Learning how to Dwell in a Place: A Practice in Decolonization

Living Room
#1

Hello Dear MBSR Community,

As a certified MBSR teacher there are many themes in this conversation with Dr. Leny Strobel that I think you would appreciate so I am sharing the details below.

You are invited to tune into a conversation with Dr. Leny Strobel on Learning How to Dwell in a Place: A Practice in Decolonization to air this Thursday at 2pm PST and is available on demand any time after it airs.

How might we learn how to Dwell in a Place, learn how to be part of the landscape, or learn how to see and feel in a whole new way? By learning how to dance, chant, and do ritual? To greet the ancient redwoods in our backyards every morning and hug the trees in the garden? To put our hands in the soil and try to learn the names of all the non-human beings we live with? All these take time. Slowness is key. Practicing presence is difficult for us in this modern culture. We are latecomers to this way of being and while we may still feel resistance sometimes, this may be the essential practice to undo our current cultural conditionings. Join us for this conversation on disengaging from the intellectual life that demands a loyalty to the faculty of reason with the body and emotions served only as side dishes on the menu of the canon and learn how to bring your whole self - body, mind, heart, spirit - into the only life you have to live, because when you do it changes everything.

Dr. Strobel is Professor of American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University. She is also one of the Founding Directors of the Center for Babaylan Studies (CFBS) (www.babaylan.net), a 501c3 nonprofit organization that seeks to facilitate the process of decolonization and re-indigenization specifically among Filipinos in the diaspora. Her books, journal articles, anthologies and public talks on these themes have planted many seeds in various communities that are now manifesting as part of a larger visible cultural and ecological movement. Dr. Strobel also teaches a year-long course, with Dr. Jurgen Kremer, on decolonizing whiteness through the exploration of an ethnoautobiography process that centers indigenous paradigms.
You can find more info on Dr. Strobel’s work here: https://www.lenystrobel.com/

#2

Thanks for posting this, Rochelle. It looks like a wonderful and
interesting program. It prompts me to mention that I for one would welcome
more posts and discussion about inclusion, diversity and equity here on
CFMHome. Particularly interesting to me in the above course description is
the relationship of embodiment (including emotions) with decolonization -
such a powerful and important aspect of reclaiming our human wholeness.

As to this particular post, it reminded me of a book that has meant a lot
to me, bell hooks’ belonging, which is a series of essays about place and
how we are affected by a sense of place or by the lack of that sense. She
speaks from her own experiences of moving away, as a young woman, from her
home home place of Kentucky, to gain education, and then returning to live
there again after becoming a well respected and established writer and
thinker. Highly recommended to anyone interested in either sense of place
or racism or both and their relationship.

On a related but tangential note, just last week here at the Center for
Mindfulness, we engaged in an afternoon of training around inclusion,
diversity and equity. We are undertaking a process of awaking ourselves up
to the myriad ways that mainstream social mores influence us, with an eye
toward developing a greater capacity to include everyone here. We are
fairly early in our process, and it is already beautifully humbling and
inspiring. There is the promise of a more harmonious, integrated future
here, with lots of work to be done along the way.

#3

Dear Eowyn,

Thank you so much for your thoughts on the topic. I am looking forward to
reading bell hook’s Belonging book you recommend. I so appreciate CFM’s
intentions to engage in training specific to inclusion, diversity, and
equity. My experience resonates very much with your description of waking
up to the myriad ways that mainstream social mores influence us and I
appreciate CFM"s intentions in honoring the process while looking forward
to a more integrated future.