Rising Up Rooted: Black Wisdom as Emancipatory Contemplative Practice for Resilience, Healing, and Liberation

Black wisdom is offered as a transformative, liberatory, and healing resource with particular applications for disrupting the five dynamics of oppression—dehumanization, disconnection, destruction, delusion, and disempowerment. Cultural wisdom is a key element of emancipatory contemplative practice which intentionally centers strategies for decolonizing inner life. The integration of Black wisdom into contemplative practices can provide an ancestral and experiential connection to a sense of belonging and “home,” as well as establish an empowering foundation from which personal and collective liberation can flourish. Black wisdom can be incorporated into contemplative practice through cultural expressions (music, African proverbs and symbols), applications that utilize embodied practice as communal ritual, and practices that emerge from concepts based on African-centered systems of wisdom and spirituality (e.g., ubuntu, sawubona, àse). The 3-part Rising Up Rooted process is offered as a soulfulness-oriented methodology that provides opportunities for planting, cultivating, and manifesting Black wisdom

Soulfulness as an Orientation to Contemplative Practice: Culture, Liberation, and Mindful Awareness

Soulfulness is introduced here as an orientation to contemplative practice that centers a synergistic integration of the psychological, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of soul (deepness, aliveness, authenticity, and a healing/transformative resource) to inform the design and implementation of culturally attuned methods. Soulfulness is characterized by themes emerging from diasporic African cultural influences and inspired by an African American cultural sensibility. These themes include an ethos of interconnectedness, a relational/communal sensibility, the centrality of spirituality, creativity and improvisation, a holistic orientation to human experience, emotional expressiveness, resilience and overcoming adversity, and struggles for liberation in the context of historical and ongoing dehumanization and oppression. The “SOUL” (Soulfulness-Oriented, Unitive, and Liberatory) approach is offered as an example of innovation and adaptation that meaningfully considers cultural and contextual factors in order to maximize the effectiveness of contemplative practices with culturally diverse groups. The SOUL-Centered Practice (SCP) framework describes foundational elements to guide the development of practices grounded in mindful awareness processes and infused with qualities of soulfulness. The SOUL approach is hypothesized to be particularly resonant with historically oppressed and marginalized people of color who experience the transgenerational impact of collective traumas such as genocide, slavery, and colonization as well as the dehumanizing soul-assaults of ongoing racism and intersectional oppression. The ultimate goal of the emerging practice is to contribute to the utilization of contemplative practice for the elevation our collective well-being as an interconnected human community in the context of ongoing struggles for liberation and social justice. Implications for research, further conceptual development, and the design of culturally syntonic contemplative practices are discussed

Culture, Wellness, and World “PEaCE”: An Introduction to Person-Environment-and-Culture-Emergence Theory

Human experience cannot be separated from culture. Yet, distance remains between psychology’s acknowledgement of the importance of culture, and its consistent integration into psychological theory, research, and practice. Person-Environment-and-Culture-Emergence (PEaCE) Theory, an integrative, complex systems approach, is introduced to facilitate conceptualization of individual and collective wellness outcomes. It draws primarily upon cultural and community psychologies in the context of a broad humanistic orientation that holds the dignity, humanity, and interconnectedness of all persons of the world as its core value. The “Being-in-Culture-in-the-World” Transactional Field represents the infinite and complex interrelationships between multidimensional biopsychorelational (person), socioecological (environment), and cultural systems that are in ongoing and dynamic transaction. Positive (e.g., thriving, well-being) and negative (e.g., dysfunction, disease) wellness outcomes are conceptualized as emergent properties of the activity of the transactional field. PEaCE Theory is informed by a large and diverse body of conceptual and empirical literature, both within and outside of psychology (e.g., public health, cultural studies), that converge in their insistence on the critical role of culture and context for understanding human experience and improving the health of persons, relationships, communities, and nations. PEaCE Theory will require ongoing testing and refinement towards its aim of transdisciplinary and global relevance

Culture, Wellness, and World “PEaCE”: An Introduction to Person-Environment-and-Culture-Emergence Theory

Human experience cannot be separated from culture. Yet, distance remains between psychology’s acknowledgement of the importance of culture, and its consistent integration into psychological theory, research, and practice. Person-Environment-and-Culture-Emergence (PEaCE) Theory, an integrative, complex systems approach, is introduced to facilitate conceptualization of individual and collective wellness outcomes. It draws primarily upon cultural and community psychologies in the context of a broad humanistic orientation that holds the dignity, humanity, and interconnectedness of all persons of the world as its core value. The “Being-in-Culture-in-the-World” Transactional Field represents the infinite and complex interrelationships between multidimensional biopsychorelational (person), socioecological (environment), and cultural systems that are in ongoing and dynamic transaction. Positive (e.g., thriving, well-being) and negative (e.g., dysfunction, disease) wellness outcomes are conceptualized as emergent properties of the activity of the transactional field. PEaCE Theory is informed by a large and diverse body of conceptual and empirical literature, both within and outside of psychology (e.g., public health, cultural studies), that converge in their insistence on the critical role of culture and context for understanding human experience and improving the health of persons, relationships, communities, and nations. PEaCE Theory will require ongoing testing and refinement towards its aim of transdisciplinary and global relevance.</p

Unique Ways in Which the Quality of Friendships Matter for Life Satisfaction

The quality of individuals’ social relationships consistently predicts greater well-being. But little is known about the relative importance of different relationship types for life satisfaction, including the relative importance of friendships compared to other types of relationships. Some have theorized that one intimate relationship is all you need. However, romantic partners, family, and friends may contribute uniquely or interactively to well-being. The current study assessed life satisfaction and relationship satisfaction in survey data collected from a large, diverse sample of respondents. Satisfaction with each type of relationship was significantly and independently associated with life satisfaction, over and above other variables in the model. Friendship (not family) interacted with intimate relationships: when respondents were highly satisfied with their intimate relationships, they were happy with their lives regardless of friendship quality. But when they were unhappy with their intimate relationships, they were only happy with their lives if they had good friends

The Daily Life Experiences Scale: Factor Structure, Reliability, Validity, and Measurement Invariance for African American Males and Females

The Daily Life Experiences - Frequency scale (DLE-F) measures the frequency of 18 racial discrimination experiences. Bifactor exploratory and confirmatory analyses indicated that the DLE-F is a unidimensional scale that yields valid and reliable scores. The DLE-F also showed evidence of measurement invariance by gender, convergent evidence, and criterion-related validity