Worthy Stokes is an American-born writer, #1 bestselling mindfulness author, and trauma-sensitive meditation guide who works with an evolutionary perspective of consciousness that synthesizes emergent neuroscience, non-religious spiritual healing, and narrative presence. She is the founder of The HeartMindĀ® Process & HeartMindĀ® Meditations.
Her books are endorsed by esteemed medical doctors, psychologists, CEOs, spiritual thought leaders, philanthropic visionaries, science experts, and award-winning, NYT bestselling authors.
A longtime advocate for patient-centered care, Worthy has worked on private hospice teams and in palliative support roles for individuals living with ALS, cancer, communication disorders, dementia, stroke symptoms, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's Disease, and more.
Meditation & Lived Experience
After experiencing tragic loss as a young adult, Worthy turned to nature, science, & meditation to understand her grief; she began to practice seriously after meeting the late Dr. Candace Pert in upstate New York.
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She later gave up religion and left the U.S. to work and write abroad only to be hit by a 15-passenger van while jogging one morning overseas. Having survived multiple injuries and a coma that coincided with a Near Death Experience (NDE), this event forever changed the course of her life and led to her career as a bestselling author & expert on trauma-sensitive consciousness. Her accident was the spiritual awakening of a lifetime.
Meditation proved to be the most transformative element of Worthy's recovery. Her ongoing effort to restore the faculties of her bodymind sparked a personal quest to understand the art & science of post-traumatic growth, neuroscience, and intrapersonal self-care. She lives well with irreparable vision loss, sensory deficits, & motion blindness, as well as intermittent episodes of anomic aphasia, fatigue, and other symptoms.
Lucid Dying & the Afterlife (NDE)
Her lucid experience of dying awakened her to life as immanent consciousness; that singular event inspires all she does. Contemporaries, neuroscientists, & creatives have called Worthy "the real deal" & "a warrior of light and healing" who "really nails the essence of mindfulness" with "grace and compassion." Leading voices in wellness call her language "poetic" with "soulful language that reminds us of the strength within."
Worthy's intimate meeting with Death after life irrevocably reconfigured her understanding of embodied awareness and re-wired her spiritual faith, and her inexplicable passage into the pure, awakened field of infinite, multi-layered, unified intelligence (prior to returning to her physical body in the ICU) re-oriented her perceptual lens to a new, mystical view that would ultimately require years of therapy, study, and personal inquiry to integrate what she realized beyond the perimeter of time, form, and space.
Self-Healing Programs
After decades of research, study, and personal practice at the intersection of neuroscience and non-religious spiritual healing, she developed and trademarked her proprietary mindfulness method: HeartMindĀ® Meditation. Additional programming includes TheĀ HeartMindĀ® Process and HeartMindĀ® Awakening. As a survivor of complex trauma, she is passionate about designing affordable support for sense-making and sustainable resilience by integrating cutting-edge neuroscience with decades of lived experience and non-religious, contemplative presence. Since 2018 her meditations have been free on Insight Timer, the world's largest meditation platform, and she has touched thousands with her guided practices.
Training & View
She attended writing & learning workshops, professional trainings, classes, and meditation retreats with a range of individuals: street ministers, medical doctors, neuroscientists, sound healers, meditation experts, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, clinical researchers and engineers, religious scholars, indigenous leaders, bodyworkers, contemplative artists, breath scientists, poet laureates, Tibetan lamas, holistic psychotherapists, creatives, biodynamic and somatic/dance movement facilitators, art therapists, reiki healers, trauma specialists, emerging voices in the field of medical humanities, and more. Additionally, Worthy has attended harm reduction presentations by theologians engaged in research pertinent to consciousness, faith, and healing, and her evolving perspective reflects an abiding love for the places where science and spirituality touch. Her view as an instructor is holistic, interdisciplinary, trauma-sensitive, and directly inspired by her personal recovery as a survivor.
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the world's - and the West's - foremost, preeminent, indigenous Tibetan scholar and teacher of Dzogchen.
Education & Global Perspective
An academic scholarship and the generosity of high-net-worth individuals made it possible for her to attend The Lawrenceville School for all four years,Ā where she was a recipient of the prestigious Eglin Society* award.
