Whether we meet in the classroom, in a lecture hall, on a meditation cushion, or on a yoga mat, my goal is to share with you the skills needed to be a capable, compassionate, engaged democratic citizen.

I am the Liberal Arts Endowed Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Penn State University. My research radically reimagines democracy. Long misunderstood as a war between two political parties fighting to win elections, with common folks like you and me enlisted as soldiers in the battle, democracy is rightly understood as a communal practice of caring for each other and for the life we share. Democracy starts from common ground, embraces deliberation and disagreement, and is embodied in everyday practices of mindfulness, compassion, and community building. There is no way to democracy; democracy is the way.

I am the author of six books, including the forthcoming On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World (Parallax, 2026). I am also a mindfulness and yoga teacher living in State College, Pennsylvania, where I co-founded Yoga Lab.

Years of studying democracy as a scholar and teaching university students to be engaged citizens and ethical leaders has convinced me democracy does not work without mindfulness. Democracy demands the skills we learn by practicing meditation: paying attention, slowing down, pausing judgment, looking deeply, speaking lovingly, and listening carefully. In fact, I’ve come to think of mindfulness as a type of civic education. For democracy to regain its power to change lives and worlds, we the people must learn to live more mindfully.