Beth Berila
With the embodiment piece, you also get think you get this different layer of what is it that you’re really deeply longing for? Not just in your head, but like, if you follow this gut, what are you longing for? What’s it going to orient you to? Like a sunflower, orient to the sun? Right? And then from that place, what what emerges? What do you want to create? Because the world probably needs it?

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host, Keith Edwards. Today I’m joined by Dr. Beth Berila to discuss her new book, Integrating Mindfulness into Anti-Oppression Pedagogy. The first version of this right here this is the first version came out in 2015. And I read it on an airplane, I still remember the flight and where it’s sitting. As I read through that it’s one of my favorites, I come back to it often and recommend it often. Today we’re discussing her fully revised version that is now available for you to purchase. We’ll talk about the new way she’s thinking about this, how to put it into practice and some cautions along the way. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s of us work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays find details about this episode, or browse the archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life with technology platforms and empower institutions to make data driven decisions. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his. I’m a speaker, author and coach, helping leaders and organizations make transformations for leadership, learning and equity. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. I am broadcasting my from my home on my side of Minneapolis at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. You’ll find out how that’s relevant here in a moment. Beth, welcome to you. Thank you for being here. I’m so excited to be in this conversation with you. For folks who don’t know you, why don’t you tell them a little bit about yourself? Sure.

Beth Berila
Thank you, Keith, so much for inviting me on this podcast and for being a long standing colleague, really value your work and love. I’m looking forward to this conversation. I am situated in South Minneapolis, you are in northeast, so we are in the same city. Kind of weird that we’re still on screen. But you know, zooms better for recording. And thank you for the kind words of my book about my book, I really appreciate that, particularly since I value your work so much. And this I think will be a rich conversation since we have a lot of common interests in approaches in our work. About me, I am a Gender and Women’s Studies professor and director of the Gender and Women’s Studies program and professor in the ethnic Gender and Women’s Studies Department at St. Cloud State University, been there for over 20 years now, where a lot of this work was birthed. I’m also an equity coach and consultant doing transformational leadership work. I facilitate workshops and other programs that sit at the nexus of social justice work, embodiment, Earth centered nature approaches, and just doing our best to work towards more liberated worlds in community with one another. I also just launched a podcast which you are a guest on. Thank you for that called Change making connections, which is an opportunity to talk with other change agents from a variety variety of different fields about the joys and challenges of working towards social change. And I’m an author, as you mentioned, and the speaker, I do a lot of speaking around why and how we should integrate mindfulness and embodiment in our work, anti oppression, pedagogy and learnings. So I’ll pause there, but I’m really looking forward to talking with you about this.

Keith Edwards
Well, I will say I’ve had a had an opportunity to sit in on one of your workshops that you did. The nice thing about COVID. And doing all of this is you were here doing it in California and I was able to join. So I got to sit on a workshop. And it’s you’re really great at how you do that and bringing content and the process. And I think we’re gonna get a sense of that here. So this is the most basics, I know that we’ll get into all the details of all the things you’ve added since the first iteration. But let’s just talk about this big idea. At the most macro level. Why integrate mindfulness into anti oppression pedagogy? And how so the wow. Yeah,

Beth Berila
thank you for that. Let me first say that I am a faculty member. So a lot of my work comes out of my experiences in the classroom, but Gender and Women’s Studies has always worked very closely with our partners in student affairs we have we are one of the disciplines that has always understood the holistic student and that the classroom always works in tandem with advising with with student programming with identity centers with athletics with the Counseling Center. And so I highly value all that work. And I do think some of the ideas I’ve offered, even if they are sometimes situated in the classroom, are directly applicable. So let me start there. I’ll just

Keith Edwards
say I really found that when I was reading through it that there was sort of frame for the classroom, but really relevant. I didn’t have to make any translations just like yeah, this is how we would do this, and students in workshops and meetings and conversations in one on ones and retreat in so many different aspects. Yeah, perfect.

