Mindfulness is a key principle of the Ubuntuworks Project. Being mindful means focusing our awareness to be fully present in the moment. Curiosity and awareness can result in gaining insight into our patterns of thinking, emotions, and behaviors. Furthermore, mindfulness helps ease stress and anxiety, improves concentration, and increases overall well-being. Therefore, mindfulness not only helps us know ourselves better but it also helps us appreciate each other.
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“Let Your Light Shine: How Mindfulness Can Empower Children and Rebuild Communities”
by Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez; published by Penguin Random House (2022)
Book Review
This transformative book explores the profound impact of yoga and mindfulness practices on individuals and communities, emphasizing the power of self-awareness, compassion, and connection, especially in education.
The authors, founders of The Holistic Life Foundation, share their experiences of teaching yoga, meditation, and breathwork to at-risk kids in Baltimore schools over the past two decades and draw on their own childhood experiences in a poverty-stricken and violent neighborhood in the city. Their research highlights the positive impact these practices have had on the students, helping them develop qualities such as patience, empathy, resolve, and the motivation for meaningful social change.
The remarkable results achieved by their programs include a significant decrease in suspension rates and a remarkable increase in graduation rates in the participating schools. The book provides practical mindfulness and meditation tools that can be taught to children, enabling them to engage in similar transformative work within their own communities.
“Let Your Light Shine captures the originality, insight and most importantly, the brother-love that make Ali, Andy, and Atman’s work so vital and effective. Blending wisdom from their own Baltimore-based Black community and family with 2,500-year-old teachings originally offered in India, this trauma-sensitive, engaging book is just the contribution to the mindfulness movement that we need right now.”
—Rhonda V. Magee, MA, JD, author of The Inner Work of Racial Justice
Learn more and read an excerpt from Let Your Light Shine here.
Photo: Cristian Escobar