Mindful Multiculturalism: Exploring Intercultural Perspective through Reflective Awareness

In this experiential workshop, participants will be encouraged and challenged to explore their intercultural attitudes by approaching the totality of their experience with mindful attention. To this end, basic mindfulness skills will be introduced and practiced. Participants will gain a deeper sense of their response and approach to cultural difference as well as specific mindfulness practices to enhance personal awareness and promote the development of a deeper and richer worldview. Research correlates mindfulness practice with several desirable physiological and psychological responses including improved affect regulation and cognitive flexibility. Applying mindfulness to specific aspects of difference will challenge participants to become aware of thoughts, feelings, and attitudes that have been socially constructed and exist in one’s worldview as possible obstacles to deepening one’s understanding and experience of diversity. The presenters propose that mindful attention can support participants in recognizing aspects of their self-experience that are at odds with conscious desires and that approaching those obstacles with nonjudgmental reflective awareness can lead to greater integration. The program will include an introduction to mindfulness, a rationale for the mindful approach to multiculturalism, and experiential learning opportunities to practice session content. Time permitting, results from a phenomenological study on mindful multiculturalism will be shared.