Mindfulness is a kind of awareness. If you’ve ever given your whole attention to what you’re sensing and feeling in a given moment, without trying to interpret or judge it, you’ve experienced something like mindful awareness. Everyone has this ability.

Mindfulness is a capacity that you can grow and strengthen with practice. Any opportunity to simply observe your own experience, moment to moment, with intention, openness, and kindness, can be a mindfulness practice. Some people practice mindful awareness by meditating, some people pay attention to their breathing to keep them in the present moment, some people exercise mindfully.

Experience and scientific study alike teach that mindfulness practices can help people maintain emotional equilibrium, improve concentration, sleep better, and feel happier.

The Mindfulness Alliance knows that mindfulness can do much more.

What if, for instance, we brought the same intention and openness to understanding one another? What if we each turned inward to know ourselves better—and then each turned outward, purposefully, non-judgmentally, to recognize each other? To see our social norms and institutions with clarity and compassion, rather than assumptions?

The Mindfulness Alliance believes that this cycle—turning mindful awareness inward and outward, inward and outward—can change the world. Not in some faraway future, but here and now. Connecting people across their differences. Empowering people to change norms and institutions that undermine human flourishing and interconnection. Supporting the shift from “me” to “We.” Reimagining and remaking the world to embody more justice, compassion, and inclusivity. Learn more, join the WeShift Institute.