Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery: How to Reclaim Your Life During Cancer Treatment with Dr. Linda Carlson

Cynthia is a newborn ICU nurse by trade that has spent the last six years in the medical device industry educating nurses and doctors about devices that are new to their facility. In her spare time she enjoys hiking, traveling the world with her family, and creating Halloween animatronics for her annual front yard display. She has a passion for life-long learning and enjoys sharing what she learns with the people around her.

Dr. Linda Carlson has held the Enbridge Research Chair in Psychosocial Oncology since 2007, is Full Professor in Psychosocial Oncology in the Department of Oncology, Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology. She is the Director of the Alberta Complementary Therapy and Integrative Oncology (ACTION) Centre (ACTION Centre | My Site (action-centre.ca), and is Director of Research and continues to work as a Clinical Psychologist at the Department of Psychosocial Resources at Cancer Care Alberta, where she has provided clinical service since 1997. Dr. Carlson has received a long line of prestigious national and international research and teaching awards throughout her career, highlighted by the Kawano New Investigator Award from the International Psycho-Oncology Society (IPOS) in 2006, the inaugural Research Excellence award from the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology in 2010, the Bernard Fox Memorial Award from IPOS in 2019, a Distinguished Scientist award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine in 2023, and the Dr. Rogers Prize in Complementary and Alternative Medicine in 2023. She was the President of the Society for Integrative Oncology from 2021-2023, and is Co-Editor-in-Chief for the official IPOS journal: The Journal of Psychosocial Oncology Research and Practice. Dr. Carlson's research in Psychosocial Oncology, Integrative Oncology and Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery has been published in many high-impact journals and book chapters, and she published a patient manual in 2011 with Michael Speca entitled: Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery: A step-by-step MBSR approach to help you cope with treatment and reclaim your life, in addition to a professional training manual in 2009 (2nd Edition 2017) with Shauna Shapiro entitled The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating mindfulness into psychology and the helping professions. She has published over 250 peer-reviewed research papers and book chapters, holds several millions of dollars in grant funding and is regularly invited to present her work at international conferences. She presented a TEDx talk entitled Mindfulness for Personal and Collective Evolution in 2016, you can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgZd5GvZ5Qs