Editor's Note

Abstract

A few years ago, I participated in an eighteenth-month leadership training program for professors considering moving into administration. One of the many presentations for the group was titled “Mindfulness: Waking Up to the Leader You Really Are!” I was excited for what I thought would be a combination of my scholarly field and potential managerial aspirations. The bulk of the presentation consisted of detailing the “evidence-based research on the effectiveness of mindfulness” by a white woman PhD in the College of Medicine. The presenter often used the phrase “we finally have the scientific evidence for ________ [insert effective Eastern body-based practice here].” She then provided anecdotes from a seemingly unexpected place to convince us that mindfulness and practices like yoga actually work. We watched a short video of an avuncular white man talking about the power of yoga, which ended with a footnote from Gandhi. We were to be impressed that American construction workers found yoga helpful, as if they didn’t use and understand their bodies far better than academics. By the end of the session, I was more than a bit uncomfortable, and when we went around the table for comments, I simply said, “You had me at thousands of years of Indian spiritual healing practices.” I don’t mean to sound flip or to disparage this work, for, no doubt, there were some in the room that needed to see the composite data points and hear testimonies from white Americans. It was neither the time nor place for me to suggest unpacking the false progressivist assumptions that Eastern healing practices have been waiting around for validation from the scientific method, or the implied coopting of this body of knowledge from a people not represented in the room into packages more palatable for those in the room, allowing them to be more comfortable and open to this type of embodied knowledge.