The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We explored how mindfulness can help us to build beloved community. We all need connection to flourish. We can expand our circles of relationships by examining the obstacles to connection. We can become aware of the implicit bias that we all learn as developing humans. Awareness is the first step in relearning more life-affirming habits of connection.
In a lively and moving conversation with On Being’s Krista Tippett ,we heard Professor john a. powell’s observations about how we approach belonging. In exploring race he focuses on our shared human needs. He offers many examples of how we can learn to resolve many of our race related social problems. He shares personal memories of learning what is most important in relationship from his father’s example. He is professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of Racing to Justice: Transforming our Concepts of Self and Other to Build an Inclusive Society.
We heard about mindfulness approaches to building beloved community from the Boundless Love Project. You can access many resources including their tenets of building beloved community.
We heard Anu Gupta’s approach to mindfully “breaking bias,” a habit that we learn and can unlearn. You can watch Anu’s TEDtalk, What We Can Save by Breaking Unconscious Bias.
We heard part of poet and author Mark Nepo’s inspirational essay, More Together Than Alone.
