My Year Of Living Mindfully Review: One Woman, One Year, Six Labs

In short: Lying awake at night with a mind that will not switch off? Shannon Harvey was. In My Year Of Living Mindfully (2020) she meditated every day for a year while six labs tracked her brain, blood, genes and stress hormones. She reports that her insomnia cleared. She still had lupus, but after a silent retreat she had no symptoms for over a month. It is the fairest film about mindfulness and health we have seen.

Last updated: 2 November 2026.

My Year Of Living Mindfully: the short version

At 24, Shannon Harvey was told she probably had lupus, an autoimmune disease (where the immune system attacks the body) with no known cure. Years later, still in pain and sleeping badly, she asked a simple question: what is the mind’s version of a 30 minute walk? My Year Of Living Mindfully is her answer. She meditated every day for a year, and the doubts stay in the film alongside the hope.

One thing to know before you read on: every result on this page is Shannon’s own account in the film. It is one person’s year, not a clinical trial.

About the film: My Year Of Living Mindfully (2020), directed by Shannon Harvey, produced by Shannon Harvey and Julian Harvey, with Elemental Media credited as distributor. We quote short lines for the purpose of review. The film’s charts and scans are described in words here, not reproduced.

My Year Of Living Mindfully in short form

Here is the whole review in eight lines.

• What it is: an Australian feature documentary, 1 hour 38 minutes.
• The experiment: one woman, daily meditation, a course and a silent retreat.
• Her results: wellbeing up sharply, insomnia gone, illness still there.
• The hard test: mindfulness taken to refugees who have survived war and torture.
• The science: many researchers interviewed, with the doubts kept in.
• Our checks: 26 named studies looked up, listed at the end.
• Where to watch: rent on YouTube Movies or Apple TV.
• Our verdict: strong, fair and worth your evening.
• The yoga link: the skill it teaches has deep yoga roots. See how they connect.

My Year Of Living Mindfully results: insomnia and lupus

These are the two results most people want to know about, so here they are first.

Insomnia in My Year Of Living Mindfully: what Shannon reported

Shannon reports that her insomnia cleared. It did not happen quickly. Early in the year her insomnia came back, and she told her doctor it had got worse.

Later, psychiatrist Judson Brewer talks with her about it. Insomnia can run like a habit loop: you lie down, a worry thought arrives, and you feed it with more thoughts. Shannon described noticing the thought before bed and not feeding it. Brewer calls that a real change in behaviour, not a placebo (a sugar-pill effect).

That is her experience, in her words, not a promise for everyone.

Her lupus: still there, but quieter for a while

Shannon still had lupus at the end of her year. After a ten day silent retreat she had no symptoms of her autoimmune disease for over a month. She wondered whether that was the disease, or simply that she now felt differently about it.

Her blood tests for immune function, inflammation and stress showed some trends, but a busy life created too much noise in the data to read them clearly.

Her own conclusion, paraphrased: mindfulness did not cure her illness, but it changed her relationship to it.

What is My Year Of Living Mindfully about?

It is one woman’s search for a daily habit for the mind. Shannon Harvey is an Australian health journalist and a mother of two.

After her diagnosis she spent a lot of money on things that promised a cure and did not help. Then she turned to science.

There is plenty of advice on what to eat, how much to sleep and how much to exercise. But she found no widely accepted daily recommendation for mental health. No “five serves of fruit and veg” for the mind.

Her answer had to be available to anyone, anywhere, at any time, and backed by evidence. Mindfulness meditation ticked every box.

She started at 20 minutes a day. Then she did an eight week MBSR course (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, the programme built by Jon Kabat-Zinn) at 45 minutes a day, and a ten day silent retreat. By day 365 she had logged 453 hours of practice. At the end of the film she was on day 543 and still going.

Where Iyengar yoga fits in

Iyengar yoga is the style developed by Mr BKS Iyengar. In the 20th century he did more than anyone to set down traditional Indian yoga, through his books and his teaching, and he pioneered the use of props. It is sometimes called modern classical yoga, and it’s the style we teach at Flametree.

This is a mindfulness film, not a yoga film. We come back to how the two overlap near the end.

Useful things to learn from My Year Of Living Mindfully

You do not need to watch the whole film to take something from it. These are the lessons we found most useful.

What mindfulness is, in Jon Kabat-Zinn’s words

Mindfulness is a way of paying attention. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who created MBSR at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, gives his working definition in the film. Mindfulness is the awareness that comes from “paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally”.

