As someone who has devoted my career (and, indeed, my life) to the purpose of eliminating racism and breaking bias using PRISM tools, including mindfulness, it was such an honor to be invited to serve as a panelist for MNDFL's Mindfulness 3.0 Challenge.
A full view of the live-stream is available for your viewing, but I want to share a bit with you below about one of the important questions that the summit surfaced:
What are some of the challenges facing mindfulness today?
My answer is that one of the biggest challenges facing us is that our environments are often not hospitable to becoming truly embodied. The BE MORE Journey teaches us that optimism and empowerment are some of the most powerful levers we have toward propelling ourselves toward acting as intentional social change agents -- another way to say this, then, is that one of the biggest opportunities facing us is the opportunity to re-configure our relationships with ourselves, each other, and our environments in order to truly cultivate a mindfulness practice.
One of the most important things I could say about mindfulness is that mindfulness is for everyone. It is really our birthright. It's about cultivating a rich, inner life -- being in touch with that life, and then sharing it with others. And when we view it that way, we can understand how important (indeed, critical) it is to ensure that mindfulness is, and feels, accessible to all.
In that way, mindfulness shares so much with compassion -- it is such a natural way of being, and yet so often the world distances us from it.
We are wired to know ourselves. We are wired to find our way back.
I hope that you'll take some time this week to review our conversation. But I'll advise you, going in: bring a notebook! It's a powerful 50 minutes, and there's a lot to learn!
Thank you so much to my co-panelists, Dr. Sará King and Dr. Cliff Saron, and to our moderator, Jylani Ma'at. It was so wonderful to share space with you, and to learn from all of you.