As parents today, we face unprecedented and disorienting technological, cultural, and socio-political change. This talk will explore ways to bring mindfulness into our parenting at all ages and stages, as we navigate raising our children in today's world. Mindfulness is not a quick fix solution to the challenges of parenting. Rather, it is the gradual cultivation of a new way of being present with the totality of our experience, allowing us and our children greater access to our natural creativity, flexibility, heartfulness, intuitive wisdom, and values when the stakes are highest and we need them most.

This lecture is one of four sessions taught by Teresa LaMendola Kabat-Zinn and Will Kabat-Zinn in the Contemplation By Design Summit. You are welcome to join one or all sessions. The other sessions include an interactive workshop titled Mindful Parenting Interactive Session: Loving Awareness in Action on October 19, a guided practice with Teresa titled Cultivating Connection on October 21, and a guided practice with Will titled Embracing Emotions on October 23.

Teresa LaMendola Kabat-Zinn, MA, LMFT, is a Marriage and Family Therapist currently in private practice in the Bay Area. She has over two decades of professional experience supporting parents, families, children, and adolescents in various settings, including schools, private practice, and specialized therapeutic environments. Teresa co-developed and taught an in-depth mindfulness curriculum for parents of children with special needs as part of a long-term study on stress and cell aging at UCSF. She has developed and facilitated programs for Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Center, presented at the Wisdom 2.O Conference Parenting Intensive, and provides parent training, coaching, and consultation.

Will Kabat-Zinn, MA, has been practicing meditation for over two decades and has spent extended time in silent retreat both in the US and in Burma. He is passionate about helping people put into practice and experience for themselves the liberating power of mindfulness. Will has taught mindfulness and other meditative practices to diverse populations—including educators, parents, incarcerated youth, law enforcement officers, scientists, and business and technology leaders—and spent a year as an executive in residence at the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business.  He conducts regular retreats and practice intensives around the country and in Europe and leads a local meditation community in Berkeley where he lives with his wife and two children.

This sessions is part of the FREE Contemplation by Design Summit, Oct. 15-27, 2025.

The full summit schedule is posted at: https://med.stanford.edu/contemplation/summit.html.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/stanford-contemplation-by-design-summit-2025-online-oct-15-27-registration-1520413249959