Disrupting Systemic Whiteness in the Mindfulness Movement

Dr. Angela Rose Black is an activist, scholar, practitioner, and thought leader in the mindfulness movement. She is also the Founder and CEO of Mindfulness for the People LLC—a Black-owned social change agency that offers oppression-sensitive and culturally-responsive mindfulness trainings engaging Racial Battle Fatigue among People of Color and White Fragility among White people. We asked her to share her journey with us in this a Mindful Q &A.

Mindful: Can you share a bit about your journey and what brought you to mindfulness?
Dr. Angela Rose Black: I spent over 15 years in academia as a health disparities scholar. My research focused on Black women’s stress-health pathways, identifying what kinds of life experiences produce compromised health outcomes, but also, what elements of our lives promote resilience. The irony of my research life was that across many “real time” data points—as a graduate student, postdoc, and tenure-track professor—I was presenting on and researching the intersection of Black women’s health and stress while being incredibly stressed and unwell myself. Something about that didn’t feel right. Why was I traveling all over the country, educating audiences on disparities in Black women’s health outcomes, when—behind closed doors—I knew I wasn’t well?

As a way to offset my own health compromise, I began exploring mindfulness and meditation. And while I hoped to begin locating ways to support my own healing, I learned quickly that spaces where mindfulness initiatives were taking place were just an extension of the racial aggression and isolation I felt at-large, except worse. Because in these spaces, I arrived as a woman of color already fatigued by the racial isolation and racial aggression of the world, yet expecting and hoping to try on practices that might aid in diffusing some of the burden I carried. Instead, I had to navigate the complexities of feeling unwelcomed while curiously hyperfocused on; unseen yet aggressively over-directed by White practitioners and teachers. So while trying to make room to “pay attention with intention” to my breath, I just kept feeling like something about my presence, my very embodiment of Blackness, was both triggering and intoxicating for White folks there too.  

I was presenting on and researching the intersection of Black women’s health and stress while being incredibly stressed and unwell myself.

As I shared my frustrations with other practitioners of color in my life—the microaggressions, the vacillation between over and under engagement by White community members, the sense of isolation intensified by curricula steeped in Whiteness—these experiences mirrored their own stumbled-upon discoveries in walking the mindfulness path. Many of us had been repeatedly yet unintentionally harmed by White students and White instructors teaching curricula grounded in Whiteness.

Mindful: Describe what you mean by mindfulness curricula being grounded in Whiteness.
Dr. Angela Rose Black:  Sure. Mindfulness curricula grounded in Whiteness means that there is an overt assumption that the content presented is universally beneficial to EVERYbody. That the empirical evidence driving the curricula is “robust and rigorous” so of course its application is relevant to EVERYbody. And all of this universality is assumed while never having to say that decades of evidence-based, well-funded, highly visible, and industry standard findings that support mindfulness curricula and practices are predominantly normed on the lived experiences of White people.

Mindfulness for the People was born from my desire to center the voices and wisdom of People of Color in mindfulness research, teaching, and practice.

And quite honestly, that lack of inquiry—not having to ask which bodies receive benefit and which ones don’t; which ones were included in research studies and which ones weren’t, all the while garnering major dollars to further the development of this blind spot—is not only an oversight, but a demonstration of how capitalism and White privilege is driving the mindfulness movement.

Mindful: Is that why you felt called to create Mindfulness for the People?
Dr. Angela Rose Black:  Mindfulness for the People was born from my desire to center the voices and wisdom of People of Color in mindfulness research, teaching, and practice. From feeling the deeply painful but sobering reality that our omission in mindfulness spaces was reflective of our absence from the very imagination of what mindfulness is or could be.

White folks may be surprised to note the myriad ways in which they, too, benefit by seeing People of Color engaged in our own mindfulness practices and by being led in mindfulness instruction by teachers of color. One comment I’ve often received teaching mindfulness to White students is, until having this felt experience of being instructed by a Person of Color, never before had they realized how rarified this dynamic is in their lives—and how hungry they were for more. Never before had they been encouraged to consider there might be consequences for the relative absence of POC perspectives influencing their worldviews– their very practice. This integration of POC perspectives is a key way White folks can contribute to reimagining the mindfulness movement and act in opposition to systemic Whiteness in the mindfulness movement. 

Mindful: What makes re-imagining the mindfulness movement such a radical act?
Dr. Angela Rose Black: Re-imagining a mindfulness movement that actually meets the needs of our racialized world IS a radical act because in doing so, we are collectively saying that although our oppressions may be connected, the way in which we arrive at suffering can look very different. We no longer have to be blissed out by the universality that unites us—our family stress, work stress, relational stress—because we have the right to feel distinct differences in our life experiences as a function of our racial identities. So if we cannot live unracialized lives in a racialized world, when then will the mindfulness movement respond in kind?

Healing Racial Fault Lines

Fear Less, Love More

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Passion Will Spark Your Resolutions, Not Pressure

Whether it’s New Year’s or just another day, you can learn to cultivate resolve by gently investigating what it means to you to support your own decisions. Instead of being a floppy noodle, you can trust your ability to hold firm and notice the energy this gives you.

Evoking a clear image of something makes it more tangible. The RESOLVE practice is a gentle, 7-step guide to help you manifest whatever you want to achieve.

R — Recognize a yearning for change

So, you want to turn in a new direction? Then you’ve already got what you need to start making changes. Once you can see that you want more freshness in your life, you can kick your resolve into gear and make it happen.

E — Engage all your resources

As we learn to tune into the body, watch our thoughts, and become friendly with our emotions, we develop inner “resources” that we can call on to help us create a feeling of stability. Engaging your resources can include forming an allegiance with someone who is also seeking to strengthen their resolve. Anything that helps support you in your cause is a resource.

Engaging your resources can include forming an allegiance with someone who is also seeking to strengthen their resolve. Anything that helps support you in your cause is a resource.

S — Soften your need for speed

Instead, make headway slowly. Impatience can be a tremendous drain on your motivation. You learn as you go, so adopt a more relaxed pace that allows you time to investigate and learn from what you are experiencing.

O — Open up to why this matters to you

Let yourself feel why this is worth the effort. Recall that you chose this route because you were determined to grow your resolve. Return to this initial inspiration whenever you need a boost of motivation.

L — Learn to make allies of your obstacles

If you take the time to stop, breathe, and examine your obstacles you might discover that some dissolve under inspection. We often fear taking a stand.  We may use catastrophic thinking or overly exaggerate a negative result. Sometimes the greatest obstacle is the fear of change itself. We can gently notice this too. Awareness will feed our resolve.

V — Value your own efforts

It takes determination, energy, and powerful intention to connect with our heart’s desires. No effort is wasted. All will serve to strengthen your ability to trust yourself and your ability to stand up for what you want.

E — Enjoy the twists and turns

Plans have a nasty habit of changing or veering off course. Learn to adapt your route as your resolve propels you forward. The curve balls and surprises are what make life such a titillating adventure.

This article provides additional information related to a column titled, “You Say You Want a Resolution,” which appeared in the February 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.

 

Cultivate What You Want by Loving What You Have

A Mindful Strategy for a Resilient New Year

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The Key to Lasting Change? Get Creative

In the mid-1980s, Phillip Moffitt was sitting pretty. He’d recently pulled off one the great turnaround stories of the decade, transforming the languishing Esquire magazine into the envy of the New York media world. But then, to the surprise of his friends and colleagues, he sold the magazine, moved to California, and devoted himself, as he put it, “to finding more joy and meaning in my life.”

That led to a new career as a nationally recognized teacher of mindfulness meditation. Along the way, inspired by the work he’d done as an advisor to business leaders, Moffitt founded what’s now called the Institute of Change and Transition, where he and his team train individuals and groups how to tap into their personal values and make major transformations in their lives. I met up with Moffitt recently at his office in Belvedere, California, to discuss the art of reinventing your life from the inside out.

Hugh Delehanty: You’ve written a lot about the importance of aligning your inner life and your outer life. Where does that come from?

Phillip Moffitt: My nature is internally oriented, being mindful of internal experience and seeing how that manifests itself in the world. It’s about unity and wholeness. I’m not impressed with people who can sit on a cushion and have all kinds of bliss states, then go home and kick their dog.

When I started at Esquire, I had a yoga practice, and if I had to make a hard decision, I’d coach myself internally. “This is yoga. Don’t get caught up in the narrative. Treat it as a posture. What are the inner values here?” It was very cool.

So when you started practicing mindfulness meditation, what captured your imagination?

It’s mindfulness and intention together that’s the thing. Mindfulness allows you to be present and to see what is. Intention is about the basic values by which you are living your life. The mind that’s mindful and does not have intention will be controlled by the pleasant and the unpleasant. It will go after whatever’s pleasant and avoid anything that’s unpleasant. That’s not much quality of life.

The mind that’s mindful and does not have intention will be controlled by the pleasant and the unpleasant. It will go after whatever’s pleasant and avoid anything that’s unpleasant. That’s not much quality of life.

Mindfulness allows you to be present, but it also has this remembering aspect. It’s not just remembering to be present, as is sometimes taught. It’s remembering to be present in a certain way. Remembering that this is what matters.

I had a friend who was really smart in the media world and very wealthy.  But his intentions were different from mine. He thought that success and recognition were essential. I don’t feel that way. To me, success is having a mind that is not at war with itself and a sense of well-being that’s not based on having all the conditions right. Then you’re free to pursue whatever you want.

What role does compassion play in all this?

Without compassion, you have to do a lot of self-justifying. You have to make up stories about [less fortunate]people or go into active denial.

We’re seeing a lot of that these days, big time.

Yes, mindfulness is being usurped by the ego. But you can’t pull that off for long because true mindfulness sees things as they are. Being lonely is like this. Wanting attention is like this. Wanting to share is like this. Mindfulness doesn’t discriminate.  It’s interested in what is by its very nature. That’s how the mind finds contentment. But when we layer on all these other things, then mindfulness becomes something else.

What things?

Rationalizing behavior, being caught in jealousy or anger, trying to make everything OK, rather than just being mindful. If we really see things as they are, the wisdom comes from the clear seeing, as long as there’s mindful intention. This is not a theory. It’s the way things work, and when you know that for yourself, life is better. It may mean that you don’t get certain things that you could have gotten by rationalizing, but your sense of well-being grows. We don’t get to choose a lot of things that come up in our lives, but, with practice, we get to choose how we relate to them. And what’s the practice? Mindful intention infused with compassion.

What have you learned working with entrepreneurs?

For one thing, we never talk about winning. We talk about what really matters to them. There’s a [business]strategy that’s appropriate for what matters to you and that includes whatever your goals may be. We start with values because, in the long run, if you’re true to yourself, you’ll have more clarity of mind. You’ll also get more access to your intuition and not be so uptight about what you’re trying to do.

I just went through this with a guy in his 40s who was selling his company and couldn’t sleep at night. It was clear to me right away that he wasn’t lined up.

What do you mean “lined up”?

Being aligned with your values. He was being too narrow. Too driven by fear. So we went through and reimagined what he was doing and he was able to sell his company. The way he described it, everything changed because he reimagined the whole thing. He got to feel his own deepest values at play and that affected not just him, but his employees and his wife, as well.

What do you focus on in your workshops?

First, we take people through what we call “the journey of change.” Basically, it’s a variation on Joseph Campbell’s approach in The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Do you find that a lot of people are fearful of change?

That’s in the pre-stage. You know something is wrong, but you don’t address it. Sometimes it hits you with a two-by-four. But a lot of times, people just feel ambivalent about change. They’ll say, “I’ll change if I’m guaranteed that I’ll be happier and that it’s going to work out.” They’re trying to bargain. That’s often the first opening.

A lot of times, people just feel ambivalent about change. They’ll say, “I’ll change if I’m guaranteed that I’ll be happier and that it’s going to work out.” They’re trying to bargain. That’s often the first opening.

What comes next?

We help them clarify the change they’ve imagined and put it in the context of their whole life. It’s not just change in one area. If you change your job or your partner, that affects everything else.

Then we give them a chance to “live” that change in the workshop. Once you’ve made the change, you need to bring the values associated with it to the wholeness of your life. You don’t just say “I’m going to switch professions.” You say, “This is what I care about.” It has to show up everywhere else in your life 24/7.

What’s your big learning from doing this?

That not only can you make a successful change in your circumstances, but you can actually change your experience of those circumstances.

How?

Successful people are supposed to control the conditions of their lives. That’s the narrative, and you’re a failure if you don’t have the right circumstances in your family life, your work life, whatever. But we can never ultimately control conditions. Otherwise nobody would ever get old and die.

What we can do is have some degree of choice about how we relate to the conditions. And that choice makes us more able to maneuver and realize what we want to achieve in life.

 

 

This Q&A provides additional information related to a feature article titled, “Is Your Life Designed for You?”, which appeared in the February 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.

 

 

How Creativity Frees the Mind

4 Ways to Follow Your Inner Compass

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Mindful Movement to Nourish Your Spine

Many of us respond to shorter days and colder weather by spending more time at our desks, or curled up on the couch—but these habits can leave us feeling stagnant. That’s why it’s important during the winter to give your spine some extra care. This 3-minute practice offers 4 exercises to stretch and strengthen the spine. If you find yourself feeling tired with the imminent approach of winter, doing this quick practice throughout the day can refresh your energy and focus. Moving from your spine gets your blood flowing, warms you up, and creates a conscious connection to your breath.

3-Minute Mindful Movement Practice to Nourish Your Spine

1) Dynamic mountain
To start, separate your feet hip-width apart. Inhale and reach both your arms forward and overhead. As you exhale, reach your arms out to the sides and down. Repeat this movement for 3 breaths.

2) Downhill skier stretch
Inhale and reach up again. As you exhale, bend your knees slightly and place your hands on your knees like a baseball player. Take a deep breath in and out. Then, keep your knees bent as you reach your arms back behind you. Hold this for another breath in and out. As you inhale again, sweep your arms forward and up into a small backbend. Repeat for for 3 breaths.

3) Side sways
Bring your arms overhead as you inhale. Exhale and sway to your right, reaching over your head with your left hand. Inhale and come back to the center, and as you exhale, reach your right hand over to the left. Inhale and reach both of your arms up together. Repeat this for 3 breaths.

4) Standing twists
Once more, sweep your arms overhead as you breathe in. Exhale and twist to the right, reaching the left arm forward and the right arm backward. Bring both arms down to touch your legs. Inhale and bring your arms all the way up. Repeat for 3 breaths. To finish, keep your arms overhead, stretch as high as you can, and breathe into the stretch. Finally, release your arms down to your sides.

This mindfulness practice provides additional information related to a feature article titled, “Winter Got You Down? Move Around!”, which appeared in the February 2018 issue of Mindful magazine.

Mindful Movement to Beat the Afternoon Slump

Try This Movement Practice Before You Meditate

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Leaning In With the Mindfulness Momentum

When you have a mission that sounds as broad as ours—supporting people everywhere who want to bring more mindfulness into their life—it’s sometimes hard to see how some of the things we do fit in. I’d like to help clear that up.

To start with, most people think of us as a magazine and a website. And of course, that’s true—up to a point. Our dedicated Mindful magazine and Mindful.org team works tirelessly to produce content to support anyone who wants to use mindfulness to bring more focus, resilience, compassion—or sometimes just a little space—into their life.

That’s what I call “go small.” We create credible, accessible content to help people in need, from schoolchildren to first responders to doctors to business people to patients and people suffering from trauma, mental illness, or homelessness—whatever.

And we take that duty very seriously. Mindfulness teaching and publishing requires a kind of Hippocratic oath, a commitment to helping people where they are and being careful not to create harm. That’s one reason we pay the greatest possible attention to scientific integrity.

We’re very proud that we do all that, but (surprise!) we didn’t get into this work just to create a media business. We first established the Foundation for a Mindful Society 6 years ago as the nonprofit vehicle to achieve our broad mission. And since our professional expertise is in the media, we created Mindful magazine and Mindful.org as powerful tools to do just that.

We’re leaning into emerging initiatives like mindfulness training for border patrol agents, displaced refugees, international care workers, and health care agencies.

That’s where “go big” comes in. Our commitment to the Foundation’s mission means we show up in every high leverage conversation where we can make a difference. That’s why we’re excited about big projects like Mindful Cities and mindfulness in education, and why we’re leaning into emerging initiatives like mindfulness training for border patrol agents, displaced refugees, international care workers, and health care agencies.

Of course, the coolest thing is when big and small clearly converge, which we think happens much of the time. Mindfulness in education may sound like a remote ‘big idea,’ but when you hear homeless 9-year-old Charles in Louisville tell about teaching his 23-year-old mother to “find your anchor” in a quiet corner of the shelter they live in during one of her rare breaks between her school classes and her job, well, it becomes very immediate.

One such convergence is our emerging project to help bring mindfulness training to federal firefighters by providing support to the inspired work of MBSR teacher and lifelong firefighter Michelle Reugebrink and her insightful, innovative bosses at the US Forest Services. We read about the homes and lives lost from the fires in every part of the country but less spoken about is the stress, trauma, and life-pressures suffered by the brave women and men who fight those fires on our behalf.

We receive many inquiries from folks across the country with projects and inspirations just like this, folks who want information, counsel, support, guidance, and assurances to know they’re doing their very best in how they bring mindfulness in to help improve the lives of the folks in their communities. We want to be there to help them.

The challenge for us is that that the ‘go big’ projects don’t often fit a media economic model. For example, we won’t necessarily sell more magazine subscriptions or advertising with our Mindful Cities project. But when we see the opportunity to bring mindfulness to all aspects of our society we can’t help but do it.

And further we can’t leave this mindfulness social innovation work solely to the for-profit mindfulness world. There’s often no business incentive where mindfulness addresses social challenges in our society. And we’ve already seen visionary mindfulness business founders displaced by investors, as well as questionable new products introduced to meet investors’ sales goals.

It’s your support—from individuals, foundations, and anonymous donors—that makes it possible for us to do this mindfulness-based social innovation work. While the media operation can be self-sustaining, our efforts to support the go big projects are only possible through your vision and generosity.

Gosh, I didn’t start the Inside Mindful blog to do fundraising. But funding the ‘go big’ work is important for us to fulfill our mission. It’s that time of year, and the opportunity for you to help is immediate, so thanks for letting me rant.

 

Help Fund Mindful 2017

Your small donations make a big difference, your big donations mean that much more.
Go big and small with us.

 

Mindfulness Feeds the Roots

Why There’s No “Mindfulness Movement”

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How to Discover Where Your Happiness Lives

Who doesn’t want to be happier in their life? But what is happiness?

It’s different for everyone and the challenge is finding what it means for us. Kurt Vonnegut says it so well: “And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

In this video from Elaine Smookler, she asks people to notice that sometimes the reason we’re not happy is because we haven’t taken the time to figure out what that means for us. We get so caught up comparing our lives to others that we struggle to answer the simple question: what brings me true happiness?

Here are 3 things to consider when discovering what brings you happiness:

1) Try for Happier-ness: “I personally find it helpful not necessarily to think in terms of happiness exactly, but I’m kind of okay even with the notion of happier-ness—noticing anything at all that moves me in a direction of something delightful, starting to cultivate my own experience of what makes me happy. Because what makes me happy might not make you happy, it may not make your partner happy.”

2) Notice your Comparing Mind: “We each have our own pathway in life and part of our challenge is we’re not used to even asking ourselves and noticing: what brings me happiness? So what ends up happening is we chase so many dreams that may or may not actually have anything to do with what would bring us happiness. We look around at other people and say, oh, that person has a new car. Oh, that person has a fancy house. That person has this… This person has that… Well that’s wonderful. But, until you really know enough about yourself to see what opens you up what makes you happy, it can be really difficult to know which direction exactly happiness is.”

3) Wish Yourself and Others Happiness: “I would suggest that the notion of wishing for happiness for oneself and those we care about and even those we don’t care about is beautiful. But recognize that it may take a little bit for you to really know what makes you happy. And when I say happy I mean not just a “sugar rush”— [I mean] sustained happiness and well-being.”

 

A MINDFUL VIDEO COURSE: Want to learn more about making mindfulness a part of your life? In our new video course “Mindful Presents: Get Started with Mindfulness,” Elaine Smookler will teach you what mindfulness is, what its practical benefits are, and how you can use mindfulness to have a more open and engaging experience with life. We’re offering our online readers a 75% discount if you follow the link here. 

 

The Best Medicine

Is It Selfish to Seek Happiness?

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Awakening from the Trance of Fear – Part 2 - Tara Brach

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Awakening from the Trance of Fear – Part 2 ~

While fear is a natural and intelligent emotion, when fear goes on overdrive, we are in a trance of fear that contracts our body, heart and mind. Our resistance to the direct experience of fear sustains the trance and leads to decisions and behaviors that harm ourselves and others. Only by facing fear with mindfulness and compassion can we awaken from trance and reconnect with our capacity for creativity and full aliveness, wisdom and love.

Listen in to Awakening from the Trance of Fear – Part 1.

Your support enables us to continue to offer these talks and meditations freely. If you value them, I hope you will consider offering a donation at this time at www.tarabrach.com/donation/.

With gratitude and love, Tara

photo: pixabay.com

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