He says the non-judgemental part is the kicker. It does not mean you stop having judgements. It means you notice how many you have.

He also separates two words. Mindfulness is a state or a capacity. Meditation is a whole family of practices that build it.

Mindfulness is not a way of relaxing

This may surprise you. Kabat-Zinn says, in substance, that mindfulness is not a relaxation technique. Look closely at your own mind and you find all sorts of things, many of them anything but relaxing.

The film’s noise experiment shows it well. Try hard to block out a noise and it gets louder. In mindfulness you let it be, and its grip loosens.

Start small: floss one tooth

Shannon did not start well, and that is encouraging. Early on her autoimmune symptoms flared and her insomnia came back. She wondered whether the whole project was the stupidest idea in the world.

A teacher gave her a tip for days like that: floss one tooth. Commit only to sitting down. Nobody flosses one tooth, so once you are there, you do the whole routine.

Even so, months in, she admits she was struggling to find the time. Old restlessness made sitting almost intolerable.

Then came a turning point, on a plane. For a very brief moment she felt a slow winding down, a beat of interest that made her want to keep going.

If you have tried to meditate and given up, this part is for you.

Catch the thought, do not feed it

Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist at the Brown University Mindfulness Center, explains habit loops. A trigger arrives, you react, and the reaction is rewarded, so the loop gets stronger.

His research suggests mindfulness helps separate the craving from the behaviour. He describes it with smoking, and the same loop runs through worry at bedtime, snacking and scrolling.

The cautions My Year Of Living Mindfully keeps in

The film keeps its doubts in, and we think that makes it stronger.

Nicholas Van Dam, a clinical psychologist at the University of Melbourne, led a 2018 paper called “Mind the Hype”. He warns that mindfulness has been oversold. Anyone who says one thing works 100 per cent of the time for 100 per cent of people, he says, is not telling the whole story.

Willoughby Britton of Brown University studies people who struggle on intense retreats. In her interview study, the most common problem reported was more fear. Her advice, in substance: change is gradual, keep an eye on yourself, and choose practices that fit your goals.

Shannon herself says one person’s results prove nothing on their own.

What the lab tests showed in My Year Of Living Mindfully

Six labs tested Shannon through the year. The film shows charts and scans. Here is what each one showed, described in words, with what the scientists said about it.

Wellbeing: from 69.4 to 93

Her wellbeing score rose from 69.4 to 93 over the year. At the start she was just below average. At the end she was well above the average person’s happiness and wellbeing set point.

Shannon says this is the result that matters most. Her point is that the subjective is valid. If a person is having a better experience of their life, that counts, whatever the scans show.

The brain scan and the hippocampus

At the start, Nicolas Cherbuin’s team at the Australian National University took an MRI (a detailed brain scan). They pointed to the hippocampus, a small curved part deep in the brain that helps with memory and emotions, and tends to shrink with age.

Their explanation is simple. When we practise something, the networks we use get stronger, whether it is a taxi driver learning London’s streets, a pianist, or someone training in mindfulness.

At the end, Cherbuin describes an increase in the volume of her right hippocampus. Most brains slowly shrink with age. Areas linked to self-awareness, memory and handling emotions grew in hers. People with depression often have a smaller hippocampus, and Shannon says the change she felt most was in managing her emotions.

Brainwaves and blood tests: too much noise

Her brainwaves were measured with an EEG (sensors on the scalp that pick up brain electrical activity) in seven scans. Her resting brain and her meditating brain looked clearly different. But across the year there was too much noise to see a trend. Her words, paraphrased: you cannot meditate away sleep loss, jet lag or the flu.

Her blood was tested for immune function, inflammation and stress markers. There were trends, but her illness and the ups and downs of life created too much noise for a clear answer.

Telomeres: early days

Telomeres are the protective caps on the ends of our DNA, a little like the plastic tips on shoelaces. Shorter telomeres go with ageing.

Her last sample looked as though her telomeres may have grown. It is tempting to sell that as good news, and the film does not. Each sample was measured more than one way, and the methods gave different answers. Her verdict: very early days for this science.

The gene chart: one inflammation switch

Marc Wilkins, Professor of Systems Biology at UNSW, analysed more than 17,000 of her genes. One stood out. He describes it as a master regulator of inflammation.

