Promoting Mindfulness in African American Communities
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COMMENTARY
Promoting Mindfulness in African American Communities Alana Biggers 1
&
Claire Adams Spears 2 & Kimberly Sanders 3 & Jason Ong 4 & Lisa K. Sharp 5 & Ben S. Gerber 1
Published online: 21 August 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract African Americans report higher rates of chronic stress compared with non-Hispanic Whites. Consequently, chronic stress contributes to disproportionately higher rates of poor health outcomes among African Americans. Mindfulness meditation is a well-established and studied strategy to reduce stress and potentially improve health outcomes. However, the practice of mindfulness meditation is largely underutilized in African American communities despite its potential health benefits. In this commentary, we will discuss the relevance of mindfulness interventions, limited research available, reasons for low representation, and cultural adaptations for mindfulness meditation in African American communities. We also provide additional strategies to guide future mindfulness research that target African Americans. Keywords Mindfulness-based interventions . African Americans . Racial/ethnic minorities . Chronic stress
Mindfulness represents the basic human ability to be fully present in the moment (Dryden and Still 2006). Being mindful is a century-old practice that evolved from various religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism (Kabat-Zinn 2003; Selva 2019). Today, it is frequently experienced in several forms through religious rituals, mind–body exercises such as yoga and Tai Chi, and various other purposeful secular practices (Kelley and Kelley 2015; Posadzki and Jacques 2009; Selva 2019). Mindfulness in Western culture may have arisen through the influence of immigration, Eastern travel, and increased trade with Asia in the mid-nineteenth century (Wilson 2014). Eventually, in the 1960s, immigration reforms enabled more Asians to emigrate to the USA, including prominent
* Alana Biggers [email protected] 1
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, 1747 West Roosevelt Road, Chicago, IL 60608, USA
2
Georgia State University, 140 Decatur St. Suite 612, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA
3
Hunter Holmes Mcguire Veterans Hospital, 1201 Broad Rock Blvd, Richmond, VA 23249, USA
4
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, 710 N Lake Shore Drive Suite 1004, Chicago, IL, USA
5
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy, 833 South Wood St, Chicago, IL 60612, USA
Tibetan and Zen missionaries who founded Buddhist centers and toured college campuses. Following this, and most importantly, Kabat-Zinn (1990) created the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. MBSR and similar mindfulness-based programs represent a complementary or alternative approach to reduce stress, pain, and suffering and in some cases to reduce symptoms of specific conditions such as insomnia and cancer-related fatigue (Kabat-Zinn, 2001; Mehta et al. 2019; Ong et al. 2014; Sipe and Eisendrath 2012). The traditional MBSR program involves a 2.
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