We hope you were able to join us on September 23rd at 12 p.m. 2022, for the fourth talk in our Mindfulness and Anti-Racism series, when we had the honor and fortune of hosting Dr. Marisela Gomez in collaboration with the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion leaders from the Brown School. Dr. Gomez is a mindfulness practitioner and public health scholar, activist and physician of Afro-Latina ancestry. She has spent more than 20 years in Baltimore involved in social justice activism and community building, health research and practice. She’s been practicing and studying mindfulness since 2004 and other forms of meditation in Nepal, in the US, in Malaysia, Thailand, Colombia, Belize, and France. She has co-organized retreats for people of color at Blue Cliff Monastery in New York since 2007, which is a monastery in the tradition of the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh . 

Dr. Gomez addressed important questions such as: 

How do we speak/teach about the difficult things that trigger us yet are needed to transform the legacy of our unevenly developed society?  like the supremacy of whiteness, colonization and all the things that have led to the legacy we are now living? 

How do we use the skillfulness of mindfulness/awareness/joy/breath/presence/moments of healing/rest/relaxation to talk/teach about this? 

How do we not shut down but open up to the spaciousness we already have inside, to take care and transform this history in us and re-educate ourselves and our students skillfully? In public health? In all sciences? in the humanities? How do we skillfully use this history to transform this legacy?

If you missed the talk you can watch the recording and find the transcript and slide deck here