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Integrating Mindfulness into Anti-Oppression Pedagogy

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Elizabeth Berila explores an anti-oppressive pedagogy for university and college classrooms.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 27, 2024

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This video video discusses the motivations and themes behind a book focused on integrating mindfulness and embodiment practices into social justice education and pedagogy. The author reflects on their long experience teaching gender, women's studies, and social justice classes, noting a gap between understanding social justice concepts intellectually and applying them in real life. The author's journey involved discovering the importance of engaging the whole being—intellect, body, and emotions—in social justice work.

The book emphasizes the significance of mindfulness, defined as repeated, intentional practices that enhance self-awareness and presence, as vital tools for fostering deeper connections and transformative learning in social justice contexts. The author addresses the need for authenticity in conversations about equity and the complexities of power dynamics in mixed-identity spaces. The integration of embodiment practices is presented as essential for creating a more inclusive and effective learning environment.

The second edition of the book expands on these ideas, drawing from public intellectual work and contemporary practices in mindfulness and social justice. It provides practical guidance for educators and program developers, aiming to promote systemic change through collective action and individual transformation. The author hopes readers will be inspired to apply these insights across various contexts, contributing to the ongoing evolution of social justice work.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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The first edition of this book was published many years

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ago, and what motivated me was an inquiry into

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how can teachers support students, and ourselves

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and colleagues to engage the social justice process

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with our whole being and not just our intellect.

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And part of the motivation of that was

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that I had been teaching gender and women's studies

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and social justice classes for many years,

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maybe 10 years at the time.

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And I had also been engaged in social

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justice work for a long time.

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And I kept seeing this dissonance between people being able

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to get social justice ideas and politics intellectually,

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but then having challenges, holding it in actual life,

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practicing it in actual life.

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And that may look like, you know, talking about empowerment,

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but then being in, abusive or unsupportive

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or toxic relationships.

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It might be like, wanting to talk about self care

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and appreciating oneself, but having an eating disorder

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or sort of dissonances.

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Um, and of course some of

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that was student developmental issues, in age

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and where they are in social justice awareness and so on.

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But some of that was also a questioning on my part

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of whether the,

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typical emphasis on the intellect in higher education,

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was enough.

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And of course, some disciplines always engaged the body,

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but not every discipline.

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And so in my own journey, I had found

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integrated embodiment through mindfulness and then yoga

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and now somatics, which I talk about in the book.

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And so that's certainly not the only path to integration,

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but that was the path that led me to the book.

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Um, how can I integrate embodiment practices into my

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pedagogy so that people can, explore

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social justice on all the layers of our being.

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Um, and the book is a journey of how to do that well.

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What are some of the challenges?

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What are some of the critical questions we need

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to engage in our pedagogies?

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And while the book is focused on higher education,

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I have heard from people who have read the book that it's

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because it's so practical and applied.

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Uh, it works very well for lots of educational settings

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and even non-educational settings.

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Um, if you're a program developer

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or you,

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wanna bring mindfulness into organizational practice

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or meetings, the book explores how we can do

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that in a way that supports all of us to learn

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and co-create towards justice.

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I use the term mindfulness, to refer

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to embodied practices.

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And, by practice, I mean an activity

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that we come back to again and again

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and again, that it's more about process,

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not about perfection.

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Um, and that we do it with intentionality.

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So it's a practice that we bring our full awareness to,

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and we do it with an intention to become more self-aware

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of whatever is happening in us to become more aware

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and discerning of relations between us and our community

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and the wider world.

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Um, these practices cultivate presence.

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So not always being future oriented,

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not always being past oriented,

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but what's happening right now, right?

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Um, a self-awareness, ideally with some compassion

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for ourselves, because I find

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that if we fight what's happening with us,

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it just gets stronger.

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But if we bring some compassion to,

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how did this get here?

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Why is this happening? What's the impact?

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Then we can work with it a little more

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and help it transform.

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Um, it's also a,

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mindfulness practices can come from a

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lot of different traditions.

