Our January 2022 conversation features Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche and Elissa Epel. They discuss how contemplative practice can build resilience to address injustice and the climate crisis.
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2022 Summer Research Institute
SRI 2022 explores the crisis of disconnection and othering. The challenges we face—from racial injustice to conflict within and across borders to climate change—demand concerted action; yet we remain more divided than ever. What is the role of our minds in creating these divisions, and how can our minds transform to create a more connected world?
Embracing Humility and Complexity: Our Journey to Engage in Anti-Racist Practices
Lao Tzu famously said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Four years ago, we took that step at Mind & Life with a commitment to engage in anti-racist practices. It has been a humbling journey of deep reflection and meaningful transformation, along with missteps along the way. Today, I am …
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Transformative Social and Emotional Learning as a Catalyst for Climate Action
There’s a saying in the climate movement that to change everything will take everyone. In my work as an educational leader of color dedicated to transforming school communities through Social and Emotional Learning (SEL), I believe it’s imperative that schools ultimately position SEL in service of a shift in collective consciousness.
Resistance through Resilience: A Compassionate Approach to Interrupting Privilege
Our two UW Centers have recognized that the dual pandemic of racism and COVID-19 exacerbated stressors on our most vulnerable populations. In response, we are creating a collaboration between the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE) and the Resilience Lab that bridges CCDE’s landmark Interrupting Privilege program with Be REAL, a program developed by …
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Master Plants and Mindful Medicine: Towards Reciprocation and Recontextualization of Indigenous Practices and Western Psychedelic Research
The new movement in psychedelics transforms ideas and practices related to mental health and the science of transcendent experience. It is on a path, though, to exclude Indigenous voices and millenary knowledge from which these medicines originate. Indigenous contemplative practices are noticeably absent in psychedelic-assisted therapies. No involvement of Indigenous Peoples determines best practices in …
Embodying DEI: Trauma-informed and Mindfulness-based Approaches to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education
The past year has renewed higher education’s urgency to address historical racial violence. Yet the outpouring of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts we have seen over the course of the past year have often neglected the demands of people of color to oppose racism not only intellectually or semantically, but to address historical racialized …
Inspiring Minds – September 2021
Our September conversation features Adam Bucko and Fred Bahnson, with musicians Holy River. They discuss how Christian contemplative practice can reinforce our sense of interconnection, reciprocity, and kinship.
Grant Jones: Showing Up Fully Through Music and Mindfulness
“Music is my first spiritual practice,” says Grant Jones, a musician, activist, contemplative researcher, and the newest member of Mind & Life’s Steering Council. And while the overlap between his music and meditation started as a slow crescendo, now the connection is more explicit. His new collection of songs, “Constellations,” recently released on Spotify, touches …
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A Conversation with Christiana Figueres: The Case for Stubborn Optimism
Christiana Figueres is renowned for having delivered the seemingly impossible. During her tenure as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-2016, she brought together national and sub-national governments, corporations, activists, financial institutions, communities of faith, think tanks, and technology providers to jointly deliver the unprecedented, historic Paris climate …
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