Meditation for Climate Activists and the Climate Conscious: Session 1, Spring 2025
Thu, Feb 27, 2025
12:00 PM–1:00 PM
All are welcome. This 60-min online meditation series will take place virtually via Zoom. Register below to attend and we’ll email you the Zoom link.
What is the purpose of practice?
Join us Thursday, February 27th at 12 PM EST for this guided meditation session “What is the purpose of practice?” facilitated by Anaïs G. Duplan. This session will focus on the end-goal of meditation practice, revisiting a touchy topic in Buddhism: are we allowed to “want” enlightenment? The session will also discuss the goals of activist practice and the relative merits of being goal- versus process-oriented.
This series is open to the public and encouraged for community organizers who work around climate justice or social justice issues. From facilitating meetings to navigating physical reactions to stress and escalation, this workshop is intended for anyone who wants to approach their work with care, thought, and reflectiveness.
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. All are welcome. Option to attend the meditation in-person will be announced soon.
This 60-min monthly online meditation series hosted by Anaïs G. Duplan will take place from February to May 2025 on Zoom. 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 series is open to all people and organizations, leading, and working on the frontlines of climate change activism.
This season will focus on the following themes: (1) What is the purpose of practice? (2) Meditation for Endings (3) Confronting hatred, anger, and despair and (4) Welcoming personal change.
Spring 2025 sessions will be held on the following dates:
- Thursday, February 27th, 12 PM EST on Zoom— Session 1: What is the purpose of practice?
- Thursday, March 27th, 12 PM EST on Zoom— Session 2: Meditation for Endings
- Thursday, April 24th, 12 PM EST on Zoom— Session 3: Confronting hatred, anger, and despair
- Thursday, May 22nd, 12 PM EST on Zoom— Session 4: Welcoming personal change
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.
