Sarah Meyer Tapia, PhD Keeps Stanford Mindful
For the past 13 years, Sarah Meyer Tapia, PhD, has worked at Stanford University supporting the well-being of faculty, staff, and students. Dr. Tapia teaches classes and workshops related to stress management, behavior change, self-compassion, and personal development. She also leads a free online mindfulness meditation for the public three times per week.
“I’ve been teaching wellness for decades and I’m really grateful for the work I get to do at Stanford,” says Dr. Tapia, Director of Stanford Living Education (SLED).
“It’s been a lifelong way of being for me to take whatever is inspiring and useful and share it in some way. I’m a person who doesn’t separate who I am and how I live with the work that I do. I find it a real privilege to facilitate wellness, and at the same time non-negotiable,” says Dr. Tapia.
Creating environments for people to manage stress and experience well-being is integral to Dr. Tapia’s purpose. She grew up on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe in a small community called Zephyr Cove, Nevada. As a teen, she found peace by going on runs among the pine trees from her house down to the lake. Running in such a beautiful environment balanced her nervous system and often brought her mind into the present moment.
Little did she know she was practicing mindfulness at this young age, well before learning about the concept at the cognitive level. It wasn’t until her first year as a counseling and health psychology master’s student at Santa Clara University that she became aware of the term “mindfulness.”
“One of my classes was taught by a mindfulness-based therapist. I had never heard the word ‘mindfulness’ before, but it felt like coming home,” says Dr. Tapia. “I thought, ‘Oh, there’s a word for the thing my soul craves. Once I learned about it, it was an immediate ‘yes’ for me to learn more, and I immersed myself in books, research, and trainings related to mindfulness. This class put me on the trajectory of incorporating mindfulness into my career.”
Dr. Tapia completed her master’s degree in 2010 while working at Bethany University in the Wellness Resource Center. But the following year, her life took a turn, and she had to put her practices to the test.
“At that time, everything in my life was dismantling. The University closed overnight, so I lost my job. My marriage was dissolving, and I had to find a new home for me and my 3-year-old child,” says Dr. Tapia. “Although it was a challenging time, it was also about to grow into something so beautiful. When job hunting, I had made a list of everything I’d loved about every job I’d had in the past, and when I saw the position for the BeWell coach at Stanford, it was almost verbatim what I had written down.”
Dr. Tapia’s daily mindfulness practice provided the resilience to overcome the challenges of this time. In 2012, she joined Stanford as a BeWell coach and Wellness Instructor. Her talents and skills were quickly recognized, and by 2014, she was promoted to manager of the BeWell coaching program.
In 2018, Dr. Tapia moved to the academic side of Stanford, overseeing Wellness Education, and ultimately became the Director of SLED. In her position, Dr. Tapia provides leadership for all programs within SLED, which offers wellness classes for approximately 1,000 Stanford students annually.
“These are the classes we wish we had in college,” says Dr. Tapia, who teaches alongside 35 other instructors. “Students earn academic credit while learning about the science of wellbeing and caring for themselves as whole people.”
A Focus on Self-Compassion
As a teacher, Dr. Tapia recognizes the specific needs of her audience. Many students at Stanford experience high levels of stress, not only because of their demanding workload but also because they tend to be ambitious, hold themselves to exceptionally high standards, and be self-critical when they don’t meet their goals. To counter these patterns, Dr. Tapia facilitates wellness courses that cultivate self-compassion.
“There’s a fallacy that if you give yourself compassion, you’re being too easy on yourself and therefore you won’t achieve your goals, but the research shows differently,” says Dr. Tapia, who has studied extensively with mindful self-compassion researcher Kristen Neff, PhD.
Dr. Tapia often shares a research study with her Stanford students that shows how self-compassion can improve performance, not hinder it. In the study, Kristen Neff taught self-compassion practices to NCAA athletes and then measured how quickly they bounced back after making a mistake. Since athletes might view “self-compassion” as soft, the intervention was presented as “resilience” practices. The results showed that the practices lowered perceived stress, increased confidence, and improved performance.
“I’m grateful that I get to create spaces where students can exhale and bring their whole selves and discover that offering themselves compassion can actually fuel their passion and ambition,” says Dr. Tapia. “Many of them come to our classes conditioned for stress, overcommitment, and burnout. Many of them have not thought about who they are and what they want in life; they’ve only thought about their potential accomplishments and career trajectories, and they mistakenly think that any self-compassion or ease they bring to their life will derail their efforts.”
“It’s a joy to watch my students discover that they fly even higher when they are supporting themselves and showing up as a whole person,” says Dr. Tapia.