Additionally, her peers elected her to presidential leadership positions in support of creativity, women and leadership, and performing arts theatre. She has said her time at Lawrenceville "taught me the importance of giving. Sometimes that means time and volunteerism. Sometimes that means money or opportunity. It's the spirit of giving generously to others that matters more than the gift itself. My years at Lawrenceville taught me the true meaning of philanthropy. And that no offering is too small to make an impact; every time we make a choice to uplift another person, it makes a difference."
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Worthy holds an undergraduate degree in documentary journalism and conducted qualitative research in Eastern Europe. She completed graduate-level course work in creative writing and narrative nonfiction at Sarah Lawrence College, and she has been privately mentored by award-winning, NYT bestselling authors.
She currently studies Narrative Medicine at Columbia University with interests in narrative humility, bioethics, consciousness, and phenomenology.
Prior to becoming a #1 bestselling meditation author, her lifelong passion for impact-driven philanthropy led her to work internationally in the field of nonprofit communications. Her dedication to visionary projects inspired her to take on roles at organizations such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (grants administrator for donor-advised funds) and for indigenous leaders running indigenous-led initiatives. Worthy has been a managing director, advisor, and director of communications in organizations that protect and preserve key indigenous assets: IP, cultural practices, contemplative arts, tribal wisdom, medicinal plant extracts, oral records of historically relevant matters such as property lines in remote territories, and myriad forms of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in critical locations across the world.
Nature, Nurture, & Place
Worthy is named for her maternal grandfather, Dr. Worthy, a battlefield surgeon with the Harvard Group in WWII & a Founding Fellow of the American College of OB-GYN who spent his career in medicine as a beloved, small-town physician. She was born and raised in rural Montana through early childhood.
She grew up in a working, middle-class family and spent much of her spare time reading books she borrowed from the local library. Her father, a Vietnam veteran who used the G.I. bill to become the first person in his family to attend college, eventually earned a Ph.D.Ā The pain of war inspired his devotion to preserving wild places; in the science and beauty of nature, he found peace.
With extraordinary dedication and ingenuity that was ahead of his time, her father worked alongside countless others as an employee of the United States Forest Service to design the first Bob Marshall Wilderness management & policy plan. He subsequently relocated his family to the East Coast and held governmental leadership positions in Washington D.C. as an advisor on natural resource issues at the national level.
Her mother (a retired school teacher with an M.A. in art education) worked part-time as a painter and used art & mysticism to manage and obscure her mental illness.
Indoctrinated with New Age occultist practices, experimental mediumship techniques, and psychic communication with spirits, Worthy was trained (by the age of 7) in esoteric self-help methods she did not fully understand and spent decades trying to unlearn.
These formative experiences activated her sensitivity to dangers of spiritual bypassing, known risks of mindfulness, and power dynamics exploited by individuals in positions of influence. Having traveled extensively throughout her life, Worthy remains attentive to the architecture of global gender biases, racism, and cultural frameworks that shape our world.
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The theological & intellectual inquiry that permeated Worthy's upbringing informs her work at the nexus of neuroscience, trauma-sensitive presence, & mindfulness in light of all matters of faith.
Her Retreat from Fame
After becoming a #1 bestselling mindfulness author and overseeing the outreach and PR strategy for four, extraordinary book deals in a row, she found herself overwhelmed by (and unprepared for) the societal pressure that comes with being a public figure. To recover from the debilitating anxiety, panic attacks, & physical stress crisis that accompanied her unexpected success, she chose to prioritize her private life.
Disinterested in the trappings of fame + wary of "guru" or "influencer" pop culture, Worthy withdrew from the public eye to focus on product design for conscious tech, HeartMindĀ® programming, and research.
Life Now
She lives with her husband, who is from New York City; he holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University. His global work in the field of adult literacy led to positions in international cities, and he has managed education and consulting projects across all five b of NYC, in addition to philanthropic programming + fundraising initiatives supported by renowned patrons & artists.
A certified yoga instructor with expertise in adult education, he has trained with Dr. Richard P. Brown, M.D. and Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, M.D. to teach Breath-Body-Mind, an integrative mindfulness method for addressing symptoms of post-traumatic stress.
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