Blog
Discovery
Using Meditation to Explore Privilege and Anti-Racism
By Steven Cohen
Like many Americans, I have spent a great deal of time recently engaging with work colleagues, family, and friends in conversations regarding race and racial inequality. Doing a lot of listening. Doing a lot of reading about systemic racial injustice and potential remedies. I know that I have a lot more to learn. I have started to acknowledge my white privilege and the advantages that has afforded me. I have meditated.
As meditators, we learn to observe with full attention in...
Quantum Mechanics and How We Shape Each Other
By Mo Edjlali, Mindful Leader Chief Community Organizer
Recently, we were invited to help share the premiere of a film - Infinite Potential, the story of David Bohm. It's a fascinating film, available free on YouTube here. It explores the life and work of physicist David Bohm, who Einstein called his spiritual son and the Dalia Lama his science guru. The film explores quantum mechanics and one experiment, in particular, continues to intrigue me - the double slit. Essentially, when...
The Necessity and Challenge of Being “Onto Ourselves”
By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West
A couple of weeks ago I participated in the certification process for a cohort of students finishing the Professional Coaching Course. A phrase I heard used in celebration again and again was, “you are onto yourself.” It’s a concept that comes up a lot in Integral Coaching, as it is one of the biggest indicators of deepening development.
What does it mean to be onto ourselves?
Most fundamentally, it means just what it sounds like:...
How to Help Co-Create an End to Racial Injustice
By Due Quach
As cries for ending racial injustice and police brutality continuously resound across the country, people are making clear that it is time for the changes demanded by the Civil Rights Movement for over 60 years to finally become reality. Tragically, the pace of structural and legislative reform to address systemic racism has been slowed by how mindlessness, inertia, and complacency preserve the status quo. Because the cost and suffering from waiting are too great, what is...
The Privilege of Being Kind
By Mo Edjlali, Mindful Leader Chief Community Organizer
Our mission is to enable people to foster mindfulness and compassion in the workplace and we often talk about kindness. Until recently I never really looked at the act of kindness as a privilege. The experience that I had a few months ago gave me an entirely new perspective.
One night, heading home after work I caught an Uber and I started a conversation with my driver. He was a tall, handsome black man with a rugby player's...
Resources to Help You Deepen Your Understanding of Racism
Resources from the mindfulness community:
Leading Social Transformation: The Inner Work of Racial Justice with Rhonda Magee
SIYLI
Anti-Racist Resources from Greater Good
Greater Good
The Untold - What White People Can do with Privilege
Ruth King
An Open Letter to Humanity
Michelle L. Maldonado
Think meditation could help cope with microaggressions? There’s an app for that.
Washington Post
Anti-racism in your company:
Shaping Our Presence to Be More Supportive
By Joy Reichart, New Ventures West
In these days of heightened anxiety and insecurity, many of us are drawn to be a safe and reassuring space for those who are in crisis and afraid. And, when we’re in that often unavoidable place ourselves, we’re grateful to the folks who can hold that kind of space for us.
What is it about the people by whom we feel most comforted? What is awake in us—consciously or otherwise—when we are feeling truly available to emotionally support...
Feeling Helpless During COVID-19? Try This
By Dr. Christopher Willard
This pandemic is and will continue to be a traumatic time. While some of us may be relatively comfortable and secure for now, others are facing illness and loss of friends, family, and finances, yet none of us is spared the incredible disruption of this time.
Trauma can mean many things, and our reactions to it vary. Yet one aspect of how humans react to trauma recently surprised me in my research—more of us experience posttraumatic growth than its...
Social Isolation as a Mindfulness Retreat
By Gayle Van Gils
“Raw, vulnerable, ungrounded, and exposed” – these are feelings I have been having since working alone in social isolation. In coaching conversations with clients and masterclasses with colleagues, I have been hearing these same words over and over. They made me reflect on the interesting fact that these feelings are so similar to the condition that I find myself in several days into an immersive meditation retreat. In fact, much of my personal...
The Benefits of a Mindful and Productive Lunch
By Sarah Hollenbeck
Bringing mindfulness into your work life has been proven to increase productivity, decrease anxiety and create an overall more relaxed atmosphere for everyone. But with more and more people taking a working lunch, the ability to completely decompress and come back to work feeling refreshed is dwindling.
While there seems to be an idea that skipping out on lunch can help you get ahead in your career and get more done, studies have shown that is not the...