S2 Episode 013 Transcript
Click here to read the full episode transcript.
0:00
Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who have been the original change makers and stewards of Australia for over 60,000 years.
Their profound wisdom, resilience and deep connection to country have fostered countless stories of survival, adaptation and transformation.
0:18
The knowledge held by these communities is an invaluable resource for understanding how to create positive change and build a more just and sustainable world.
Welcome back to Change Maker Q&A, everyone.
Today we are going to be talking about a topic that I am super passionate about and one that I think is often overlooked in the mainstream social change space, and that is the topic of mindfulness.
0:45
Specifically, I want to look at why mindfulness is not only really important for us as individuals working in the social change space, but particularly why mindfulness is important within our broader social movements and how we can actually work to create mindful movements.
1:02
Now if you have any questions about any topic related to social change, you can always head to our website humanitarianchangemakers.net/podcast.
You’ll find a little type form where you can ask your question either anonymously or not anonymously.
1:21
But if you leave your details there and we answer your question on the pod, we will send you some change maker code goodies as a thank you.
And today’s podcast episode is part of our broader, I guess, series that we are doing as part of our coaching branch of the humanitarian change makers network called New Humanity.
1:45
New Humanity is kind of at the intersection of the work that we do in the social change space, self development and life coaching and also spirituality and the importance of integrating a type of spirituality into social change that I guess appeals to people of all faiths and no faith.
2:05
So that’s what we do at New Humanity and we have our 2024 Completely Free Coaching program open at the moment.
So I encourage you to join.
It is essentially looking at self development through the Inner Development Goals framework, which is a framework of 23 Inner development goals that fall into 5 distinct categories.
2:30
And these goals were created in response to the 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals as kind of like the essential skills and knowledge that leaders of change need to work on if we are to lead ourselves, our wider movements, our organisations, our communities towards those 17 Sustainable Development goals.
2:56
So we’re going to be looking at mindfulness in this episode because mindfulness is really kind of key tool or practice that is important not only for our self development but for our wider social movements.
3:11
And it relates to some of those inner development goals that we are looking at, things like presence and self-awareness in particular.
So traditionally, mindfulness has kind of focused on the individual.
3:27
It’s been something that is very much focused about you and your awareness of your body, your surroundings, your breath, whatever it might be.
But when we place this idea of mindfulness into a broader context of social justice or social change, mindfulness becomes a really powerful tool for change at both the individual and that collective level.
3:51
At the individual level, mindfulness really allows us to increase our self-awareness, our understanding of our personal privileges, our own personal situation and any biases that we might have.
It can also help us at the collective level to kind of Foster and create a sense of solidarity and community.
4:16
You know, when we think about this idea of like what it means to feel connected to our wider community, it’s a very intangible thing.
And in order to kind of, I guess, foster that, we need to tap into those kind of less tangible tools or tools that focus less on doing and more on being.
4:40
And that’s where mindfulness really comes into play.
So it can help us to kind of create those senses of solidarity or community with people in our community, in our network, in our circle.
And it can also kind of help us to just promote a more open, I guess, communication and more effective dialogue around really challenging issues when we integrate individual and collective change.
5:09
Mindfulness kind of as a practice has the potential to contribute to really lasting social transformation.
And I would even argue that it is essential because so many of the problems that arise in the world that we live in come from, I guess, this lack of mindfulness or this lack of presence.
5:31
We’re stuck in these kind of like perpetual cycles of doing and doing and being and being and trying to keep up with everything that’s happening around us.
And in order to, I guess, create an alternative, we need to, I guess, do and be in an alternative way.
5:51
So in order to create lasting change, mindfulness also means that we need to do more than just ease our stress and our reactivity to what’s happening.
We need to be able to take a critical look at the ways in which we have been socialised in our society or our culture and we need to kind of do that work to unlearn any of the harmful patterns of thinking or behaviour that we’ve kind of developed over the years.
6:23
This is not an easy task.
So much of the work that I think is essential to address some of the problems that we are experiencing in our society, things like anti racism work requires a degree of mindfulness.
6:39
It requires the ability for you to be aware of your thoughts, to kind of think critically, to be able to separate you as an individual being from those initial feelings or thoughts or emotions that might come up in a lot of this work that you might find yourself doing as a change maker.
6:58
And it’s not an easy task, but it is an essential task and mindfulness practices can help us in this arena.
So when we pay attention to our thoughts and emotions, we can obviously see how we have been conditioned by our broader context, by our environment, larger society.
7:17
And we can start to, I guess, observe those, first of all, observe without judgement.
And then start to make choices that kind of move us away from those more harmful patterns of thought and behaviour towards thoughts and patterns that kind of enable or encourage liberation for ourselves and others in order to create an inclusive and just society.