Beth Berila
So with that foundation, you know, I’ve been doing social justice, teaching around anti oppression and more liberatory co creation of social justice for many, many years. And I began to find that, that the, there were deeper levels of our being that more traditional teachings about that content was not adequately reaching, embodied reactions, emotional gut reactions, learned messages, that are so deeply ingrained that they’re often below our consciousness level. And it looks very different for people who are marginalized, and for people who are socialized into the more dominant group, and yet many of us hold both of those identity positions. And so I found that mindfulness was my path into exploring, how do we hold social justice principles? At the various levels of our beings? How do we align with kind of heart centered ways of being in the world? How do we connect with our values, what we care about, and then learn how to enact that, like, bring our values in alignment with how we show up. And in order to do that, we need to dismantle and unlearn some of them the ways of being and messages from an oppressive society that bring us out of alignment. Number one, if we’re regularly targeted by oppression, then we probably have a lot of trauma to heal individually, collectively, intergenerationally. And that is always in our classroom, whether we name it or not, or in our programs or college campuses, whether we name it or not. We need to develop the self awareness to understand what is happening for us at any given moment. What are the learned messages, and do we want to embody that or not, like create that pause where we can really reflect and we need the compassion to understand that everybody else in our community is also struggling with a process, it may be a different process than our own, right? And then we need to tap into radical imagination to imagine a better world and for me, mindfulness and various embodied practices are really beautiful complements with social justice, as long as they are in partnership together. And we can talk about that a little bit later. It allowed me to deepen my pedagogy around those issues and offer students a wider range of tools in their tool belt, so to speak, to build their capacity.

Keith Edwards
Well, I want to sort of veer off the questions that we because I’m curious, because I guess I’m hearing sort of there’s a more traditional neck up intellectual frames, models, critical analysis, right. And we’re keeping all of that and adding into that embodied emotion. Other things. When you started to bring some of that in. What did you see shift in the students? When you went from a more intellectual, conceptual way of talking about justice and equity and liberation, to also an embodied emotion recognition? What did you see shift in students?

Beth Berila
On some level, Gender and Women’s Studies has always been more than kind of the rational head up kind of thing. And I think my, my foray into mindfulness and embodied work, deepened that approach and also offered me different ways of offering students paths to address it. And so for instance, I’ve seen students develop deeper self awareness, much more compassion for themselves. We, in the book, I talk about condition tendencies, for instance, which comes out of the Stormzy Institute in generative Cymatics traditions of Cymatics. And it’s the same. unpack

Keith Edwards
a little bit of a lot of terms, people might not be familiar now.

Beth Berila
I know. Sorry about that. So it’s important to me to give credit to where I learned things. And so one of the traditions of somatics that I studied was from the Strozier Institute and generative somatics they’re kind of partnered in different ways. I go into that in the book, but one of the things that I learned from them that really resonated in my heart and I’ve found really resonates for students, is this idea of tendencies. And the way they talk about that, as I have learned it is that society shapes us, we learn different ways of being in the society based on our lived experiences, which social justice teaches us is shaped by, you know, racial power dynamics, gender, power dynamics, sexual power, dynamics, all of those things, right. And so we learn those shapes. And we do what we do to take care of ourselves and try to protect what, what this tradition of Cymatics calls safety, dignity, and belonging, that whatever we do, is designed to protect our own safety, dignity, and belonging, those are all like human needs that we all need. And we learn certain ways of showing up in whatever experiences we are in to protect those things. And what I need to do to protect that, for me is different than what you will likely need to do to protect that from you. But we learned them as habits. At some point, we may find that those habits don’t serve us anymore, that we outgrow them, we maybe don’t need them in every situation, maybe they’re driving us rather than being able to intentionally choose Okay, in this situation, I need it. And this other situation, I don’t, maybe they do on some level take care of us. But they’re not allowing a kind of expression that we really longed for. And so we might want different ways of showing up. But the piece that really like resonated so deeply in my heart and really helped me heal, and I’ve seen it land for students, since I’ve started sharing it with them is that we come by those tendencies, honestly, as generative Cymatics says that those things, those patterns were there to take care of us. And so we don’t need to demonize that. We don’t need to, to, like, turn on ourselves and be super judgmental about that tendency, because we did what we could with the capacity we have, right, so there’s a compassionate level that comes and an understanding that says who, maybe I don’t necessarily want to embody that now. But boy, thank you for taking care of me when, as you could when you could. And now, maybe I want different choices. Or maybe I still want to be able to use that when I need it. But in other moments, maybe not. And so the combination of deep compassion for oneself and an understanding of how power dynamics and socialization has led to particular habits, but then open also opening possibilities for different ways of showing up, I found that piece to be really resonant for students. In recent years, the peace of compassion has been really helpful, because they can often get so down on themselves, particularly I work a lot with students who really care about social justice, right. And so then they get they berate themselves, when, you know, they undermine themselves, or they don’t show up the way they want to. And so giving them this way of framing, that is one way that some of this has been helpful for them.

Keith Edwards
That’s, that’s so powerful. I’m connecting that with internal family systems, ifs therapy that talks about sort of the, the inner critic, or the seventh floor or whatever, is usually this voice that kept us safe as children by being invisible, or being small, isolated, abuse, or different things. And then you have grownups who are 50 years old, still doing that thing. And to have compassion, thank you for keeping me safe. And that thing is no longer here. I want to engage with more vulnerability, or I want to open myself up to this or play bigger is really important. And I love this part about the compassion because I I’ve interacted with a lot of students who had a marginalized or minoritized identity, and then fell talking about justice, justice and equity broadly was really threatening, because I should know better. Right? The privilege folks like me, of course, you wouldn’t know and, and you kind of get escaped, right? But if I’m gay, and I don’t know about all these things, then that’s a betrayal, my identity and having to know all of these things, and not just about my identity, but other identities. And so then they shut down or withdraw sometimes from sort of a self righteous like, this class isn’t for me, it’s for y’all. And I’m disengaging. And I think that compassion and then having those folks come back and say what was really going on there was I was so scared of messing up. Because how can I with all that experience, not know about anti semitism or not know about ableism or this other thing, and we all have so much to learn, and I think bringing that compassion I think opens up the possibility to, we don’t know everything we’re all learners are gonna mess up. And that’s part of the process and learning and growing from that I think can be, can be really great. And the self awareness to to notice like not just I’m uncomfortable, but oh, what that is, is I’m afraid of this or when that language has been used in the past that is led to this. So that’s what’s going on for me. And I think sometimes we get, particularly now we use anxiety, is this over generalized experience? I’m feeling anxious. Well, what flavor of anxious? Are you? Yeah, or I’m worried or just uneasy, right? Those are really different things. And you’re talking about getting the emotion in the body to really tap into some of that.

Beth Berila
Yeah, I find, one of the questions I like to ask is, how do you know that’s what you’re feeling? Hmm. Right. So like, if someone says, I’m sad, I’m anxious, I’m okay. What are the cues that are telling you that and to deepen and nuance? That would be one thing. And then the other thing that was arising for me, as you were talking was, I was reminded of a conversation we just had yesterday, and in my feminist leadership class, about sustainability. And one of the things I find with I teach a lot of traditional age college students, I also work with, you know, working professionals and nonprofits and that sort of thing. But since we’re talking about student affairs, right now, I teach a lot of traditional age college students who, right around this time of the semester are like running on empty, and they’re going full speed and they’re exhausted, and you can feel the level of energy like down in the room. At the same time, a similar pattern happens with fine developmentally with students who are really excited about social justice, care about it and go all in on every crisis. And so I regularly have conversations with them about sustainability, and what how you show up for things you really care about with integrity, while also pacing yourself and understanding that, at least for me, when I go all in, and I still show up, when I’m exhausted, I tend to be a lot less skillful. That doesn’t mean that there are times and others with myself and others. Yes, and and you know, there are times in places when we still need to show up. Like it’s a privilege to step back. But when you’re when you’re building a community, of people who are doing this work, one of the things I’ve really appreciated and continually expose students to and have drawn much more heavily on in this version of the book than I did in the first book is popular, more public, activist efforts, that are doing really important work in social justice realms, and having conversations about sustainability, or mindfulness, or embodied well being that the two can go together. And in fact, you can be much more skillful all the way around with yourself and others when you do that. And so, you know, and again, exposing students to that way of embracing their life and their work, which I see as a really important life skill, not just college skill. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I don’t think we’ve said it, but I’m hearing a lot of both and, yes, right. It is the collective and the individual experience, it is our socialization, and it is our agency. It is compassion. And do we want to choose it? There’s a lot of both, and here, and we can be engaged. And that’s great. And we can find I’m gonna let this one go and focus on other things. And yeah, you you talked, you talked a little bit about things that have shifted, as we mentioned, as we’re getting started, you published the first version eight years ago, in 2015. Which by the clock of the world is about 30 years ago.

Beth Berila
Oh my gosh, it seems so long ago.

Keith Edwards
So what was your thinking shifted? I mean, I’ll just say the the new version is a full revision, it is not a few edits here in there. It is a full and complete revision, that the basics are still there, and a lot more has been added, due to your learning your experience your teaching. So share with folks a little bit about how you’re thinking your approach has shifted, and what you’re really focusing on now that maybe you weren’t even aware of.

