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
A team of us at IISC are partnering with an engineering firm to work on a climate change resiliency planning initiative in a vulnerable neighborhood in New York City. Our role is to lead the creation and implementation of a “stakeholder engagement plan” for broad-based input into project deliverables, including a fully funded infrastructure project and a feasibility study.
In developing our proposal for this initiative, we were guided by the notion that resiliency can and should be a core feature of social structures and processes. That is, threats to resiliency are found not simply in conditions such as low lying coastal communities or lack of back-up energy generation, but also in social disconnection and impaired flows of key resources. We were already aware of some of the vulnerabilities of this particular community, as well as its strengths in that it is well-organized and has a considerable density of social services and community organizations. That said, even when there are such assets in a neighborhood, there are many examples of municipally-sponsored projects that by-pass or fail to fully honor existing assets and networks in a community, with results ranging from missed opportunities to actually leaching resources (including time and trust). Read More
I am very excited about today’s opening of the BMW Guggenheim Lab in NYC for many reasons. At IISC, we talk about and focus on the importance of creating optimal conditions and spaces for collaboration – to innovate, build agreement, create constructive dissonance, etc. This mobile Lab seems to incorporate the best of design thinking and diversity to spur urban revitalization. And I’m wondering what this inspires in and for you.
|Photo by MontyPython|http://www.flickr.com/photos/montypython/3853109452/|
Last week a few of us here at IISC had the privilege of reconnecting with Peter Forbes and Ginny McGinn of the Center for Whole Communities. The focus of our two day summit was the development of a training to help people implement Whole Measures, CWC’s holistic framework for thinking about social, community, and organizational change. Rooted in narrative, Whole Measures has its own interesting story.