7:41
I think that it’s really essential that we consider the ways in which our individual identities also kind of intersect with larger systems of power, and this recognition that our kind of individual or individualized reflection of who we are and ourselves is also shaped by these external systems of power.
8:06
And we can kind of use mindfulness to observe, I guess, our interpersonal experiences and begin to understand how our, I guess, our own perspective of who we are has not only been shaped by our race, our gender, our class and other factors, but then also how others might view those things.
8:33
So when we, I guess, really take the time to actually reflect on our own lives, when we really take time to, I guess, do the work.
As cliche as doing the work sounds.
I think that it is the first step that we need to kind of take in order to, I guess break free from a lot of these systems of power and oppression that have been shaped by our socialization into a Society of particular dominant socio political dynamics and powers.
9:10
And this understanding can also lead us, I think, to reflect on the relationships that we have with others.
And, you know, we may begin to notice that our sense of other people is shaped by these factors as much as it shapes our views of ourselves.
9:29
And when we reflect on these things and we use mindfulness as a tool to do that, I think it really allows us to kind of tap into that sense of interconnectedness that we have with one another, with humanity as a whole, with other beings within the universe, with the divine or God or whatever that might be your higher self, whatever it is that you kind of perceive.
9:59
It’s mindfulness that allows you to kind of, I think, tap into that sense of connectedness and realise it.
And you know, we all have various versions of an us or me versus them construct in our lives and how we view the world.
10:15
It’s, you know, it might arise in our interpersonal relationships.
It might arise in the work that we’re doing when we so often see people or groups that think or behave differently to us as our opponents in the context of the work that we’re doing as change makers.
10:33
And it can be really easy to, I guess, lead to this notion of othering when we aren’t able to kind of recognise that some of these distinctions are arbitrary and they’re often based on things that are unconscious.
10:52
So when we can use mindfulness to actually be aware and conscious of the ways in which we might begin to other different people or different groups, we can kind of move away from so much of the energy.
11:08
I think that goes into being focused on fighting the other and instead focus on changing the systems that are creating and perpetuating these distinctions.
It often leads us to a feeling of either inferiority or superiority in our work, and in turn that leads to violence or anger.
11:33
And when we continue to perpetuate and mirror these, US versus them, I guess mentalities or constructs, that’s the very constructs and mentality and mindset that has created so many of the problems that we see today.
And unless we can be really honest with ourselves and recognise the ways in which we also contribute to those, we’re never going to be able to break free from them.
11:57
And if we’re not able to break free from them, we’re not able to truly create the change that we want to see in the world.
So there’s this concept of oneness that I think is so crucial when it comes to mindfulness and also the work that we are doing as change makers.
12:15
Oneness, in particularly mainstream mindfulness communities, is kind of considered to be like the absolute or the ultimate goal.
It’s about tapping into that sense of oneness with others, with humanity, with the universe, with God, whatever it might be.
12:35
But an important aspect of kind of tapping into like this idea of oneness, or realising this idea of oneness is recognising the diverse lived experience and the diverse communities in which we all find ourselves.
12:54
The interesting thing about oneness, and this is I think where a lot of people get it wrong.
Oneness doesn’t mean sameness.
It’s the same as, like when we talk about equality, we’re not talking about, you know, wanting men and women to be treated the same.
13:13
We just want them to be treated equally in the same way.
That oneness isn’t about everybody being the same.
It’s just about recognising that connection, that kind of thread that connects all of us as humans, as a species, as beings in this universe.
13:31
And once we can kind of recognise that oneness isn’t sameness, we can kind of come together and celebrate diversity and celebrate our differences, including differences in perspectives.
And we don’t have to give up our identities or our views and conform to somebody else’s.
13:51
And we also don’t have to have other people conform to our views about the way the world is or the way the world should be because we can appreciate each other for who we are.
And one of the ways that we can do this is through mindfulness.
14:09
So, you know, I kind of talked a lot about how mindfulness helps us to become aware of the interconnectedness of all life.
And it’s kind of like this tool that we can use to embrace the diverse richness of humanity and our differences and the interrelations between them.
14:30
But how do we actually do that?
And before I talk about the ways we actually do that, I want to talk about how we don’t do that.
So there’s this concept that I think was first put forward by a guy called Ron Purser, who he kind of coined this term MC mindfulness.
14:54
It’s essentially the version of mindfulness that we often see as something to be consumed.
So it’s I guess this way that we’re kind of sold mindfulness as a product.
As you know, it’s something that we can consume to help us to manage our stress.
15:13
But what mindfulness really does is it kind of ignores, I think, a lot of the systems and the factors that are actually causing these problems in the 1st place, regulating our emotions, developing self compassion.
15:32
You know, making ourselves less calm, less stressed, less reactive can result in, I think, better work for us as change makers.