Beth Berila
Yeah, thank you for saying that. It is a radical rewrite. As you said, the basic principles are there but I’ve deepened a lot of it because my thinking has changed a lot. So many people are doing this work now and either they weren’t then or I didn’t know about it, then And so that has been really lovely and supportive and helpful. Some of the things that have shifted. In the first edition I contextualize the work within feminist critical race and critical pedagogies that remains the same, but this one also draws on decolonizing and re indigenizing pedagogies. abolitionist pedagogy. pedagogy is trauma informed pedagogies. Something else I’m probably blanking on right now. I am, I spend more time talking about the trauma of oppression itself. And how that is always in our classrooms, and how mindfulness and embodied practices can, if done skillfully, right, support that, but how to how and why we need to be aware of the trauma in our spaces, if and when to bring in the mindfulness practices because embodness, you tap into your experience in a different way. And for someone who is experiencing active trauma, or trauma resonances, they need to be supported in a particular way. Speaking of that, and I’ve, in addition to mindfulness, I now use somatics, as well. And Cymatics, I understand to be a whole body system of transformation. So mindfulness and somatics are often paired. But somatics is kind of a bigger umbrella than mindfulness. So I use both of them. One of the things I’m really excited about is the chapter on transformation. That’s new in this book, and I’ve been increasingly exploring, well, how do we transform on an individual level on a collective level on a societal level? What does that look like? And how can mindfulness and embodied practices help us move through the rockiness that is inevitable, in a transformation process. And for those of us who’ve been doing this work for a long time, we often see students move through similar patterns. But for them, it’s often the first time. And even for us who’ve been doing it for a while, if we think about any like looming big transformation in our lives, we may be awfully unsettled. And so how can embodiment and mindfulness support us in that when informed with social justice? And then I end with CO creating liberation. So how creativity, radical imagination is a part of this work? Because we’re not just anti something, we are in favor of something right? So what is it we want to co create? And as I said, this work is much more situated and work in the public realm. It still draws on academic theory, but it’s much more in the public realm. And I do touch a little bit on online formats for mindfulness because we are all much more online than we used to be. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
well, I’ve seen as I mentioned, I’ve seen you do that I’ve seen you lead embodied activity from our little zoom boxes. And people do that on their own, and also doing it when people are in a room together. And those are different things with different considerations, right, there’s some, you know, if you’re alone in a room by yourself, there can be some ways that you might engage that maybe wouldn’t be willing to do in a room with others. And it also can feel a little distant and disconnected. And you mentioned some of the things that you’re bringing in, and I found, you’re not just mentioning some of those things. Which maybe you regret, because it was probably a lot of work, a really deep dive on some of these different aspects, not just mentioning abolitionists, education, but really exploring it in some detail. And bringing some of that in. It had me thinking a lot about working with students and their process and helping them be more aware of what is going on, not just intellectually, but in their bodies, in their emotions to help them better navigate it. It also had me thinking about my own things. And as you mentioned, for those of us who have been doing this for a while, we may have been through some of this, but then we also are confronted with the things that we’ve been resisting for decades. Right, and I am willing to go here, here and here, but not there. I’m just not willing to do that. And I think the compassion with which which you both suggest, and model in the book, it left me feeling a little bit more courageous to go into some of the places where maybe I am hesitant to go or we’ll only go in certain situations in certain ways, not just for, for the worker to teach others but for our own liberation. Right. And you mentioned this not not just an anti oppression, but also what is liberation look like we need both of those. We need to understand what’s not working. And what do we want to create? What would Joy look like? What would liberation look like? What would freedom what would and I’d love for you to talk a little bit about radical imagination, because I’m just so excited about those two words. together?

