Dave Potter (Palouse Mindfulness)

Dave Potter is a fully certified MBSR instructor, certified by the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and the founder of Palouse Mindfulness, a free online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course. It is based on the program founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at that university. Before the online course, he taught live, in-person MBSR classes in his community for 12 years. He is also a retired professional psychotherapist.

His interest in meditation began in his teens, when he checked out "Autobiography of a Yogi" from the public library. His first real instruction came from a teacher at a Vedanta center near his UC Berkeley dormitory. Meditation stayed central to his daily life through several career changes: he left a PhD program in mathematics to work at Intel, founded a small software company in Idaho, and at age 51 left the tech world to earn a master's in counseling and become a licensed psychotherapist. Until his first MBSR class in 2004, meditation was strictly a personal practice.

He had read Jon Kabat-Zinn's books, but MBSR still astounded him. He found it a non-religious, non-esoteric form of meditation that is simple and pragmatic yet carries the deepest of truths, and one anyone can practice without giving up their beliefs or faith. Sharing it became his mission, first through the in-person course and now through the online one.

The course is designed for people who cannot take a live MBSR course for financial or logistical reasons. It offers the guided meditations, articles and videos he used in his live classes, along with optional Graduate Explorations that go beyond a standard course. Palouse Mindfulness is a registered 501(c)3 non-profit, run by a team of experienced graduates who volunteer their time. More than 8,000 graduates from 120 countries have completed the course. Dave serves on its executive team and non-profit board, and says he loves that this way of learning meditation is available to anyone, anywhere, regardless of financial resources or geographical location.