My Path to Loving Kindness Via Militant Mindfulness

Embodiment: what is a body of work? As an interdisciplinary artist, my leadership is forged in service. At 21, I co-founded and was the executive artistic director of a community-based nonprofit experimental theatre company in Philadelphia, PA, where I built a creative home for nearly two decades. Later, I served as a certified hospice volunteer and end-of-life doula (INELDA), accompanying individuals and families through profound transitions.

I entered social work formally in 2020, earning my MSW from Adelphi University. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I completed a  1,000-hour frontline internship under the clinical supervision of Judith Lombardi-R, at the Dutchess County Public Defender’s Office, embedding with the alternative-to-incarceration (ATI) workers and contributing to holistic defense across family, criminal, and drug courts. Forensic social work mitigation expanded my public scholar-practitioner lens, regarding training my person-in-environment, biospheric orientation informed by Black cultural kinship traditions blood-lined from the African philosophical roots of Ubuntu: “I am because, we are,” indigenous wisdom, and  activist advocacy.  I was able to integrate my professional artist identity with my social work identity through embodied approaches to applied research in the form of personal narrative and the power of redemption through accountability. One of the most meaningful lessons I learned in forensic mitigation was how deep listening can be the light that provides insight and a way back home. The pandemic provided a type of freedom, as I was literally outside in the streets forming hear-centered connections through community-based social work. Over three-years of the pandemic, my core behavioral health service and population training involved serving high-risk, high-need, and low-resource individuals contending with suicide ideation and survivors of multiple suicide attempts. These viscerally human-condition experiences, as well as, co-research on a major mitigation case with then-Public Defender Tom Angel, grounded my social work practice in loving kindness and cultural humility. 

Training, Practice &  Love as Health Justice

I completed postgraduate clinical training at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, where I focused on trauma-sensitive, neuroscience-informed Buddhist psychology. I was also selected for the inaugural IDEATE Integrated Behavioral Health Fellowship, receiving certification in Suicide Safer Care and the AIMS model of collaborative care.

My public scholarship bridges ecological justice, loving kindness, militant mindfulness,  and arts &  health. I served for three years on Adelphi's arts-based participatory action research team, investigating health disparities among Harlem residents and co-creating platforms for community voice. Through this work, and as a diasporic African American woman, I have developed a nuanced understanding of how culture, stress, race, and systemic neglect shape access to care and wellbeing.

The Future I’m Building

I am honored to be part of the first cohort of the 2024 MBSR Teacher Advancement Intensive (TAI) Level One Training at Brown University, focused on serving historically marginalized groups under the leadership of Professor Eric Loucks.

To me, militant mindfulness is inherently relational. It is not a passive state or an escape—it is a call to embodiment. It asks us to fully inhabit our bodies, our communities, and our responsibilities to one another. Militant Mindfulness as embodiment means standing in our truth, loving through adversity, and cultivating the safety to be fully seen and fully free. To move through the world without shrinking. To act with tenderness and power. To belong without permission.

Walk with me.

—Shelita Birchett Benash, MSW

Qualified MBSR Teacher, Brown University