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Um, some of them are secular, some

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of them have spiritual roots.

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And in my book I talk about, that distinction

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between secular and spiritual

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and what that means for educational

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or organizational settings.

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But I also talk about the questions

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and the responsibilities

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of if those practices do come from particular traditions,

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how do we need to be accountable to those traditions so

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that we don't culturally appropriate?

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And that means reflecting on our own identities in relation

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to whatever traditions those practices might be coming from.

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Um, in my second edition of the book,

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I brought in mindfulness practices

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to talk more fully about embodiment,

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that can be mindfulness.

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But in this book, the second edition,

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I also talk about somatics, which is a tradition

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of whole body transformation.

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Um, and I talk a little bit more about what that is.

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Um, so why social justice?

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Um, when I wrote the first book many years ago,

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at least in my own research in higher education,

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my own practices and pedagogy for years,

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and my own involvement in various mindfulness and yoga

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and social justice spaces, I found that,

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in mindfulness spaces, at least the ones I had been able

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to have access to, there was a lot of talk of mindfulness,

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but not an awareness very often of social justice issues.

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And so when they were brought up in mindfulness spaces

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that often raised some friction, alternatively,

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when I was in social justice spaces,

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mindfulness felt was often received as,

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a luxury.

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Like we have urgent issues we need

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to address right now, which is very true.

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Um, but mindfulness was often perceived as a derailing of

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that rather than an avenue into more fully engaging it.

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And then in pedagogy, some liberatory pedagogies

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that I was exposed to at the time did address the body

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and how different issues land on different,

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Identities and lived experiences differently.

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But they didn't all effectively show me how to engage

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the full being of our students

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and ourselves in the social justice learning process.

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And so the first book

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and then the second book are an attempt

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to weave all those things together so

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that they're not segmented,

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but like what can they bring to each other?

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Uh, and then the second edition reflects the

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how has my thinking changed since the first book?

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There's been an explosion of really powerful work

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on integrating embodiment into social justice realms,

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both in pedagogies and ademe,

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but also in lived on the ground activism.

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And so the second book really, it continues

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to be embedded in theory,

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but it really is,

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drawing a lot more on public intellectual spaces

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where there's some really powerful, transformative,

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inspiring and cutting edge work.

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Well, I think they're challenging everywhere,

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and my venue is the classroom.

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So that's what I talk about.

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Um, well, first I think it's important to define what I mean

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by authentic conversations.

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Uh, there's a lot of, especially with the hotness

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of DEI right now as the most latest manifestation of,

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equity work.

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Um, there can be a tendency

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to talk about things in surface ways,

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but not really get to the fundamental blocks

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of why we don't have inclusivity.

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What do we need to create equity?

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And when we get real about those conversations,

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particularly in mixed identity spaces,

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it can be really challenging,

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because there's power in the room.

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And many people, particularly people who are privileged

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by normative societies,

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are taught not to see those things.

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The ways that they are privileged, the ways

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that they have power,

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and how that shows up in everyday spaces.

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And because they're taught not to see it, they often

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get, they often bristle when it's pointed out to them.

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Um, and alternatively, people

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who live marginalized identities are regularly harmed,

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both in terms of large scale systemic issues,

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and the ways of showing up in everyday spaces

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such as the classroom.

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And, higher education, K through 12 education,

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like all the other social institutions are not all,

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they're often not safe for people of marginalized groups.

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And so this is all happening at the same time in most

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classrooms or in most mixed identity spaces.

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So the reason, one

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of the reasons authentic conversations can get hard is

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because we need to be able

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to navigate all those complex power dynamics

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and how people are taught not to see them

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or are viscerally aware

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of them depending on their identities,

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and learn how to work through them in ways that

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don't cause more harm.

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Help people stay in connection

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and relationship with one another rather than kind

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of continue to polarize

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and help people learn how to be accountable in ways that

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allow us to transform and co-create different alternatives.

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Uh, and so those, those are the conditions

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that make it challenging.

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And I think when we only talk about social justice on the

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intellectual level, the issues, the thought patterns, the,

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we talk about them like in the abstract,

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but less so about how they're showing up

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for us in any particular moment,

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then we are limited into

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how authentically we could actually have those

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conversations and transform.

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I went to mindfulness and embodiment always rooted in

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social justice framework.

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So that's really important. It's not just any mindfulness

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or embodiment, it's mindfulness

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and embodiment rooted in a social justice

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and politicized awareness.

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Um, so I'm just gonna start with an individual example.

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Um, if I care about systemic change,

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then I'm gonna be working towards systemic

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change and equity work.

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But I

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as an individual am always gonna have my embodied

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experiences, and those embodied experiences are gonna arise.

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So for an example, if somebody says to me, Hey,

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what you just said caused harm,

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chances are given my complex identities,

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which are both privileged

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and marginalized, I'm gonna have some kind of

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gut reactions, automatic reactions

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to somebody telling me that I did harm.

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And some of those reactions might be defensiveness,

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they might be denial, they might be shame or guilt.

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And if I don't work with those embodied reactions,

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then they may derail what I care about.

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So if I care about social justice,

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if I care about showing up in ways

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that don't cause more harm to people around me,

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then if I enact my defensiveness and I enact my shame

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or guilt, I'm gonna be responding, reacting in ways

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that don't align with what I care about, right?

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So mindfulness gives us an opportunity to pause

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and reflect, like, look, I'm noticing this.

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I'm feeling defensive.

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My heart is racing and I'm starting to sweat. I feel shame.

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I want to say or do X.

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And then the question is, if I say

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and do X, does that align with what I care about?

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And if it doesn't, that pause allows me to course correct.

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It allows me to engage in a different way.

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Um, I've seen this happen with students a lot.

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So for example, in a recent class,

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students were talking about the negative,

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self-talk they have as multiracial, people

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with multiracial identities

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where they have often been pressured to choose one

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or the other, or they've always felt like they're

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Outside.

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Uh, they're outsiders in particular communities

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because they live multiracial identities.

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Um, not because they live multiracial identities, but

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because we live in a culture in the United States,

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for example, that privileges monoracial identities, right?

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And so pressures people to choose

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in expressing those messages,

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which are internalized oppression, right?

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Messages from the dominant culture

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that tell you you're not right.

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Somehow that other you in expressing

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that other students in the room were like,

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Hey, I experienced that too.

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Oh my gosh. Um, and here's how it shows up.

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And so because we took the time to express

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and explore the internalized oppression

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and how that shows up for one student,

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other students were able to chime in

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and then they were able to notice, Hey, that's a pattern.

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It's not about me individually. It's not a flaw in me.

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It's a systemic pattern that other people

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who have similar identities also experience.

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So then how can we collectively support each other to

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unlearn and heal from those harmful messages?

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And how can we bring those experiences

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and those collective connections with one another

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to create systemic changes?

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So I see, systemic change as it has

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to happen at the systemic level.

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And systems are bigger than individuals,

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but individuals participate in those systems.

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And so we need to create individual change, group change,

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systemic change, and they're all interrelated.

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The book looks at how pedagogies, when informed

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by both social justice

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and embodied practices can weave together those different

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layers, in ways

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that can empower people from different lived experiences

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and different levels of power and privilege

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and marginalization to engage in social justice work.

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This book is a very practical book,

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so the title's a little clunky.

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It, it reads like it's a heavily theoretical book,

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and it is, it's rooted in theory,

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but it's very practical and applied.

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So it's got a lot of tips about, here's what

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to think about if you're starting

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to engage mindfulness into your pedagogies.

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Um, if you've been engaging in mindfulness

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for a long time in your pedagogies,

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here are some ways to deepen it.

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Um, it's got, it's got applied tips, like,

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here are some challenges you might encounter,

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and here are some ways you might meet those challenges.

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Um, it's got chapters on

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how do we help people with different lived experiences

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and different power dynamics move towards transformation.

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What are some of the common steps

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or elements in transformation that show up?

