Meet Kristen

Kristen Estill is an interdisciplinary educator, contemplative practitioner, and public scholar whose work explores the meeting place of psychology, neuroscience, Jungian depth psychology, and Gothic literature. She holds a summa cum laude B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Health, Medicine, and Human Values from the University of New Mexico, where she completed two years of NIH-funded neuroscience research. Her academic background also includes work as a university teaching assistant in positive psychology, grounding her teaching in both empirical rigor and humanistic inquiry.

​

Kristen’s work is guided by a central question: How do we make meaning of inner life in a way that honors both science and soul? To that end, she draws on research-informed psychology alongside myth, archetype, and narrative traditions—particularly Jungian and Gothic frameworks—to explore shadow integration, moral imagination, and the psychological significance of liminality, fear, and transformation.

​

She is the founder of SoundMindScience, a psychology informed education platform offering courses, lectures, and contemplative practices that integrate nervous system awareness, reflective inquiry, and symbolic literacy. Her teaching emphasizes learning how the mind and body function, embodying that knowledge through practice, and aligning one’s life with clarity, intention, and ethical coherence.

​

In parallel with her work at SoundMindScience, Kristen serves as Executive Director of the International Gothic Literature Society, a public-facing scholarly initiative dedicated to exploring the Gothic as a living intellectual tradition. Through essays, lectures, and interdisciplinary collaboration, her work with IGLS examines the Gothic as a psychological and cultural lens—one that gives language to shadow, ambiguity, rupture, and the unseen dimensions of human experience.

​

Kristen also maintains a global teaching presence as a meditation and contemplative education instructor, where she has led hundreds of live sessions focused on nervous system regulation, symbolic self-inquiry, and reflective integration. Her offerings often incorporate sound, guided meditation, and literary or archetypal material to support depth-oriented reflection rather than prescriptive self-improvement.

​

Across all of her work, Kristen is committed to intellectual rigor, compassionate inquiry, and making complex psychological and philosophical ideas accessible without diluting their depth. SoundMindScience was created from the belief that healing and meaning are not opposites—that we can be both scientifically informed and symbolically attuned, cultivating lives of awareness, integrity, and care.