There are many benefits to listening to black guided meditations and connecting with the BIPOC community. This community can be supported and connected with increased mindfulness to make them feel more accepted and less alone. Racial injustice affects black, indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) by projecting negative mental health patterns on them, such as depression, anxiety or fear. These can result in a disconnection from self. To avoid this and to boost their mental resilience, the BIPOC community can avail themselves of a range of tools and techniques taken from meditation practices. Many apps and platforms have been developed to support the BIPOC community and we will explore these in the article.
Introduction
The BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) community experiences a lot of racial injustice; this can take a heavy toll on the mental health of the community. It is important to find tools and techniques to calm the mind and body and return to your true self to counter the stress that comes from personal, environmental or racial trauma. Meditation is one of these tools that can help reduce stress and reconnect them with their true identity. From a place of calmness, it becomes easier to reaffirm their place in the world and accept themselves for all the wonderful things they are.
Meditation in Black Culture
Indigenous cultures have used many forms of meditation and spiritual practices to enhance their well-being over the past years. Many healing meditations, visualization, manifestation and contemplative meditation have been used as helpful tools to connect with their indigenous roots and ancestral culture.
Due to the extensive use of meditation over long periods, there have been many proven benefits, such as reduced stress, a boost in happiness and positivity, increased resilience and an even greater ability to deal with anxiety, depression and pain. As well as balancing the mind and inviting calmness, meditation can help your body and mind feel good. These benefits then extend into creating a positive mindset that can be shared with others. As you start to share your meditation practice with others, you may notice that a meditation community can be formed. This creates solidarity and companionship, so you never feel lost or alone.
Inviting regular meditation into black culture can help to solidify community and connection so that healing of racial issues can take place.
Picking your Meditation Goals
To stay centred in your meditation practice and to find the right motivation for yourself, it is important to choose meditation goals that you can connect with to remind you why you started your meditation practice in the first place.
To choose your meditation goals, you may like to tune into your heart with this small meditation:
Heart-centred Way to Choose your Goals
- Place your hands over your heart centre, connect with your breath and allow yourself to relax comfortably.
- Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to tap into what your body, mind and soul want or need today.
- Ask yourself – What do I need? Why did I come here to meditate today? What am I seeking?
- Allow time and space for the answers to surface. Remember that answers may come from words, thoughts, images, sensations or memories.
- If you have any other questions that you would like the answers to, you can ask them now.
- Take one final deep breath, accepting the answers and wisdom you just received.
- Open your eyes and write down the answers you received.
- In the space beside each answer – write down a goal related to that answer. For example, you may have received the answer that you need more inner peace – now you can write your goal of meditation as “I want to connect with my inner place of peace.”
- Allow these goals to inspire you to return to your meditation practice daily.
- You can stick the notes on the wall or keep them by your bed as a constant reminder of why you started in the first place.
Suppose you do choose to meditate as a BIPOC group. In that case, you may even like to set group meditation goals such as overcoming racial injustice, feeling supported and connected as a community or reducing general stress and anxiety.
Your goals should make you feel good so that you are motivated and inspired to achieve them through meditation.
Black Guided Meditation Scripts
If you enjoy listening to guided meditations, you can connect with some of these guided meditations for black women by black women.
Black Girl in Om is a platform that promotes wellbeing-based meditations, support and podcasts for the black community.
There is also an app called Liberate that connects the mind, heart and music. There are many recorded meditations by BIPOC teachers who want to support a diverse and global community on this app.
Black Zen is another service run by two sisters that release weekly podcasts, meditations and general support for the BIPOC community.
The topics discussed on these platforms create a sense of connection and community to which any community member can tune in. Being in touch with other BIPOC community members can also help you to feel supported and less alone in your journey toward improving mental health and resilience.
The Bottomline
Get the support you need by reaching out to other BIPOC community members so you can draw on this support when times get tough for you. You are never alone and there are many guided or self-paced meditations that you can turn to when you need to reconnect with your true self. Take time to explore a variety of meditations and see how they feel for yourself.
If you are seeking to challenge yourself to begin meditation, you may like to sign up for our 30 days Meditation Challenge followed by our 200 Hrs TTC Course to keep you on track!
