Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment with kindness and curiosity (from iBme at https://ibme.info/resources/)

You may also like to read Jessica Morey’s (participant at the Mindful Leadership Online Training Conference (www. in. gr and https://cyclades24.gr) article Finding my way

‘Discernment includes seeing that even as we attempt to see our children for who they are, we also cannot fully know who they are or where their lives will take them. We can only love them, and accept them, and honour the mystery of their being’, Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn, Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting

Viveka Chen: Undoing bias from the inside out from Mindful Leadership Online Training Conference (www. in. gr and https://cyclades24.gr)

Viveka Chen talks about how bias operates to keep us repeating limited loops of perception and ways of responding and how this often operates at an unconscious level. She mentions that this implicit bias can occur through our internalizing the Other or certain groups of people as inferior or dangerous during our early years within our familial contexts and then later on at school, through the media, in our social groups, etc, and how it negatively impacts our judgment, decision making and behaviour. She refers to research findings that show that the amygdala (fear response) of participants who are, for instance, shown pictures of people of colour is activated. This occurs automatically and under their conscious awareness. Often our conscious values and ideas about the world and others may be in contradiction with these underlying schemas. Finally, she talks about the possibility to transcend implicit bias and racist attitudes – often below our conscious awareness – through practising mindfulness, which can allow us to become aware of this, and then engage in exploration of our fears, cognitive processing and reframing.