Cassandra Vieten, PhD is President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a Scientist at California Pacific Medical Center’s Mind-Body Medicine Research Group. She is a psychologist, researcher, author, and international workshop leader and public speaker who, for over 20 years, has been studying how people transform their way of looking at the world.
Her primary interest lies in how psychology, biology, and spirituality interact to affect experience and behavior. Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the State of California, and several private donors and foundations, her research has focused on spirituality and health; development and pilot testing of mindfulness-based approaches to cultivating emotional balance; and factors, experiences, and practices involved in psychospiritual transformation to a more meaningful, compassionate, and service-oriented way of life.
She is author of three books, including Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life. Her current projects focus on spirituality in mental health care, extraordinary experiences during or as a result of meditation, and virtual reality approaches to inducing perspective-shifting experiences that change people’s lives.