Since 2012, the University of Minnesota's Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality & Healing has hosted wellbeing thought-leaders to inspire and educate the community, organizations, and life-long learners through the Wellbeing Lecture Series.
Past speakers like Brené Brown, Atul Gawande, Dessa, Celeste Headlee, Rhonda Magee, and Jon Kabat-Zinn have explored a range of topics including purpose, vulnerability, food and wellbeing, gratitude, technology, and mindfulness, among others.
Explore wellbeing topics with us through the Wellbeing Series, an opportunity to engage, learn, grow, and enhance your wellbeing.
2027 Wellbeing Series
Be the first to receive updates regarding the 2027 Wellbeing Series by filling out our quick form. We will open registration for the three webinars in the coming weeks. This is a series you won’t want to miss so watch for an announcement soon to learn from our line-up of fantastic wellbeing thought leaders and visionaries!
Heal Faster: Activate Your Body’s Rapid Recovery System featuring Victoria Maizes, MD
February 11, 2027, Noon to 1:30 PM Central | Online via Zoom
Why do some individuals recover quickly from illness, injury, or surgery while others struggle? Given the incredible advances of modern medicine, it is surprising that its focus is more often on managing chronic disease, than on reversing it. Increasing numbers of adults find themselves with several diagnoses for which they take multiple medications. In this evidence-based webinar, Dr. Maizes explores the emerging science behind the body’s innate capacity for recovery—and how it can be activated.
Drawing on decades of clinical experience in integrative medicine and new research, Dr. Maizes examines the impediments to healing and the key accelerators of recovery. Attendees will learn practical and actionable strategies to enhance physiologic resilience, including insights from circadian medicine, optimization of sleep timing, use of wearables, and reduction of exposure to hormone-disrupting environmental toxins.
This session reframes recovery as an innate biological capacity that can be strengthened through targeted interventions rather than a passive process. By integrating these principles people can learn to more effectively activate their rapid recovery reflex—supporting faster healing, improved outcomes, and greater vitality.
Learning objectives:
- Participants will deepen their understanding of the innate capacity of the body to heal.
- Participants will learn about the elimination diet as a potential tool for activating healing.
- Participants will experience a breathing practice that can help quiet their vagus nerve.
About the Speaker
Victoria Maizes, MD is a pioneering leader in integrative medicine. She is the founding executive director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and a professor of medicine, family medicine, and public health at the University of Arizona.
Together with her team at the Center, she created and implemented educational programs that have trained thousands of physicians and nurses and impacted the care of millions of patients. Dr. Maizes focuses on the body’s ability to recover, heal and thrive. She is the author of Heal Faster: Unlock Your Body’s Rapid Recovery Reflex, which explores practical, evidence-based strategies to strengthen resilience and accelerate recovery. Dr. Maizes is also the editor of the Oxford University Press textbook Integrative Women’s Health and the author of Be Fruitful: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Fertility and Giving Birth to a Healthy Child. She co-hosts the popular podcast Body of Wonder with Dr. Andrew Weil and was named one of the world’s 25 intelligent optimists by ODE magazine.
Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose featuring Jennifer Wallace
March 2, 2027, Noon to 1:30 PM Central | Online via Zoom
Mattering—the feeling that we are valued by others and able to add value to the world around us—is a fundamental human need. Research shows that people with a strong sense of mattering are more engaged, resilient, and connected. They experience greater wellbeing, stronger mental health, healthier relationships, and a deeper sense of purpose. When our sense of mattering is weak, we are more likely to withdraw, feel lonely or isolated, disengage from those around us, and struggle with anxiety, depression, and hopelessness. Yet over the last several decades, our sense of mattering has quietly eroded.
In this practical, research-backed webinar, New York Times bestselling author of Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, Jennifer Breheny Wallace draws on her decade of mattering research and compelling real-life stories to reveal why mattering is one of the most powerful drivers of human wellbeing. You'll learn how to strengthen your own sense of mattering—and cultivate it in others—through simple, everyday practices that can transform your relationships, work, and overall sense of purpose.
Learning Objectives
- Understand what mattering is, why it is essential to wellbeing, and how it influences our relationships and resilience.
- Learn the four essential components of mattering—feeling significant, appreciated, invested in, and depended on—and practical ways to strengthen each in your daily life.
- Recognize the signs of "mattering too much," which means being overly relied upon without enough support, and learn strategies for restoring balance.
- Discover how to maintain and strengthen your sense of mattering during major life transitions, including starting a new job, becoming a parent, navigating an empty nest, retiring, and other destabilizing periods of change.
About the Speaker
Jennifer Wallace is an award-winning journalist and the author of two instant New York Times bestsellers: Mattering: The Secret to a Life of Deep Connection and Purpose, an Amazon Best Business & Leadership Book of 2026, and Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic — And What We Can Do About It, an Amazon Best Book of the Year. Jennifer began her journalism career in television at CBS “60 Minutes” and has been a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. She lives in New York City with her family.