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Lily Smith
Graduate Student, Department of Counseling Psychology

Lily is a doctoral student in the Counseling Psychology Department working with Dr. Simon Goldberg.

Lily’s work and interest lie in several areas of research: methods to increase the efficacy of meditation-based interventions, such the use of personalization and coaching to improve outcomes; the interplay between psychedelic-assisted therapy and meditation, including how the two may mutually support each other in clinical settings; how meditation-based interventions may support flourishing in interpersonal relationships.

Lily has been practicing meditation for over a decade and spent 3.5 years living at the Cambridge Zen Center in Cambridge, MA, where she ran meditation groups for young adult meditators and incarcerated women at a correctional facility. Lily is also a certified teacher and trainer at Unified Mindfulness, where she has completed 420 hours of mindfulness coach training and served a variety of roles, including co-facilitating meditation retreats and leading mindfulness workshops.

Prior to attending graduate school, Lily worked in basic neuroscience research and on clinical trials of psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Education

B.A., Neuroscience, Boston University

What does well-being mean to me?

"Well-being feels like flourishing. It includes the ability to experience joy, pleasure, and connection with other humans. It does not necessarily exclude challenging states–to be human is to suffer and experience deeply painful emotions like despair, grief, and loss. Well-being means that we can have the fullness of human experiences with
an inner system that is flexible enough to experience it all."