Beth Berila
Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for saying and sharing some of your reactions to how the book landed. That’s hard. That’s very empowering for me. So thank you. Yeah, I have found myself in recent years, much less fed by anti anything. I think that anti oppression, anti racism. All of the antis are critical steps in dismantling. But for my Soma, I also need the for my being my holistic, my ability to keep coming to this work skillfully. And with creativity and care, I need the what’s possible. And for me, radical imagination is a place where some of that lands and and it comes out of it’s particularly inspired recently by emergent strategy, which I bring up in every conversation, because everybody, it’s such a hot book, but also it felt it fed my soul when I read it. And in all the work and all the people who are enacting emergent strategy in variety of different ways right now, I think they are practicing radical imagination. And, like what becomes possible when we, when we show up for each other and imagine different ways of being if we need to move away from mass agriculture? what’s possible in our local community, right? what’s already happening? How does art play into this and help us tap into a different side a different way of our being. And I think that one of the things my trauma studies have taught me is that when we are in the throes of trauma, or trauma responses on oppression creates a huge amount of trauma, it’s very hard to access that creativity. Because we’re in survival mode, right. And so we do absolutely need to change the things and do the healing support that moves people and communities out of trauma support, and support the creativity that has always been happening even amidst all of that. And so one of the things that’s led me to do what more often in my classes is to bring in artistic practices to have days off, so to speak, where we’re not trying to cover a particular content necessarily, but that they get a moment to connect with each other and create. I kind of read the room and figure out where people’s energy levels are. I assign them current material that people where people are doing this kind of creativity work to show and inspire, and catalyze that, that this is part of social justice work. And so radical imagination is kind of exploring what’s possible and thinking outside the box, which gender women’s studies, ethnic studies, has always done. Right. But with create with the embodiment piece, you also get think you get this different layer of what is it that you’re really deeply longing for? Not just in your head, but like, if you follow this gut, what are you longing for? What’s it going to orient you to? Like a sunflower, orient to the sun? Right? And then from that place, what what emerges? What do you want to create? Because the world probably needs it?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I mean, I wrote down in the first part of this conversation that what you were talking about, about not just the neck up, but the embodied and the emotional, and the compassion, I feel like that’s what people are yearning for. Desperate for, eager for, right? I want to connect with that in me, I want to connect with that in you. And then I get pulled into self righteousness on social media and binaries of you either support the Palestinians or the Israelis, and you can’t be heartbroken for all the monstrosities happening and all the hurt and pain, or it’s this or that it’s one or the other. And these both hands coming in. But then also this radical imagination. I think about that in terms of what would society look like if we didn’t socialize people in the blah, blah, blah, and that list is endless? No, that’s a super exciting thought experiment. But it’s a little out of reach directly, but then I can think about, what about how I raised my daughter, what could that relationship look like if we deconstructed some gender nonsense? What would that look like? What kind of liberation might we as two white people get? By unpacking our racist socialization? Yeah, Well, that’s, that’s juicy. That’s interesting, right? So thinking about it, from the micro to the macro, and then everything in between, like, like your classroom, like this podcast like this workshop that we’re leading. I think there’s the both and both and of all of that. Anything else that you really have brought in to this new addition that you really want to speak to? And then we can move to some of the cautions you want to offer?

Beth Berila
I think the just the the reflective piece on what transformation looks like and what are some of the things that can derail transformation? And then how do we integrate our embodiment alongside social justice in a way that helps us move through that dissonance instead of kind of scrambling back for what’s familiar safe, but but limiting, in terms of turning

Keith Edwards
that dissonance isn’t even

Beth Berila
there? Right, or pretending?

Keith Edwards
Pushing Yeah, pushing it down, right, but really love that language? Through. You do offer in a particular chapter, but also throughout the book. Let’s be careful. Yeah, let’s be cautious about this. If you’re going to use this, just be aware, this doesn’t always go well, and be thoughtful about this. And not only are you offering cautions, but really helpful strategies, you might then consider this and then you might then consider this. So this is a very, it’s very theoretical. And it’s very practical, at the same time from what is abolitionist education, to, here’s how to do an embodied activity if you’re concerned about this, and be careful about this and try and avoid this. So share with us some of the cautions you have around mindfulness and equity and justice work.

Beth Berila
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that question. It’s so important. One is it’s not a silver bullet, it doesn’t fix everything. And one should always even the language of fix, my body just bristled at that. It is a possible approach. It is not the only approach and it has its own possible pitfalls or limitation. So that’s the first thing I would say. One possible pitfall or limitation is the issue of cultural appropriation, which I think is as a white person centered in the US is something I need to critically reflect on all the time, my entry into mindfulness was through meditation and yoga. And I have a lot of experience in the yoga world, a lot of training in the yoga world. And there’s a lot of things that the US mainstream yoga world does, that’s problematic and appropriative. And so there are ways to engage mindfulness approaches that are not appropriated or less appropriative. And I think, I should say that it’s easier for me in a Gender and Women’s Studies classroom, because cultural appropriation is right along the lines of what we need to talk about. Right? Whereas if you’re doing it in a area where you have other content in your program that needs to be covered or something that it may be less relevant. But I think the conversations around how do we do this ethically, and responsibly, if it is not from our own cultural tradition, are really important. And one way of addressing some of that is helping students trace out what would mindfulness what would be in a mindfulness type practice from your own cultural location? Right? And that can be deeply healing for people can also be fraught with grief depending on one’s relationship to one’s cultural location. So