On his chart, the biggest change came in the first sample after the silent retreat, when that gene appeared to be turned down. Wilkins says plainly that the change was not statistically significant (it could have been chance). But he calls it an interesting trend, and the gene he would watch closely in another experiment.

Stories to retell from My Year Of Living Mindfully

Shannon’s story in My Year Of Living Mindfully

Diagnosed at 24, money spent on false hope, a turn to science, and a year-long experiment on herself. The ending is not a cure. It is a changed relationship with her illness, better sleep and a wellbeing score that rose from 69.4 to 93.

Vidyamala Burch: healing rather than cure

Vidyamala broke her spine in a car crash at 23, after an earlier injury in her teens. There was no magical medical cure. Meditation, she says, has not changed her spine. It has changed how she lives with it, from being in a vice to greater ease. She went on to co-found Breathworks, which teaches mindfulness for pain and illness.

Dan Harris: the on-air panic attack

Dan Harris, the former ABC News anchor and author of 10% Happier, tells of a panic attack live on air in June 2004. His lungs seized and he could not talk, in a job where talking is everything.

His image for mindfulness is an inner meteorologist. You see the storm coming, but you do not have to be carried off by it.

A mindful minute in the bathroom, from My Year Of Living Mindfully

Before a big talk, Shannon slips into a bathroom for a mindful minute, feeling like an idiot. It is gentle, funny and true to life, and it shows mindfulness does not need a cushion or a retreat.

“A medicine for me”

In Tel Aviv, Shannon tells an Eritrean asylum seeker that meditation feels almost like a luxury when you have so many worries. His reply turns it around. “Maybe a luxury for you, it’s like a medicine for me.” He says that after he meditates, he feels like a new person for a while.

The refugee camps: My Year Of Living Mindfully’s hardest test

Can mindfulness help people who have lived through war and torture? Shannon calls herself an educated white woman in a peaceful country. So for her last trip she took mindfulness to the front line of the global humanitarian crisis.

Za’atari camp and Jim Gordon

The film opens, and ends its last act, in Jordan at the Za’atari refugee camp. The film says over 75,000 people live there, in one of the biggest refugee camps in the world. The crew could not even film the main gate.

A speaker named in the film as Jim Gordon explains why timing matters. When people live with constant fear and worry about the future, he says, it becomes locked into their bodies, their thinking and their behaviour. The time to help, in his view, is while the trauma is happening.

Eritrean asylum seekers in Israel

In south Tel Aviv, Shannon meets Amit Bernstein and his team from the University of Haifa, who work with asylum seekers from Eritrea.

Bernstein’s point is about scale. Even twenty psychiatrists cannot care for 150,000 refugees in a camp. Mindfulness is not a panacea, he says, but there were good reasons to think a group programme could work.

The figures are stark. As our notes from the film record them, 70 to 80 per cent of the East African asylum seekers there have survived or witnessed torture, and 55 to 80 per cent have raised symptoms of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). One man describes a desert crossing where water was spoiled with petrol so captives could not drink it.

The team built a nine-week mindfulness programme for trauma recovery. Participants said things like “I didn’t know I was on autopilot”.

What the Haifa team found

In the film, the early results were promising. As our notes from the film record it, the first groups showed almost a 50 per cent drop in stress and trauma symptoms after the nine weeks, compared with controls. That was preliminary data. The film’s own caption cuts off before the number.

The study has since been published. In 2021 the team reported a randomised trial of 158 Eritrean asylum seekers in Clinical Psychological Science. Compared with a waiting list, the programme group had significantly lower rates and severity of PTSD, depression and anxiety, at the end and five weeks later, with no evidence of harm. Read the published Haifa study.

That is a strong result from one of the hardest groups anyone could test.

Claims made in My Year Of Living Mindfully

Films move fast, so we wrote down the main science claims and checked them. “Evidence strength” is our plain reading of the evidence we found. Where we did not find the study, we say so.

Claims about the mind and mental health

Claim in the film	Who says it	Evidence strength
About 300 million people have depression; by 2030 it may be the biggest health problem.	Narration, quoting a global projection	A projection. Not checked by us.
Mindfulness research grew from a few hundred papers to almost 6,000.	Narration	Not checked by us.
An eight-week course (MBCT, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy) matches medication for stopping depression returning.	Narration	Good: two large studies (Kuyken 2015, 2016).
Mindfulness-trained people recover faster from a speech stress test.	A researcher not named in the captions	Study not identified.
Five times the quit rate for smokers.	Judson Brewer	One trial, 88 smokers (Brewer 2011).
Clients of Zen-trained trainee therapists did better.	Narration	One trial, 18 therapists (Grepmair 2007).
A nine-week programme cut refugees’ trauma symptoms.	Amit Bernstein	Good: a 2021 randomised trial of 158 people.

