Mindful Social Justice: Begin Within
Mindful Social Justice: Begin Within
Based on the idea that small personal changes can have a huge impact on the world, this course provides strategies for increasing cultural inclusion and challenging systems of social inequity beginning within. Research shows that the ancient practice of mindfulness can serve as a tool not only for increasing health/wellness and decreasing stress, but also to challenge our implicit biases. We can use mindfulness for personal empowerment, culturally inclusive leadership, and social and environmental justice. Taught by Dena Samuels, Ph.D.
3 credit hours
UCCS fees plus additional program fees
Register with UCCS first!
Mindful Social Justice: Begin Within
Ignite your mindfulness journey with Dr. Samuels as your Guide!
The course offers a range of mindfulness practices and activities to:
- increase your personal empowerment
- live a more meaningful life
- connect more authentically with others, especially across social differences
- develop your culturally inclusive leadership
- engage in social and environmental justice from the inside out
Each session of the course features Dr. Samuels who provides deeper insight on your mindfulness path including guided meditations, journaling, and other activities. The course gives you the chance to reflect even more deeply on your own goals, set intentions, recognize and challenge the limiting beliefs that may be keeping you from living your best life and unlocking your potential.
Unlimited Access To The Course
Praise from Former Students
100% of students agree or strongly agree that this course:
- improved their health & well being
- offered support for them to live a more meaningful life
- provided strategies for increasing cultural inclusion in their life
Course Module Descriptions
Module 1: Welcome and Introduction
In this first session, Dr. Dena Samuels introduces the online course, based on her book, The Mindfulness Effect, and its accompanying journal. Dr. Samuels offers insight about mindfulness, meditation, and its impact on our world and our lives. She provides some suggestions on how to make best use of the course and how to incorporate mindfulness into our daily lives. Learn the difference between mindfulness and meditation and join Dr. Samuels as she guides us in exploring our hopes and our intentions for the course.
Module 2
In session two, Dr. Samuels describes the benefits of mindfulness. She offers deeper insights into the ideas and techniques shared in chapters one and two from The Mindfulness Effect, including who we really are beyond what we’ve been taught about ourselves and even beyond our experiences. In this session, we explore mindfulness techniques to practice seeing ourselves as the observer of our thoughts, our emotions, and our stories, and to better understand the impact of our social conditioning.
Module 3
In session three, Dr. Samuels explains how mindfulness can be used both for our own healing and for social justice work. She demonstrates how we can use mindfulness as a tool for observing and challenging the ways that social privilege manifests in our lives. She also explains how spiritual bypassing can work to include some people and exclude others. Dr. Samuels demonstrates how we can gain important messages from our bodies to live healthier, more integrated lives. She guides us through meditations that expand our inner light through connecting to our body.
Module 4
Session four dives even deeper into mindful healing. Dr. Samuels draws on Michael Singer’s book The Untethered Soul to help us understand the challenging but transformational process of becoming free from the triggers and stuck feelings that cause us so much suffering. Dr. Samuels explains how we can work with our “thorns” & “dark box” to become mindfully liberated. Once free from the constraints of social conditioning, we can dream big and set intentions for a meaningful life!
Module 5
Session five provides activities that help us envision what a mindful life might look like. Dr. Samuels offers appreciation for operating in a space of expanded awareness and experiencing our “Big Ideas.” She also provides insights on how to work with the feeling of doubt and the difference between setting an intention and releasing it vs. focusing on an attachment to the outcome. Knowing and believing that we are enough is central to living a purposeful and joyful life.
Module 6
In session six, we are asked to challenge and work with our biases without blame or judgement for the benefit of social justice for all. Dr. Samuels asks what does it mean to live a conscious life? She also delves into culturally inclusive leadership development by inviting us to become more aware of our biases. Awareness of bias is the first step to minimizing its impact on our interactions with others. She provides specific strategies for challenging our biases, and intervening when we witness bias and/or microaggressions in our workplace, in our relationships, and in our lives.
Module 7
In session seven, Dr. Samuels draws a connection between cultural inclusion, diversity & equity, and interconnectedness to the planet in relation to social justice. She guides us through mindfulness practices that connect us with the systemic forms of disconnection, isolation, and discrimination that impact all of our lives. She also invites us to consider our connection to the planet and explains why it is such an important mindfulness practice. She invites us to formulate a plan for becoming or continuing a practice of being an agent of change.
Module 8
In the final module of our self-paced course, we conclude with the teachings and takeaways in the final chapter of The Mindfulness Effect. Join Dr. Samuels as she guides you through several final meditations and tips on creating a lifelong mindfulness practice.
Course Benefits
- Deep dive into Mindfulness, meditation, and connection
- Learn to let go of the patterns that no longer serve you
- Gain access to our online FB community to post questions, share intentions, successes, and more!
- Quick link access to the Resources, TedTalks, and YouTube videos mentioned in the book
- Gain access to many Additional Resources provided to uplevel your mindfulness journey!
Course Expectations Include:
- Watching all 8 sessions at your own pace
- Engaging in a daily mindfulness meditation practice throughout the course (and beyond!)
- Reading 2 chapters before each session
- Completing the meditations and activities in each chapter
- Journaling after each mindfulness practice and activity
- Books required for the course sold separately
Please purchase required books separately
- The Mindfulness Effect
- The Mindfulness Effect Journal & Practice Planner
- Holthaus, G. (2008). Learning Native Wisdom: What Traditional Cultures Teach Us about Subsistence, Sustainability, and Spirituality.University Press of Kentucky.
- Nichtern, E. (2007). One City: A Declaration of Interdependence.Wisdom Publications.
Individuals who finish the course are eligible for a certificate of completion!
After completing the course, students reported that they would have happily spent $500 for this course!
Now Only $297!
Includes all 8 video sessions for one year.
Academic Credit Requires Separate Registration and purchase of books.