Keith Edwards
that’s one dominant so I’m thinking about my internalized dominance. Yeah,

Beth Berila
yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the flip side of trying to avoid the cultural appropriation by detaching it and making it fully secular, if you’re drawing on practices that are actually from spiritual traditions, that is that can also be problematic because while it is, in some ways safer, to bring secular practices into a public university than something that has spiritual roots, it’s also problematic to separate from its context, right. So there’s that piece. I think being aware that when you ask people to sink into their embodied experience, lots of things can arise that people who aren’t trained to handle it may be unprepared for and there are, I think, ethical responsibilities to support students. Gender women’s studies, again, is somewhat unique because we’ve always addressed trauma in our class. CERN’s you know, I teach around sexual assault, I teach around eating disorders. And I’m always aware that there are people in the room who will have experienced that. And so I’ve always, you know, unlike maybe some other disciplines, I’ve always been attuned to, how do you care for yourself and learn about this, but also know, the off ramps that you may need? And how do I make sure to Tech Connect those students to other campus support services as they need it? I think mindfulness and embodied practices can bring people closer to that those those experiences because being in your head kind of can avoid some of it. And so I give a lot of techniques in the books that to come from a trauma centered or healing, centered approach, so that you can scaffold the practices, for instance, or offer students that kind of safer, potentially safer approach and then go deeper if they wish it but not having to do it. There are other examples like that. I think one of the other pressures is, you know, how’s this related to course content, we need to study for a test, or we have to practice for an athletic meet? Why are we doing this? And one of the, one of the ways that I found to always address that is explained the why take it to the metal level, always explain the why. And then it becomes a little more evident to students over time how it can be supportive. Yeah,

Keith Edwards
yeah. Well, you mentioned going into the body can be a really powerful tool. And for some folks going into the body is not a safe, comfortable place. And so you talk a lot about consent. Not just in terms of sexual violence, but consent in close your eyes, if you feel comfortable doing so. Right. Yeah. If not, you might try this, right. And you talk a lot about consent, you talk about a lot about permission, and you talk a lot about many multiple pathways. So we’re going to do this. And if you’re comfortable doing that, great. And if you’re not, you might try this, or you might try this. And really offering I think those multiple pathways, it brought me to a lot of universal design, right, which is, you know, here’s the thing we hope to accomplish, and what are the many different pathways we can get there. Because if you can’t do this, or don’t have access to this are limited in these ways, or that your home doesn’t offer this, then there’s so many different pathways. And so just saying to an individual, I want you to be able to connect to this experience. And if this isn’t a way you feel comfortable doing this, here are some other ways and if this isn’t a way that you feel safe doing this, here are some other ways. And you’re offered a lot of specific examples about I think you just talked about multiple pathways or multiple on ramps or off ramps. Right, because there’s a difference between unmindful li disengaging, which I want me to, I just don’t want to be here. This is stressful, I’m out. And then there’s Okay, that’s too much for me right now. I’m going to consciously choose to slightly disengaged or disconnected this way. And maybe come back to it another time or meet with you one on one or take some time to journal and reflect along the way,

Beth Berila
which itself is a self awareness and life skill. Right? Like so for me, a student saying, I that is not good for me right now. I’m going to just sit here and journal is a win, right? Because

Keith Edwards
a lot of teachers feel is resistance and something they have to do not necessarily,

Beth Berila
right. Not necessarily. I mean, maybe but also resistance is there for a reason. And as much as as a social justice person, as much as I want to be like, No, we need to work on justice right now. So sorry, you’re not ready to examine your privilege, right? There’s a part of me that wants to do that. There’s another part of me that says people will do this in their own time. And, again, it’s a both and it’s an unpeeling of a layer. And they may not be able to go to level layer seven right now, but they may be able to go to layer two. And that so that’s one thing. But then the other thing is being a being aware enough to say I could have done that yesterday, but I’m not. I don’t have the capacity to do that today is a lot more than some students have been were able to say before they started examining mindfulness because so much of so much of our society and this is depends on our cultural location. But there’s so much disembodiment that comes partly with supremacy culture, that even when we’re not part of the dominant group, we may have been severed from our embodiment, that being able to say what you have capacity for or don’t have capacity for an agency to choose. That is, I think, a huge advancement more important than any particular than that they engage in, in particular meditation or journal activity.