Claims about the body, brain and genes

Claim in the film	Who says it	Evidence strength
At 50, long-term meditators’ brains look about seven and a half years younger.	Narration, on Nicolas Cherbuin’s research	Early: comparison studies only, and a 2016 review by the same group says cause is not yet shown.
Mindfulness eases pain by changing which pain messages get through.	Narration and interviewees	Moderate (Goyal 2014, Zeidan 2015).
A day of practice turned down inflammation genes in experienced meditators.	Narration, on Richard Davidson’s lab	Early: 19 meditators, one day (Kaliman 2014).
Mindfulness and relaxation body scans change the brain differently.	Narration, on a Harvard study	Study not identified.
Meditation quietens the brain’s “self-story” network.	Interviewees	Not checked by us.
Trauma can change how genes work, and some changes pass to children.	An interviewee not named in the captions	Not checked by us.
Shannon’s own results.	Shannon and her scientists	One person’s account, not a trial.

My Year Of Living Mindfully and PubMed: has anyone else run tests like Shannon’s?

The short answer is no, not in one person. We found no study that follows one person through MRI, brainwaves, blood, genes, telomeres and sleep over a year. The nearest are group studies that measure two or three of these things together.

That makes Shannon’s film a case study. Case studies are where science often starts, as one of her own scientists points out. But with no one to compare her with, they cannot show what caused a change. Her illness’s natural ups and downs, or simply being filmed, could play a part.

Below are the studies we looked up on PubMed, each named with its size.

The closest group studies

These measured some of the same things Shannon’s labs did.

• Davidson 2003 (41 workers). After eight weeks of MBSR, the mindfulness group had more left-frontal brain activity and a bigger antibody response to a flu shot.
• Kaliman 2014 (19 experienced meditators, 21 others). After one day of practice, some inflammation-related genes were less active, which went with faster recovery of the stress hormone cortisol.
• Jacobs 2011, the Shamatha Project (60 people). After a three-month retreat, telomerase (an enzyme that looks after telomeres) was higher than in a waiting group. It was measured only at the end.
• Holzel 2011 (33 people). After eight weeks of MBSR, MRI showed denser grey matter in the left hippocampus and three other areas.
• Creswell 2012 (40 older adults). MBSR reduced loneliness and lowered the activity of inflammation-related genes.
• Black 2015 (49 older adults with poor sleep). Six weeks of mindful awareness improved sleep scores from 10.2 to 7.4, against 10.2 to 9.1 for a sleep tips class.

The big reviews and key trials

Larger reviews pool many trials, so they carry more weight than any one person.

• Goyal 2014 (47 trials, 3,515 people). Mindfulness programmes eased anxiety, depression and pain by moderate amounts, even against fair comparison programmes.
• Khoury 2013 (209 studies, 12,145 people). Mindfulness-based therapy worked well overall, and about as well as cognitive behavioural therapy.
• Kuyken 2015 (424 people) and Kuyken 2016 (9 trials, 1,258 people). For repeated depression, MBCT protected against relapse about as well as staying on medication.
• Brewer 2011 (88 smokers). At 17 weeks, 31 per cent of the mindfulness group had quit, against 6 per cent on a standard programme.
• Zeidan 2015 (75 healthy volunteers). Four days of mindfulness training reduced heat pain more than a placebo cream or fake meditation.

Goyal’s review found little clear effect on sleep overall, so Shannon’s sleep result is best read as her experience, backed by smaller trials like Black 2015.

Beyond My Year Of Living Mindfully: a lupus pilot trial

Is there research on mindfulness for lupus? Yes, a little. Taub 2021, a pilot trial in Israel, gave MBSR to 15 people with lupus and compared them with 11 on a waiting list.

The MBSR group improved more in quality of life, in shame about their illness, and in how stuck they felt in their pain. The gains on shame and stuckness held six months later. The study used questionnaires, not blood markers.

That fits Shannon’s story: a better life with the illness, rather than the illness gone. A smaller report, Horesh 2016, described six women with lupus who felt more able to separate themselves from it.

Retractions: not checked for any study on this page.

