“And it was clear to me that I didn’t want to live on that seesaw anymore.” “I was in a place of feeling grounded, of feeling a lot of acceptance, and in particular feeling a lot of gratitude for having been alive at all,” she says. In the midst of it all, she had a major health crisis-a cerebral hemorrhage-and in the moment of finding out she had a massive brain bleed, her practice rose to the surface. She would go on a meditation retreat, return to the outside world only to get caught up in work, then back on retreat to feel connected to her practice again. And for me, it’s definitely community where everyone is cared for.” – SD Allow Yourself to HealĪden Van Noppen teetered between two worlds in her late twenties. The pandemic has invited us all to look deep into what really matters. “For me, happiness is so deeply connected with purpose and meaning. Srinivasan believes that when school leaders are supported on the path of mindfulness, they can begin “healing the separation, leading for belonging, letting our beloved community extend to the Earth.”Īnd that’s heart work, for Srinivasan. “Is it baked in enough into who you are that you can draw upon it when you’re at the school board meeting and there is a really angry parent there?” “The implementation of social emotional learning was ultimately ineffective, if you didn’t have leaders who embodied these skills and competencies.” And Srinivasan knew that a casual mindfulness practice was not enough to help leaders keep their seat when times got tough. In the Oakland schools she worked in, Srinivasan saw firsthand the limits of social and emotional learning.

“When school leaders are supported on the path of mindfulness, they can begin healing the separation, leading for belonging, letting our beloved community extend to the Earth.” “If you’re not practicing mindfulness with that question at the core, you might de-stress a little, but you’re not going to actually effect change.” Like Lantieri, Srinivasan is an educator guided by the principles of Social Emotional Learning, and like Lantieri, she believes in the power of mindfulness to change lives-especially when leaders engage in deep practice with Larry Ward’s question in mind. Srinivasan is the executive director of Transformative Educational Leadership, cofounded by Linda Lantieri and Daniel Rechtschaffen. But she knows her role as an ancestor is broader than her family. For Srinivasan, there’s immediate personal resonance-she has a young son. “What kind of ancestor am I willing to be?” Meena Srinivasan credits her teacher Larry Ward with inviting her to contemplate this essential question.

Mindful women