M. Powietrzyńska & K. Tobin (Eds.), Weaving Complementary Knowledge Systems and Mindfulness to Educate a Literate Citizenry for Sustainable and Healthy Lives, 1–18. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved. KENNETH TOBIN 1. RESEARCHING MINDFULNESS AND WELLNESS ABSTRACT In this chapter I address mindfulness and wellness as priorities for educators and citizens in a complex, rapidly changing world. The issues I address include the context of everyday life, emphasizing stress and emotions as salient to the quality of interactions and wellness. The importance of educating the citizenry from birth through death is identified as a priority. Meditation and mindfulness are presented as components of a toolkit that is pertinent to improving lifestyles by, when it is desirable to do so, enabling people to detach emotions from what they do. Also, meditation and mindfulness can be options for people to use to change the emotions they express in particular situations and also reduce the intensity of emotion, if and when it is considered desirable. A second section of the paper provides an advance organizer for many chapters in this volume that concern complementary approaches to health and wellbeing. In this chapter I focus on Jin Shin Jyutsu as an approach that individuals can use, as self- help, to maintain wellness and address health projects that emerge. Jin Shin Jyutsu is presented as a complement to Western medicine, not a replacement for it. The examples I provide in this introductory chapter set the stage for what is to follow in the remainder of the book. Keywords: mindfulness, wellness, complementary medicine, Jin Shin Jyutsu, emotions, research priorities, literate citizenry MINDFULNESS Awareness and Change Television and electronic media are ubiquitous in the lives of citizens across an age spectrum of birth through death. It is common to see young children using iPads and iPhones to access digital media, games, and a variety of live and stored television programs. Similarly, TVs are used to occupy time, ostensibly entertaining and educating senior citizens in a variety of places, including their homes, retirement villages, nursing homes, and hospitals. At many restaurants and gyms, for example, TV sets broadcast news and entertainment “in the background,” and in many US households, perhaps most, family members returning to their home instinctively switch on the TV to catch up with the latest news. When they are on, these devices