George Mumford: "Mindfulness and Performance" UWS Virtual Fall Speaker Series

This is an interactive community event, featuring George Mumford, the former mindfulness coach to the championship-winning LA Lakers, Chicago Bulls, and other top-performers. George will focus on how everyone can improve concentration and performance—both in athletics as well as in life—through mindfulness.

Mumford's deeply moving personal story is unforgettable. A basketball player at the University of Massachusetts (where he roomed with Dr. J, Julius Erving), injuries forced Mumford out of the game he loved. The meds that relieved the pain of his injuries also numbed him to the emptiness he felt without the game and eventually led him to heroin. After years as a functioning addict, Mumford enrolled in Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction program, and made meditation, on and off the cushion, the center of his life. He kicked drugs, earned a master's degree in counseling psychology and began teaching meditation to inmates (a collaboration undertaken with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn) and others.