CANCELLED: From Imbalance to In Balance

I am the Director of the Gender & Women's Studies Program and a Full Professor in the Ethnic, Gender & Women's Studies Department at St. Cloud State University. Having taught in academia for more than twenty years, I too have struggled with balance. On the verge of burnout, I turned to mindfulness, yoga, and meditation for some practices and insights into how to engage in teaching and scholarship that I so deeply care about while still taking care of my well being to live a full, well-rounded life. In fact, I became a 500-hour registered yoga teacher in order to deepen both my own journey to wholeness and learn more about teaching yoga. I have also completed trainings with Generative Somatics and in Trauma-Informed Yoga, Adaptive Yoga, and Curvy Yoga. I draw on all these experiences, alongside my deep familiarity with academic culture, to offer strategies for bringing our work into balance.

My teaching and scholarship has also grown from this journey. My book, Integrating Mindfulness into Anti-Oppression Pedagogy: Social Justice in Higher Education, was published by Routledge in 2015. I am the co-editor, with Melanie Klein and Chelsea Jackson Roberts, of Yoga, the Body, and Embodied Social Change: An Intersectional Feminist Analysis (Lexington Books 2016). My work is located at the juncture of mindfulness, feminism, and embodied social justice. Learn more here. Photo Credit: Rita Farmer Photography.