Mindfulness

Mariana is a certified Mindfulness Instructor for kids and teens. She took a mentoring and certification training program at the UCSD Center for Mindfulness. She also completed an intensive teacher training in the Mindfulness in Schools Education Project (MiSP .b program), a program launched in the UK, having obtained a certification to teach this dynamic, classroom-based program to middle and high school students. She is currently working to become certified to teach the Making Friends with Yourself Program, which is a Self-Compassion curriculum for teens based on the ideas and research of Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer taught at the Center for Self-Compassion. Since 2015, she has been working with the Youth and Family Programs Division at the UCSD Center for Mindfulness.

At this time, Mariana provides support in Mindful and Compassionate Parenting Workshops and will start offering training on this to parents in Mexico. Mariana strongly believes in the power of Mindfulness. This has inspired her to concentrate her studies on helping children and teens develop self-regulation, resilience and social-emotional skills that they can use for the rest of their lives. Her passion for teaching children and teens has inspired her to pursue further training in the Little Flower Yoga Program. This also motivated her to start a Stress Reduction Program where she applies her knowledge to teach in economically underdeveloped areas in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she has been teaching a multiage group of teens and pre-teens.

Mariana is a multicultural woman. She spent eight years living in Europe. This has helped her better understand how different societies work. Her native language is Spanish and she also speaks English, French and German. She spends her free time traveling and producing wine at her vineyards in Ensenada, Mexico with her husband.

Megan Prager, MA, serves as the Compassion Programs Director at the UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness and is the co-founder of Mindful Labs. She is a certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher, a certified Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) teacher, and a certified Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) instructor. Megan is also an adjunct faculty member at San Diego State University and a lecturer at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management.

In addition to teaching mindfulness-based programs, Megan specializes in designing and delivering mindfulness and compassion trainings for Fortune 500 companies as well as for educational, healthcare, and academic settings. She currently collaborates with universities to develop and teach mindfulness and compassion courses at the collegiate level. Across all of her work, Megan is driven by a clear mission: to empower individuals to cultivate compassionate awareness and recognize their capacity to shape their own well-being.

Helen Hyun-Chung Kim is a Certified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy teacher. In her previous life she was a board-certified psychiatrist in Korea for 15 years, serving underserved communities. During that time she witnessed profound suffering in her patients and felt drawn toward mindfulness and self-compassion as paths toward healing.

With guidance from founding director Dr. Steve Hickman, Helen joined UC San Diego’s Center for Mindfulness, where she studied a range of mindfulness-based programs with many respected teachers. Through this journey she developed a grounded foundation rooted in awareness, acceptance, ease, and compassion.

Helen is committed to sharing what she has learned with others on their own paths of healing and self-discovery, offering a warm, steady presence shaped by both clinical experience and contemplative practice.

Cheryl has over 20 years of finance and corporate experience in leadership roles, working in a high-demanding career while raising two daughters. The daily stress she faced led her to conclude there must be a better way to live and work. She witnessed firsthand the negative impacts of long work hours, stress, and pressure on individuals and the emotional and mental pain suffered in the workplace.

Her extensive professional background informs her teaching, making her an accessible and compassionate guide who translates mindfulness and compassion into language that feels relevant and practical.

Cheryl first discovered meditation in college when her wandering mind created difficulties in her studies. She later learned about mindfulness through Mindful Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in 2005 and pursued Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) in 2010. She attended a 10-day silent Vipassana retreat in Joshua Tree in 2013 and continues retreat practice annually.

She embodies mindfulness and self-compassion through daily practice, emphasizing the power of pausing to respond with intention. Cheryl ultimately left her finance career to launch Simply Pause, supporting others in changing their relationship with stress and cultivating wiser, more compassionate lives.

Cassandra Vieten is Clinical Professor and Director of the Center for Mindfulness at the Centers for Integrative Health in the Department of Family Medicine at UC San Diego. She is also Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination and Clinical Psychology Director at the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative at UCSD. She is Senior Advisor of the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation where she served as Executive Director from 2019-2023, and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019.

Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, and development of media technologies to inspire awe. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and completed her research training in behavioral genetics at UC San Francisco. She has authored three books, published numerous articles in scientific journals, and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader.