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A 6-Minute Practice to Softly Focus Our Awareness

Often we use the sensation of the breath as an anchor in meditation. However, focusing on the sounds around you can also be a comforting way to ground yourself. Try this guided practice to gently focus awareness when in need of a moment of calm.

A 6-Minute Guided Meditation for Focused Awareness

• 6:27

1. Let’s start by bringing our primary attention to the sounds in the room, wherever you are. Right now I’m hearing a clock somewhere. A window is open where I am, so I’m also hearing some birds. 

2. Notice any thoughts that arise. While I’m listening to the sounds in the room, I’m not blocking the thoughts and emotions that come up.

I think of this kind of like driving a car: My primary attention is on the road in front of me, but I’m still aware of what’s happening in my peripheral vision, what’s happening in my rearview mirror, and if I have kids in the back seat of the car, what’s happening there.

Our primary attention is on sound, but we don’t block the thoughts and emotions that show up, we just don’t get caught up in them.

That’s what we do with this meditation. Our primary attention is on sound, but we don’t block the thoughts and emotions that show up, we just don’t get caught up in them. We notice they’re there and gently, with soft attention, keep our primary attention on listening. 

3. Keep going on your own, listening to what’s happening around you, and allowing what comes up in the equivalent of your peripheral vision to come and go, just like pedestrians along the road when you’re driving. Remember, if your mind wanders, that’s okay. That’s what minds do. The moment you notice that your mind has wandered, that’s a moment of awareness. That’s something worth celebrating. And then, bring your primary attention back to the sounds in the room.

4. Before we finish, check in with yourself and see if there’s something bubbling up. An emotion, maybe something you’re grateful for, maybe a strong feeling. Whatever it is, see if you can bring that same soft light of awareness to being with that emotion, not thinking about it, not engaging in it, not getting caught up in stories around it, but just feeling that emotion, with a broad floodlight of awareness. If it’s too much, you can move back to noticing sounds. Sit with what comes up, notice if there’s any tension in your body. You don’t need to change anything. Just noticing the tension usually will soften it. Stay with this emotion for another second or two, and rest.

Want to learn how you and your kids can become more mindful? Check out the Inner Kids Collaborative, a pay-what-you-can online resource offering mindfulness classes for kids, families, and educators.

read more

Guided Meditation

A Guided Meditation for Turning Awareness into Action 

Michelle Maldonado, coauthor of A Bridge To Better: An Open Letter To Humanity and Resource Guide, shares a guided meditation for strengthening our ability to be self-aware, self-actualized, and self-determined as we co-create our emerging new reality and world together. Read More 

• Michelle Maldonado
• June 17, 2020

Guided Meditation

A 10-Minute Practice to Fully Experience the Present 

When the world feels out of control, it helps to take time to stop and do nothing at all. Jay Vidyarthi guides us to temporarily let go of racing thoughts and rest our awareness in the experience of this moment. Read More 

• Jay Vidyarthi
• June 15, 2020

Guided Meditation

A Mindfulness Practice to Notice the Mind-Body Connection 

Our bodies have power to influence our minds, and vice versa. This guided meditation shows you how. Read More 

• Susan Kaiser Greenland
• August 7, 2019

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4 Lessons on Anti-Racism from Brené Brown and Ibram X. Kendi

We are collectively facing a moment where people are hearing the call from Black communities and rising to action. We need to work for change on every level—supporting individual change, social change, and policy change—in order to fully acknowledge and end racism.

This rich conversation between professor Ibram X. Kendi, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist (as well as the upcoming Antiracist Baby) and the Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, together with research professor, author, and podcast host Brené Brown offers us clear and heart-opening lessons to integrate into our anti-racist toolbox. Read a few highlights here, and be sure to listen to their full interview. 

Four Lessons on Anti-Racism from Brené Brown and Ibram X. Kendi

1. Our identity is changing from moment to moment

Nobody, regardless of race, says Kendi, is simply racist or anti-racist in a static way. “What we say and do about race in each moment determines what, not who, we are.” It isn’t helpful to fall into essentialist categories around race, says Kendi, even as a Black person, because we have the ability to change that as we raise our own awareness—and our ability to admit it when we’ve made mistakes: “Essentially, to be anti-racist is to admit when we’re being racist.”

“What we say and do about race in each moment determines what, not who, we are.” It isn’t helpful to fall into essentialist categories around race, says Kendi.

2. The opposite of racist isn’t non-racist, but anti-racist

“Once you understand what a racist idea and a racist policy is,” says Dr. Kendi, “you begin to realize there’s a fundamental contrast to that, and that contrast is not some sort of neutrality.” 

For example, between ideas of racial hierarchy and its opposite, racial equality, there is no grey area in the middle where we can say our actions are neither racist nor anti-racist. Similarly, there’s no neutral ground between justice and injustice. To say there is a middle ground, you’re “creating this category for yourself” in order to dodge responsibility for what we have said or done, says Kendi. 

3. The root of racism is self-interest

The history of slavery and continuing racism serves a purpose for those in positions of power. “There’s a specific reason why you had so many powerful Americans trying to convince white Americans that Black people were inferior. It was out of their own self-interest.” However, even when most normal white people do not intentionally benefit from inequality, it’s normal to have a self-defensive reaction to being called racist. Brené summarizes: “I think there are people who don’t want to be in the racist category, because there’s so much shame attached to that.”  

4. Shame does not lead to social justice

Holding ourselves and others accountable for racist actions is critical, but feeling shame for having acted in racist ways is not helpful—and here’s the difference between the two. Kendi uses a powerful analogy to explain why we need not bring shame to the effort of dealing with our own racist conditioning. In America, says Kendi, it’s as though racist ideas are constantly rained on your head: “‘You have no umbrella, and you don’t even know that you’re wet with those racist ideas,’ because the ideas themselves lead you to believe that you’re dry. ‘Then someone comes along and says, ‘You know what, you’re wet, and these ideas are still raining on your head. Here’s an umbrella.’ You can be like, ‘Thank you! I didn’t even realize I was drenched.’”

We all need to cultivate the ability to have honest conversations, accept that we will make mistakes along our anti-racist path, and to commit with love to walking this path anyway. To do this, we need to practice listening and understanding deeply. When we find ourselves able to step into a role of genuine vulnerability, in this moment, we can see more clearly where racism and injustice stem from. Holding this awareness, we can begin to walk the long path of change with presence, compassion, and courage. 

Listen to the full episode of Unlocking Us Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist

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Guided Meditation

A Guided Meditation for Turning Awareness into Action 

Michelle Maldonado, coauthor of A Bridge To Better: An Open Letter To Humanity and Resource Guide, shares a guided meditation for strengthening our ability to be self-aware, self-actualized, and self-determined as we co-create our emerging new reality and world together. Read More 

• Michelle Maldonado
• June 17, 2020

Relationships

How to Stop the Racist in You 

The new science of bias suggests that we all carry prejudices within ourselves—and we all have the tools to keep them in check. Read More 

• Jeremy Adam Smith and Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton
• August 3, 2016

5 Mindful Books About Equality and Racial Justice 

Discover a non-exhaustive reading list of works that explore the experiences of Black folks and people of color. Read More 

• Mindful Staff
• June 19, 2020

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Sustaining Our Caring

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All transformation arises out of love; it is the energy of caring about life that moves us toward inner, relational and societal healing. With a primary focus on our radically re-enlivened movement for racial justice and equity, this talk looks at ways of remembering what matters and consciously nourishing our care. 

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5 Mindful Books About Equality and Racial Justice

1) Every Body Yoga

Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body

Jessamyn Stanley • Workman

Most people feel awkward during their first yoga class. For Jessamyn Stanley, being the largest woman in the studio only compounded this. Fast-forward a few years, and Stanley is an Instagram sensation for chronicling how a “big, black, and beautiful African Queen” can be as yogic as the idealized (and grossly misleading) representation portrayed in women’s magazines. With Every Body Yoga, Stanley, now a certified teacher, takes that a step further.

This book—a solid mixture of pose and sequencing instruction, introduction to the history and philosophy of the practice, and beginner’s tips to help you feel slightly less awkward when you start out—also tells Stanley’s story of how falling in love with yoga helped her fall in love with herself. Not only is this an inspiration for anyone who has ever felt different or has struggled with self-image, it’s an absolute testament to what yoga, at its core, is really all about.

2) Mindful of Race

Transforming Racism from the Inside Out

Ruth King • Sounds True

Long-overdue discussions around race in America are finally having a moment—one that needs to last a very long time.

The “post-racial America” illusionary bubble has been burst. Put simply, to imagine we are (or even aspire to be) color-blind is just to be blind to reality. So, where is mindfulness in all this? Is the spread of this practice, touted as something truly transformational, making a dent anywhere in our understanding and our race relations? If Ruth King has her way, it will. With Mindful of Race, King joins other voices demanding contemporary mindfulness practice go beyond being another luxury of the privileged to become something that enables us to explore deep habits together in ways that effect real change.

King calls racism a “heart disease” that can go unnoticed and untreated for a long time. In response, she developed a three-and-a-half-day program with the same name as the book that “brings mindful inquiry to an examination of racial conditioning and social distress.” She unfolds her training on the page in three phases: In Diagnosis, we uncover “the narrative we hold along racial lines”; in Mindfulness—Heart Surgery, meditation practice helps us investigate deeply while “softening the grip of the tension” from emotions triggered by going to rarely explored places; and Recovery is about how we can spread understanding, caring, and equanimity about race from our inner circle to the bigger circles in the world.

3) The Inner Work of Racial Justice

Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities through Mindfulness

Rhonda V. Magee • Tarcher Perigree

Early in this book, Rhonda Magee tells a little story that both breaks your heart and potently illustrates why she has devoted her life’s work to getting to the heart of bias and helping undo its deleterious effects. She recounts the first time she came to see fully how other people could view her in a completely different light than she and her family viewed her. She saw that there was a wall dividing people—a wall that could be nearly invisible until you bumped up against it. 

Magee has brought together experience as a law professor and a longtime practitioner of mindfulness—and training as a mindfulness teacher—to host classroom conversations about race, privilege, and bias that few of us ever take part in, particularly in a mixed-race context. She’s learned a lot from years of this kind of hands-on work. For one thing, it has taught Magee that color blindness is an unhelpful concept for promoting equity and justice. Despite the fact that race is “socially constructed” and ultimately a “fiction,” our perception of significant differences is unmistakable, so we cannot be “blind” to color. That’s simply a prescription for being blind to our biases.

Instead, Magee teaches and practices what she calls ColorInsight, using contemplative practices to peer into and beyond our biases. It starts from a view that we are deeply interconnected, but need to “take a long (lifelong), loving (heartful and compassionate) look at racism,” where “staying in our discomfort” can be “an important part of healing and transformation.” Through instruction, stories, history (both legal and otherwise), and insight, Magee takes us on a very rewarding, vital, and timely journey.

4) Stay Woke

A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us

Justin Michael WIlliams • Sounds True

Many “spiritual” writings give only incidental mention of the social and material struggles people face. They imply, “Inequality, marginalization? That’s an out-there problem. Ignore it and meditate.” Having reckoned with homophobia, personal trauma, and stress rooted in poverty, racism, and domestic violence, Justin Michael Williams has no time for that: “You need a different type of meditation. One that doesn’t pretend the struggle doesn’t exist.” He demonstrates real strength through the honesty and vulnerability of his first book. With “Freedom Meditation,” he offers you 10 steps to create a meditation (and life) practice that’s about fearlessly embracing all of who you are, to explore both your inner and outer worlds: “Meditation is not about relaxing. Meditation is about becoming more alive.”

5) Beyond Guilt Trips

Mindful Travel in an Unequal World

Anu Taranath • Between the Lines

Growing up in the US as the child of Indian immigrants, Taranath, a professor at the University of Washington, felt she never quite fit the image of an American. Nor was she fully at home when studying in India. She describes “the familiar patterns of shame and guilt that lure me in like a comfortable sofa.” Beyond Guilt Trips arose from her conviction that, to bridge social and cultural differences, we must get in touch with global inequality and our discomfort in facing it. Only then, she says, can we “know that our differences might not be everything.” Enlivened by her travel stories—at once tense, challenging, and brightly beautiful—Taranath’s book may become required reading for those who wander, and those who want to. 

read more

Guided Meditation

A Guided Meditation for Turning Awareness into Action 

Michelle Maldonado, coauthor of A Bridge To Better: An Open Letter To Humanity and Resource Guide, shares a guided meditation for strengthening our ability to be self-aware, self-actualized, and self-determined as we co-create our emerging new reality and world together. Read More 

• Michelle Maldonado
• June 17, 2020

Voices

How Being Held Accountable Is an Experience of Vulnerability 

Amanda Hester, Director of Operations and Business Development at Mindful, explores why mindfulness is key to sitting with feelings of shame and blame. Read More 

• Amanda Hester
• June 8, 2020

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Maybe it’s The Barrel: Mindful Policing Gets Real

As protests continue across the United States, video footage of police officers acting in reprehensible ways has gone viral, resulting in widespread criticism of the police and a call for defunding.

Richard Goerling is a certified mindfulness trainer and former police lieutenant, who specializes in teaching resilience and performance skills to first responders. In this interview, he explores the biases that exist in policing—and explains how mindfulness can foster a more compassionate police force. 

Founding Editor Barry Boyce Speaks with Former Police Lieutenant Richard Goerling

• 52:12

The Two Types of Change Policing Needs

“One of the greatest failures of police leadership is the failure to lead a culture—or maybe, more specifically—the failure to lead an ethos that is grounded in humanity, rather than grounded in tactics or grounded in equipment, or grounded in the good old boy network,” Goerling says.

Here are two types of changes he says the policing culture needs to see:

1. Systemic Change

“No matter how the institution of policing evolves, it is still a system. And systems, by their nature, are imperfect. And systems that are imperfect by their nature can and will cause harm on some level,” Goerling says.

Systemic change refers to a change in the institution as a whole—in this case, a change to the police force. 

“No matter how the institution of policing evolves, it is still a system. And systems, by their nature, are imperfect.”

“Systemic change is going to look like a lot of different things,” Goerling says. That could mean a change in federal or state laws, along with the way policing is conducted in the field. 

“We also need some changes in how police chiefs…interact with other community leaders,” he adds.

2. Organic Change 

Organic change refers to a change in actions of each individual police officer. 

In order to deliver on the intention behind any systemic changes, we need “changes at the ground level, changes in skills training for first responders, for police officers,” says Goerling.

“[A] large body of men and women need to be resourced with skills so that they know what their ethos is when they show up to work,” Goerling says. “And that’s really been missing in police culture in America today.”

In many cases, training begins from the inside out—and mindfulness can be vital in creating a foundation for personal transformation.

“[A] large body of men and women need to be resourced with skills so that they know what their ethos is when they show up to work,” Goerling says. “And that’s really been missing in police culture in America today.” 

How Mindfulness Fosters Compassionate Policing 

“What we have today is this extremist position between what people expect in the community, and what police culture is delivering,” Goerling says. “That reckoning, I think, is a very positive thing—even though it’s going to be very painful, in many ways.”

Training in mindfulness skills can help officers boost their sense of awareness and compassion, so they’re less likely to rush to judgment. 

There are three central areas Goerling recommends building awareness around:

1. Awareness of thought: By encouraging officers to notice what they’re thinking about during a conversation, or the middle of a critical incident, they can notice when judgment arises. “How do we work with that judgment so that the judgment bias doesn’t become the tail that wags the dog?” he asks.
2. Awareness of emotion: By noticing when anger or stress begins to rise, officers can begin to regulate their reactions. “We can just skillfully be where we are and know that whatever is emerging…is a normal part of the human experience, and that we can regulate it with skill in order to show up and do the work that we do in policing,” says Goerling.
3. Awareness of body: Occupational stress and trauma can impact an officer’s body, and can be resolved through mindful movement and other interventions. 

A Few Bad Apples, Or An Entire Rotten Barrel? 

A common refrain following acts of police brutality appeals to the idea of a “few bad apples” on a police force, insisting not all police officers act that way. But is that really the case?

In answer to that question, Goerling points to research from Philip Zimbardo, who conducted the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. 

“We say, ‘Oh, it’s that there’s a bad apple in the barrel and the bad apple is toxic,’” Goerling says. “And Phil flips that argument upside down. He says maybe…the model we should consider is not that there’s bad apples. It’s that the barrel itself is bad.” 

That barrel is a metaphor for the police force. It means that even when there are good officers, they are unable to act independently to do good. The recent video of an elderly man cracking his head on the sidewalk after being pushed to the ground by police is a clear example, Goerling says.

The model we should consider is not that there’s bad apples. It’s that the barrel itself is bad.

“The way they’re trained and the way they’re thinking, because they’re not guided by an ethos that allows critical thinking, they just roll right over a 75 year-old man,” he says. “If you isolate any one of those individuals, they’d probably tell you that they wanted to do something different. But the forces of the barrel are powerful.”

In order to improve policing, Goerling says, we need to create a new “barrel,” one that encourages critical thinking and places humanitarianism at the forefront. So how can we make that happen?

Addressing Bias in Policing

“One of the most significant biases in police leadership and police culture is the refusal to believe that there’s bias at all,” Goerling says. 

He explains that bias often stems from the traumatic nature of policing. As police officers witness more crime, they become more burnt out and judgmental, forming opinions of people based on what they’ve witnessed previously. 

“This notion of being cynical is a predictable outcome of being a police officer if it’s not properly mitigated,” Goerling says. But it’s more than just cynicism—over time, this mistrust can lead to racism. 

“Bias emerges and it creates all sorts of failures of judgment,” Goerling says. “It creates all sorts of discriminatory behavior, and that’s a very serious problem in policing across America.”

On the other hand, Goerling says, all of us have implicit biases that we must work through.

“One of the most significant biases in police leadership and police culture is the refusal to believe that there’s bias at all.”

“We bring our own baggage to policing. And if we’re not willing to sit with that baggage…then it just stews and festers, and becomes part of our equation of how we show up in the world. And it becomes unconscious.”

While there is no one-size-fits-all approach to mindfulness training for police officers, Goerling says it must address occupational trauma and encourage a growth mindset.  

“It comes back to these fundamental skills of teaching self-awareness, self-compassion, self-regulation, and then awareness and compassion for the world around us,” he says.

But no matter what a more mindful police force may look like, it won’t be easy to get there. 

“We’re going to the social justice gym here, and we’re going to get a really kick-ass workout. And it’s hard. We have to step into that space of self-reflection, and personal and professional growth—and I’m not convinced that there is inspiration to do that,” Goerling says. “In some places there will be. And in those places, I think community can support that effort of transformation.”

“I think communities are going to see some remarkable reform and transformation with a new model of community collaborative public safety,” he adds. “From my perspective, I’m not sure how we can achieve this kind of transformation without the intensive integration of mindfulness skills training.”

Listen to the full interview for more on what the mindfulness community can do to support the movement toward widespread integration of mindfulness within policing.

read more

Voices

How Being Held Accountable Is an Experience of Vulnerability 

Amanda Hester, Director of Operations and Business Development at Mindful, explores why mindfulness is key to sitting with feelings of shame and blame. Read More 

• Amanda Hester
• June 8, 2020

Voices

7 Ways Mindfulness Could Support Compassionate Policing 

Founding Editor Barry Boyce considers what contribution mindfulness practice might make to the change people are seeking in police departments. Read More 

• Barry Boyce
• June 9, 2020

Guided Meditation

A Guided Meditation for Turning Awareness into Action 

Michelle Maldonado, coauthor of A Bridge To Better: An Open Letter To Humanity and Resource Guide, shares a guided meditation for strengthening our ability to be self-aware, self-actualized, and self-determined as we co-create our emerging new reality and world together. Read More 

• Michelle Maldonado
• June 17, 2020

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Meditation: Embodied Metta (19:36 min.)

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Lovingkindness becomes full when it is energetically experienced in our bodies. This meditation guides us in awakening the receptivity, warmth and openness of metta through our body, and then invites us to rest in the space of loving presence, as we open to whatever arises.

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