I couldn’t stop myself from marvelling at the bright-eyed woman across from me who I knew was experiencing what most people would consider intolerable pain, but was somehow nevertheless radiant, light-hearted and completely present as we sat eating a meal together. The lunch date was both professional and personal. I was profiling Vidyamala Burch in my documentary My Year of Living Mindfully as a case study in coping with chronic pain. She’s the founder of Breathworks, an organisation with a global reach that, among other things, aims to teach people living with chronic pain and illness how to reclaim their... Read full article »

I looked at the older, bald, robed man across from me and thought, whatever he’s on, I want some. I was interviewing Matthieu Ricard, the renowned Buddhist monk who normally lives in a monastery in Nepal but was in Australia as a keynote speaker at the Happiness and Its Causes Conference. It was eight in the evening and the 71-year-old was on his fourth and final day of a whirlwind tour. Starting in 2004, neuroscientists performed a series of seminal brain scans on Ricard and the popular media started calling him the happiest man on earth. As we prepared for... Read full article »