When I was an undergraduate studying psychology, Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart’s groundbreaking work introduced me to the concept of historical trauma. Historical trauma refers to the collective, cumulative emotional and psychological wounding experienced by Indigenous peoples due to genocide and the destruction of their cultures on Turtle Island, an Indigenous term for North America. …
Continue reading “Mindfulness, Indigenous Wisdom, and Community Well-being”
In 2011, I traveled to Australia over Christmas to visit my dear friend Kira Kay, who was leading an intense Satori retreat. I had heard many positive things about this intersubjective form of deep meditation, referred to in the 70s as “Enlightenment Intensives.” So, I took a chance and enrolled in a six-day retreat with …
“Hey! Dr. Boz!” I turn around to see the smiling face of a woman calling at me from behind a barred window. It takes me a moment to recognize who she is. “Kelly? Is that you?” “Yes! Would you tell someone that I’m in here?” She’s standing inside the building that I’m walking by. I …
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.― John Dewey As we reflect on our world today, we sense and see dramatic, interdependent global challenges—racial, political, economic, and ecological—all around us. This awareness leads many of us to feel an immediate need for action aimed at broad and deep systemic …
Over the years, I’ve been increasingly aware of what one could call a deficit of compassion in medical care, and have observed the effects not only on patients but also on clinicians, and even on the institutions in which clinicians serve. I felt moved to find a better way to train clinicians in compassion, and …
Who am I to study compassion? I am a compassion scientist, which feels a little like choosing to ingest a tiny bit of poison and its antidote every workday. When I stare at a blank page to write about the science of compassion, I feel paralyzed by the presumptuousness of the endeavor and the reminder …
Recent generations of my family have had many opportunities to practice working with difficulty. Born in a still-segregated North Carolina town, I experienced the direct disadvantages of being racialized Black in the southern United States, including a range of childhood traumas. These negative outcomes too often follow hard upon systematic impoverishment, deprivation of educational opportunities, …
Continue reading “The End of Othering: Cultivating Just, Equitable Communities”
When I was a junior in college, I signed up for a course on meditation and developmental psychology. On the first day of class, the professor asked each student to write on a notecard, “the voice in your head that you wish you didn’t have to listen to throughout the day.” I felt apprehensive. I …