Keith Edwards
Because that can come into conflict with a loved one that can come into a particular work projects that come into this TV show is focused on this. And I’ve just, I can’t deal with that today. Yeah, absolutely. This is not relaxing. For me, this is not renewable. For me. This is. And so to notice that and tap into that, and name that and ask for that, I think it’d be really great. You mentioned sort of when you get tempted to to No, no, no, we’re going to do this because we have we have, I noticed that when I fall into that place. I’m focused on me going where I want to go, not the learners. Yeah. And not their growth, learning and change. I’m focused on what am I doing? What do I get to claim later. And we see so much of that on social media and these little clickbait kinds of things, or look what I did, or, and I think, when you were talking about getting connected with your body, and being aware of that. I just don’t know where that really is being modeled for folks. And a pervasive way in our society and culture. Maybe folks are getting it in little places here and there, but I’m imagining being in your class and being told to tap into my body, and that’s okay. And it has wisdom. I such a radical offer,

Beth Berila
huh? Yeah, I will, you know, I’m not gonna lie, some students still look at me, like, Wow, you’re a big weirdo. I mean, like, what is this. And so that’s one thing, I would say to anybody who hasn’t been doing this work, and who wants to try it be prepared for those books. Because it’s kind of cultural and a lot of higher ed. And, and a lot of places in general. So explaining the why I go through several suggestions about how to ease people in sometimes I start with the stress relief piece, even though that’s not why I do the mindfulness piece, but I make sure to let them know, it might help them around things like midterms, even though I’m doing it for a much deeper reason. And, you know, some students will never tap into it. And it will never speak to them. And that’s okay, part of what I’m trying to do is plant the seed that there is something more out there. And they can listen to what’s calling them when they’re when they need it when they want it. And then the other piece is, the flip side of that is that sometimes halfway through the semester, students are begging for it. Like, can we meditate? You know, we’re stressed? Yeah,

Keith Edwards
we just do that breathing thing? Yeah.

Beth Berila
Can we have an art day? And the fact that they fill agency to ask that or that I see the shift from when they looked at me weird to when they’re asking for, right? And then I remind them, they don’t need me to create that space. And we talk about, like, how might they and their very busy college lives, integrated into what they’re already doing, instead of making it an add on.

Keith Edwards
There’s sort of some themes I see in the book around awareness about what is going on out there, right systems and structures and power and isms. And what’s going on in here. And that’s how it’s showing up for me and oh my gosh, that thing that I keep doing that I never understood is really about my response to that. So so the awareness out there and in here, and then this pause, this pause of a breath, this pause of inquiry, this pause of where do you feel the sadness in your body? Yeah, as opening up a lot of spaciousness. And then the next part is this, I’ll use the word agency, you talk a lot about choice. The radical reimagining is a part of that like, Okay, so I’ve been through some things, these things are showing up in me, what would that look like differently? Or what could they be? What choice do I want to make differently? Or? Yeah. And that seems to be where the Cymatics come in. That’s where the mindfulness comes in, and connects to all these bigger learnings and not only helps us learn ideas and concepts, but helps us develop some skills and competencies that certainly can help with equity and justice, and that kind of transformation, but also just navigating the complexities of life and relationships and conflicts and hard things all over the place.

Beth Berila
Yeah, absolutely. I think I really see both social justice and embodiment, by which I mean both mindfulness and somatics to be important life and community skills. And I guess the other thing I would say that I insist upon in both books, is that I really think there for them to be an effective partnership, we really do need both politicized mindfulness or somatics. There’s a lot of mindfulness and somatics out there that reproduce harm. And so that’s not the type I’m talking about. And I critique that regularly. And there’s some social justice work that is, you know, awkward. While it’s really important, it also produces burnout, culture, and extractive social justice. And a lot of a lot of on the ground activists are talking about that right now. And so the the partnership of them together is really important. And for people who haven’t, aren’t familiar with my book, they may not understand that I do have critiques of both that there’s a there’s a nuanced way that they partner, I think,

