BIPOC Teachers
Scholarship Fund

What we are doing.

We are establishing a scholarship fund for BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) mindfulness teachers-in-training to pursue MBSR Certification. We are contributing a portion of the subscription revenue of this site to that effort, as well as inviting teacher subscribers to make an optional $50 contribution when they sign up.

Training to teach mindfulness professionally, let alone training to teach teachers, is a long and expensive undertaking. You can consider the fees (before cost of travel and time away from other work) at Brown University or UCSD or the MTTA, for example. We are not assuming that all BIPoC teachers need financing. We simply wish to remove obstacles where they exist, and to provide encouragement and support.

In 2021-22 we are focused on building up the fund. We encourage you to check back on this page for news about the scholarship application process, criteria for eligibility, and the disbursement of the first round of funding in January of 2023.

Why a scholarship fund for BIPOC Teachers?

Systemic racism is enduring and pervasive. This is also plainly reflected in the mindfulness field where disparities are both glaring and subtle, despite the best intentions of many leading voices and institutions of the field. We believe much needs to be done to correct the dominance of white culture within the research and teaching communities of secular mindfulness. There are many dimensions to these issues, none of which we can tackle single handedly. We have chosen to focus on doing our small part to contribute to bring into being a more racially diverse teaching community.

Although we do not have precise statistics, we know from experience that the community of certified mindfulness teachers is not representative of our larger society in the United States — racially, economically and linguistically in particular. This raises many questions about the structural, cultural and economic factors contributing to this reality. If the mindfulness teaching community remains overwhelmingly of a similar demographic, it will compound low cultural competency and unconscious bias. It’s also a system at risk of replicating itself, unless proactive measures are put in place. Furthermore, the practice and the mindfulness field themselves are greatly impoverished when the wisdom and experience of communities of color are not included. This lack of diversity hurts everyone.

Mindfulness courses are also part of the larger, growing sector of health and wellness. In our society, who gets to be well? Marginalized groups have long experienced a variety of oppressions and stressors, as well as the often unseen weathering effects, which have resulted in significant health and income disparities over generations. Recently, this has been painfully highlighted through the Coronavirus pandemic, with communities of color being the hardest hit. Access to healing, mindfulness modalities and preventative healthcare are urgent ethical topics we must confront as a professional community.

Furthermore, mindfulness practices have been developed, cultivated and transmitted for centuries outside of European and European-American cultural contexts. The roots of the particular practices of MBSR are found in Asian wisdom traditions; and mindfulness practices have also long been part of Native American ancestral heritage. And yet, mindfulness teachers from these communities have been under-represented in the field.

We know that part of the solution involves seeing more teachers from communities of color become certified mindfulness teachers. This will begin to correct a great imbalance. It will also contribute to mindfulness courses being more inviting and welcoming to students of color, and to making courses available in communities where they are seldom found. This will eventually lead to more Black, Indigenous and People of Color becoming trainers of teachers and holding more positions of leadership and authority in the future of the “mindfulness movement.”

Lastly, we know that mindfulness can play a key role in developing greater racial sensitivity, self-awareness, and healing from racialized trauma. A great deal of exciting research has been developing in this area. We believe this cannot become truly effective without a simultaneous process of undoing systemic racism within the mindfulness professional field itself.

We encourage readers to explore the section “Ethics of MBSR” from the MBSR Teachers Collaborative of Greater New York, which includes a broader compilation of resources related to the ethics of de-contextualizing and re-contextualizing mindfulness, as well as issues related to professionalization, commodification and structural inequities.

Further resources for reflection and action

Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, by Ruth King, Sounds True, 2018

The Inner Work of Racial Justice, Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness, by Rhonda Magee, Tarcher Perigee, 2019

The Cultural Relevance of Mindfulness Meditation as a Health Intervention for African Americans, Implications for Reducing Stress-Related Health Disparities, by Cheryl L. Woods-Giscombé, PhD, RN, PMHNP and Susan A. Gaylord, PhD, Jin ournal of Holistic Nursing, 2014

Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Implicit Age and Race Bias: The Role of Reduced Automaticity of Responding, by Lueke, A. and Gibson, B. in Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2014

TIME's Beautiful, White, Blonde 'Mindfulness Revolution', by Joanna Piacenza, The Huffington Post, 2014

“Disrupting Systemic Whiteness in the Mindfulness Movement,”a Q&A with Dr. Angela Rose Black, Mindful Magazine, 2017

“Recommendations for a culturally-responsive mindfulness-based intervention for African Americans,” by Natalie N. Watson-Singleton, Angela R. Black, Briana N. Spivey, in Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice, 2019

“Defunding Mindfulness: While We Sit on Our Cushions, Systemic Racism Runs Rampant,” by Michael Yellow Bird, University of Manitoba; Maria Gehl, ZERO TO THREE, Washington, DC; Holly Hatton-Bowers, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; Laurel M. Hicks, University of Colorado–Boulder; and Debbie Reno-Smith, Victor, Inc., Riverside County, California, published online in October 2020