Close your eyes.
Focus on your breath.
[tranquil music playing]
Inhale through your nose.
[inhales deeply]
Exhale through your mouth.
[exhales deeply]
And let the clapback begin, sis,
'cause they got about four, five seconds to hop off
our every last nerve-- No?
That's not what we're doing?
Guided Meditation for Inner Peace. Take two.
[bleep]
Hey, YouTube world, it's me, Evelyn.
That's lemon water, it's cleansing.
I want to make a guided meditation for stressed out students.
Specifically, Black girls. Stay with me.
Back in 2015, the US Department of Education
required all public schools to report on the number
of counselors, nurses, psychologists,
social workers employed on their campuses.
Now, the federal government's been reporting on public schools for decades,
but this was the first time comprehensive data
about law enforcement and staff-to-student ratio was collected.
And the results...
This is blank.
1.7 million students were in schools
with police, but no counselors.
That number jumped to 3 million students
when it came to schools with a police officer, but no school nurse.
And 14 million students
attended a school that had a cop,
but not a counselor, nurse,
social worker or a psychologist.
The stress in these numbers.
When schools lack support staff like that,
coupled with the implicit biases
that empower adults in charge to think Black kids are stronger,
more dangerous and sometimes even older than they actually are,
you end up with stats like this.
Black girls made up 8% of all students in the country.
But 14% of students suspended,
and 10% of students expelled.
Black girls made up 16% of the entire female student population,
but they made up 39% of girls arrested on campus.
Yeah, girl. Oh, yeah.
To be crystal clear,
I'm not saying that if Black girls just calm down, you know, take a chill pill,
that none of these things would happen to them.
I'm saying that I believe school should be a place of education and refuge,
not heightened policing and danger.
And in lieu of the support staff
that we now know is severely lacking,
can I collaborate with some folks
to create a resource for my girls?
A little bit of self-care while the grown-ups figure it out?
So, the plan is, through the power of the Internet,
I'm gonna reach out to three women.
I'm Satyani KarenLeigh McPherson.
And I am a mindfulness mentor.
Hey! So my name is Lauren Ash.
And I am the founder of Black Girl in Om
that centers Black women and women of color in wellness.
Hello, my name is Muhsinah.
I am a composer, a singer, and a songwriter from Washington, DC.
[Evelyn] And these three perspectives and experiences
will help us understand mindfulness and meditation a little bit better,
and how Black girls can use it as a tool to navigate their lives.
So, mindfulness is being aware
of whatever we're experiencing in the present moment.
Free from any interpretation, analysis or judgement.
Think about how often during the day you're on autopilot.
And think about how often during the day you're allowing yourself to just be.
Most of us are doing
and maybe just being a tiny bit, right?
We have to make so many choices in our daily lives
and we have to do so much, like, work
that we don't have the opportunity
to just, like, let ourselves kinda wander a little bit.
[Satyani] Whatever thoughts, whatever emotions we're experiencing,
and simply being aware
and by anchoring our attention in the present moment,
it helps to increase focus,
memory, a feeling of wellbeing.
It helps to reduce anxiety, stress.
Stress was what led me to meditation. [chuckles]
Um, and in therapy, my therapist was like,
"Maybe you should try meditation."
And I was like, "That's..." [sighs]
Mindfulness helps us to be more aware of ourselves
and then to bring greater skillfulness
to our relations with others.
Now, I know what you're thinkin', mmkay?
This all sound a little hippy-dippy liberal for my liking.
But stay with me.
To be honest, I had so much anxiety around the practice of meditation,
um, that it...
it's almost unbelievable where I'm at right now. [laughs]
First of all, there's no right or wrong way to meditate.
As long as you're practicing, that's a good thing.
I started practicing just five to ten minutes of silence.
But when I tell you, Evelyn, that was like three hours...
-[Evelyn laughs] -...of, like, pain and suffering.
That's what it felt like, for real.
So I do use an app to meditate
every night, um, before I go to bed.
Because I think that my mind is,
like, most active at that time of day.
I grew up playing piano.
And I didn't realize it until I started doing just, like, silent meditations.
And I'm like, "Oh, I have been doing this the whole time,
just through a different modality."
So, I still do use piano playing as meditation.
I'll just pick up a random piece of music and read it and just
play and my mind can wander.
Meditation is not about emptying my mind
and finding complete silence and complete stillness.
It is about being in relationship,
in closer, more intentional relationship
with precisely what is going on.
[Satyani]
The reason I reached out to Satyani
is because she specifically taught mindfulness
to a diverse group of Black students in Washington, DC.
Some of them had, um,
mental health issues. Some of them were on medication.
Some of them needed to be but were not on medication.
Some of them had had, um, encounters with the so-called,
and I really say so-called, criminal justice system.
Had experience incarceration
or have family members who had experienced incarceration.
