Disrupting White Mindfulness Race and Racism in the Wellbeing Industry By Cathy-Mae Karelse

Thursday Night book club with MNPC

Open event all welcome 

Disrupting White Mindfulness Race and Racism in the Wellbeing Industry

By Cathy-Mae Karelse, meditation offered by Zindika Kamauesi

September 14st

7:30-9:00  (GMT) 

Mindfulness is now everywhere in the West. Over the last four decades, the movement has exploded in the US and UK, and is now found everywhere from boardrooms and bedrooms to schools, prisons, and hospitals. Yet popular mindfulness is infused in whiteness and late capitalism. This

book reveals how its easy fit in Western society replicates existing social norms and dominant narratives: an essentially White Mindfulness reflects racialised institutional profiles and a largely White, middle-class audience.

Taking a critical look at this lucrative industry, Disrupting White Mindfulness explores the influences of neoliberalism and postracialism, and the invisible force of whiteness that marginalises and excludes People of the Global Majority from meaningful leadership and decision-making.

Engaging with decolonising initiatives rooted in embodied justice, Disrupting White Mindfulness offers a path and an invitation for a radically transformed mindfulness, one which moves away from whiteness to embrace solutions built on difference and on indigenous, queer, and global South perspectives.

Cathy-Mae Karelse, PhD is an independent specialist in deep systems change and decolonisation with 20+ years’ expertise in social transformation. In the last decade, she has extended her work to social health policies and systems and is a recognized thought leader in diversity, inclusion and belonging (DEI+). She designs and develops customised change-making strategies at multiple levels to shepherd meaningful transformation. Specialising in turning grand plans for DEI+ into practical strategies and programmes that deliver results, Dr Karelse has worked with corporates, governments, policy institutes, communities, and global programmes to establish policies, processes and social strategies of leadership, wellbeing, transformation, and growth. As author of Disrupting White Mindfulness: Race and Racism in the Wellbeing Industry and with a global network, her remit includes the support of global South leadership in sustainable transformation agendas. In addition to offering strategic thought leadership, she also operates personally as an educator, coach, and mentor.

Meditation offered by 

Zindika Kamauesi :

Zindika is an author, speaker, and a transformational writing success coach. She is the founder of Meditate and Grow, an inspirational blog and youtube channel. She teaches people how to use writing as therapy, to raise their confidence, self-esteem and their self-expression. She helps people who want to work on their personal development through meditation and writing. She is the author of six books and delivers motivational talks on the topics of women and migration, meditation and writing.

Pay what you can:

In our course descriptions, we include different rates of suggested contribution. We offer standard, Sponsor, and hardship rates. We run the project as a not-for-profit organisation. It depends on numerous forms of generosity and voluntary labour. If you can offer more than the standard rate that we suggest, then please do. Your offering will help to support the on-going work development and enable the marginalised who are economically less well off to gain access to the work.

Please look at the suggested contributions on the booking page and enter into the spirit of the solidarity economy by buying a retreat for someone.  And there are those who would like to attend this retreat or workshop and would benefit from it, but who cannot afford to do so.  We price our events on a non-profit basis and make them as affordable as we can, and we offer bursaries.  But we also rely on the generosity of others to enable us to enable those who cannot afford to do so, to attend.  So please, if you can, buy an extra ticket which we will allocate to someone who really needs it.  Alternatively, please offer a donation - we are grateful for any amount - which will be directly used to finance a ticket for others.

Financial Assistance:

Dana - Teacher Fees.

The word Dana is a Sanskrit and Pali word which means giving something unconditionally with an open heart. It is an ancient practice in Buddhism for cultivating generosity.  This retreat is offered in the tradition of Dana by the teachers.  We ask you to consider with care what is possible for you to give, knowing that the teachers rely on Dana to support their living so that they will be able to continue teaching.