One of the ways my own social and cultural conditioning shows up is in the way I’ve learned to compartmentalize things—everything around me, separating it out. I never saw the mind as a part of the body. It always seemed to be floating out there somewhere, ephemeral, untouchable. Separation permeated my worldview, and continues to be reinforced by the cultural milieu in which we all live, with its borders, barriers, cultural and ethnic designations, class delineations, statehoods. And the sense of separateness from the very Earth, of which we are all a part. We see ourselves as people that walk on the Earth, yet we are Earth that walks, an integral part of this organism that we rest on. Mindfulness erases all these lines of separation.
Amana Brembry Johnson
Spirit Rock Residential Teacher
Amana Brembry Johnson is a dedicated meditation teacher and community leader with more than four decades of contemplative practice across multiple spiritual traditions. She serves as a Core Teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, California, and is a coordinating teacher for residential retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.