Andy Puddicombe
WATCH VIDEO:
Andy Puddicombe, a former monk with a degree in Circus Arts, is the co-founder of Headspace, an award-winning digital health platform providing guided meditation sessions and mindfulness training to the masses.
TED talker, BBC contributor and Huffington Post writer, Andy is on a mission to get as many people as possible to integrate a 10-minute meditation exercise into their lives, bringing them, through Headspace, a “gym membership for the mind.” He has also authored two books, Get Some Headspace and The Headspace Diet, published in 25 countries and translated into 10 languages.
In his early twenties, midway through a Sports Science degree and a very typical student life, Andy made the radical decision to give it all up and set off to Asia to become a Buddhist monk. For more than ten years, his meditation training took him all over the world, to Nepal, India, Burma, Thailand, Australia and Russia. He became a fully-ordained monk at a Tibetan Monastery in the Indian Himalayas.
In 2004, Andy returned to the UK with one simple aim in mind: to demystify meditation, to make it accessible, relevant and beneficial for as many people as possible. Following years of further training, registration and planning, Headspace officially launched in spring of 2010. With hundreds of hours of content, it is acknowledged as one of the most comprehensive secular programmes for meditation and mindfulness, and has now been featured in over 65 international press titles.
As well as writing and presenting, Andy and his team have partnered with companies such as Virgin Atlantic, Westin Hotels Worldwide, Selfridges and The Huffington Post. They have consulted for Innocent Drinks, Reuters, KPMG and Credit Suisse, teaching people how to be less stressed and more focused in an increasingly challenging work environment, and count Gwyneth Paltrow, Emma Watson, Olympic Gold Medalist Etienne Stott and Twitter founder Evan Williams among their fans.
Based in Venice, California, Andy’s daily meditations have been listened to by over 2 million Headspace users around the world.
Social Media:
Website – www.headspace.com
Facebook – Andy Puddicombe
Select Publications: