When the conference director of Happiness and Its Causes asked me to host a panel discussion between experts on deepening our mind-body connection so that we can lead healthier lives, I was delighted. It’s a topic I’m dedicated to raising awareness about and the lineup was terrific. There was Michael Mosely – the famed English doctor and BBC presenter known for self-experimenting in the name of science, Elissa Epel – an American psychiatry professor and stress expert, who co-authored the bestselling book The Telomere Effect about healthy ageing, Amit Bernstein – an Israeli mindfulness professor who is doing extraordinary work... Read full article »

I sat on the stage looking out at an audience of psychologists, mental-heath workers, educators, academics, and everyday folk looking for reliable ways to live better in this crazy, busy, mixed-up world. The event, which was called “Mind The Hype: Is Meditation All It’s Cracked Up To Be?” was hosted by the University of Melbourne as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week and was billed as a panel discussion about whether mindfulness has rightfully earned its place on the top of the global health trend charts.  Although the subject matter was the focus of substantial debate, the enthusiasm for the event... Read full article »

A friend of mine recently had a particularly nasty gastro bug that landed her in hospital. She sent me a link she’d found after googling her ongoing post-hospital symptoms. The online article was written by a blogger who had experienced a very similar illness to my friend’s and whole-heartedly prescribed a recovery path for others, which involved a restricted diet plan and special probiotics. I totally understand why my friend had turned to Dr Google. She’d been pronounced “better” and booted out of hospital after consulting with a specialist doctor for a grand total of eight minutes. Two weeks later,... Read full article »

This year I set myself an ambitious goal to be eating a completely whole-food diet by the end of the year. At a time when experts are increasingly concerned about the impact of junk food on our health, I wanted to see if was even possible to learn to cook everything from scratch while leading a busy life as a working mother of two young children.With the customary zeal that accompanies every well-intentioned “New Year New Me” resolution, I signed up for an intensive cooking course, gave my pantry a makeover, planted seeds for a fledgling herb garden and invented... Read full article »

Normally people discover they're iron deficient during a visit to their GP that was prompted by feeling unusually fatigued. I learned abut my anaemia in slightly more unusual way. During the production of my new film about mindfulness I had a team of scientists tracking my biological markers as I meditated every day for a year. This included various brain scans, blood tests and saliva analysis. When it came time to reveal my saliva results, we hit an unexpected anomaly; “If your cortisol levels were any lower, you’d probably be dead,” the scientist who was analysing the data told me.While... Read full article »

For some, mindfulness is a life-saving psychological tool that pulled them out of the depths of depression, for others it’s a way to disentangle from the grip of addiction. Some use mindfulness to face chronic pain or stressful emotions, while others use it to achieve peak performance at work.Some believe that mindfulness is an innate human capability of such great import that it should be taught in schools and used in parliaments, while others see it as a marketing device, with which to sell mayonnaise and colouring books. No matter what you think mindfulness is or what it does, there’s... Read full article »