Mindfulness Compassion and Racism: An Anti-Oppressive Approach to Adult Education, Thursday Feb 5 12-1PM

Mindfulness practice has been shown to deepen self-awareness, strengthen our capacity to regulate emotions, and support healthier relationships with others. It is also a key component of compassion, which begins with awareness and clear seeing into our stress and suffering, both individual and collective. Compassion involves acknowledging this stress and suffering, together with the wish, or the actions, to help alleviate it.

While mindfulness and compassion are increasingly recognized for their benefits, there has been limited research exploring how these practices are experienced by racialized adults. In this presentation, I will draw from my research to explore how people who identify as Indigenous or Black, South or East Asian, Middle Eastern, and other ethnic minorities living in Canada (referred to here as BIPOC—Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour) experience racism or oppression, and how mindfulness or compassion practices, integrated with ancestral, community, and cultural practices may support them in processing these experiences

The broader aim of this work is to expand understanding and support educators and clinicians in developing anti-oppressive, inclusive, and culturally sensitive approaches to mindfulness-based education and care. By grounding mindfulness and compassion in lived realities, this research seeks to contribute to practices that genuinely support well-being and autonomy among BIPOC individuals and communities.

In addition to discussion, the session includes an experiential component. Participants are invited to engage in mindfulness and compassion practices, along with guided reflection, to explore how these approaches might be thoughtfully integrated into their own teaching, clinical practice, or research.

About the presenter

Rose Mina Munjee is a PhD candidate in Education at the University of Reading in the UK. She has written for DIME, Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies, and Mindful.org. She developed and taught “Mindfulness-Informed Interventions for Mental Health” at the University of Toronto and curated a speaker series entitled, “Diverse Perspectives in Mindfulness and Mental Health.” She is a Registered Psychotherapist and certified teacher, mentor, and teacher trainer of evidence based Mindfulness programs (MBSR, MBCT, MSC). She develops curricula and has taught mindfulness-based interventions at the Center for Mindful Self Compassion, the Centre for Mindfulness Studies, the University of Toronto, UCSD Mindfulness, and for various corporations and in healthcare. Rose Mina has practiced insight meditation since 2007 and is a community meditation teacher with True North Insight where she runs groups, retreats, and nature walks and is a co-founder of Mindful Earth Refuge, a Toronto-based, in person, EcoDharma monthly practice group. She is a BIPOC woman of South Asian origin and is originally from South Africa.

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