Comments from Gail: My colleague Alison Cebulla shared the work of David Treleaven and his work with trauma-sensitive mindfulness, including his new book Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness. I love their mission: Making Mindfulness Safe and Effective for People Who've Experienced Trauma. I include an excerpt from a recent email from him and the group below:
Our commitment inside of Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness (TSM) is to provide you with resources that equip you—and by extension anyone you’re working with—to practice mindfulness in a trauma-sensitive way.
One aspect of this is forwarding a systemic understanding of trauma. This involves making connections between individual experiences of trauma and systems of oppression. The death of George Floyd, for example, cannot be understood apart from a history of slavery and white supremacy. If we focus exclusively on individual components of trauma, we risk missing the bigger picture.
As mindfulness practitioners, I believe we’re most powerful when we think about trauma systemically. The more we can understand someone’s lived experience—including our own social context—the more we can build safety and trust, and support those we’re working with.
With that said, I’d like to draw your attention to a podcast episode we just released and to offer a few additional resources I hope are useful.
The podcast features Sydney Spears—a trauma-sensitive mindfulness and yoga teacher, clinical social worker, and professor who teaches on cultural diversity, clinical social work, and trauma-sensitive care. Sydney is connected to the Midwest Alliance in Mindfulness, which focuses on providing mindfulness-based practices and community outreach efforts for organizations and at-risk populations.
In the podcast, you’ll also hear about:
- The role mindfulness and compassion can play in healing trauma;
- The relationship between trauma and social oppression;
- How to skillfully navigate multiracial spaces as a leader in contemplative settings.
Although I recorded this podcast before the wide scale protests, the conversation centers racial dynamics within the mindfulness movement—something that feels especially important right now.
You can access the podcast here.
In addition, David shared a few resources related to trauma, oppression, and racial justice organizing.
- Healing Racial Trauma Through Body-Centered Psychology with Resmaa Menakem: An interview conducted by the National Wellness Institute with Resmaa Menakem, a trauma specialist and racial justice educator, on his book My Grandmother's Hands.
- Tamika Mallory’s Speech: A powerful call for solidarity and action from Tamika Mallory, a Black Lives Matter organizer and one of the leading organizers of the 2017 Women's March.
- The Cross Cultural Solidarity History Project: Resources about Black and Brown coalitions, Black internationalism, and White allies in U.S. history.
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