Meditation for Climate Activists and the Climate Conscious: Session 1, Fall 2024
Mon, Nov 11, 2024
10:00 AM–11:00 AM
This 60-min online meditation series will take place virtually via Zoom. Register below to attend and we’ll email you the Zoom link.
Connecting to your breath and body
Join us Monday, November 11th at 10 AM for the first guided meditation session “Connecting to your breath and body ” of this Fall 2024 series. This season, meditation guide Anaïs G. Duplan will provide you with some postures and breathing techniques that you can use in times of strife. This 60-min online meditation series hosted by Anaïs G. Duplan will take place on a bi-weekly basis from November to December, 2024. Each meditation session will begin with a talk by Anaïs G. Duplan, followed by guided yoga postures (yin, long durational holds), breathing techniques (pranayama), and a discussion and Q&A session.
This season will focus on the following themes: (1) Connecting to your breath and body, (2) Noticing tension and inviting release, (3) Witnessing another and being witnessed, and (4) Breathing through conflict, inspired by Jennifer Patterson’s The Power of Breathwork.
We will engage the following pranayama techniques:
- Yogic deep breathing: Incorporates three levels of breathing through the diaphragm, chest, and collar bones, to utilize the full capacity of the lungs in the process of breathing.
- Skull shining: Rapid, diaphragmatic breathing, forcefully contracting the abdomen, expelling excess buildup of energy.
- Humming breath: Humming sound to create vibration throughout the head and out the crown chakra, enabling concentration.
- Bellows breath: Helps with breath retention as a compliment to the skull shining, but has more to do with retention of energy, grounding back into one’s core energy.
To join this season of the mediation series, please fill out this registration form. Zoom links will be sent out prior to the start of the series. Space is limited.
Fall 2024 sessions will be held on the following dates:
- Monday, November 11th, 10 AM EST on Zoom— Session 1: Connecting to your breath and body
- Monday, November 25th, 10 AM EST on Zoom— Session 2: Noticing tension and inviting release
- Monday, December 9th, 10 AM EST on Zoom— Session 3: Witnessing another and being witnessed
- Monday, December 16th, 10 AM EST on Zoom— Session 4: Breathing through conflict
Meditation Guide
Anaïs Duplan
Anaïs Duplan is a trans* poet, curator, and artist. He is the author of the book I NEED MUSIC;Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture; Take This Stallion; and the chapbook, Mount Carmel and the Blood of Parnassus. He was a 2017-2019 joint Public Programs fellow at the MoMA and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2021 received a Marian Goodman fellowship from Independent Curators International for his research on Black experimental documentary. In 2016, he founded the Center for Afrofuturist Studies, an artist residency program for artists of color, based at Iowa City’s artist-run organization Public Space One. He is the recipient of the 2021 QUEER|ART|PRIZE for Recent Work, and a 2022 Whiting Award in Nonfiction. Duplan is a professor of postcolonial literature at Bennington College, and has taught poetry at The New School, Columbia University, and Sarah Lawrence College, and others. Visit his website here for more information.
Meditation for Climate Activists and the Climate-Conscious is a two-year, monthly meditation series led by trans* poet, artist, and meditation teacher Anaïs G. Duplan. “We are in dire need of heightened attention and action around the climate crisis, particularly the way it manifests as environmental racism. By engaging in collective breath work and tending with delicate urgency to our inner worlds, climate activists can both build an inner resilience and tap into an energetic harmony with the earth in order to support their efforts at addressing these life threatening issues.”
This meditation course will center embodied wisdom around ecojustice, racial justice, and mindfulness. Anaïs will lead participants through a series of meditative postures, exercises, and knowledge sharing/production, guided by scholars and practitioners studied in these disciplines.
Through the series, the Center for the Humanities hopes to enact and advance new forms of creative, activist, and scholarly care that more effectively supports the people and organizations leading on the frontlines of climate change.
