Publications
Reports and Guides
Transformative Skills Guide: Expanding the Definition of Climate Literacy (2025)
Sarah Bodor, Jamie Bristow, Alison Cawood, Jazmine Cofer, Haley Crim, Cyane Dandridge, Katerina Gonzales,, Jenna Hartley, Rose Hendricks, Andres Henriquez, Radhika Iyengar, Christina Kwauk, Molly Trendell-Nation, Frank Niepold, Bora Simmons, Rebecca Soulen, Kathryn Stevenson, Rachel Szczytko, Melissa Taggart.
A collaboration between U.S. federal and international non-federal experts in climate literacy and transformative skills-building, including contributors from NOAA, EPA, FEMA, USDA, Smithsonian and Executive Office of the President (EOP) before the change of presidential administration in 2025.
The guide aims to expand climate literacy to encompass those inner skills and capacities that help translate scientific understanding into transformative shifts in the way we do things, individually and collectively. The hope is that this guide will help educators and practitioners equip the whole of society with these essential resources.
The System Within: addressing the inner dimensions of sustainability and systems transformation (2024)
Authors: Jamie Bristow, Rosie Bell, Christine Wamsler, Tomas Bjorkman, Phoebe Tickell, Julia Kim, Otto Scharmer
Earth for All: A Survival Guide for Humanity, a Report to The Club of Rome, offered system change pathways to avoid ecological and societal collapse through ‘extraordinary turnarounds’ in key policy areas. This Deep-Dive was subsequently commissioned to complement Earth for All by highlighting the overlooked inner dimension of system change, and supplying systems thinkers with the language to advocate for psychological, social and spiritual factors crucial to sustainable solutions. It discusses worldviews, mindsets, values and identity as root drivers of cultural behaviour, their interaction with psychological and behavioural tendencies, and the transformative inner capacities that can be cultivated to intervene at deep leverage points; and introduces existing initiatives leading the way in integrating inner and outer dimensions of system change.
Examples of inner development in public policies and services (2024)
Authors: Jamie Bristow
Written for the Inner Development Goals, this document explores how inner development is being integrated into various public sector policies and services.
Fieldbook for Mindfulness Innovators (2019. 2nd Edition, 2024)
Authors: Menka Sanghvi, Jamie Bristow
The Fieldbook for Mindfulness Innovators was developed to support pioneers of all stripes in the growing field of mindfulness training. Drawing on expert contributions from across the mindfulness sector and a wealth of experience in innovation, the document invites innovators to explore essential ideas, resources and frameworks as they navigate the field. It aims to stimulate effective, high-quality innovations that minimise risk and are sustainable in the long-term.
The Fieldbook has been updated and revitalised in 2024. Among other new content, it now includes sections on social mindfulness, as well as diversity, equality and inclusion.
Mindfulness in Westminster: Reflection from UK Politicians (2023)
Authors: Ruth Ormston, Jamie Bristow
To date, mindfulness courses or classes have been attended, voluntarily, by over 300 Members of the House of Commons (MPs) and House of Lords (Peers) from diverse political backgrounds, as well as approximately 800 staff members.
Drawing on reflections given by around 20 politicians during in-depth interviews, as well as comments made elsewhere, this report is the first attempt globally to comprehensively set out accounts from politicians on the personal and interpersonal benefits of their mindfulness training. Many of these align with existing research in psychology, neuroscience, and leadership development.
Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out (2022)
Jamie Bristow, Rosie Bell, Christine Wamsler
Climate change is a physical reality, demanding political and practical solutions. But its inner dimension, overlooked entirely by mainstream approaches, is a human crisis of relationship. Reconnection: Meeting the Climate Crisis Inside Out outlines the relevance of mindfulness and compassion practices in addressing the endemic disconnection from self, others and nature at the root of the climate crisis.
We explore the cognitive and emotional foundations of conscious connection and discuss the potential for mindfulness and compassion practices to be developed into powerful enablers of reconnection, fostering both greater resilience and more appropriate responses to global sustainability crises.
Wamsler C., Bristow J., Cooper K., Steidle G., Taggart S., Søvold L., Bockler J., Oliver T.H., Legrand T.
This Theoretical Foundations Report was been developed for UNDP’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance (CoFSA). It demonstrates the need for increased policy attention to the neglected inner dimension of sustainability to address today’s sustainability crises. It provides an overview of current research and evidence for the potential of consciousness approaches and practices to complement current approaches and unlock transformation towards sustainability.
Mindfulness: Developing Agency in Urgent Times 2020
Jamie Bristow, Rosie Bell, Dan Nixon
Humanity’s future may depend upon strengthening our agency. Multiple interconnected crises call for skilful response on a global scale - but our capacity for intentional action in our collective best interest is underdeveloped and increasingly undermined. This discussion paper opens a dialogue on the contribution of evidence-based mindfulness training to individual and collective agency.
Beyond a ‘nice to have’ wellbeing benefit in the workplace or an alternative to prescription drugs, we’ll discuss how cultivating the innate capacity of mindfulness and its essential qualities such as attention regulation, receptivity, meta-cognition, cognitive flexibility, embodiment, emotion regulation and kindness could be foundational in responding to the complex challenges of the 21st Century.
Journal Articles
Inner Development Goals: from inner growth to outer change (2024)
Mindfulness in politics: qualitative study on mindfulness training in the UK Parliament (2023)
Mindfulness and ‘bigger than self’ issues: protocol for a scoping review (2023)
Exiting the Anthropocene: Achieving personal and planetary health in the 21st century (2022). Allergy European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology
Mindfulness in Politics and Public Policy (2018). Current Opinion in Psychology.
Web Articles
DeSmog - Between Optimism and Despair: The Messy Middle Paths Through Climate Breakdown
LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment - The unseen inner dimension of systems change and sustainability
Club of Rome - The System Within
Mindful Leader - How can inner work help with climate action?
Mind & Life Institute - New Framework Shows Why Mindfulness is a Foundational Capacity for Meeting the Challenges of Our Times
The Alternative UK - We need to reclaim our agency: Mindfulness can help.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Founder of MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction)
Author of Full Catastrophe Living and Coming to Our Senses
“Everything that Jamie and Rosie produce… is staggeringly compelling, always illuminating, and reliably supported by a clear look at the available evidence, framed in an even-handed way. Their innovative leadership in developing evidence-informed narratives has been remarkably catalytic, contributing significantly to the flowering of mindfulness-based approaches for meeting the challenges of our times.”
