This is why we practice. As climate change, a global pandemic, a racial justice reckoning, and suffering of all kinds wrack our world, we remind each other: This is why we practice. In our second annual focus on women leaders of mindfulness, we invited these twelve women—teachers, researchers, writers, and activists nominated by their peers—to share with us what they’ve learned from their years of deep practice. In these pages they reveal the insights and experiences that help them navigate troubled times, guide others, and make transformational change in their own lives, the lives of others, and even the organizations and structures we live and work within. We hope the wisdom they share inspires you—not only to sit and practice, but also to rise and act.
1) Cultivate Equanimity, Not Impassivity
Diana Winston
Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA
One of the first, basic mindfulness practices to resonate with Diana Winston still guides her today. She was 21 years old, on a 10-day meditation retreat, learning various principles. “And one of them was there’s praise and there’s blame, and you can’t escape the two of them. And I heard this and something lit up inside me. And I knew that I was really interested in: How do you escape? I’m always seeking praise and running away from blame. And they said, well, there is an answer, and that is to develop a mind of equanimity. And here’s how you do it, you meditate.”
It’s equanimity Winston, a renowned writer and meditation teacher, reaches for when life gets stormy, it’s equanimity she’s striving to help her young daughter learn, and it’s equanimity she believes can help steady us all in troubled and troubling times.
“Just coming back to my practice, going back to my breath and cultivating that equanimity. I try to remind myself that things are as they are, not to bring impassivity, but to help me grapple with and hold space for the fact that there is tremendous suffering going on and lots of forces of greed and violence and delusion that are causing more and more of it.”
“I think that bringing mindfulness out into the world is moving our planet in the direction we want to go.”
Holding that space, Winston says, can change the world. “I think that bringing mindfulness out into the world is moving our planet in the direction we want to go. It transforms individuals, which transforms our communities and transforms institutions. It’s what we can do to help transform the world in the spirit of love, compassion, and justice.”
2) Remember Who You Are
Jenée Johnson
Mindfulness, Public Health, and Racial Healing Innovator
Jenée Johnson’s mindfulness practice has been a place for her to root and remember who she is. “I am not who you say I am,” says the Program Innovation Leader at the San Francisco Department of Public Health Mindfulness, Trauma and Racial Healing. Johnson says her mindfulness practice—begun in childhood as Christian prayer—helps her remember who she is amidst the chaos of modern times, including the “psychic warfare” of racism.
Much of Johnson’s work focuses on race. “Not by choice, I speak about racism,” Johnson says, but she knows the work is vital because of the nature of racism, and how it operates. “You begin to question your worth. And that’s essentially what racism does. It’s a dehumanization process.”
“Once you have access to the fullness of your worth and your humanity, then you can do just about anything you want.”
So for Johnson, connecting with her mindfulness practice allows her spaciousness, and an opportunity to rest. “The body needs to rest, which is also part of the reclamation of mindfulness for a people that were brought here to work and where rest is not often a part of what we get to do with ease. And there is no healing without rest. And so I am these days so thankful for the practice.”
A practice, Johnson notes, that has roots in Africa, though it does not belong to any one group of people—it’s part of the human experience, “thereby increasing access and relevance to people of African ancestry and others. Once you have access to the fullness of your worth and your humanity, then you can do just about anything you want. You can have anything.”
For Johnson, mindfulness isn’t just rest—it’s also hard work. “Mindfulness is that roadway to emotional intelligences, to this ability to navigate the triggers and potent emotions, to have empathy and compassion, to know my value, to be resilient, to have a way of explaining things that don’t diminish me.”
Johnson emphasizes the work to her colleagues in public health when she’s teaching. “This is not about making excuses. This is stepping fully into what is possible.” That includes, Johnson says, a reckoning with one’s circumstances, no matter how painful and traumatic they may be—and it’s not about turning away from that pain and trauma, but to say yes, that happened, this is what I’m facing. “And that’s more and more of what I speak about in my work, this ability to not make an altar at Black pain, but to say yes that happened, and I’m moving on.”
3) Support Grassroots Mindfulness Work
Tita Angangco
Cofounder, The Centre for Mindfulness Studies
Tita Angangco cofounded, along with Patricia Rockman, the Centre for Mindfulness Studies. Angangco knew mindfulness meditation could help those who practice be gentler, more open, less reactive, and more resilient—and that could be a boon for people who are involved with government systems like corrections, health, housing, and more.
“I really am very interested in system change because that has the greatest impact for a lot of people,” Angangco says. She’s retired from the Centre she cofounded, serving now on its board. Now she’s involved in a project in the Philippines, providing mindfulness training through schools and universities. “The global mental health field is making innovations in areas that would be anathema or would not be acceptable within the western setting where we’re up against established order and established ways of thinking,” Angangco says.
“What’s really important is to change the very fundamentals of our values, and our beliefs about each other.”
The three-year pilot project in the Philippines is simple in its concept. “Right now we have a program that’s training frontline workers to do both preventive and treatment work with marginalized youth. And we’re hoping to get another grant for working with the youth themselves, to train those that are interested, to be peer-support workers.”
Angangco knows that though the pace of change will be slow, it will com