Hello dear MBSR Community,
I understand that I’m preaching to the choir here but I’d like to share my intention for building this certificate program at SJSU. Thank you for receiving this.
Building the humbling and healing skills of awareness in my life will be a life-long practice of embodiment, empowerment, and connectedness which is in stark contrast to how desolate the landscape is in our culture considering how I was almost relentlessly raised to be a nice, obedient white woman thoroughly bought into the status quo.
Our patriarchal society is strengthened when we continue to perpetuate what we have been taught which for me was:
~to numb, disregard, undermine, and subjugate my human experience,
~to live in the domain of cognition to the almost complete exclusion of my body, my intuition, my heart, my values, my desires,
~to perpetuate structures of oppression and domination even if only in silence, in not calling it out when I witnessed it.
When we choose to uphold these toxic systems, these disconnected ways of being and relating to ourselves and the world, we become disempowered, disengaged, and isolated.
We become ourselves fuel for the same system that’s making us sick and we remain cogs in the wheels of the empire. I know, I have been here entrenched in it and I’m working my way through it.
It is clear that maintaining and perpetuating these systems of domination and disconnection is not helping anyone.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is so much work to do. There is so much we can do! We can reclaim the wisdom of our bodies that is our birthright. We can reclaim our utterly entangled existence and interwoven relationship with this world. We can reclaim our sanity and soul in these troubled times and we gain so very much in the process!
It takes community, steadfast practice, and a loving container.
The intention of this mindfulness-based certificate program is to provide this nourishing container, building a community of practitioners and ambassadors of a new Way of being in relationship to ourselves and the world and it is my prayer of love and hope for the world in these troubled times.
To learn more go to www.sjsu.edu/mindfulness
