The ability to be mindful in stressful times is a skill that can greatly improve our ability to respond to ourselves and others with kindness, compassion, and wisdom. Ultimately, it can contribute greatly to our own healing and to healing our world. This is directly related to the Coming to the Table Vision, Mission, and Values regarding racial healing.
In offering mindfulness and meditation practices through both the resources listed below and regularly scheduled Guided Meditation Community Conference Calls, our intention is to create a community of people who are interested in practicing together and providing encouragement to each other to deepen awareness of love, compassion and wisdom in our racially wounded country.
If you’d like to stay up to date on what the CTTT Mindfulness Group is doing, become a member and you will receive the monthly Coming to the Table newsletter, which includes information about each month’s Guided Meditation call, as well as other news specific to the Mindfulness Group.
If you would like to be added to the Mindfulness mailing list (in addition to your CTTT membership), or have questions or comments, please contact us by completing the form at the bottom of this page.
Our Mindfulness Group brings you:
Introduction to Meditation:
- Click Here to watch a class led by Mindfulness Group member Jennifer Stanley exploring some basics of meditation practice: Posture, mindfulness techniques, meditation anchors, and working with thoughts and emotions, including ways to establish, energize, and support your practice, as well as where additional resources can be found.
Monthly Guided Meditation Conference Calls:
- Upcoming Guided Meditation Calls are listed in the Events Calendar.
Recorded Meditation Sessions
- Recordings of past Guided Meditation sessions led by members of the CTTT Mindfulness Group.
Benefits of Meditation
- Defuse stress and experience greater calm.
- Explore the mind-body relationship.
- Heal embodied life trauma.
- Connect to our feelings.
- Expand our sense of who we are, beyond our fears and self-judgment.
- Deepen focus, concentration, and understanding when anxious or fearful.
- Increase awareness of conditioning and habits of mind associated with bias, positionally, and blindspots.
- Increase capacity for emotion-regulation when “triggered.”
- Ameliorate effects of stereotype threat.
- Increase capacity for perspective-taking and compassion.
- Find genuine happiness.
- Discover inner resources that can change our everyday lives.
- Awaken our capacity for insight and wisdom.
- Transform our worldview from one of isolation and confusion to one of connection, clarity and compassion.
- Broaden our perspective and deepen our courage, based on seeing things just as they are.
(sources: Insight Meditation Society and ColorInsight Practices)
“Meditation is not a quick fix. It asks us to slow down so that we can experience ourselves lovingly… Meditation opens us to levels of consciousness that lie deeper than our intellect. Our disguises fade and our aggression diminishes. Our mind becomes tranquil and more manageable, and we act more wisely toward others and ourselves.”
Resources and Links
As you experience the benefits of a steady meditation practice, you may want to deepen your practice by exploring more resources not listed here. To experience the benefits of meditation, it is important for you to develop a daily practice on your own. We encourage you to read, to visit these and other websites devoted to the practice of meditation, to begin, or continue to free your heart and mind from the multiple traumas spawned by the history and legacy of slavery in the United States.
Click on the items listed below to view those resources we’ve found most helpful to our Coming to the Table community:
Do you have questions? Suggestions?
If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, complete the contact form below. We’ll be in touch with you soon.
If you’d like to be part of the Mindfulness Group & Support Team, let us know and we’ll be in touch soon. Members of this team are committed to participate in:
- Guided Meditation calls as you are available.
- Periodic Mindfulness Team calls (once or twice each each year) to share:
- information, perceptions, and experiences around mindfulness
- mindfulness or meditation practices that may assist others
- insights on how meditation can support racial healing
- planning future workshops, guided meditation sessions, etc.
PLEASE NOTE: We encourage you to join CTTT. One benefit of doing so is that you will receive notifications of all future Mindfulness guided meditation sessions and other offerings.
Click Here to become a Member of CTTT
If you have questions, want more info, or wish to let us know how you’d like to support the CTTT community with more mindfulness, please complete and submit the form below: