Mindful U at Naropa University

104. The Essential Relationship of Mindfulness and Activism

January 9th, 2024  |  1 hr 14 secs

activism, grief, healing, mindfulness, political activism, yoga

Reggie Hubbard is a yogi, political campaigner and activist, speaker, and meditation instructor.

On this episode he speaks to working with grief and how to heal, he tells his story of how he aligned his professional and spiritual life into an integrated path of purpose, and he explains why he believes mindfulness is essential to political activism.

102. Healing the Whole Person with Gestalt Therapy

November 28th, 2023  |  57 mins 41 secs

gestalt, mindful-based, mindfulness, mindfulness-based therapy, therapy, transpersonal counseling, transpersonal psychology

Visiting professor of Naropa’s master's program in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling, Harmony Kwiker, shares about how the gestalt therapy model helps to bridge spirituality with a practical way of helping others. It provides a framework to treat patients as equals who are empowered in their own healing journey to come into contact with the deepest parts of themselves.

100. Holistic Life Foundation: Let Your Light Shine

August 11th, 2023  |  42 mins 35 secs

ali smith, andres gonzalez, atman smith, engaged mindfulness, hlf, holistic life foundation, let your light shine, light shine, mindfulness, social justice, yoga

Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez are the founders of the Holistic Life Foundation and the authors of Let Your Light Shine. They teach yoga and mindfulness practices to at-risk youth in their community and underserved communities. There programs have revolutionized schools, detention centers, drug treatment centers, mental illness facilities, recreation centers, group homes, and more. In this episode, they talk about their new book, Let Your Light Shine, which shares the inspiration and methods of their programs as well as their personal practices that inspire their path.

89. Jordan Quaglia: The Science of Mindfulness Training

August 29th, 2022  |  58 mins 25 secs

cognitive, mind, mindfulness, naropa, psychology

How do you really know if mindfulness is improving your mind? Jordan Quaglia, PhD, Director of Naropa’s Cognitive and Affective Science Lab, answers this and more on the science of the human psyche in this episode.

86. Tai Amri Poetics: Beautiful Ashe

July 20th, 2022  |  46 mins 56 secs

buddhism, mindfulness, naropa university, on being, restorative community, restorative justice

"I started Allies in Action at Naropa while I was there as a student, and also was the editor of Tendril, which was a journal on diversity. And that really came out of my feelings of like, man it’s really hard being black in Boulder, and being black at Naropa was also very difficult. And — and I was getting triggered all the time, and micro-aggressions, which I didn’t have language for at the time, I just like, I’m not gonna be able to graduate from here if I don’t do something to try to change it. And Allies in Action was really like - how do we address unaddressed privilege and oppression in the school environment? And I feel like B.L.A.C.K Lawrence tries to do a lot of that, as well as how do we create space for black creators in a place where there’s not a lot of us.”

85. Regina Smith: Visions of a Thriving Mission, Culture & Inclusive Community

July 1st, 2022  |  59 mins 18 secs

anti-racism, buddhism, buddhist school, culture, mindfulness, naropa university, on being, restorative community, restorative justice

Regina Smith, Masters in Contemplative Psychotherapy & Buddhist Psychology from Naropa, has a contemplated what a thriving mission, culture, and inclusivity-driven community could look like. Tune into this episode to get a glimpse of her vision and find out how you can help.

84. Jamelah & Amanda: Mission, Culture & Inclusive Community at Naropa

June 11th, 2022  |  49 mins 23 secs

anti-racism, buddhism, justice, mindfulness, naropa university, on being, restorative community, restorative justice, transformative justice

Mission, Culture & Inclusive Community is an important development in Naropa's recent history. MCIC was created post murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor - when the push for closer alignment with the University's values and mission was necessary for the conscious evolution of our community. Learn more about this division of Naropa from Jamelah & Amanda in this Mindful U Podcast episode.

78. Charles Eisenstein: The Origin of Wrongness

February 17th, 2020  |  45 mins 53 secs

buddhism, buddhist inspired, charles eisenstein, david devine, education, good intention, higher education, inner self, inner work, inspiration, intention, meditation, mindfulness, naropa, naropa university, origin of wrongness, reflection, self development, university, war, wrongness

"I read very widely and was trying to put the pieces together to understand this lifelong question that I had carried. What is the origin of the wrongness in the world, which is presented to us as a series of fragmented isolated atrocities and injustices and horrors -- without any synthesizing narrative that explains why the world is the way that it is? And I really wanted to understand so that I wouldn't be part of maintaining the status quo through pursuing insufficiently deep solutions that may be actually part of the problem. I think a lot of our solutions are part of the problem -- or you could even say our solution templates -- I mean one of them is the war on evil. So, I wanted to -- to get really deep and eventually I came to understand that all of the crises and horrors that we see in the world are an outgrowth of the mythology of civilization. The story of separation is what I call it, which basically says it answers the most fundamental questions that human beings ask. Who are you? Who am I? What is important? How is life to be lived? What is real? What is possible? How does the world work? And our culture answers that in a certain way. And other cultures have answered it different ways."

79. Anthony Gallucci: Re-establishing Masculinity

February 17th, 2020  |  41 mins 25 secs

cisgender, contemplative, education, gender, higher education, masculine, masculinity, mindfulness, misogynistic, misogyny, naropa, naropa university, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, university

"There's gender identity, which isn't actually a problem. It's when it's forced into a limited paradigm or spectrum it can be an issue or when it's forced into a hierarchy. I see us eventually eliminating the hierarchy within these systems of identity and becoming more for lack of a better term, more merit based in our assessment of people's qualities. The re-establishing masculinity group believes that at Naropa to be foresighted and to support these movements we need to begin to get out of the way sort of speak and actually become allies to the anti-misogynistic movements that are occurring in our world. And to do that we ought to be -- we being people whom identify as masculine ought to be not disempowered to engage in that work. We ought to be empowered in our opinion to engage in that work. And the offering that's available of how masculinity is defined and actualized too often is non virtuous and not empowering."

77. Charlotte Rotterdam: Finding Courage in Contemplative Education

February 17th, 2020  |  47 mins 38 secs

charlotte rotterdam, college, contemplative, contemplative education, courage, david devine, education, higher education, meditation, mindful, mindfulness, naropa, naropa university, university

"Absolutely. You know we might have an idea about something, but then when you begin to express it from a creative place it's almost like you have to feel into it. If I want to write a poem about sadness it's not just about my ideas about sadness. At some point as I'm writing I need to stop and feel into what does sadness feel like? And then I might even think about a very specific situation in my life that brings up sadness. And then what arises from that place as a poem is coming from a non-conceptual place. Non-conceptual knowing and yet I've expressed something and I might even express it in words like with a poem. So, what we're trying to do in contemplative education is to bring both of those together. So, it's not in spite of conceptual knowing -- concepts are great, thinking is great -- but that there are other ways of knowing that are equally important and maybe if we bring them all together then there's a richness of knowing that begins to emerge."