Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn arrives in British Columbia this month as part of a 20-city North American tour.
The best-selling author fills lecture halls everywhere he speaks - and many in the crowd will be doctors, nurses, and fellow scientists. They come to hear about his breakthrough research on the minds of Tibetan monks, how meditation improves health, and why “mindfulness” can have a dramatic impact on depression and stress.
Dr. Kabat-Zinn keynotes a conference for oncologists in Victoria before heading to Vancouver for a public lecture and a day-long mindfulness workshop sponsored by Vipassana BC on April 17.
“Jon is one of those rare individuals who has managed to bridge East and West in a way that deepens our spiritual, social and scientific understanding of what it means to be human,” says Vancouver physician Dr. Adrianne Ross, who studied with Dr. Kabat-Zinn at his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic in Boston, Massachusetts.
And yet as is often the case, building bridges is not easy work. After studying with pioneer medical scientist and Nobel Laureate, Salvador Luria at MIT, Kabat-Zinn had to break the news to his esteemed mentor that he was going to begin a study of meditation. “Why do you insist on wasting your time on a cushion?” Luria asked.
“The truth is, I drove (Luria) nuts a good deal of the time,” Kabat-Zinn writes in his latest book, Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness.
But when the great scientist was dying with cancer, Luria called out to his former rebellious student, asking to be taught the ancient way of Buddhist meditation.
Over the years Kabat-Zinn has worked with thousands of doctors, teaching them how to teach their patients the practice of Mindfulness. And his best-selling books – such as Full-Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are have reached hundreds of thousands more.
And wherever he goes, there a lot of people go too.
Tickets for his two Vancouver appearances - a public lecture on April 15 and a full-day workshop on April 17 are now on sale at Banyen Books.

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