Contemplative practices, meditation, or nap time mid class-or is it all three? Each class we take the time to look inward and are guided through a meditation that reflects our course content in some form. Honestly, this form of meditation is not for me.

The contemplative practices in our class are heavy, often broaching the subject of social racism, white supremacy, and even our own death-all topics that to me take more time than the allotted fifteen minutes in class to reflect and meditate on. I don’t usually partake, but I always respect my classmates and sit quietly to not distract from their experiences. In my mind, meditation is supposed to be calming, centering, a time of peace in a busy day to help get my mind and body back on track. Taking the time to meditate about the heavy issues of our world is difficult, a task that should not be taken lightly or with brevity.

https://www.contemplativemind.org/practices/tree

When I googled “contemplative practice” this was the first thing that came up, the tree of contemplative practice. This image gave me a greater insight to what a contemplative practice truly is. It is more than meditation, is about action and intention. This is something I can appreciate as I begin to understand it more.

With all this said, one contemplative practice that stuck with me more than some of the others was when we were guided to take the feeling of white supremacy and racism and to feel the weight in our right hand as our left hand felt the weight-or lack of weight-of freedom. Once we distinguished those two feelings, we were asked to squish them together as we folded our hands and to think about how our hands felt. The weight of freedom ad racism all mashed together and what it did to our hands, mind, and body. I don’t know why this stuck with me, maybe it was because it caught me off guard-maybe it was because I focuses on the emotions linked to these two topics a little more than I usually do. Most likely, it is because I get to experience freedom in my everyday life. I am white, I can speak my mind, I can wear what I choose, I have freewill-all of these freedoms I take for granted and I feel as if this practice reminded me of how lucky I am.