Mind & Life

To conclude this mini-series, guest host Jamie Bristow is joined by Gretchen Steidle, cathy-mae karelse and Rufus Pollock to step back from individual approaches explored so far and consider the wider field they are collectively helping to shape. As interest in contemplative approaches to social and ecological transformation continues to grow, how do we make sense of a rapidly expanding landscape of people, projects, organisations and ideas? Together, they discuss the importance of mapping emerging fields: not simply to catalogue what exists, but to help practitioners find one another, foster collaboration, identify gaps, and make the field more visible to researchers, funders and institutions. The conversation also explores what it takes for an emerging movement to develop coherence, legitimacy and shared purpose. Bringing the series to a close, it offers a hopeful bird's-eye view of a field that is beginning to recognise itself, and asks what might be needed for its next stage of maturity.

cathy-mae karelse, PhD, a changemaker and scholar practitioner who leads Climate Youth Resilience, a global south-facing program that approaches climate resilience and systems change from the inside out. 

Rufus Pollock, who is co-founder of Life Itself and the Second Renaissance Initiatives and is focused on inner-led social change to renew our civilization's foundations. 

Gretchen Steidle, Director of Spirituality and Social Change at the Garrison Institute and Chief Weaver for the Conscious Change Collective, a network of practitioners

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In this episode of the mini-series on systems change, guest host Jamie Bristow turns the lens around. Rather than beginning with a particular inner approach and asking what it might offer, the conversation starts with the system itself: the patterns, power dynamics and meaning-making structures that shape the crises we face. Joined by Rachel Lilley, Thomas Legrand, and Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman, Jamie explores why contemplative and embodied approaches may be vital not only for shifting deep leverage points such as worldview and values, but also for helping systems practitioners navigate complexity, bias, and uncertainty. From food systems and public policy to AI, Ubuntu, and embodied systems leadership, the discussion ranges widely while staying grounded in a central question: what does it take to work with systems in ways that are more relational, reflective, and transformative? The result is a rich conversation about inner-led change, viewed through a broader systems lens.

Thomas Legrand is Lead Advisor for the UNDP-convened Conscious Food Systems Alliance, and the author of Politics of Being: wisdom and science for a new development paradigm.

Rachel Lilley is an Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham, where she is programme director of the MSc in Systems Thinking and Leadership and pioneers the integration of embodied practice and inner inquiry into systems practice.

Wakanyi Macharia-Hoffman is an Ubuntu philosophy thinker, the founder of African Folktales Project and the director of African AI Design Research at Inclusive AI Lab, Utrecht University. , where she bridges indigenous African knowledge for inner human development with AI design ethics.

 

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Jon Kabat-Zinn didn't invent MBSR as a stress reduction programme. He created it as a way of meeting suffering—individual, collective, planetary—with greater clarity and care. Somewhere in the journey to the mainstream, that wider vision narrowed in the public conception. This episode is, in part, a return to the source.

Guest host Jamie Bristow is joined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Paula Ramírez Díazgranados and Liane Stephan to explore what mindfulness becomes when it is brought back into relationship with the world: with trauma and conflict, with institutions and food systems, with the tragedy of ecological crisis. Their conversation moves through medicine, humanitarian response and sustainability work, but the deeper thread running through all of it is relational: the question of what contemplative practice can offer when the patient is not only the individual, but the communities and systems we are part of.

 

The result is a wide-ranging and genuinely hopeful conversation about resilience, interdependence and the fuller promise of mindfulness in a time that needs more than personal wellbeing.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is internationally known for his work as a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society including MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction). He is professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and author of numerous books, including Full Catastrophe Living, Arriving at Your Own Door, Coming to Our Senses, and Mindfulness Meditation for Pain Relief


Paula Ramírez Díazgranados is a Colombian anthropologist, peacebuilder, therapist, and somatic facilitator whose work integrates trauma-sensitive mindfulness, Somatic Experiencing, ancestral practice, and cultural and ecological wisdom. Since 2009, she has worked across more than 20 countries with individuals, communities, and humanitarian teams navigating trauma, systemic violence, displacement, and recovery. She is co-director of RESPIRA in Colombia and Breathe/Emerge International, organizations that combine peacebuilding and mental health through the restoration of human resilience.


Liane Stephan is the co-founder and CEO of Awaris GmbH and co-founder of the Inner Green Deal. With more than three decades of experience in leadership development, mindfulness, systemic organizational development, and culture change, she supports leaders, teams, and organizations in cultivating resilience, awareness, and sustainable transformation. She is also co-author of The Resilient Culture: How Collective Resilience Leads to Business Success.

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In this panel conversation, guest host Jamie Bristow is joined by Katrin Kaufer,  Martin Kalungu-Banda and Megan Seneque to explore Theory U and the wider field of awareness-based systems change. Developed through the Presencing Institute, Theory U is one of the most widely applied approaches to systems change that explicitly integrates contemplative practice with collective transformation. Together, they examine how this work helps people move beyond habitual responses, deepen the quality of attention and relationship, and create the conditions for new futures to emerge. The conversation ranges from leadership and social innovation to public health, higher education, research, and global systems work, while also asking harder questions about evidence, integrity, access, and scale. The result is a rich and searching exploration of what it means to work with complexity in ways that are rigorous, relational, and open to emergence.

Dr. Katrin Kaufer, is co-founding member and managing director of the Presencing Institute. She is also director of the Just Money program at MIT's Community Innovation Lab, CoLab, where she also teaches. 

Martin Kalungu-Banda, is a leadership and organizational development practitioner who works across business, government, and civil society. He's visiting fellow at Oxford Said Business School, a core faculty member with the Presencing Institute and co-founder of the Ubuntu Lab Institute, bringing a strong practice lens on adaptive leadership and systems change. 

Dr. Megan Seneque, is an associate with the Presencing Institute and a member of the editorial team with the Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change hosted by the Presencing Institute. She is also a research associate at the University of Roehampton in London, an honorary fellow with the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

In the second panel conversation of this mini-series, guest host Jamie Bristow is joined by Laura Calderón de la Barca, Kazu Haga and Thomas Hübl to explore the rising significance of trauma healing for systems change. As trauma moves from the margins to the mainstream, the conversation asks what we are really naming when we speak of trauma, and how unprocessed experience shapes not only individual lives, but relationships, communities and whole societies. Together, they reflect on the growing recognition that healing need not be a solitary pursuit, and that collective, systemic and intergenerational approaches may be vital in an age of compounding crises. The result is a thoughtful and far-reaching conversation about whether our capacity to relate wisely to trauma may help determine how we meet the pressures of a rapidly changing and imperiled world.

Laura Calderón de la Barca, PhD is a psychotherapist specialized in collective, systemic and intergenerational trauma, as well as a collective healing researcher, educator, consultant, and lead author of Healing Systems, the #1 read article of the Stanford Social Innovation Review for 2024

Kazu Haga is an educator and practitioner with over 25 years of experience in nonviolence, restorative justice and trauma healing work, and author of Fierce Vulnerability: Healing from Trauma, Emerging from Collapse. 

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change by integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science.