Susan Kaiser Greenland, J.D.

Susan Kaiser Greenland is a Mindfulness Instructor at The UCLA Family Commons and also serves as one of our Advisors. She teaches mindful awareness to children and teens, as well as educators, parents, therapists and health care professionals around the world. She also consults with various organizations on teaching mindful awareness in an age-appropriate and secular manner. Susan developed the Inner Kids mindful awareness program for children and families and, in 2000, she co-founded the Inner Kids Foundation to teach mindful awareness in Los Angeles schools and other community settings.

Susan is on the clinical team of the Pediatric Pain Clinic at UCLA’s Mattel Children’s Hospital and is Co-Investigator on a multi-year, multi-site research study at UCLA’s Semel Institute on the impact of mindfulness in education. She is also a collaborator on an investigation of mindful eating for children and their caregivers at UCSF and serves on the Garrison Institute’s Initiative on Contemplation and Education Leadership Council.

Susan’s upcoming book, The Mindful Child, will be published by Free Press in 2010. She can be found online at www.susankaisergreenland.com, as well as at www.mindfulnesstogether.net, a social network for those interested in mindfulness that she and her daughter created in 2007 as part of a high school community service project.  She also blogs occasionally for the Huffington Post and Intent.

Susan and her husband have two children, an 18-year-old daughter and a 16-year-old son. She likes to cook and bike on the beach, and she’s learning to play the guitar. Susan finds that her life is not always well balanced between work and play, but she’s working to change that. She has, however, made peace with her frozen yogurt habit, which she satisfies regularly at either Pinkberry or Cold Stone Creamery.