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And how can our embodied social justice

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pedagogies help people move

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Through that?

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So it's, I hope that people can take

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elements wherever they are, whatever discipline they teach,

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whatever organization they're working in,

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whatever program they develop.

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I hope that people can find really applied tips,

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to engage wherever you are in, whether you're,

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new to beginning mindfulness into your work,

15:13.265 --> 15:16.845
or whether you are you, you're very experienced in it.

15:17.285 --> 15:19.485
I hope that people can engage applied tips,

15:19.625 --> 15:23.165
but also, inspiration for

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how can this integration of mindfulness

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and social justice move us all

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to towards more liberatory worlds?

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And what are some of the things we need to consider to do

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that ethically and responsibly.

15:35.505 --> 15:38.805
Um, I also hope people can really get inspired

15:38.905 --> 15:41.405
by the inspirational work that's happening in the world.

15:41.665 --> 15:46.445
Um, the book really works in, thing emergent strategies

15:46.625 --> 15:48.485
and embodied somatics

15:48.705 --> 15:51.565
and, creative work in a lot of different fields

15:52.075 --> 15:54.845
that inspire us to do things in different ways.

15:55.505 --> 15:58.045
Um, and I hope that people find ways

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to bring their own voices to this work.

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It's evolving, it's emergent, it's, co-created,

16:04.425 --> 16:05.965
and I'm just one voice of many.

16:06.385 --> 16:08.725
Um, so I really hope that,

16:10.035 --> 16:13.895
people can apply this to a variety of different contexts so

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that we can work together to create a better world.

00:00 - The first edition of this book was published many years ago, and what motivated me was an inquiry into how can teachers support students, and ourselves and colleagues to engage the social justice process with our whole being and not just our intellect. And part of the motivation of that was

00:22 - that I had been teaching gender and women's studies and social justice classes for many years, maybe 10 years at the time. And I had also been engaged in social justice work for a long time. And I kept seeing this dissonance between people being able to get social justice ideas and politics intellectually, but then having challenges, holding it in actual life, practicing it in actual life. And that may look like, you know, talking about empowerment,

00:51 - but then being in, abusive or unsupportive or toxic relationships. It might be like, wanting to talk about self care and appreciating oneself, but having an eating disorder or sort of dissonances. and of course some of that was student developmental issues, in age and where they are in social justice awareness and so on. But some of that was also a questioning on my part of whether the,

01:20 - typical emphasis on the intellect in higher education, was enough. And of course, some disciplines always engaged the body, but not every discipline. And so in my own journey, I had found integrated embodiment through mindfulness and then yoga and now somatics, which I talk about in the book. And so that's certainly not the only path to integration, but that was the path that led me to the book. how can I integrate embodiment practices into my

01:53 - pedagogy so that people can, explore social justice on all the layers of our being. and the book is a journey of how to do that well. What are some of the challenges? What are some of the critical questions we need to engage in our pedagogies? And while the book is focused on higher education, I have heard from people who have read the book that it's because it's so practical and applied. it works very well for lots of educational settings

02:22 - and even non-educational settings. if you're a program developer or you, wanna bring mindfulness into organizational practice or meetings, the book explores how we can do that in a way that supports all of us to learn and co-create towards justice. I use the term mindfulness, to refer to embodied practices. And, by practice, I mean an activity

02:49 - that we come back to again and again and again, that it's more about process, not about perfection. and that we do it with intentionality. So it's a practice that we bring our full awareness to, and we do it with an intention to become more self-aware of whatever is happening in us to become more aware and discerning of relations between us and our community and the wider world. these practices cultivate presence.

03:19 - So not always being future oriented, not always being past oriented, but what's happening right now, right? a self-awareness, ideally with some compassion for ourselves, because I find that if we fight what's happening with us, it just gets stronger. But if we bring some compassion to, how did this get here? Why is this happening? What's the impact?

