Mindfulness Teacher
Dr. Judson Brewer
Psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and habit-change researcher
- Mindfulness for habit change
- Neuroscience of addiction and craving
- Anxiety and the worry habit
- Mindfulness-based treatment programs
- Meditation and present-moment awareness
- Behavioral and psychiatric research
Dr. Judson Brewer is a psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and habit-change researcher who studies how the brain forms habits and how mindfulness can help break them. He serves as director of research and innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center and is a professor in the School of Public Health and the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown. He is widely known for his TED talk "A simple way to break a bad habit," which has been viewed more than 20 million times, and for translating mindfulness research into practical tools for anxiety, addiction, and unhealthy habits. Below you'll find Dr. Judson Brewer's practices and teachings shared on Mindfulness Exercises.
Dr. Brewer earned his B.A. in chemistry from Princeton University and his M.D. and Ph.D. from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Before his current work at Brown University, he held research and teaching positions at Yale University and the University of Massachusetts' Center for Mindfulness. His research focuses on the science of how habits form in the brain and how mindfulness practices can help interrupt those patterns.
He is the author of several books that bring this work to a general audience, including The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits (Yale University Press, 2017); Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind (Avery, 2021), a New York Times bestseller; and The Hunger Habit: Why We Eat When We're Not Hungry and How to Stop (Avery, 2024).
His approach blends mindfulness training with scientific research, using curiosity and present-moment awareness to help people notice the habit loops that drive worry, craving, and other automatic behaviors. Rather than relying on willpower alone, his work emphasizes understanding how habits are reinforced in the brain so that awareness itself can become a tool for lasting change.