My Resistance Melts Away: The Role of Mindfulness in Supporting YPAR Researchers' Efforts to Share Power with Youth Co-Researchers

Background

In the context of what has been called “the great unraveling”, scholars, activists and community leaders are calling for collective and collaborative responses that reflect the urgency of these times. Youth voices and action are and have always been a powerful force for social change. Youth have a unique stake in the future health of their communities, and hold key insights into what communities need to respond to these threats. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) requires researchers to share power with youth co-researchers and to collaborate across identities to work equitably. To share power with youth, adult facilitators of YPAR must have the capacity to track the role of identity and power in group dynamics, and work skillfully with trauma, particularly when working with youth impacted by oppression. Understanding what approaches and practices support YPAR adult facilitators’ ability to share power is a vital area of knowledge that can support greater freedom in how researchers’ approach YPAR.

Mindfulness is a capacity available to all humans, and can be cultivated through various practices (e.g., sitting, movement-based). Emerging scholarship suggests that mindfulness can help facilitate critical consciousness, address internal biases and sustain justice-oriented work. Mindfulness offers a powerful set of practices to support researchers in staying present and grounded in YPAR. This qualitative study explored the role of mindfulness in supporting capacity as YPAR researchers to skillfully collaborate with youth co-researchers and share power.

Methods

Representing a collective of diverse researchers and YPAR projects, we employed collaborative autoethnography (CAE), exploring multiple researchers’ experiences using a systematic critical analysis, reflecting on a core research question: How does mindfulness inform and support our YPAR work, particularly our task of sharing power with youth co-researchers? Through personal reflexive narratives, and collaboratively engaging in data analysis, we positioned ourselves as both researcher/participant to iteratively co-construct knowledge. Data was systematically analyzed utilizing a Sort and Sift, Think and Shift process, while exploring power dynamics in relation to the data.

Results

Two major themes emerged. First, mindfulness supported our ability to overcome barriers to being present in facilitating YPAR. This first theme included three subthemes: Mindfulness as a support for 1) working with triggers related to identity, 2) working with the tendency to control group dynamics, 3) and facilitator burnout. Our second theme suggests mindful presence facilitated deeper connection with youth and stronger collaboration; this theme included two subthemes: Presence supporting 1) facilitator capacity to foster trust and connection, 2) and deep collaboration and flow.

Conclusions

In strengthening social impact through collaborative research, we join other interdisciplinary scholars who underscore the potential that YPAR and mindfulness hold to address the challenges of our time. Mindfulness can provide a strengths-based approach to deepen youth collaboration, and tools to counter white supremacist tendencies (e.g., power-hoarding). Further, the lineage of socially engaged mindfulness offers exciting opportunities to support researchers’ efforts to dismantle colonized ways of working and the potential of youth-adult community collaborations. Implications for youth community-based participatory action research will be explored.