My Year Of Living Mindfully, yoga and pranayama

Do yoga breathing practices show similar effects? Some of them do, in early studies. Here is what researchers have measured on four breaths taught at Flametree.

Ocean breath (ujjayi)

In Mason 2013, 17 young adults new to yoga practised slow breathing at six breaths a minute. Slow breathing raised baroreflex sensitivity (the body’s blood pressure steadying reflex). Adding ujjayi kept oxygen levels similar. Plain slow breathing with equal in and out breaths did best.

Humming breath (bhramari)

In Malhotra 2026, 20 healthy adults did one five-minute session. Heart rate variability (how flexibly the heart rate changes, a sign of the calming side of the nervous system) rose during the practice. There was no comparison group. A 2017 review of six bhramari studies, Kuppusamy 2017, found the same calming pattern but rated the studies’ quality as very low.

Alternate nostril breathing

In Sharma 2024, 100 nurses in India did eight weeks of alternate nostril breathing plus a meditation practice. Compared with controls, they had lower stress and lower blood levels of cortisol and several inflammation markers. The breathing could not be separated from the meditation. One marker, telomerase, went down, which is not the direction people usually quote as good news.

Staircase breathing (viloma)

We found no study of Iyengar-style viloma (breathing in or out in small steps with pauses). When “viloma” turns up on PubMed, it almost always means anuloma viloma, which is alternate nostril breathing, a different technique.

Not yet studied is not the same as not working. Viloma has been taught and practised for generations, and students find it steadying.

Do they do the same thing as mindfulness?

They point the same way, but they are not identical. Lomas 2015, a review of 56 brainwave studies with 1,715 people, found mindfulness most often raised alpha and theta waves (slower, calmer rhythms). Zaccaro 2018, a review of 15 studies, found slow breathing also raised alpha. Travis and Shear 2010 showed different meditations produce different patterns.

So the overlap between mindfulness, yoga and pranayama is Flametree’s view, backed in part by these reviews. A mindfulness trial is not proof that yoga does the same.

At Flametree we suggest starting with some yoga first, because the poses quieten the mind and make breathing practices easier to learn. Breath holds are not for people with high blood pressure or heart problems.

Mindfulness and yoga: the short version

Films like this one show people learning to rest attention on the breath, notice that the mind has wandered, and bring it back. In our view, that is essentially a breath-and-attention skill that yoga has trained for thousands of years.

Here is how the two came to be told apart:

• Yoga came first. Patanjali’s yoga and the Buddha’s mindfulness of breathing are shared roots.
• The 1979 course included yoga. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a yoga teacher, combined mindfulness meditation and gentle hatha yoga in his hospital course in Massachusetts.
• Yoga’s name slipped out of the story. The course was described in plain medical words so it could be studied, and the trials tested “mindfulness”.
• The same loop sits under all of it. Rest attention. Notice it has wandered. Bring it back.

Many films, courses and apps teach this same skill under the name mindfulness. We see them as routes to the same state, not identical, and no trial has yet isolated what does the work. Read our full guide, Yoga And Mindfulness: Why The Mindfulness Research Points Back To Yoga And The Breath, for the whole history, the Iyengar teachers’ own words and the research.

Films like My Year Of Living Mindfully, and pages to explore

If My Year Of Living Mindfully interests you, these are good next steps.

Other film reviews on our site

• The Mindfulness Manual review
• The Science Behind Yoga
• Why We Breathe review
• Air Hunger review
• The Iyengar documentary
• My Dharma review
• All our film reviews.

Flametree pages on the same topics

• Mindfulness and yoga, the full story: Yoga And Mindfulness guide.
• A restless mind: Monkey mind and yoga.
• Sleep: Sleep problems in Darwin.
• Breathing: What is pranayama?
• Stress: Calming the nervous system.
• Immunity: Yoga and the immune system.
• The brain: Yoga for brain and memory.
• Styles: Yoga or Iyengar yoga?

Flametree’s position on My Year Of Living Mindfully

We are commenting on a film that is out there. We agree with much of it, we see some things differently, and a lot of it backs up what we teach.

What we agree with

• The mind needs daily care, like the body. Shannon’s question is a good one, and we share her answer: a regular practice.
• Start small and keep going. “Floss one tooth” is advice we would give any new student.
• The doubts belong in the story. No practice works for everyone in the same way, and the film says so.
• Healing rather than cure. Changing how you live with a condition is a real and worthwhile result.