But it’s not going to challenge the status quo.
It’s not going to encourage people to really be mindful and question the context of the systems and the society that they actually find themselves living in that is causing a lot of the stress in their lives.
16:02
It’s going to, I think in many ways actually just continue to perpetuate the very conditions that it claims to be alleviating.
And this is where we kind of can take mindfulness and again turn it from something that tends to be very reactive.
16:22
And mindfulness, in this context, like MC, mindfulness is very much a reactive thing.
It’s a way of using mindfulness as a response to all of the symptoms of a dysfunctional society.
What I’m arguing we can and should do is take mindfulness and actually use it as the tool to overcome so many of the causes of dysfunction in our society.
16:50
So proponents of what we might call the Mindfulness tend to purport that it is mindless or maladapted individuals that are to blame for a lot of the dysfunctions that we see in society, not the political and economic frameworks within which we are all forced to exist.
17:12
They often kind of frame it as the need to shift the burden of responsibility to individuals to manage their own well-being.
And by doing this they kind of privatize and pathologize stress and it’s led to a $1.1 billion mindfulness industry.
17:34
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17:52
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All of the remaining profits from our sales are redistributed to our impact partner, the Humanitarian Change Makers Network, providing workshops, events, solutions, focused news and resources to catalyze young Australians to become active across the social change space.
18:17
I think this notion of MC mindfulness really kind of highlights the commodification of really crucial things that we need to, you know, survive and to create the kind of change that we want to create in the world.
18:33
That happens when we live in a capitalist or neoliberal environment.
We’ve kind of taught people that in order to cope with the negative effects of neoliberalism, they can use mindfulness techniques.
And in order to do that, we then kind of try and sell people mindfulness products, meditation apps, books, courses, things that are going to help them achieve that goal.
18:59
It does nothing to actually address the root causes of stress.
It kind of just tells people that you need to accept the system that you find yourself in.
And here’s a way that you can kind of take responsibility to deal with it.
And that’s not the kind of, you know, attitude that we want to have as change makers.
19:20
You know, we don’t want to just turn mindfulness or accept mindfulness as a way for capitalism to profit off people’s misery.
Want.
We want to actually say, here’s this tool that we can use to not only deal with a lot of the problems that we are experiencing, but here’s how we can actually use this tool to come together as a collective, to change the systems and structures and cultures we find ourselves in and actually use this as a tool to address those, to address the root causes of all of these symptoms we are experiencing.
19:53
So when we move beyond this idea of Macmindfulness in order to kind of overcome some of the key challenges of Macmindfulness, there are kind of two areas that I think need to be addressed by any practitioners or anybody wanting to kind of.
20:13
Utilize mindfulness as a tool in their work.
The 1st is how do we make our mindfulness teachings or practices more accessible and inclusive to people from diverse backgrounds.
One way to do this is creating opportunities for dialogue and exchange between different communities.
20:31
There is, I think, a need to increase representation within our networks of people that are making a conscious effort to recruit members from diverse groups by increasing access and inclusion in these practices.
20:48
It needs to help us ensure that mindfulness isn’t just, you know, meditation that is not available to everyone.
And the second question I think we need to kind of ask is how do we ensure that mindfulness is done for the purpose of benefiting the collective, not just ourselves as individuals?
21:09
And I think the skills that mindfulness give us can really add to our change making tool kit, not only kind of for our personal lives, but for, I guess social cohesion and effective functioning in our communities.
21:24
And mindfulness practitioners, and also leaders of change must kind of come together and explore the best ways that we can actually use mindfulness practices to raise our collective consciousness capabilities.
Now, there is obviously a lot of scope to make mindfulness training and practices more transformative, but there are kind of people out there who are already doing it in ways that we can use existing approaches to do this.
21:55
So during the past few decades, mindfulness has kind of evolved from it’s original, you know, Buddhist or yogic, Hindu or Indian roots.
And the way it’s been brought to the Western world is through what we might call healthcare interventions that are sometimes referred to as mindfulness based interventions.
22:22
So Mbis, these are essentially standardized approaches or programs that allow us to adapt mindfulness teachings and practices to educational contexts or organizational environments like workplaces or schools.
22:41
So a lot of the Mbis that we see are typically well researched.
They do have a lot of evidence behind them.
So they can kind of range from different like formal mindfulness practices, things like sitting meditations, mindful movements and body scan practices as well.
23:03
So whether that’s something like a yoga or whether that’s a more simple exercise like a kindness or compassion related like guided meditation, these are all different types of Mbis.
Now Mbis as a practice are often taught over weekly sessions or as daily home practices.
23:28
They can also be integrated through informal practice.