And had also experienced trauma.
[Evelyn] UCLA and Columbia professor,
Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, published a report called
Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected.
It's about 50 pages,
and it details how schools, the education system in general,
hasn't been a safe place for Black girls.
[reading]
But the disparity between their punishment is so noteworthy
that the ACLU addressed it in their report
titled, "Cops and No Counselors."
This type of discipline directly impacts your access to education.
For example, Black girls lost
seven times the amount of instruction time than their white peers
due to out-of-school suspension.
An organization in Baltimore
that offers, um, mindfulness and yoga for youth...
In Satyani's experience,
mindfulness also allows teachers to slow down
instead of quickly opting for other forms of punishment.
And they've supported schools in setting up mindfulness rooms,
where instead of being, um, you know, put in detention,
you go chill out in the mindfulness room.
Get your head right so you can come back and be with us.
I definitely would love to see mindfulness in all schools.
[Evelyn] They did this at Robert Coleman Elementary in Baltimore, Maryland.
And they reported that suspensions dropped to zero,
and the principal even said
kids don't be in her office all that much anymore.
Okay, so,
if your school doesn't have a Satyani though...
what do you do?
We can't all be so blessed.
So the goal of this Creators for Change project
was to address an issue I see in girls' education in my community.
And Muhsinah articulated it so beautifully.
I went to two different high schools.
I started out in a suburban high school
where I was one of few Black people,
and that was a struggle for me.
I could not find my footing,
I did not understand what the whole thing was about.
And then my parents kinda noticed that and moved me to an arts high school.
And that really helped me.
But I definitely needed meditation for sure. I was struggling.
I still think about how hardened I was as a child.
Way too early.
I do think that a lot of our norms... [sighs]
are not healthy for children.
Especially girl children.
So that's why my next step is to actually make the guided meditation
for Black girls to listen to on their own,
hopefully providing access where there previously wasn't any.
A lot of Black girls don't have a space
for expression, exploration,
creativity outside of themselves.
Like, sometimes there's not even a physical space.
Sometimes we live in homes where we can't, you know, be ourselves.
And sometimes we have to create that space within us.
And I think meditation is a really great opportunity
to always know the feeling of home and safety.
'Cause sometimes that feeling isn't there in our physical lives.
So we have to create that inside.
A lot of people, for many reasons, have a lot of anxiety
and apprehension around meditation in general.
Because they don't know if they're "doing it right."
I would say there's no such thing.
However, when you're being guided by someone else in the practice,
it allows you to just release that, kind of, pressure,
and just allow yourself to do what the person is telling you to do, right?
So, Lauren already has a couple guided mediations online that you can listen to.
Which is great. I wanted to FUBU this. You know what I'm sayin'?
♪ I saw things I imagined ♪
You know what I'm sayin'?
So, for me, I love creating guided meditations, of course.
But I also love attending guided meditations
because if you know that person has a really lovely voice,
it's the music that I'm really vibing with,
it gets me to kind of tap into my inner child a little bit.
I loved telling stories but I also love being read to.
And so it's kind of reminiscent also of my childhood, of entering this other world
and just allowing myself to explore it.
Speaking of music, we need some.
We need a vibe.
Okay, we are a vibe-y people. We love music.
Wouldn't it be incredible if this Black girl meditation was not only narrated by one,
word to Lauren, but also scored by a Black girl?
So, I write love songs daily.
So, for this I was like,
"What if I approach this meditation
like it was a love song to myself,
or to ourselves?"
Usually I start with where I am that day.
I will start at the piano. I'm sitting next to my piano right now,
so I'll start just, like, playing...
-[playing piano] -...ideas, whatever it is.
Oh, this is nice, you know, like, I feel like... [laughs]
And then I'll go with whatever ideas
and then I will remember them and take them
into my studio and, like,
kinda flesh ideas out.
I really am eager to draw
from inspiration in my own life
that I've been navigating in the past few months as a Black woman.
As a starting point for the topics and themes
and journey that we'll all be going on together as we step
into this meditative experience together.
So, I had a dream last night
and it had music in it.
So I woke up today and I was like,
"I have to remember this music."
So I ran out of bed, and I came to the piano
to figure out what this music was that I heard in my dream.
[playing chords]
[vocalizing]
[continues vocalizing]
Hey, y'all. I'm about record in this amazing booth.
These medita... Well, one meditation.
You see, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm excited to guide so many more.
So, see you on the other side. [chuckles]
[tranquil music playing]
You may choose to lay down in your bed.
The pillow propped behind your neck.
Blanket hugging your body.
The full meditation is available.
Click it, wherever links be located.
Please use it, please share it.
It is made with Black girls in mind.
But grown-ups, you can use it, too.
In the comments below, let me know
if you've ever mediated or practiced mindfulness.
And I will see you on the Internet somewhere. Bye.
[Evelyn reading]