After a year of secluding ourselves due to COVID-19, many are getting vaccinated and reconnecting to the world. The free app, Healthy Minds Program, has released a new meditation dedicated to entering a new phase as the world heals and returns to a sense of normalcy. The meditation in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month which was in May is by Dr. Cortland Dahl who joins Lisa to talk about well being, meditation, and the HealthyMinds Program App and more!

Well-being is a skill - What modern science has to say about well-being and how it can be learned. The most current research suggests that the brain is constantly changing in response to experience. This insight, known in neuroscience as neuroplasticity, suggests that we can train our minds, and even rewire our brains, to be more resilient, more focused, and even to feel more connected with other people and our most deeply held values. Dr. Cortland Dahl and other scientists at the Center for Healthy Minds have developed a new scientific framework that helps us understand how this might actually happen. Their framework focuses on four core pillars of well-being - awareness, connection, insight, and purpose - and shows how in just minutes a day we can strengthen these pillars and improve our well-being.

Dr. Cortland Dahl is a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Healthy Minds and the Chief Contemplative Officer at the center’s affiliated non-profit, Healthy Minds Innovations. He has a varied career, which includes nearly a decade spent living in Tibetan refugee settlements in India and Nepal, translating ancient meditation manuals from Tibetan into English, and the founding of a global network of meditation centers. In his work as a scientist, he has been at the forefront of the current research on meditation and well-being, including the creation of a groundbreaking scientific model of well-being recently published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has published numerous other scientific works, as well as twelve books of translations, and leads meditation retreats and workshops on the science of well-being around the world.

HealthyMinds Innovations (HMI) created this app to help calm your anxiety surrounding everyday personal or professional stresses, including COVID-19. Did you know the mind can be trained to be more focused, calm, and resilient? The HealthyMinds Program App teaches you how to accomplish this through meditation training. It's available for anyone to use as a day-to-day tool navigating life in school, the workplace, or even relationships with friends, family or significant others. In the App you can choose from traditional sitting meditations or active on-the-go meditations when you're walking, taking the subway, or even driving - plus you can choose how much time you have, from 5 - 30 minutes. There are also meditations for dealing with specific stresses like COVID-19, working remotely, or going back to school. The Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and their non-profit, HMI, are both led by Neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson. He's spent years researching the science of well being. Dr. Cortland Dahl joined his team and used his PHD thesis to create a framework of four pillars to scientifically train the mind; called ACIP (Awareness, Connection, Insight, Purpose) which the app is centered around. He is also the voice of the app!