ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on yoga, meditation, and internalized oppression that reflects learned and deeply ingrained ideologies. The anti-oppression courses often address the harmful effects of internalized oppression. These effects rarely go so far as to consider it a trauma. The chapter explores some of the complexities of how internalized oppression might manifest in a classroom and how mindfulness might help us work with these situations in productive ways. Mindfulness offers us practical tools that can be used in the moment to reframe our embodied reactions. Learning which tools work for ourselves is part of the discernment that is critical for unlearning internalized oppression. The first step to unlearning internalized oppression is to become deeply aware of how it manifests in each of us as individuals. One of the most critical steps in the unlearning process is critical awareness or what feminist and anti-oppression pedagogy calls self-reflection. Mindful education takes this idea to an even deeper, embodied level.