Keith Edwards
Well, you do you point out a lot of these critiques in the book, and I love as you point them out, and then you don’t just stop there. So there is this thing that I’m suggesting, recommending and think is really powerful. And here’s a critique of it. And here’s how we’re exploring take it seriously. And so then we should consider these things as we move into, right? So it’s not just well, this is a thing, and then someone critiqued it. And so we shouldn’t do that. Right. But how do we engage the critique thoughtfully and intentionally bring that in, in fact about him? And again, as you were just pointing to just more both and yes, yes, yes. And yes. We are running out of time. Forever. I know, I felt like when I started, but the clock says otherwise. Yes. So we want to end with our question. This podcast is called Student Affairs NOW we want to ask you what you are thinking troubling or pondering now might be related to this. We have talked about the old book, because it’s what we have in our hands. Yeah. And it’s this moment of time, we’re having the conversation, the new book is not in even in your hands. By the time this podcast is released, the new version is out, it is available, you can get it, you can go find it, you will be able to access it readily. But other than go out and buy the book, which will include in the show notes, what are you thinking troubling and pondering now? And where might folks who want to connect with you be able to do that? Awesome,

Beth Berila
thank you. Yes, thanks for the shout out that new book is coming out in hardcover, you know, like, be able to tangibly hold it soon. You can find me on my website, bethberila.com. There are multiple my social media links are on there, my email is on there. Love to connect with people about that. What I’m pondering right now, a lot of radical imagination in terms of what what possibilities can we create? And where? Where am I called to do that? Were my students called to do that? That’s one thing. Right now I’m really, really sinking into its winter, where we are or just merging into winter, which can be a very challenging time for me personally. And so I’m really sinking into what is what is seasonal living look like right now on how do I, how do I live and create social justice from this alignment with nature and the insights? So it’s very Allah emergent strategy, a lot of regenerative leadership, but also just like, What is meiselman need, and how I show up? And one of the things I’ve noticed, and I think all of you Student Affairs, people out there will resonate with some of this, that academic culture runs directly counter to nature seasons, at least at this stage, right? So winter, at least in the northern hemisphere is like, let’s sink in. Let’s slow down, let’s reflect. let’s renew and restore. So we can come back vibrant in the spring. And yet right now, everybody’s running at their biggest pace right now. Students are many faculty are some some student affairs are. There’ll be, there’ll be a gap when when things are on break, even people who have 12 month contracts, you know, have a little bit more spaciousness typically

Keith Edwards
than other racing, right? Yes,

Beth Berila
then it gets filled with so part of me is like all of that is so capitalist and supremacists. That even higher ed is aligning with it right. So how can we do what we need to do but, but also give our beings what we need? What each other’s need? What does I’m reflecting on that right now?

Keith Edwards
Yeah, well, I’m gonna mention the book Wintering by Katherine. Yes. And love which is a wonderful sort of indulgence into not fighting winter, but embracing, embracing the cold, embracing the darkness, embracing what it offers for that renewal. Yes, I love that. Right. It’s a lovely, it’s lovely with a warm cup of tea. It just feels like absolute coziness. And since we both live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, we have to embrace winter because it’s really well thank you so much. This has been terrific. We could go on and on. And maybe we will but I really appreciate. I loved your first version of the book from 2015. I do I recommend it all the time. And I’m so excited for this new version. It is full of new things. So if you’re a fan of the first version, this will be great, you’ll learn so much more I learned so much, and reading through it. And if you haven’t got the first version, this is your chance to get it so much to learn around pedagogy around justice and equity around mindfulness around Cymatics. You’re just a wonderful teacher and I think you offer so much that is so helpful for others. So thank you. Thanks for thank you

Beth Berila
so much. Of course, thanks for the opportunity and the high praise. Thank you.

Keith Edwards
Well, thank you, Beth, and thanks to our sponsor of today’s episode Symplicity, Symplicity as the global leader in student services technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution Symplicity supports all aspects of student life, including but not limited to, Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and wellbeing, students success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com Or visit them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Huge shout out as always, to our producer Nat Ambrosey, who does all the work behind the scenes to make us look and sound good. We love your support for these important conversations. You can help us reach even more folks by subscribing. Subscribe to the podcast, or YouTube channel or weekly newsletter which announces each new episode, and more. You can also leave us a five star review these little things, make sure you don’t miss anything, and help make sure these conversations reach our larger, larger audience. Thank you, Beth for being here. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to Beth and to everyone who’s watching and listening. Maybe make it a great week. Thank you

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