03:42 - Then we can work with it a little more and help it transform. it's also a, mindfulness practices can come from a lot of different traditions. some of them are secular, some of them have spiritual roots. And in my book I talk about, that distinction between secular and spiritual and what that means for educational

04:03 - or organizational settings. But I also talk about the questions and the responsibilities of if those practices do come from particular traditions, how do we need to be accountable to those traditions so that we don't culturally appropriate? And that means reflecting on our own identities in relation to whatever traditions those practices might be coming from. in my second edition of the book, I brought in mindfulness practices

04:33 - to talk more fully about embodiment, that can be mindfulness. But in this book, the second edition, I also talk about somatics, which is a tradition of whole body transformation. and I talk a little bit more about what that is. so why social justice? when I wrote the first book many years ago, at least in my own research in higher education, my own practices and pedagogy for years,

04:59 - and my own involvement in various mindfulness and yoga and social justice spaces, I found that, in mindfulness spaces, at least the ones I had been able to have access to, there was a lot of talk of mindfulness, but not an awareness very often of social justice issues. And so when they were brought up in mindfulness spaces that often raised some friction, alternatively, when I was in social justice spaces, mindfulness felt was often received as, a luxury.

05:32 - Like we have urgent issues we need to address right now, which is very true. but mindfulness was often perceived as a derailing of that rather than an avenue into more fully engaging it. And then in pedagogy, some liberatory pedagogies that I was exposed to at the time did address the body and how different issues land on different, Identities and lived experiences differently. But they didn't all effectively show me how to engage the full being of our students

06:07 - and ourselves in the social justice learning process. And so the first book and then the second book are an attempt to weave all those things together so that they're not segmented, but like what can they bring to each other? and then the second edition reflects the how has my thinking changed since the first book? There's been an explosion of really powerful work on integrating embodiment into social justice realms,

06:34 - both in pedagogies and ademe, but also in lived on the ground activism. And so the second book really, it continues to be embedded in theory, but it really is, drawing a lot more on public intellectual spaces where there's some really powerful, transformative, inspiring and cutting edge work. Well, I think they're challenging everywhere, and my venue is the classroom.

06:59 - So that's what I talk about. well, first I think it's important to define what I mean by authentic conversations. there's a lot of, especially with the hotness of DEI right now as the most latest manifestation of, equity work. there can be a tendency to talk about things in surface ways, but not really get to the fundamental blocks of why we don't have inclusivity.

07:26 - What do we need to create equity? And when we get real about those conversations, particularly in mixed identity spaces, it can be really challenging, because there's power in the room. And many people, particularly people who are privileged by normative societies, are taught not to see those things. The ways that they are privileged, the ways that they have power,

07:49 - and how that shows up in everyday spaces. And because they're taught not to see it, they often get, they often bristle when it's pointed out to them. and alternatively, people who live marginalized identities are regularly harmed, both in terms of large scale systemic issues, and the ways of showing up in everyday spaces such as the classroom. And, higher education, K through 12 education, like all the other social institutions are not all,

08:21 - they're often not safe for people of marginalized groups. And so this is all happening at the same time in most classrooms or in most mixed identity spaces. So the reason, one of the reasons authentic conversations can get hard is because we need to be able to navigate all those complex power dynamics and how people are taught not to see them or are viscerally aware of them depending on their identities,

08:47 - and learn how to work through them in ways that don't cause more harm. Help people stay in connection and relationship with one another rather than kind of continue to polarize and help people learn how to be accountable in ways that allow us to transform and co-create different alternatives. and so those, those are the conditions that make it challenging. And I think when we only talk about social justice on the

09:19 - intellectual level, the issues, the thought patterns, the, we talk about them like in the abstract, but less so about how they're showing up for us in any particular moment, then we are limited into how authentically we could actually have those conversations and transform. I went to mindfulness and embodiment always rooted in social justice framework. So that's really important. It's not just any mindfulness

09:44 - or embodiment, it's mindfulness and embodiment rooted in a social justice and politicized awareness. so I'm just gonna start with an individual example. if I care about systemic change, then I'm gonna be working towards systemic change and equity work. But I as an individual am always gonna have my embodied experiences, and those embodied experiences are gonna arise.

