Origins

Search Inside Yourself was born at Google in 2007 when one of Google’s earliest engineers, Chade-Meng Tan, gathered a team of leading experts in mindfulness techniques, neuroscience, leadership, to develop an internal course for fellow Google employees lovingly called Search Inside Yourself (SIY).

In 2012, due to the high demand for SIY from external organizations, Meng Tan, Philippe Goldin and Marc Lesser spun off the program and founded the independent non-profit educational institute they called The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, SIYLI (pronounced like "silly"–they wanted to keep it light!).

The aim of SIY was to help people develop the skills of mindfulness, empathy, compassion, and overall emotional intelligence to create the conditions for individual and collective thriving.

SIYLI offers programs, tools and content on mindfulness-based emotional intelligence, empathy, compassion, resilience, leadership and more, which have a positive impact helping to promote sustainable well being, motivation and high performance for individuals, teams and organizations.

SIYLI continues to work with the federal government, the nation of Bhutan, Feeding America, Greenpeace, and many more nonprofit and government organizations around the world.

LEARN MORE AND STAY CONNECTED

Don't let the course fade away.

Join the conversation and stay connected with other SIY enthusiasts on our LinkedIn Enthusiasts and Alumni group! It's a great place to ask questions and network with other like-minded individuals.
For more ongoing content and training, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. We post new content, videos and articles on a regular basis.
We also post new content to our blog on a bi-monthly basis. Take a look to learn more about meditation, mindfulness and leadership.

WITH YOUR COMMUNITY & COWORKERS

Join a group

There are many ways to practice mindfulness and we encourage you to explore options near you (e.g. local zen center, yoga studio or other spiritual traditions).

Organize a group

There are many things that you and your community or colleagues can try out as a group. Some ideas are:

Hold a regular sit where you colleagues come together for 10-20 minute practice period
Organize mindful lunches which colleagues are invited to eat together in silence
Create a book club.

The sky's the limit here! Find something that resonates with you and your companions.

Organize a Mindful Lunch

"When walking, walk. When eating, eat." -Zen Proverb.

Practicing mindfulness while eating is a wonderful opportunity to eat with all of your senses and to cultivate mindfulness as part of a daily activity. Not every meal needs to be eaten in complete silence, even just taking a moment at the beginning of a meal or during a bite can help bring attention and appreciation to the meal and the moment. Eating mindfully also helps with digestion, and helps you stop eating when you are full rather than over-eating.

The idea is simple: get a group of people together for an intentional lunch. Maybe start with one or two minutes of silent eating, or try having the whole lunch in silence.

Here are a few more resources to get you started:

Mindful Eating as Food for Thought (NYT article)
Lilian Cheung: "Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life" from the Harvard School of Public Health
“Mindful Eating” from Psychology Today
“Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food” by Jan Chozen Bays
Thich Nhat Hahn Talk @ Google

Our Approach

The public sector today faces incredible challenges, from broken or painfully slow bureaucracy, to understaffing and overwork, to simply painful day-to-day experiences. At SIYLI, our goal is to support every individual with the emotional resources that can help them navigate these challenges. We want to see our public health nurses, teachers, civil servants, and nonprofit frontline workers thrive, supported in doing the deeply human work that supports everyone. We want to see empowered leaders supported in making wise changes in their systems.

Our programs offer practical tools that can support both individuals and groups to alleviate stress and practice self-care. They connect like-hearted individuals with one-another and support ongoing community. They enable self-awareness and embodied awareness of others in a way that cultivates deep wisdom. Through these mindfulness-based emotional intelligence programs, we believe in the ripple effects that are possible by supporting the public sector.

In addition to programming, starting in 2022, SIYLI is engaging in research in partnership with academic institutions. Click here to sign up for our newsletter and learn more.

SIYLI is actively seeking to build new partnerships and cultivate new Community projects. We'd love to hear your ideas--contact us below!

San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH)

Community SFDPH photo

SFDPH provides the foundation of health for residents of San Francisco and offers a variety important services, including a complete system of care consisting of hospitals and primary care centers, as well as health protection and promotion, disease and injury prevention, disaster preparedness and response, and environmental health services. SFDPH employees are on the frontlines of all dimensions of health and wellness for San Francisco.

SIYLI is honored to partner with SFDPH in a multi-year engagement to train and support SFDPH employees to scale and deliver SIY to the health department.

Flint, Michigan

Community Flint photo

SIYLI has partnered with the Crim Fitness Foundation to support community members to build their emotional intelligence and resilience skills, with the goal of creating a more thriving community.

This multi-year, multi-step project began with SIYLI and Crim hosting an initial kick off program for a cross section of 125 Flint, Michigan community leaders to build knowledge and support for this project. SIYLI has now trained local community members as teachers so they can make SIY available to all residents in Flint and Genesee County with the goal of integrating mindfulness and compassion and ultimately transforming the city.

The Nation of Bhutan

Community Bhutan photo

Starting in 2018, to support overall wellbeing of the country and its residents, SIYLI was invited by the Government of Bhutan to train local trainers to teach SIY programming so that it could be made available to all civil servants in Bhutan. To date, there are 160 people in Bhutan that are certified to teach SIY to their fellow civil servants. Thus far, they have taught SIY to more than 15,000 people in Bhutan!

Bhutan will be the first nation to have trained all of their civil servants in mindfulness and emotional intelligence.

Seeing the impact of the program, the government has now added SIY as a mandatory training for all new and retiring civil servants and is offering the program at a number of universities, medical schools and government executive academies.

Feeding America

Feeding America key stats

Since 2020, SIYLI has been partnering with Feeding America, the United States’ largest domestic hunger-relief organization, to help support employees to build resilience by creating opportunities for them to attend SIY open enrollment programs. So far, over 100 employees have attended SIYLI’s programs.

To help increase the impact, Feeding America is currently participating in SIYLI’s Organizational Teacher Certification program and looks forward to scaling this work throughout their organization.