A Meditation: Re-Imagining Mental Health Care for Black Communities

September 28, 2018 Leave a comment

Image by Osajus, shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0.

 

At IISC, we are using guided meditations to spark transformation in the hearts and minds of participants in our facilitation and training rooms.

This is one I offered to thirty Black leaders brought together by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in New York City this summer. They were asked by First Lady Chirlane McCray, wife of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, to develop recommendations to increase the numbers of Black mental health providers. But our job in the end was so much more. It was helping them to discover ways to re-imagine mental health care for Black communities, and to encourage Black people to go into mental health fields to free Black people from the emotional and spiritual binds of pain rooted in systemic and historical injustice.

It was the deepest honor to create and share this meditation with the group as I lost my mother in 2002 to mental illness and the health care system that “treated her”.

Get comfortable
Anchor your feet and back
Breathe natural breaths at your own pace

See what’s on your mind about today
See your obligations outside of this room and let them float past you and away

Call on your images of your ancestors
See the faces of your family
Present
And Past

Think about the history of Black people
What images do you see of pain?
Of pain as they face hardship? As their mental health deteriorates?

Of triumph?
As they triumph over, and their mental health improves and sets them free?

What supports did they have to help them heal and achieve wholeness?
Who helped them?
How?

Who helped you in times of need? In times of mental burden and stress?
How?

Thank your ancestors
Thank yourself
Breathe once again those breaths of life
And come back when you are ready

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