Breaking Bias With Mindfulness

In an era of global anti-racism protests, #metoo, and widespread acknowledgment of racial, ethnic, gender, religious, caste, class, sexual orientation, disability, and other forms of inequalities, many of us continue to feel shame, guilt, confusion, and helplessness on how to address unconscious biases that we may be carrying.

This 7-day meditation course provides an introduction to the five tools that have shown to measurably break bias. Biases are learned habits that affect the mind, body, and heart. These tools will support you in unlearning habits that keep us feeling separate from others and learning new habits to heal our minds, bodies, and hearts to feel more connected with ourselves and others.

Rooted in the science of neuroplasticity, collectively these tools spell out the acronym PRISM®: Perspective-taking, pRosocial behaviors, Individuation, Stereotype replacement, and Mindfulness. Science shows that it takes three to eight weeks of regular practice to build a new habit. With regular practice of PRISM, we can begin to transform habits of stereotyping to break bias and feel the promises of a beloved community in ourselves and our surroundings.

Lección 1: PRISM®: The Toolkit For Breaking Bias To Build A Beloved Community

This lesson provides an overview of the PRISM framework, highlighting its integration of mind, body, and heart practices. We will learn the difference between conscious and unconscious bias, how regularly practicing PRISM tools help break bias, and reflect on the meaning of a beloved community.

Lección 2: Mindfulness: Observing The Mind’s Habit Of Stereotyping

Mindfulness is the bedrock of breaking bias. It is the act of noticing and becoming aware of what is happening in the mind, body, and heart at the moment of contact with another person. In this session, we will learn why mindfulness is the foundation of building new habits. The meditation will support us in noticing our automatic habits of thoughts as we begin detaching ourselves from such conditioned behavior.

Lección 3: Stereotype Replacement: Actively Replacing The Mind’s Habit To Stereotype

Stereotype replacement is the active practice of visualization to break our mind’s habits of putting people into stereotypical boxes. In this session, we hone our mindfulness practice by actively noticing stereotypes and replacing them with positive examples to neutralize the mind’s conditioning.

The meditation will guide us in gently strengthening our mindfulness practice and using the power of visualization to build new habits of thoughts.

Lección 4: Individuation: Cultivating Curiosity & Celebrating Individual Uniqueness

Individuation is a practice that builds on the previous two to cultivate curiosity. This practice allows us to mindfully notice group-based stereotypes that arise in the mind and actively dissociate them from the person we are with so we can be with people for who they are instead of being stuck in our ideas of them.

The meditation will allow us to experience individuation by bringing deeper awareness into the sensations and feelings in our bodies.

Lección 5: Prosocial Behavior: Using Loving-Kindness To Overcome Otherness

Prosocial behaviors are a set of tools that actively incline our minds toward positive feeling states, such as compassion, loving-kindness, gratitude, equanimity, generosity, joy, and forgiveness. When we cultivate these feeling states around the suffering of bias experienced by oneself and others, it helps build boundless resilience and courage.

We will practice a loving-kindness meditation to cultivate and feel the effects of this positive feeling state.

Lección 6: Perspective-Taking: Using Imagination For Unconditional Connection

Perspective-taking is the ultimate tool of radical compassion. It is giving ourselves permission to imagine what it may be like to be in the shoes of another person. It’s what good actors and performers can do on stage—embody the life of another human in such a way that we get chills down our spine.

The meditation will guide us in a visualization practice to feel within us the capacity for radical compassion for ourselves and other people.

Lección 7: Sustaining PRISM Practices: Using The Toolkit To Build A Beloved Community

Science shows that three to eight weeks of practice can dramatically transform our ability to build new habits. Bias is no exception and the routine practices of mindfulness, stereotype replacement, individuation, prosocial behaviors, and perspective-taking have proven to be powerful tools for breaking our biased habits of thought.

In this session, we will review some ways you can incorporate these tools into your daily routine. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our goal is to build a beloved community, and this will require a qualitative shift in our hearts and a quantitative shift in our lives.”

Through these daily practices, we can proactively initiate those shifts to create a world where all people belong everywhere.

Reviews

I highly recommend this practice! We all have biases. This practice helps to acknowledge the biases, but work towards replacing and understanding.

Calming voice and excellent program