Mindfulness In Society

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“Coming into Alignment: Visioning a Humane Post Pandemic World”
Vaishali Mamgain

Oct. 4, 2021; 5-6:30 p.m.

As we emerge from the pandemic, we are acknowledging that reality as we knew it is different. In a sense, everything is unwritten and presents an opportunity for a fresh perspective. But tapping into that and not sliding into what we consider “normal” requires us to pause and reflect on what that “normal” was, whether it was humane and just, and what changes we might affect to build a better future. In this session, Mamgain will encourage you to engage your mindfulness practice for its intended liberatory purpose: to experience the truth of interconnectedness with its attendant responsibility to create a just, flourishing, world for all beings. Through various modalities—movement, art, storytelling—Mamgain will invite you to tap into the natural joy that arises when we acknowledge our interconnectedness and express care for all with whom we share the planet.

  “The Role of Mindfulness in Transforming Communities”
Sara Flitner and Scott Rogers

Oct. 11, 2021; 5-6:30 p.m.

Since 2020, Sara Flitner, founder of the Becoming Jackson Whole initiative, and Miami Law professor Scott Rogers have collaborated on mindfulness trainings for members of Jackson Hole to strengthen community health by increasing focus, compassion, and critical thinking. They will share with you the work of the initiative and their collaboration in reaching in major community sectors: nonprofit, civic, education, healthcare, business, law enforcement, arts, and emergency response.

“Mindfulness: Meeting the Existential Challenges of the 21^st Century”
Jamie Bristow

Oct. 18, 2021; 5-6:30 p.m.

Mindfulness helps us reclaim and reorient attention towards what matters, reflect more wisely, and act from a place of collective purpose. In this session, we will explore a three-fold model for understanding how mindfulness supports human agency – our ability to act intentionally – as proposed in Bristow’s recent paper “Mindfulness: Developing Agency in Urgent Times.” We will also unpack the initial findings from a new program of research and policy development that addresses the potential of mindfulness and compassion training to increase responsiveness and resilience in the face of the climate crisis.

“Befriending Breath: The Subtle Neuroscience of Breath Awareness”
Norman Farb

Oct. 25, 2021; 5-6:30 p.m.

Breath monitoring is a foundational practice in many contemplative traditions and secular adaptations such as modern mindfulness training, yoga, and progressive muscle relaxation. Why is monitoring the breath, an omnipresent body signal, so challenging and yet potentially transformative? Emerging neuroscientific research reveals that breath monitoring requires walking a “middle path” between inhibiting conventional patterns of thought and working to preserve the subtler signals of the breath in each moment. Behavioral studies suggest breath awareness may not be the critical ingredient for mental health; instead, it seems that subjective confidence and comfort with engaging in breath awareness has more relevance for well-being than objective measures of perceptual acuity. By analogy, our ability to navigate stressful life events may be more about our confidence in exploring and understanding our feelings of stress than our ability to objectively report on how stress may be impacting us in any moment.

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“Social Mindfulness as Organisational Transformation”
Mark Leonard, Mindfulness-Based Organisational Education

Oct. 5, 2020; 5-6:45 p.m.

The pandemic has laid bare divisions in society and the risk of conflict grows. We know we need to do things differently, but we don’t know what to do. If mindfulness can help us understand our humanness, it can help us work together to build a better world.

** Special: Guided Mindful Meditation with Sharon Salzberg

“Reimaging Our Lives Through Compassion”
Mirabai Bush, founder and Senior Fellow of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

Oct. 12, 2020; 5-6:45 p.m.

Compassion is critical at a time when COVID-19 and other world events call for reimagining our lives. Isolation and quarantine show how important others are to a healthy life, and compassion is what moves us to create a life and a society with respect and care for all. This session will include a compassion and mindfulness exercise and discussion.

“Mindfulness and Police Reform”
Richard Goerling, certified mindfulness trainer, retired police officer, and veteran

Oct. 19, 2020; 5-6:30 p.m.

Mindfulness skills are foundational for the health, humanity, and performance of police officers and police leaders. Working with police and community leaders to integrate awareness and compassion will open up new possibilities for how to transform our criminal justice system.

“Mindful Intersections: Liberation Over Time”
Stephanie Briggs, former community college professor and the owner of Be.Still.Move., a program of mindful/contemplative embodied movement and arts-based learning

Oct. 26, 2020; 5-6:30 p.m.

Through a combination of talk, group work, and discussion, this workshop will explore the importance of developing a mindful presence, investigating thought, speech, and listening paving the way for expanding personal truth, and how these processes offer steps towards transformative healing. 

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Friday, Sept. 13, 2019; 1-7 p.m.
Saturday, Sept. 14, 2019; 8 a.m.-4 p.m.

“A Mindful Nation in the Making”
Congressman Tim Ryan

Before being elected to Congress in 2002, Tim served in the Ohio State Senate and began his career in politics as a congressional aide in 1995. Tim has a law degree from the University of New Hampshire School of Law and a bachelor’s degree from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He is the author of Healing America: How a Simple Practice Can Help Us Recapture the American Spirit and The Real Food Revolution: Healthy Eating, Green Groceries, and the Return of the American Family Farm.

“How Mindfulness Helps Us Work With Our Craving Minds”
Judson Brewer, MD, PhD, director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center 

Judson is an internationally known thought leader in the field of habit change and the “science of self-mastery” with 20+ years of experience in the mindfulness field. He has developed novel mindfulness programs for behavior change, including both in-person and app-based treatments for smoking, emotional eating, and anxiety. His work has been featured on 60 Minutes, at TED.com (4th most viewed talk of 2016), and in documentaries, books, and news outlets across the world. He is the author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love, Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits.

“The Inner Work of Racial Justice”
Rhonda V. Magee, M.A. Sociology, J.D., professor of law at the University of San Francisco

Rhonda is an internationally-recognized thought and practice leader focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law and social justice. A student of a wide variety of Buddhist and other wisdom teachers, including Norman Fischer and Jon Kabat Zinn, she trained as a mindfulness teacher through the Oasis Teacher Training Institute of the University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. She teaches mindfulness-based interventions, as well as awareness and compassion practices from a range of traditions. A former President of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, Professor Magee is a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute. She recently completed a 2-year term on its steering council.

Liz Kineke, producer and writer of CBS series Religion & Culture

Since joining CBS in 2005, Kineke has created dozens of half-hour documentaries covering a range of religious and public-life issues, as well as matters of cultural heritage and activism. Her most recent project airing through CBS, “Teaching Kindness: Religion & Identity in Young America,” explores the effects of religion-based bullying on Sikh, Muslim, and Jewish students.

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