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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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.

Full show notes and resources