Where we see things differently

The film treats mindfulness as separate from yoga. We do not. In our view, yoga and pranayama produce mindfulness. You cannot hold a pose well without attention on the feet, the spine and the breath, and that attention brings you into the present moment.

The split is largely a Western one. For many people the body is an easier way in than sitting still, especially when sitting feels intolerable, as it did for Shannon.

What in My Year Of Living Mindfully reinforces our approach

Several points in the film fit what we see in classes every week. Steady attention changes how people respond to stress. Supported, restful poses give the mind a chance to settle. And regular practice in a group keeps people going through the hard patches, the way Shannon’s MBSR course and retreat carried her.

Mindfulness trials count as evidence for us, because they are a different road to the same place. If you would like to try that road through the body, come to a class. See class times.

Where to watch My Year Of Living Mindfully in Australia

You can rent or buy it online. Checked on 2 November 2026:

• YouTube Movies: we rented it in October 2026 for about A$3, with English captions.
• Apple TV: listed to rent or buy. Price not confirmed.
• Google Play and Amazon: prices not confirmed.
• Education Shop: a 7-day rental listed at $10.03.

Prices change, so check before you pay. The film’s own site is myyearoflivingmindfully.com, and Shannon’s work continues on Shannon Harvey’s website.

Try yoga with us

New to Flametree, or away 3 months or more? Your first 2 classes are free, and you can choose 2 free ebooks. Cutting Stress With Yoga is the natural partner to this film. Get 2 free classes, ebooks.

For the studio, check the beginner timetable and just come along. For a LIVE online class, click the class time you want and we email you the link to join.

• New to yoga? Half price beginner classes, plus two free.
• Done yoga before? Non-beginner starter deal.

Questions about My Year Of Living Mindfully

What is mindfulness meditation?

Mindfulness meditation is training your attention. In My Year Of Living Mindfully, Jon Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. Meditation is the practice that builds it. At Flametree in Darwin, we see the same skill grow in Iyengar yoga, where attention stays on the pose and the breath.

How does mindfulness meditation work?

Mindfulness works by changing how you respond to thoughts and feelings. In the film, researchers describe it loosening the brain’s self-story, so a thought is seen as just a thought. It also weakens habit loops, such as worrying at bedtime. At Flametree in Darwin we see a similar settling when students hold a pose with steady attention.

Which Australian researchers appear in My Year Of Living Mindfully?

Australian researchers in My Year Of Living Mindfully include Nicholas Van Dam (University of Melbourne), Craig Hassed (Monash University), Nicolas Cherbuin (Australian National University) and Marc Wilkins (UNSW). Timothea Goddard, an Australian mindfulness teacher, also appears. Shannon Harvey, the director, is an Australian health journalist. Each person’s role is listed at the foot of this review.

Can mindfulness cure lupus?

Shannon Harvey still had lupus at the end of her year in My Year Of Living Mindfully. After a silent retreat she had no symptoms for over a month, but her blood tests were too noisy to show a clear trend. She says mindfulness did not cure her illness. It changed her relationship to it, and that mattered to her.

Can mindfulness help insomnia?

Shannon Harvey reports that her insomnia cleared during My Year Of Living Mindfully. In the film, Judson Brewer explains she was catching the worry thought at bedtime and not feeding it. In a 2015 trial of 49 older adults, mindful awareness improved sleep quality more than a sleep tips class. Flametree in Darwin teaches restful, supported poses too.

Is mindfulness the same as yoga or pranayama?

They overlap a great deal, but they are not identical. At Flametree in Darwin, we see Iyengar yoga and pranayama (yogic breathing) as mindfulness through a different doorway, because you cannot hold a pose well without attention. Brainwave reviews show calm practices pointing the same way, but a mindfulness trial is not proof that yoga does the same. Our guide, Yoga And Mindfulness, sets out how the two connect.

Is My Year Of Living Mindfully worth watching, and where in Australia?

Yes. It is the fairest film about mindfulness and health we have seen at Flametree. In Australia it is listed to rent or buy on YouTube Movies and Apple TV, and the Education Shop lists a 7-day rental for about $10. Prices change, so check before you pay. We last checked on 2 November 2026.

Where can I learn mindfulness through yoga in Darwin?

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga and pranayama in Darwin, at Woolner and Coolalinga, and LIVE online. In every class your attention is held on the pose, the feet, the spine and the breath, which is mindfulness in practice. New students, and anyone away 3 months or more, get their first 2 classes free.

