Dr. Angel Acosta joins Mirabai to share about the healing-centered work he offers at the intersection of social justice, mindfulness, and wholeness.
Dr. Angel Acosta works to bridge the fields of leadership, social justice & mindfulness. He completed his Ed.D. in the Curriculum and Teaching Department at Teachers College, Columbia University with research exploring healing-centered education as a promising framework for educational leadership development and community care. As a member of the 400 Years of Inequality Project, he designed the Contemplating 400 Years of Inequality Experience to support communities with understanding structural inequality through a mindfulness-based and contemplative approach. He is Director of the Garrison Institute’s Fellowship Program and serves as Creative Director of the NYC Healing Collective. More info: DrAngelAcosta.com
Links from this episode: Healing-Centered Education Summit in October | Healing-Centered Education: Primer Course
Healing-Centered Work // Contemplative Practices
Welcoming, mindfulness and social justice leader, Dr. Angel Acosta to the Walking Each Other Home podcast, Mirabai invites him to share about the ‘healing-centered work’ that is the base of all of his core initiatives intersecting the realms of social justice work, leadership, mindfulness, community care, contemplative practices, ending inequality, and healing wounds.
“Healing-centered education is an extension and offshoot of contemplative practice because they both mutually influence each other. They’re a part of ancient practices we’ve had for a longtime as a human community.” – Dr. Angel Acosta
Dive into the art of spiritual healing with RamDev, on Ep. 68 of Healing at the Edge
‘400 Years of Inequality’ Project (17:00)
Prompted by Mirabai, Dr. Acosta tells about his transformative and potent ‘400 Years of Inequality’ project. 400 Years of Inequality—created in direct response to the 400 years anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to Jamestown in 1619—invites us all to contemplate and reconcile this difficult period in human history.
“Groups throughout the U.S. started to think about what it mean to engage in intentional curation of material, experiences, communication campaigns, to enable the country to reckon with this 400 year period.” – Dr. Angel Acosta
Dr. David Ragland PhD and Konda Mason explore slavery, reparations, and truth telling, on Ep. 10 of the Brown Rice Hour
Fragmentation & Polarization // Wholeness & Presence (31:00)
Speaking to the power of healing-centered practices to help bring us more into the wholeness of ourselves in the present moment, Mirabai and Dr. Acosta offer antidotes for the fragmentation and polarization we are witnessing in conjunction with the difficult circumstances and turbulent ideologies of unfolding current events.
“There’s something about contemplative practice, mindfulness practice, awareness practice, that enables us to become more present in the moment, experience stress reduction in the moment, and a sense of calm; but I think it also enables us to feel our own sense of wholeness in the moment – that’s pretty significant.” – Dr. Angel Acosta
Explore love, compassion, human rights, and motivation for activism, on Ep. 140 of the Metta Hour
Intergenerational Trauma & Healing // Guided Meditation Practice (47:00)
Mirabai and Dr. Acosta dig into intergenerational trauma and healing – exploring resilience, emotional/psychic transmuting through arts/dancing, and working through difficult and engrained experiences like colonialization using ancient modalities handed down through generations as well. To bring the episode home, Dr. Acosta leads a meditation practice.