10:12 - So for an example, if somebody says to me, Hey, what you just said caused harm, chances are given my complex identities, which are both privileged and marginalized, I'm gonna have some kind of gut reactions, automatic reactions to somebody telling me that I did harm. And some of those reactions might be defensiveness, they might be denial, they might be shame or guilt. And if I don't work with those embodied reactions,

10:42 - then they may derail what I care about. So if I care about social justice, if I care about showing up in ways that don't cause more harm to people around me, then if I enact my defensiveness and I enact my shame or guilt, I'm gonna be responding, reacting in ways that don't align with what I care about, right? So mindfulness gives us an opportunity to pause and reflect, like, look, I'm noticing this. I'm feeling defensive.

11:12 - My heart is racing and I'm starting to sweat. I feel shame. I want to say or do X. And then the question is, if I say and do X, does that align with what I care about? And if it doesn't, that pause allows me to course correct. It allows me to engage in a different way. I've seen this happen with students a lot. So for example, in a recent class, students were talking about the negative, self-talk they have as multiracial, people

11:44 - with multiracial identities where they have often been pressured to choose one or the other, or they've always felt like they're Outside. they're outsiders in particular communities because they live multiracial identities. not because they live multiracial identities, but because we live in a culture in the United States, for example, that privileges monoracial identities, right? And so pressures people to choose

12:09 - in expressing those messages, which are internalized oppression, right? Messages from the dominant culture that tell you you're not right. Somehow that other you in expressing that other students in the room were like, Hey, I experienced that too. my gosh. and here's how it shows up. And so because we took the time to express and explore the internalized oppression

12:34 - and how that shows up for one student, other students were able to chime in and then they were able to notice, Hey, that's a pattern. It's not about me individually. It's not a flaw in me. It's a systemic pattern that other people who have similar identities also experience. So then how can we collectively support each other to unlearn and heal from those harmful messages? And how can we bring those experiences and those collective connections with one another

13:05 - to create systemic changes? So I see, systemic change as it has to happen at the systemic level. And systems are bigger than individuals, but individuals participate in those systems. And so we need to create individual change, group change, systemic change, and they're all interrelated. The book looks at how pedagogies, when informed by both social justice and embodied practices can weave together those different

13:36 - layers, in ways that can empower people from different lived experiences and different levels of power and privilege and marginalization to engage in social justice work. This book is a very practical book, so the title's a little clunky. It, it reads like it's a heavily theoretical book, and it is, it's rooted in theory, but it's very practical and applied. So it's got a lot of tips about, here's what

14:06 - to think about if you're starting to engage mindfulness into your pedagogies. if you've been engaging in mindfulness for a long time in your pedagogies, here are some ways to deepen it. it's got, it's got applied tips, like, here are some challenges you might encounter, and here are some ways you might meet those challenges. it's got chapters on how do we help people with different lived experiences

14:35 - and different power dynamics move towards transformation. What are some of the common steps or elements in transformation that show up? And how can our embodied social justice pedagogies help people move Through that? So it's, I hope that people can take elements wherever they are, whatever discipline they teach, whatever organization they're working in, whatever program they develop.

15:02 - I hope that people can find really applied tips, to engage wherever you are in, whether you're, new to beginning mindfulness into your work, or whether you are you, you're very experienced in it. I hope that people can engage applied tips, but also, inspiration for how can this integration of mindfulness and social justice move us all to towards more liberatory worlds? And what are some of the things we need to consider to do

15:33 - that ethically and responsibly. I also hope people can really get inspired by the inspirational work that's happening in the world. the book really works in, thing emergent strategies and embodied somatics and, creative work in a lot of different fields that inspire us to do things in different ways. and I hope that people find ways to bring their own voices to this work. It's evolving, it's emergent, it's, co-created,

16:04 - and I'm just one voice of many. so I really hope that, people can apply this to a variety of different contexts so that we can work together to create a better world.

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