Who appears in My Year Of Living Mindfully, with time codes

Here is every researcher, teacher and storyteller we could identify. Time codes are minutes and seconds from the start of the 98-minute film, accurate to a few seconds. Words are paraphrased from the captions. Where a role is not confirmed, we say so.

The scientists who tested Shannon in My Year Of Living Mindfully

• Nicolas Cherbuin, brain ageing researcher, Australian National University, Canberra. Ran her MRI scans. Explains why the hippocampus matters (about 14:08 to 14:56) and reports growth in her right hippocampus (91:15). Confirmed.
• Marc Wilkins, Professor of Systems Biology, UNSW Sydney. Analysed her genes and says the inflammation gene change was not statistically significant (93:13 to 94:01). Confirmed.
• Neil Bailey, brainwave (EEG) scientist. Met at the lab (11:48). Partly confirmed: listings differ on his institution.
• Also credited as experiment scientists: Anna Finniss, Kimina Lyall, Marc Longster and Hilda Pickett. We did not place them in the captions. Roles not confirmed.

The researchers and doctors interviewed

• Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of MBSR, University of Massachusetts Medical School. Defines mindfulness (19:37) and says it is not a way of relaxing (20:56). Confirmed.
• Nicholas Van Dam, clinical psychologist, University of Melbourne, lead author of “Mind the Hype”. Warns about oversold claims (24:13 to 25:38). Confirmed.
• Elissa Epel, psychiatry researcher, University of California San Francisco, co-author of The Telomere Effect. Says stress is our response to a situation (34:53). Confirmed.
• Richard Davidson, Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Calls lasting brain differences in long-term meditators an “altered trait” (about 46:50). Confirmed.
• Judson Brewer, psychiatrist, Brown University Mindfulness Center. Discusses Shannon’s insomnia as a habit loop (47:24 to 48:27) and his smoking trial (49:19 to 50:29). Confirmed; his turns are identified from context, as captions carry no names.
• Willoughby Britton, Brown University, studies difficult meditation experiences. Describes retreat risks (64:19 to 66:02). Partly confirmed.
• Amit Bernstein, University of Haifa. Leads the refugee programme (82:52 to 83:46, 86:45 to 88:37). Confirmed through the university’s published study.
• Jim Gordon, as named in the captions. Describes fear becoming locked in (81:09 to 81:36). Role not confirmed.

Also credited, times not captured

• Craig Hassed, Associate Professor of General Practice, Monash University. Confirmed in cast listings; we did not place his scenes in the captions.
• Timothea Goddard, mindfulness teacher, Mindfulness Training Institute and Openground. Confirmed in cast listings; scenes not placed.
• Willem Kuyken, Oxford Mindfulness Centre. Partly confirmed; scenes not placed.
• Kristin Neff, self-compassion researcher, and Daniel Goleman, science writer. Credited; scenes not placed.
• Gaelle Desbordes and Amishi Jha. Credited; roles not confirmed.

Teachers and storytellers

• Shannon Harvey, director and health journalist; produced the film with Julian Harvey. Confirmed.
• Dan Harris, former ABC News anchor, author of 10% Happier. Tells of his on-air panic attack (31:33 to 32:58) and the inner meteorologist (39:00). Confirmed.
• Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk trained in molecular biology. Discussed from about 43:52, including his hours in an MRI scanner. Confirmed as credited.
• Vidyamala Burch, co-founder of Breathworks. Tells her story (53:24 to 59:10). Confirmed.
• Mogos Kidane Tewelde, credited as himself; probably an Eritrean man in the refugee section (from about 83:52). Not confirmed which speaker he is.
• Teachers named only by first name: Joseph (21:09) and Patrick, her retreat teacher (66:54). Roles not confirmed.

Flametree Yoga Studio teaches Iyengar yoga in Darwin, at Woolner and Coolalinga, and LIVE online anywhere.

General information only, not medical advice. Talk to your yoga teacher, yoga therapist, and your doctor if you wish, before changing what you do.

Sources and further reading

The film:

• My Year Of Living Mindfully (2020), directed by Shannon Harvey, watched with captions on YouTube Movies Australia, October 2026. Official film site.

Mindfulness studies checked

Retraction status not checked for any study.

• Aizik-Reebs A, Bernstein A and colleagues, 2021, Clinical Psychological Science. The Haifa refugee trial (158 people).
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Brainwave and breathing studies checked

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