Breathing in, I calm my body.
Breathing out, I make peace.
Since my last newsletter, our nation has endured yet another brutal week. It can be overwhelming at times to navigate the changes COVID has wrought and to simultaneously grapple with what seem to be intractable societal ills. A dear friend sent me some wonderful resources from Greater Good Magazine, which I found both affirming and inspiring. I encourage you to check out Rhonda Magee’s article on “How Mindfulness Can Defeat Racial Bias,” as well as Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu’s “How to Sustain Your Activism,” which both affirm the power of mindfulness and compassion practices to effect societal change.
As Murphy-Shigematsu writes and Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, “mindfulness is more than an individualistic way of reducing stress…making peace begins within ourselves, [and] contemplation leads to compassion [which] involves taking action to address suffering. This work to transform the world through social, political, economic, or environmental change is activism.”
Magee, too, notes that mindfulness practices “help each of us work more effectively with others in increasingly diverse and conflict-laden environments. They create pathways—neural, emotional, and relational—to engagements that promote not merely personal, but relational and systemic changes that support real social justice.” While Magee concedes “they won’t end racism,” she nevertheless asserts (with the support of research) that “mindfulness and other contemplative practices do support ways of being in the world that reflect less of the biases that each of us holds…And that is truly good news.”
May this be “news you can use,” and may your practice empower you to make peace in your body-mind and in the wider world. Namaste