---

ATTENDANCE POLICY

Learners who complete this 2.5-hour course will receive a certificate of completion from the Academy.

This course is the first in a 3-part series.

DESCRIPTION

This 3-part series will allow participants to explore their grief and its possible constituent elements (fear, anxiety, outrage, apathy, hopelessness, despair, and more) as they are experienced in relation to the legacies of loss in many marginalized communities, including those associated with gentrification and the geo-socio-political realities of our time. Participants will gain experience with life-affirming contemplative practices that can be used toward ongoing personal, interpersonal, and communal insight, empowerment, and transformation.

Session I, Processing Sociopolitical Grief with Joyful Empowerment, aims to help service providers and all participants heal from and creatively transform the wounds of inequality and all types of displacement, as we move towards authentic community building grounded in truth.

Recognizing that service providers are working within complex and, at times, dehumanizing and demoralizing power structures, the practices and approaches shared in this workshop also aim to supply participants with strategies for joyful resilience even when facing losses and difficulties.

We may not always recognize the losses that occur when communities are gentrified: prior residents witness a loss of a sense of home, a loss of cultural landmarks, and often the resistance and liberatory legacy of a community. New residents acknowledge the tension of the transition as they wrestle with their aspirations for belonging alongside guilt, shame, or defensiveness about their occupying spaces minoritized communities have carved out for themselves in a hostile world. This session will allow participants to explore what has been lost due to injustice and honor the grief that comes with gentrification, marginalization and other forms of oppression.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Participants will:

• Discuss the work of scholar-activists who recognize the impact of neighborhood shifts on physical and psychological health
• Use meditative practices to take a deeper look at the internal shifts that may have occurred (subtly or profoundly) in response to locational shifts
• Engage with affinity group work and prompts for personal introspection, reflection, and group dialogue to support service providers and all participants in dealing with displacement and community heritage loss in a way that supports growth and empowered, just action
• Experience contemplative practices that foster a life-affirming sense of humor and joyful, empowered resistance to injustice
• Deepen awareness of, and capacity to engage with, diverse contemplative practices in a non-culturally appropriative manner
• Learn to acknowledge and support individuals’ and communities’ organic contemplative practices and culture-based forms of grieving and healing

WHAT TO EXPECT

This workshop combines teaching, reflection, discussion, and opportunities to experience a range of contemplative practices firsthand. Participants will be invited to contribute to this interactive workshop in different ways, including by joining on-camera wherever possible.

Session I will include:

• Introductions designed to help us each notice what is joyful and what is challenging about our locational and sociocultural positionality.
• Overview of contemplative practice as a resource that can aid us even in the shadow of structural violence where we may feel powerless, as we move from being reactive to being responsive.
• Practicing with Black music (Jazz, R&B, Blues, and Gospel music) as a contemplative resource for embodying justice and joy.
• Practicing to steep ourselves in fierce compassion and discomfort resilience, which supports us in providing services within a complex and flawed system, to remain buoyant amidst many difficulties and challenges.
• 15 minute break
• Overview of the theory and research on marginalization, displacement, oppression, and physical and mental health.
• Practicing to recognize subtle losses that reside in the body and in the unconscious; to reclaim mental health after witnessing or experiencing displacement or other unjust loss.
• Practicing to transform guilt and shame about unearned privilege, or oppressive situational and/or cultural positionality, into empowered action for justice-driven internal and communal transformation.
• Reimagining the ways we conceptualize our roles, and how we accompany and serve community members seeking care, by applying this new knowledge and awareness (breakout groups and discussion).
• Next steps for practice: a facilitated goal-setting activity to set goals for your personal well-being and that of your clients based on specific challenges.

ELIGIBILITY

This course is open to staff of any non-profit social service or behavioral health care organization that delivers services in NYC, including community-based organizations, government agencies, mutual aid groups, and community gardens.

This course is part of a 3-part series. Participants are encouraged to attend all 3 sessions, which build on each other, but are welcome to attend any session.

Register for Session II, Moving with the Movements Toward More Just Behavioral Health. 

Register for Session III, Rewriting an Equitable Future of Human Services Provision.