Our November conversation “Yoga as a Tool for Social Change” features Richard Freeman and Gail Parker, along with pianist/composer Peter Kater. We’ll explore how embodied yoga practices can lead to greater self-awareness and agency in contributing to a better world.
Topic Archives:
International Society for Contemplative Research
In the last twenty years, a sharp increase in contemplative research has created the need for an academic home for interdisciplinary scholarship, community, dialogue, and collaboration. This special Think Tank grant goes to a multidisciplinary group of leading contemplative researchers to begin the development of a new professional society for the field. This is a …
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Silent Illumination: Compassionate End-of-Life Care for Transgender Elders
The World Health Organization estimates that 20 million adults across the globe need palliative care, including a growing cohort of transgender-identified older adults. While best practices for palliative care exist, information to guide community-based care at the end of life for this cohort is not consistently available. Guided by the wisdom from contemplative practice, art, …
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2020 Land and Peoples Acknowledgement
What is a Land and Peoples Acknowledgement, and Why is it Important A Land and Peoples Acknowledgement is a formal statement rooted in Indigenous protocol that recognizes the peoples who traditionally inhabited the land where you live or work and the relationship that continues to exist between Indigenous Peoples and their traditional territories. It’s a …
Our Commitment to Racial Equity and Inclusion
At the heart of the Mind & Life Institute’s work is nurturing understanding and action toward a world that embraces our shared humanity. We recognize that barriers to realizing our fundamental interconnectedness exist not only in the human mind, but are deeply embedded within institutions and structures. Our commitment to dismantling institutional racism begins at …
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Can We Change Racial Bias?
Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Sandra Bland. Ferguson. Baltimore. Charleston. Alton Sterling. Philando Castile. In the wake of so many recent tragedies involving racial discrimination, Americans are taking a hard look at this systemic and divisive issue in our culture, and asking what can be done to change it.
Cultivating Pro-Sociality at a Time of Unprecedented Change
Held against the backdrop of a global pandemic and worldwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism, Mind & Life’s 17th annual Summer Research Institute (SRI) offered participants in 22 countries a unique opportunity to reflect on recent events and their roles in contributing to individual and societal healing. “This is a critical moment in …
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Contemplating 400 Years of Inequality: A Mindfulness & Compassion Community Practice
Harnessing the power of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to the U.S. in 1619, scholars have designed a mindfulness-based learning experience that supports communities with taking a contemplative walk through history to process our collective past. This presentation explores the use of a 4ft x 20ft timeline as a contemplative learning …
No Place Like Home: Decolonizing our American Dreams & the Necropolitics they Bury
Space seems limited these days, limited and limiting. The places we inhabit can inhabit us, leaving our imaginations of how to live otherwise too constrained to resist the tendencies of hoarding, hunting, and fencing that define our ideals, feeding habits of homemaking that have soaked the American Dream in so much violence. Rather than letting …
The Role of Contemplative Practice in Cultivating Cultural Humility and Inclusivity in Research and Education
This presentation discusses contemplative practices as they can be used to help researchers and educators develop prosocial attitudes and behaviors such as cultural humility, discomfort resilience and fierce compassion. In addition to discussing the literature on prosociality and cultural humility, the presenter shares examples from her international research as it relates to the development of …
