Change Your Brain to Live More Nonviolently

by Monica Juma

CNV Action Organizer Monica Juma in Memphis, TN has been organizing actions for CNV Action Week since we began in 2014. This year she's helping organize and promote a meditation session in September. Pace e Bene's nonviolence trainer, Veronica Pelicaric, recently began a 6-week "Meditation for Nonviolent Living" course as well. It's a wonderful way to promote personal nonviolent living!  

A couple years ago at our Pax Christi meeting we assigned members to reflect on Pope Francis’ World Day of Peace Message 2017, “Nonviolence: a Style of Politics for Peace.“ In this message, Pope Francis quotes Pope Benedict XVI: “For Christians, nonviolence is not merely tactical behavior but a person’s way of being, the attitude of one who is so convinced of God’s love and power that he or she is not afraid to tackle evil with the weapons of love and truth alone.“ So I was reflecting on the question of how to pursue nonviolence. How do we turn fear into love in action?

Inspired by the fact that Gandhi meditated an hour a day, I started looking into the scientific benefits of meditation and how that might translate into cultivating nonviolence. A Harvard research study shows that after individuals who were new to meditation took the 8-week MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) class, MRIs of the participants revealed an area of the brain that controls fear, the amygdala, actually got smaller whereas a part of the brain that has to do with compassion, the temporo-parietal junction, got larger! This lends evidence that meditation can help replace fear with love and compassion—the heart of nonviolence.

My husband, Stephen, and I took this class in January and it was wonderful. I felt it really gave me the tools to incorporate mindfulness and meditation into my day-to-day life, working to foster inner nonviolence. Especially with everything that’s going on with the pandemic, I’m so grateful to have taken this course.

There’s an upcoming virtual offering of this MBSR course being offered by Amy Balentine, PhD, a mindfulness instructor in Memphis. It starts September 6th and will run through the week of action.

You can register here: https://www.memphiscenterformindfulliving.com/workshops/2020/9/8/mindfulness-based-stress-reduction-mbsr