Mindful U at Naropa University

64. Holistic Life Foundation: A Teacher's Approach to Mindfulness in Baltimore Public Schools

March 11th, 2019  |  43 mins 36 secs

baltimore, contemplative, higher education, holistic life foundation, meditation, mindfulness, naropa, naropa university, practice, public schools, teachers

"You know, we're doing this job dealing with people's problems and not necessarily giving them advice, but just allowing them to tap into their own thoughts and weigh out their own options to create decisions. The more you hold on—you attach yourself to an outcome, then that becomes stressful and then it's not genuine anymore. It's also stressful on the other end of the person that is dealing with the actual problem. So just knowing that you may not see the results—but one thing I have noticed is the maturity that came from my students that I've interacted with—the same situation, but a different outcome of the consequence whenever you're redirected."

53. Encore Presentation - Dr. Itai Ivtzan: The Discovery of Meaning and Purpose

December 24th, 2018  |  38 mins 8 secs

karma, naropa, psychology

Naropa presents some of the most popular and moving episodes of MindfulU from 2018, including "The Discovery of Meaning and Purpose, with Dr. Itai Ivtzan."

The disciplines of psychology and spirituality both offer us humans a gift. Psychology, being the mind-oriented discipline, seems to offer us a chance to envision ourselves within our surroundings. At the same time, spirituality invites us to move beyond the mind, and even beyond the definitions of a self. Most of us tend to focus on one or the other over our lives. But, in doing so, we often narrow our experience. When these two disciplines are married, however, we can achieve an incredible explosion of potentials to live life as fully as possible.

37. Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni: "One Drop of Love"

September 4th, 2018  |  36 mins 13 secs

census, mixed race, naropa, race

Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni on performing her wildly popular one-woman piece, "One Drop of Love," for the Naropa community as part of the Bayard and John Cobb Peace Lecture last Spring: "I have been doing this performance for 5 years, and have been in a lot of different communities–some certainly more receptive to the themes around race and racism and class and gender than others. Sometimes I think people feel uncomfortable with it, or maybe they're shy because of the stigma of being in a theater. But I got the sense after being here at Naropa for about a day that this might be a very embracing community–and that's exactly what it was. Still, something that I really appreciate about this community was its natural interaction–a kind of vocal interaction–which I don't always get. Naropa was just right there along with me, laughing out loud, saying "Hmmmmm...," and just offering both a wise and calming response."

29. Olivia Meikle: Gender and Women's Studies at Naropa

June 4th, 2018  |  33 mins 27 secs

gender studies, naropa, women's studies

It's our mission to grow more awareness of women's issues, women's voices, women's history, women's studies worldwide. We're still so far behind in knowing what we should know about the history of women in the world and their contributions, as well as the lived experiences of women, and the way it informs everything about the way our country operates, the way the world runs now. One can't really teach a gender studies class effectively any way but contemplatively. All of the best practices of contemplative education are what make gender studies unique, and they also make gender studies possible. Approaching this from a lecture standpoint , or from any other standpoint than just really being very aware of your students, being invested in them - not just intellectually but emotionally - is not going to end in success. Students are doing so much hard work, so much hard emotional work. They're breaking into traumas, trying to correct ways of seeing things they've experienced their whole lives. There is going to be serious emotional labor with these students, and Naropa is a wonderful place to do this.

11. Ramon Parish: Discipline and Delight–An Embodied Education

January 30th, 2018  |  29 mins 31 secs

embodiment, naropa, parish, somasource, somatics

Ramon Parish is a second-year adjunct instructor in Naropa’s environmental studies department currently teaching a course on Environmental Justice. He also works with Golden Bridge, and with a budding rites of passage networking organization called Youth Passageways. Parish continues to study SomaSource - the brainchild of Naropa professor Melissa Michaels - deep teaching about authentic movement, somatic-based mindfulness, men’s work and contemporary rites of passage.