A Teacher
Lisa Miller
The brain is built for transcendence, and an awakened, spiritually attuned mind is a measurably healthier one.
The transmission
Lisa Miller is an American clinical psychologist and professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she founded the Spirituality Mind Body Institute.
She earned her bachelor’s degree from Yale and her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied under positive-psychology founder Martin Seligman.
Her research on the neuroscience and psychology of spirituality has appeared in journals including JAMA Psychiatry. She is the bestselling author of ‘The Spiritual Child’ (2015) and ‘The Awakened Brain’ (2021).
What they gave
Empirical science of spirituality: Built a research program treating spiritual experience as a measurable object of clinical and developmental psychology.
- The ‘awakened brain’: Showed that a spiritually attuned, awakened brain correlates with resilience and mental health.
- Spirituality Mind Body Institute: Founded an institute at Columbia’s Teachers College to study and teach the psychology of spirituality.
- Clinical integration: Carried findings into peer-reviewed journals and toward a spirituality-in-clinical-practice movement.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: positive-psychology founder Martin Seligman; clinical and developmental psychology; the neuroscience of religious experience.
- Taught / Influenced: contemplative-science researchers; the spirituality-in-clinical-practice movement.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality2021
- The Spiritual Child2015
- The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality2012