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It seems that we’re all striving for happiness, compassion, creativity, and calm — and frankly, it’s stressing us out. What if instead of striving, we tried a little rewiring? Mind-centered interventions from meditation to music to recalibrating mental models can put us on a path toward personal and societal wellness, allowing our minds to thrive.

Rod Stryker is one of the world’s leading yoga and meditation teachers. He has helped thousands of people from all walks of life recognize their soul’s call to greatness and achieve their dreams. In this talk, Rod will outline the practical and powerful approach to embodying the highest principles of yoga without ever doing a yoga pose as well as how these ancient teaching...

Well-being isn’t merely a condition of life, some sort of personal happiness rating. According to many of today’s biggest thinkers, it’s a definable state that one can make practical steps toward achieving. To explore approaches that bring calm, happiness, and increased productivity, meditate on a few of these great sessions.


Scientific evidence suggests that we can change our brains by transforming our minds and cultivating habits of mind that will improve well-being. These include happiness, resilience, compassion, and emotional balance. Each of these characteristics is instantiated in brain circuits that exhibit plasticity and thus can be shaped and modified by experience and training. Menta...

Published studies have documented the many physical and mental health benefits of meditation, including decreased pain, better immune function, less anxiety and depression, a heightened sense of well-being, and greater happiness and emotional self-control. Google Scholar turns up almost 700,000 research documents on meditation, among them imaging studies that show increase...

Connecting with others increases happiness and health, but people routinely forgo opportunities for positive connections with friends, family, neighbors, and even strangers. In experiments asking people to connect with strangers, express gratitude, perform random acts of kindness, give compliments, ask for help, and engage in constructive confrontation, there’s a consisten...

On June 3, 2017, Alex Honnold became the first person to climb the 3,000-vertical-foot granite face of Yosemite’s El Capitan, alone, without ropes, a feat that was chronicled in the Academy Award-winning documentary, Free Solo. In his New York Times op-ed column, Bret Stephens wrote that with that act, “Honnold gave an extraordinary gift to everyone who believes that the l...

Despite decades of economic growth, the population as a whole — and surprisingly — is slightly less happy. On paper, many have lives that appear awesome, but they're just not feeling it. Even those with great material and financial affluence are not as psychologically well-off as they could be. Laurie Santos, professor of psychology and teacher of Yale's most popular class...

It is easy to take for granted the remarkable human ability to see, hear, smell, touch, and taste. Yet engaging fully with these remarkable tools of perception deepens our understanding of the world and paves the way to more mindful living. In her new book, Life in Five Senses: How Exploring the Senses Got Me Out of My Head and Into the World, author Gretchen Rubin draws o...

Are you truly tuned in to the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures that surround you every day? Ahead of her book talk at Aspen Ideas: Health, best-selling author Gretchen Rubin shares how she reconnected to the world around her through her five senses – and how you can too!


Scientific evidence suggests that we can change our brains by transforming our minds and cultivating habits of mind that will improve well-being.

While all emotions are valid, their usefulness might ultimately come down to how well a person is able to interpret the signals that their feelings provide.

When we understand how our emotions work — and how they can trick us for both good and bad outcomes — we can turn them into superpowers. Hear from researchers and practitioners who offer intriguing ways to think about emotions. They suggest ways to better navigate our inner lives and relationships with those around us.
