About Olivia

Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle, a writer and teacher, was formerly the Associate Director of the Mind/Body Clinic and a Teaching Fellow of the Mind/Body Medical Institute, where she pioneered how to bring meditation, yoga, and cognitive behavioral therapy into the medical domain to treat stress-related and chronic illness. She and her team developed one of the first training programs in Mind/Body medicine in the country and trained health professionals under the auspices of Harvard Medical School.

Formerly a therapist in private practice and a Co-Director of Greenhouse, an alternative mental health collective, Olivia worked with individuals, couples, and groups. She also spent years serving as a Hospice volunteer.

Olivia's teaching and writing are inspired by over forty years of practice in psychology, Buddhist meditation, and other wisdom traditions. In addition to her roots in Christianity, she has practiced primarily Vipassana (Insight Meditation) and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as in a devotional tradition from India. 

Having taught contemplative practices in a wide variety of settings such as government agencies, hospitals, churches, businesses, school systems, and meditation centers, she is currently focusing on conscious aging, elder issues, and living the contemplative life.

Her award winning book, Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Couple's Journey Through Alzheimer's, is a narrative memoir of how she and her husband handled his illness, drawing inspiration from their background in Buddhist practice. Her book was translated into Chinese, Korean, Dutch, and Japanese, and recorded for the National Library Service for the Blind. Now an elder with two grown children and four grandsons, she lives in Massachusetts and loves to spend time in Vermont where she grows vegetables, welcomes family and friends, and steeps herself in the glories of nature.