Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR, wrote in a message in 2023 that the curriculum "needs to bring more light to the interface of person and environment."
It was not a small thing to say. MBSR has been taught to millions of people around the world over four decades. And the question Margaret Fletcher — a senior teacher and trainer in the MBSR lineage — had been quietly carrying was: what would it actually look like to answer that call?
The MBSR & EcoAwareness Project was her answer.
Launched in 2024 with a pilot group of ten MBSR teachers, the project offers a six-session online workshop that invites mindfulness teachers to explore how EcoAwareness can be woven into their existing practice and teaching — not as an add-on, but as a natural deepening. The premise is simple and quietly radical: MBSR already teaches us to pay attention, to feel what is present, to meet difficulty without turning away. These are precisely the capacities needed to face ecological grief, climate anxiety, and the longing to belong to the living world again. The two are not separate.
The project is supported by the BESS Family Foundation and co-led with Trish Magyari — a pioneer in trauma-informed mindfulness who has studied with Joanna Macy since the 1980s. Together, they are building something that goes beyond a single workshop: a growing community of MBSR teachers who are willing to bring the Earth into the room, and who are learning together how to do so with care, skill, and joy.
The goal is quietly ambitious: to reach as many MBSR teachers as possible, remove financial barriers to participation, and ensure that at least half of all participants come from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and young adult communities.
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