Meditating and Healing in a Traumatized World

[Mushim] recently worked with Center for Healthy Minds collaborator Helen Weng and Center faculty member Larissa Duncan on a project to expand diversity throughout a neuroscience study on meditation. In this Q&A, Ikeda shares how mindfulness meditation can be both inclusive and exclusive, both healing and traumatizing – all depending on people’s lived experiences and how they’re met with care during meditation practice or in their community.

How might people's identities and life experiences affect their meditation practice and their well-being? 

Ikeda: It’s important to note that there are hundreds of kinds of meditations, which are techniques and activities we are doing with bodies and minds. Here I’ll talk about mindfulness meditation, which is the same as insight meditation and vipassana meditation in the Buddhist tradition. The specific technique of mindfulness meditation is a thoroughly embodied practice. And by that, I mean that we understand that mind and body are not a binary… And often, this practice is learned by the directed activity of another human being (a teacher), and therefore in terms of diversity, the instructional language that is used is very important if someone is starting out.

Read the rest of this wonderful Q&A here.