Zev Schuman-Olivier – Mindfulness, Behavior Change, and Health

In this episode, Wendy speaks with psychiatrist and contemplative researcher Zev Schuman-Olivier. Zev has been working for more than a decade to integrate mindfulness and compassion into health care, with a focus on addiction, depression, and chronic illness. This conversation covers many topics, including:

• weaving mindfulness and compassion into clinical settings;
• lessons from his own experience of chronic illness;
• the key role of behavior change in health;
• balancing individual responsibility for health with systemic factors;
• mindfulness and addiction;
• making interventions trauma-informed, inclusive, and broadly accessible;
• how signals from the body help motivate action and emotion;
• how mindfulness enhances trust in the body and changes the brain in depression;
• Internal Family Systems and the critical role of acceptance;
• and next steps for integrating mindfulness and compassion into complex healthcare systems.

Full show notes and resources