The Wellbeing Series

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.

Discover more about your own wellbeing with us through the Wellbeing Series, an opportunity to engage, learn, and experience what wellbeing means to you.

To make disability-related accommodations, please contact the Bakken Center's community relations office ([email protected], 612-625-8164).

2024 Wellbeing Series Speakers

We will have one more fantastic speaker addition for our 2024 Wellbeing Series lineup that we will announce soon. Sign up here to be notified when registration for the 2024 Wellbeing Series webinars becomes available and to receive our final speaker announcement.

WELL at WORK: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace featuring Esther Sternberg, M.D.

Tuesday, January 30, 2024; 12 to 1:30 p.m. Central | Online via Zoom
 
esther sternberg - a woman with glasses standing in front of a desert and cactus background
Internationally recognized mind-body science and place and wellbeing pioneer, Dr. Esther Sternberg is Research Director, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, Founding Director University of Arizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance, Inaugural Andrew Weil Chair for Research in Integrative Medicine, and Research Professor of Medicine with joint appointments in Psychology, Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture, Nutritional Sciences & Wellness. Her latest book WELL at WORK: Creating Wellbeing in Any Workspace (Little, Brown Spark), a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Fall 2023 Lifestyle Book, shows how to embed the seven domains of integrative health into any workspace and takes her previous book Healing Spaces into the post-COVID workplace era. Amongst her many awards, the National Library of Medicine recognized her as one of the women who Changed the Face of Medicine. Prior to joining UArizona, she was Senior Scientist and Section Chief, National Institutes of Health.

Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us featuring Susan Magsamen

Tuesday, April 2, 2024; 12 to 1:30 p.m. Central | Online via Zoom
 
susan magsamen - a white woman with blond hair wearing an orange shirt

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics, a pioneering neuroaesthetics initiative from the Pedersen Brain Science Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Susan’s work focuses on how the arts and aesthetic experiences measurably change the brain, body and behavior and how this knowledge can be translated to inform health, wellbeing and learning programs in medicine, public health and education. She is also the author of the Impact Thinking, an interdisciplinary translational research model to enhance human potential through the use of arts and aesthetics. In addition to her role at IAM Lab, she is the co-director of the NeuroArts Blueprint project in partnership with the Aspen Institute. The Blueprint aims to create the field of Neuroarts where arts and aesthetics are mainstream in medicine and public health. Magsamen is also the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us written for the general public.