Today we’d like to introduce you to Diana Winston.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I started meditating in India in the late 1980s. I was living in Dharamasala, India where the Dalai Lama has the government in exile. It’s a Buddhist town and I everyone around me was meditating, so you might say it was peer pressure! However once I discovered how fascinating meditation was, I was hooked. It also felt like a helpful tool for dealing with the anxiety and self-judgment, which I was struggling with at the time.
I spent the next ten years, in monasteries and retreat centers in India and the US, culminating with a year as a Buddhist nun in Burma (Myanmar) in 1998. That meant a shaved head, no food after noon, and meditating 18 hours a day! When I finished my year as a nun I was trained in the US to teach as a Buddhist teacher.
After teaching for a few years, I realized that the meditation practices were so profound and could be accessible to anyone, not only useful within a Buddhist context. Around that time I met Sue Smalley, a professor at UCLA who wanted to bring mindfulness into the university. Ultimately I was hired as the Education Director for what was then called the Mindful Awareness Research Center, and currently I am Director of UCLA Mindful, the mindfulness education center of UCLA Health. I’ve spent the last 20 years bringing mindfulness to Los Angeles and globally as well.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Hard to say. There were many years I spent knocking on doors explaining to people that mindfulness– paying attention to our present moment experiences with openness and curiosity and a willingness to be with what is– would be beneficial.
At that time the science was just starting to show its benefits for stress-related physical conditions, mental health, especially anxiety and depression, for building attention, and even for changing our brain’s structure. But in the early days I had to prove it! So I taught a lot of mindfulness classes and shared the benefits.
Over the years I began to train teachers and mindfulness has now been brought worldwide– not only by me, of course, but by many others who have helped to integrate it in society such as in academia, healthcare, psychology, business, and education. I have watched the growing acceptance of mindfulness from a fringe practice in the US into the larger cultural arena, and it’s been extraordinary.
Keep in mind these are not fringe practices in the countries they come from– much of Asia. They are central to Buddhist religion and spiritual practices.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I have now been teaching mindfulness for almost 30 years. I have the privilege of having trained about 550 mindfulness facilitators from all walks of life and over 20 countries. I have helped to oversee the growth of mindfulness, serving as a consultant to many organizations, school systems, universities, and healthcare systems that have wanted to integrate mindfulness. I have developed curriculum for research such as for younger breast cancer survivors, for insomnia, and much more. I have co-founded an accreditation system for mindfulness teachers called the International Mindfulness Teachers Association. I have written three books about mindfulness. I also have a cool program on mindfulness and menopause: https://www.meditatehappier.com/menopause I have had an incredible career.
But honestly the thing I am most proud of is the emails I get weekly telling me how individuals all over the world have benefited from mindfulness, how it has helped transform their lives. This is incredibly moving and miraculous.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I took a risk when I left my marriage ten years ago… how would that affect my child? It ended up being incredibly important and I wouldn’t be here today– happily remarried– had I not take that risk. So much better to take risks even if it’s scary, than be stuck.
Pricing:
- We have lots of free classes and a free app called UCLA Mindful, available in all the app stores
- We host a free meditation class at the Hammer Museum every Thursday at 12:30
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.uclahealth.org/uclamindful
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uclamindful/
- Other: https://dianawinston.com/
Image Credits
Milo Mitchell for the headshot, the rest are random
