A silent Sunday, Reader!
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At least for me it was. Hopefully your Sunday isn't too loud either. I attended a one day Vipassana meditation to strengthen my own practice. For the people who aren’t familiar with Vipassana: once you complete a 10-day silent retreat you can attend 1-day sessions in any center around the world. And it happens that they’re building one in Bali right now, so a group of around twenty people sat down in silence together in the middle of a construction site. It was worth it!

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Learning to sense your body

You might think what does meditation have to do with this newsletter? Well, becoming conscious of your unconscious bias is one of the six characteristics of inclusive journalism, and that’s often an embodied experience. You may become aware of your blindspots through a conversation with someone or because you end up in a specific situation that opens your eyes. It’s not unusual that in those events an uncomfortable feeling or shame arises in the body.
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Vipassana meditation is all about observing body sensations, assuming that everything we experience in our life first becomes a sensation in our body, before it becomes a thought in our head. Therefore, if we for example talk about trauma, it’s possible that something is stored in the body without you being conscious of it. I won’t go too deep into the theory, but through Vipassana you learn how to train your mind in staying equanimous in all situations, by being aware of what is happening in your body. And that can be of huge help if you deal with inclusion.
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If everything in our life first becomes an awareness in our body, it means that our prejudices are also stored there. And when we then learn to look at the world through a different perspective, our body might protest. Hence the discomfort. The core of this meditation technique is about the following sentence:

Besides the practice and the theory behind the technique, the silence is beneficial as well. How often are we silent? The answer to that question tells you the importance. As they explain in the course: we take care of our bodies through food and exercise, we should also take care of our minds. It makes a lot of sense.
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And it also relates to the topic of colonialism. In the Maria Lugones Decolonial Summer School that started last week, we had to do a writing exercise answering the question:

In order to understand the concept of decoloniality, you first have to understand coloniality. And the Summer School explains how modernity, the modern world, is inextricably linked to colonialism. Without coloniality, there wouldn’t be modernity. Modernity we know because we live in it, so we should all have encountered coloniality in our lives as well. Someone recalled a first encounter with indigenous people in her home country (Argentina), another person shared the experience of his grandmother's cooking with recipes from the country of his roots (which was a former colony).
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I choose to write about Bali and how Western people colonize the island by bringing their own lifestyle with them instead of blending with the local culture. Of course, everything isn’t so perfectly wrong or perfectly right, but I do sense colonialism since I live here.
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Lastly, one quote of our teacher Rolando Vazquez stoot out. While summing up the ethics of the Summer School, he said:

I couldn't agree more. Hopefully the pandemic is over soon and we’re able to meet each other in real life again. To communicate with our minds and bodies.
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- Sanne

Journal prompt

You could expect this one 😉: where do you sense coloniality? Where is it touching you? Try not to hide behind your objectivity, but involve your senses when you think about it. What feelings are related?

What am I reading or watching?

• The Summer School has given me a ton of articles to read as preparation for the classes, so that keeps me busy at the moment.
• Luckily, sometimes we need to watch a documentary, like "Aluna" of last weeks class. It's about a retired BBC reporter who goes back to visit an indigenous tribe in Colombia - The Kogi - who helps him understand how to avoid our planet from dying. Absolutely recommended!

What can you do?

• ​Read the story of Ann M. Simmons who is foreign correspondent in Russia and a Black woman. She says:

• Al Jazeera's program The Stream offers excellent short daily interviews with people from all walks of live. I use them as an example in the Instagram course for journalists. Last week they interviewed the founder of The Nap Ministry, a popular social media account that pleads for more silence, more quiet time in our lives, specifically for people of colour, to heal from the wounds of coloniality. I think we all need that, right?

I wish you silent moments this week and enough rest. Talk soon!