Wednesdays Beginning Nov 4th (skipping Nov 25th)
10am-11:30pm at Empowered Spaces
Un-colonizing mindfulness invites clinicians & those working in secular settings, to slow down and examine the assumptions underneath the mindfulness practices they have inherited. Rather than offering another collection of mindfulness exercises, we will explore how mindfulness has been secularized, individualized, commodified, and clinicalized—and what is important yet lost in that process.
Drawing from Theravada, Mahayana & Engaged Buddhist lineages alongside trauma-informed, neurodivergent-affirming, somatic and relational approaches, we will examine what it means to practice and teach mindfulness without assuming that breath, stillness, internal attention, calm, or “nonjudgmental awareness” are universally accessible or beneficial.
*Please note, this workshop does not teach clinical practice itself, nor provides case consultation or supervision.
What happens when mindfulness is separated from Dharma, Buddhist ethics, and sangha?
What does it mean to extract a practice rather than simply “move” it across cultures?
Who is imagined when we teach someone to “return to the breath” or “find a place of safety?”
What happens when there is no reference baseline of safety to return to—or when attending to the body is associated with pain, panic, dissociation, or overwhelm?
How might neurodivergence, disability, chronic pain, trauma, and different sensory or cognitive experiences challenge conventional assumptions about mindfulness?
What is the difference between non-attachment and detachment, acceptance and resignation, choiceless awareness and avoidance?
When does mindfulness support discernment, and when might it become a tool for bypassing?
What becomes possible when “somatic” means more than attention to bodily sensation?
What changes when mindfulness is understood as cultural and relational rather than an individual self-regulation technique?
What might Buddhist ethical practice, generosity, and uncertainty have to do with clinical mindfulness?
Participants will develop a framework for recognizing the hidden assumptions within clinicalized mindfulness instruction and begin to cultivate a different way of teaching: one grounded in agency, discernment, embodiment, relationship, cultural context, and ethical responsibility.
Those who teach or guide mindfulness and feel that something is missing or not landing right/harmfully with clients, and those actively seeking ways to decolonize clinical techniques derived from Indigenous or cultural teachings.
Those seeking clinical understanding of mindfulness, and training on mindfulness techniques.
By the end of the six weeks, clinicians will have developed a personal Un-colonizing Mindfulness Pedagogy—a set of principles they can use to critically examine their own clinical frameworks and interventions.
Deanna (they/them) is a somatic guide, Dharma Teacher, and organizer of STL Queer Sangha.
They are accredited to teach Vipassana “Insight” or “Mindfulness” meditation through The Awareness Training Institute and the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California at Berkeley, with guiding, internationally recognized Theravada Buddhist teachers, authors & psychologists, Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. They are also a certified Insight Meditation Mentor, have completed the Living Dharma program as a scholarship recipient at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, has studied & practiced Buddhism since 2018 with teachers such as Ruth King, David Cabrera, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, Kate Johnson, Sebene Selassie, Larry Yang, Mushim Ikeda, Dr. Adriana DiFazio, and Joanna Macy. Deanna also receives mentorship guidance from Saraswati Pottekkatt who is in Buddhist chaplaincy.
$300 standard registration.
$350 solidarity tier supporting Deanna’s STL Queer Sangha, which is a twice monthly, pay-what-you-can, Radical Dharma & meditation group for queer & trans folks in the St. Louis region.
Make your $50 deposit to
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
For news & updates about Un-colonizing mindfulness, and other courses designed for clinicians de-clinicalizing their practices.
Questions? Email deanna@sovereign-somatics.com
Because decolonizing is accountability with concrete goals, and I cannot decolonize your practice for you. I am not credentialed in decolonial theory, and as a practicing Buddhist of European descent living on stolen land, and within the frameworks of westernized Buddhism, I am not representing myself in authority to decolonize mindfulness or Buddhism here in America.
However, I view un-colonizing as a skillful action I am able to undertake ethically, as a steward of the Buddhist 5-Precepts, householder (non-monastic), and someone committed to lifelong uprooting of whiteness - particularly in the way clinicalized Buddhist concepts have been extracted from in-tact lineages of Buddhism, and contribute to harm. Practicing un-colonizing mindfulness is a part of the wider fabric of decolonization, and this course aims to mitigate more harm by pulling at colonial threads. ❤️🔥
No. There will be no religious practices included in the course. As the course centers on pedagogy, there will be education about terminology, concepts and cultural context that is true for both religious and secular Buddhist philosophies.
Yes absolutely! This course is designed for anyone who learned mindfulness outside a Buddhist setting, such as MBSR & MBCT.
No. This workshop offers perspective of the Dharma with the invitation to critique clinical practice.
Absolutely! No experience is required, all course work will be presented as an introduction suitable for beginners and those with some experience.
The workshop does not provide clinical supervision. Clinicians are invited to review their overall patterns & challenges, but the invitation will be to understand what aspects of the Dharma have been left out of clinical practice, and how that shapes clinical mindfulness itself.
This workshop works with Buddhist sets of ethics that are inherent with all Dharma teachings, rather than clinical ethics. We may discuss how these frameworks differ or are similar, but no teachings on clinical ethics are included.