Welcome to a new series for mindfulness teachers, exploring ways to better serve the communities who have long been excluded from practice spaces. This first article addresses the importance of acknowledging and honoring Indigenous land.
As mindfulness teachers, we are collectively coming to realize that we hold a responsibility to engage with the realities and challenges of oppression. Systemic issues, including racism, oppression, and marginalization, have severely impacted the lives of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) in Western culture. Many teachers feel a sense of helplessness when thinking about addressing these issues. The Centre for Mindfulness Studies (CMS), where we all work, is beginning to turn toward what has previously been unspoken. In particular, we’ve begun to offer territorial (or land) acknowledgments, to speak to the historical roots of mindfulness and the white dominance of secular mindfulness, and to recognize diversity in a specific way during our programs and training. Many teachers express the difficulty they have in talking about these concerns, or being called out for not addressing them. They have also highlighted their lack of experience in this area.
In this series of articles, we hope to…
