About
Dr. Yowon Choi
Yowon Choi is a psychologist and meditation teacher. As a teacher, she is praised for creating a supportive and deeply engaging learning environment that allows participants to explore and inquire. She lives in Switzerland with her family.
Psychotherapist and mindfulness teacher
She studied psychology at Yonsei University in Seoul and holds a PhD in psychology on happiness and mindfulness from Radboud University Nijmegen. As a certified psychotherapist in South Korea, she has worked in various medical and counseling centers, guiding individual clients and leading psycho-educational programs. She is also a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) trainer.
Meditation
She grew up in South Korea among Buddhist teachings. Since her youth, she has practiced Korean Seon meditation and Vipassana meditation. Her main teachers are Ven. Chungwha Sunim and Ven. Yongta Sunim in the Seon tradition, and Sayadaw U Pandita in the Vipassana tradition. Since 2009 she has taught meditation in the Netherlands, Switzerland and South Korea.
Research
Yowon Choi has worked as a scientific researcher at the World Database of Happiness project of Erasmus University Rotterdam, at the Mind-Brain-Mindfulness project of Radboud University Nijmegen, and at Seoul National University. The focus of her work has been on happiness, psychological well-being and mindfulness. Her studies suggest that mindfulness promotes mental health and happiness. As she puts it herself: “When we are mindful, the mind remains untainted and wholesome, and therefore a more sustainable happiness arises.”
Publications
- Choi, Y., Karremans, J. C., & Barendregt, H. (2011). The happy face of mindfulness: Mindfulness meditation is associated with perceptions of happiness as rated by outside observers. The Journal of Positive Psychology.
- Choi, Y. (2011). Pathways to happiness: Psychological resources for happiness. PhD thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Dr. Emil Nijhuis
Emil Nijhuis advises Hello Mindfulness and looks after the website.
He studied artificial intelligence and mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. He works as a researcher on the plasticity of brain networks.
Since 2002, he has practiced Vipassana meditation, regularly taking part in retreats in Burma, Nepal, Korea and Europe.