Honoring a legacy through mindfulness

Washington State University celebrated its first Mindfulness Takeover Monday, honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a slate of activities including films, panel discussions, workshops and even a yoga class.

While it may not be immediately clear how the legacy of King and yoga might intersect, yoga instructor and WSU Recreation Program Director Joanne Greene said King himself was personally interested in mindfulness.

Green said yoga is just one way to practice the mindfulness King admired and aspired to in his own activism. Mindfulness is a technique deployed in yoga and other practices and is often described as being deeply present or aware in the moment.

Greene said King was friends with a famous Vietnamese mindfulness teacher named Thich Nhat Hanh who combined the practice with social engagement. King even nominated Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967, saying in his nomination letter, “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam.”

“One of the principles in yoga, one of the practices is nonviolence or ‘ahimsa’ and so that was our connection in there as well … yoga also teaches compassion and nonviolence,” Greene said, noting even the movement component of yoga fosters awareness of movement. “The more opportunities you have to practice this mindfulness, the more opportunities you’ll have to utilize that for good (or) for change — to practice that nonviolence and not just to benefit you, but to benefit other people.”

Alison Krowley said she’s been practicing mindfulness through yoga for almost 15 years, which is why she was attracted to the day’s events. She said because of the reflective nature of the practice, it promotes empathy and gives people the tools to foster greater understanding of one another.

“It’s the framework to get you to have those uncomfortable conversations because racism is still alive, social injustice is still alive and mindfulness makes you aware of it,” Krowley said. “Mindfulness brings awareness and then it allows you to bring together the community of people that should be sharing those stories.”

Organizer Trymaine Gaither, who works in WSU’s Honors College, said he first had the idea for the event following a road-rage incident where another driver followed his car to a gas station to accost him while his pregnant wife and young son sat nearby. The other driver — a white man — approached Gaither’s car with his hand behind his back, punched one of the windows and hurled racial slurs.

“I thought he was going to shoot me,” Gaither said.

When he told his friends and colleagues about the incident, Gaither said he was commonly met with surprise that this could happen on the Palouse. Shortly after, he said he decided to investigate ways to promote mindfulness as a way to address social justice. One of the results of that effort was Monday’s Mindfulness Takeover, which Gaither said he hopes is the first of many.

“My background is mainly in activism so I’m really a student of this mindfulness stuff — very new to it,” Gaither said. “But it was a beautiful practice that I knew we could use to start uncovering our biases, our assumptions that we had about one another, and creating safe spaces for compassion and love to have more difficult conversations.”

Scott Jackson can be reached at (208) 883-4636, or by email to sjackson@dnews.com.