So another common way to do this is kind of for people to bring awareness to their everyday activities by pausing and responding to the situation that they’re in really mindfully, when they otherwise might kind of engage just through habits or I guess impulse.
23:52
So an example of MBI practices that are taught over like weekly sessions would be a yoga class.
If you go to like a weekly yoga class, an example of ways that these are kind of practiced as daily home practices might be through like a iPhone app or phone app doing mindfulness meditations every day or something like that.
24:20
I have a reminder that goes off on my Apple Watch that reminds me to just check in and spend 60 seconds just focusing on my breath.
So little things like that.
They are kind of ways that these daily home practices can kind of be integrated through, like informal ways of just bringing your awareness to your current situation.
24:42
So these exercises, these formal kind of Mbis, are really aimed to develop attention regulation skills.
They give us the ability to kind of focus on one thing at a time, but really also be open to an awareness of what we’re doing.
25:03
And they can help us to foster, I guess, a greater awareness of our thoughts, our emotions, our bodily sensations, And they allow crucial foundational attitudes to arise.
Things like openness, curiosity, care, all of these kind of intuitive feelings or emotions that we can sometimes get and push back because it’s not how we think we ought to be behaving or feeling in a particular context.
25:34
These also make mindfulness, I think so much more than just training or practice about attention or relaxation.
When we use any kind of teacher LED enquiry it also helps us as participants to kind of develop a better understanding of our minds and I guess develop more skillful relationships to different forms of distress that we might experience.
26:00
So in an organizational context, mindfulness based interventions, Mbis and different practices can support, I think both leaders and employees or leaders and their teams in both their personal and professional development as well as just through their daily work tasks and their operations.
26:20
There are a lot of evidence based effects of practicing mindfulness on a regular basis in an organizational context.
Things like improving productivity, mental health and well-being, emotional processing, communication and connection, connection with nature, appreciation of others, all of those good things.
26:38
They have also kind of been shown to increase and support transformative qualities and capacities for health.
And they relate to a lot of the sustainable development goals like SDG Three, I think, which is the one that deals with good health and well-being.
26:54
And I guess when we can kind of see that the evidence is there for the importance of Mbis in an organizational context or in a more collective context.
What I personally think is missing is the ability to kind of link or bridge the Mbis that we might practice these mindfulness based interventions, yoga classes, mindfulness exercises, those kind of informal practices that we might have and kind of linking those Mbis and our personal mindfulness to that need for kind of broader mindfulness or collective mindfulness within our social movements and the ability to kind of apply mindfulness in the context of social change.
27:49
This is something I would love to work on myself one day.
Hopefully I get the chance to.
Something that I have worked on is putting together a bit of a library of daily mindfulness exercises for the Humanitarian Change Makers Network.
28:04
If you head to newhumanity.humanitarianchangemakers.net, you’ll find out in a development goals course.
And through that, this idea of mindfulness is really about building the skills that can help us with those inner development goals that relate to our being and our way of kind of relating to our self and also relating to others.
28:29
And you’ll be able to access our library of daily mindfulness exercises that I’ve recorded and put together.
And you know, that’s just kind of like a starting point, I think for us as change makers to develop a bit of a mindfulness practice, build up those skills and engage in some kind of MBI that can help us to be mindful in a broader context of promoting social change.
28:57
I do think that what the world needs is kind of Mbis that can maybe be practiced as a collective, I don’t know, exercise or a way that we can kind of come together and really overcome the mindfulness that we see so often and really utilize mindfulness as a tool for social change in our existing social movements and the interventions that we’re doing.
29:25
I guess I will kind of end this episode here, but maybe leave it with a bit of like a question for you guys watching or listening.
If you have any ideas for how we can kind of create more mindful social movements, I would love to hear your thoughts.
29:42
If you know of any interventions that exist, definitely let me know.
I would love to kind of explore these.
If you have any kind of skills or the passion to maybe lead a project that can help to build more mindful social movements, definitely reach out to me and the team.
30:04
Our e-mail address is teamteam@humanitarianchangemakers.net.
We would love to support you, whether that’s through our resources, our time, our network.
If we have the ability to fund a mindfulness project here in Australia, I would love to get behind that.
30:23
So definitely feel free to reach out and connect with us.
Otherwise, if you have any questions about anything I discussed in today’s episode or anything else related to social change, you can also ask that at our website humanitarianchangemakers.net/podcast.
30:39
You can follow us on social media at Humanitarian Change Makers.
For me personally, I am at Tiana TIYANA and then the letter J.
You can also follow New Humanity which is New Humanity under score Coaching and you’ll be able to learn more about our inner development goals, training and coaching program that we’re doing throughout 2024 on there.
31:06
Other than that, I look forward to connecting with you all and seeing all of the incredible things that you get up to in your community to make change happen.
