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Mindfulness has sometimes been oversold, and that invites understandable critique.

Evidence shows that mindfulness can help people live well with depression, pain, and illness.

The challenge now is helping people access what we know helps.

Recently, a colleague said: “I think mindfulness has had its day.” I felt alarm, confusion, quiet hurt, and a flash of anger. I didn’t trust my reaction or my impulse to push back. So I sat with it. I’ve heard some version of this comment in different countries, from a range of colleagues—each time with a different mix of curiosity, concern, even relief. As if we’ve been surfing a wave, and now it’s time to move on to the next one.

My work over more than 30 years has been a vocation rather than a career—and that’s partly because it has been personal. I was raised in Nigeria, where as a young child I witnessed both tremendous suffering and extraordinary resilience. My experience of depression started in my teenage years. My first job at the World Health Organisation, travelling through China, India, and Thailand, was formative: I encountered ways of approaching the challenge of living well amid very real hardship that made me rethink much of what I’d learned growing up. For three decades, I have explored ideas and practices from contemplative traditions and modern psychology, and used them to........

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