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Practicing with Racial Awareness – Online Day of Mindfulness
This Day of Mindfulness will be held in two separate groups in order to provide a safe and supportive container for diving deeply into the theme:
- Group One – For BIPOC friends: The Spirit of the Mosaic
- Group Two – For White-Identifying friends: Lifting the Curtain
(See below for suggestions if you are not sure which group to register for.)
GROUP ONE: The Spirit of the Mosaic
An online Day of Mindfulness for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
Three residents of Morning Sun, Aurora Leon (Latina/Indigenous), Sara Henry (Asian American, AAPI+), and Joaquin Carral (Latino/Indigenous) will hold the container alongside you.
We want to invite you to jump in with us and dive into the abundance and spirit of the Mosaic that we are. We will explore how dwelling in our differences helps our resilience grow stronger, how our connections help us embrace life more openly, how our spiritual life helps us hold our world as a whole. We want to create a safe space, a cultural sanctuary, which is very rare in Buddhist spaces. In order to help our nervous system attune, settle and relax.
Who is welcome:
Black, Indigenous, People of Color. (As a sanctuary space we ask that white people do not register for this group) We would like to share this article on “Should Light-Skinned People of Color Voluntarily Exclude Ourselves from People of Color Spaces?” to help navigate the question of whether one would attend a BIPOC sanctuary space. The binary approach to BIPOC/White spaces is entirely imperfect, and is in fact representative of the disconnection of spirit that we have faced here for centuries in turtle island/the US. There is internalized oppression and deep intersectionalities within it all. This is simply a meeting point in time and space for refuge, practice, healing, and welcoming our colorful ancestral hearts. We hold in awareness and compassion that we are not fully representative of the rainbow of ethnicities, skin colors, and ancestral lineages. Sara, Joaquin, and Aurora are mixed-race people of color, are not intending to speak to the entire spectrum of experiences found in the BIPOC/BAME world, and are simply offering a space of practice for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who would like to practice in a space specifically separated from the deeper harms of whiteness (cultural whiteness). We acknowledge our limitations, our awareness for the omnipresent needs for a wide variety of BIPOC cultural sanctuaries, and know that this is our inner and outer work to do. Please feel welcome to reach out if you have any questions if you should join this group or the white sanctuary group. If you feel curious why the separate groups, you may like to read this article: https://arrow-journal.org/why-people-of-color-need-spaces-without-white-people/
The details of the schedule will be shared with you via email after registration. There will be foundational meditation practices, in addition to resiliency practices and ritual. We will observe the group flow and adapt the schedule as needed.
We are so appreciative to trust and allow this co-created space to be.
With love, Aurora, Sara, and Joaquin
GROUP TWO: Lifting the Curtain
An online Day of Mindfulness for White-Identifying Practitioners.
With practices supported by Morning Sun residents Gary (Honey Bear) Brain, Fern Dorresteyn, Mary Beth Berberick, David Viafora, and Austin Mabry.
How can we explore and compassionately embrace racial trauma in our society and within ourselves? This includes the many gifts we’ve received from our ancestry, and also includes the seeds of ignorance, trauma, privilege, oppression and white-supremacy that have lived inside us and our society for centuries.
We aspire to take refuge in the stable and nurturing foundations of our mindfulness practice throughout the day as our community’s insights help us to break through old patterns. We will practice guided sitting and walking meditation, deep relaxation, touching the earth, listening to a panel of teachings, pausing with the bell, and take the time to look deeply into different topics of race.
We will come together to create a safe space for one another. We will have the opportunity to listen, hold, and express our questions of confusion, despair, hope, experiences, and aspirations; thus as white practitioners, healing ourselves, so as to meaningfully contribute to the healing of our society; doing our part to help create an authentic inclusive Sangha, and learning to become safer and more knowledgeable allies to our BIPOC siblings.
