WATCH: Disrupting White Mindfulness: Race and Racism in the Wellbeing Industry with Cathy-Mae Karelse

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  Donation Event: 'Disrupting White Mindfulness' Race and Racism in the Wellbeing Industry - with Cathy-Mae Karelse in conversation with Alison Evans

  
  

  Cathy-Mae Karelse's new book Disrupting White Mindfulness explores how the precious practice of mindfulness, as popularly packaged in the West, lands mainly with a select, elite audience. The book unpacks how this reality comes about, how it remains entrenched, and how we might collectively build forward differently. The emphasis is that this is ALL our work. Courage to change the things we must applies as much to shifting the dominant narratives, patterns, and norms of the Mindfulness Industry as it does to upturning inequities in our families, communities, and societies, and Othering in ourselves. Equally, opening our hearts to embrace difference allows us to see mindfulness as liberation for all. 

  
  

  • Can we step beyond what is known, to hear and respond to calls that merge inner and outer landscapes of contemplation to foster collective freedom? 
  • Could this potentially offer a pathway that heals what appears as my inner disaffection, as mine? 
  • Might this avenue help us feel more connected and whole? 

  
  

  • The video is approximately 50 minutes long and was recorded on 21 September 2023. 

    
    
  • This event is offered in collaboration with the Mindfulness Network Community Friends (MNCF) - an initiative to engage the wider mindfulness community and reach new audiences. Led by a Committee of Volunteers, supported by the Mindfulness Network, we work together to run a programme of donation-based events and inspiring content. The Committee ensures that the MNCF can best serve everyone by providing opportunities to practice and learn together. 

    The event is free to attend. The Mindfulness Network welcomes any donations via our website and encourages you to consider a contribution, large or small, which will make a big difference in helping us widen access to mindfulness-based approaches.

    The Mindfulness Network and its volunteers take every care in their preparation of events to make sure they are appropriate for the audience. Please be aware that you are choosing to participate in our freely offered events at your own risk. We invite you to carefully consider your own personal circumstances and experience when joining these events. The Mindfulness Network Terms and Conditions apply (though payment and cancellation policies are not relevant for freely offered Events) and the Mindfulness Network can not accept any liability for any injury, loss, or damage, suffered during or in relation to the event, however, this may be caused.

    
    

  • About the book

    Disrupting White Mindfulness offers a timely commentary on the dominant narratives that shape the mindfulness industry - whiteness, postracialism and neoliberalism. Its positioning as 'apolitical' forges institutions that fit comfortably into increasingly divided societies. The race-gender profile of these institutions reveals a White, middle-class profile of decision-makers, educators and staff that is mirrored in its audiences. Mechanisms that recycle the industry's whiteness include corporatist pedagogies, edicts of authority, disengagement with difference and inappropriate uses of mindfulness that distance People of the Global Majority. A growing emergent movement focused on a justice-infused mindfulness and liberatory wellbeing decolonises mindfulness and de-centres whiteness. Its premise in indigenous, global South, queer knowledges leverages difference to produce multiple solutions focused on liberation. There is room for White Mindfulness to change.

    
    

    'Karelse delivers a cracking Black Feminist call to decolonise "Wellbeing" with her forensic exposé of the darkside of the White Mindfulness industry and its colonial co-option of Eastern teachings for Western gain.' 

    Heidi Safia Mirza, author of Race, Gender and Educational Desire

    
    

    Buy Cathy-Mae's book in hardcover now, or pre-order the paperback edition directly from the Manchester University Press. Receive a publisher discount by signing up for the newsletter.

    
    

  • Watch Cathy-Mae's presentation about her book, hosted and recorded by the Mindfulness and Social Change Network and shared with their permission