Brave Space

The Racial Affinity Group Development Program

Addressing the inner work of transforming racism!

Brave Space Racial Affinity Group Development Program

There can be no sustaining shift toward racial justice without the rigor required to understand and heal our racial group habits of harm.

Itโ€™s not enough to think we can simply get a racially diverse group of smart people in a room and โ€œhash outโ€ the issues. Many of us have been there and done that to no avail. We show up with good intentions but leave puzzled, bruised, and frustrated. Unfortunately, this is painfully common.

Given the unintended harm caused from unawareness and emotional activation when we gather across races, we need a way to dive deep into understanding the ignorance and innocence of our racial habits, character, and impact on social harmony. For these reasons and more, I created Brave Space: a 12-month intentional space for self-formed racial affinity groups to understand your racial conditioning, its impact, and our collective potential.

Brave Space Will Help You:

Deepen your understanding of your racial conditioning and its impact through mindfulness applications

Strengthen your understanding of racial identity, agency, and responsibility within intentional and compassionate communityย 

Experience racial group affinity as a gateway to deeper presence, clarity, and connection to humanity

Regulate emotions and deepen connection through mindfulness and somatic practices and neuroscience applicationsย 

Listen deeply and stay present to racial complexity with less activation and more stability

Clarify your intentions and ripen compassion toward yourself and other races

This work helps you stand tall in your understanding of your own race and recognize and respond to social distress with more understanding and fierce clarity.

Discover How Your Racial Conditioning Impacts Social Harmony

The group development focus in Brave Space supports an embodied learning experience. Through structured and supportive monthly guidanceย andย attention to group growth within your racial affinity group,ย you discover how you show up and impact groups in your broader fields of influence.

Within a span of 12 months, you have time to relax, open, and discover - from the inside out - that you can stay engaged with the truth of race and racism with more inner stability, confidence, and grace.

In Brave space, belonging becomes more intimate, and this ripening has a profound impact on your capacity to influence social harmony and well-being.

Mindful of Race Institute

Racial Group Affinity Is the Gateway to Deeper Presence, Clarity, and Connection to Humanity

When you engage this tender territory with members of your own race, you are using your relationships to each other to better understand yourself as a racialized being and your collective impact.

To separate into same-race groups, in this sense, is not intended to divide us but rather to leverage the fact that within most contexts and often within our hearts, we are already racially divided. In Brave Space, we use separation to more deeply understand this chronic conditioning that feeds separation and harm.

Click here to read more about the unique importance for BIPOC and white affinity groups.

"Now is the time... just do it!"

Examine and challenge your own unconscious racial bias.ย 

Experience mindfulness within group process and how it supports stability and broadens perspective.ย 

Practice meditation and apply neuroscience tools when experiencing intense emotions.

Recognize how dominant and subordinated racial groups perceive, and how perception informs your approach to leadership.ย 

Experience vulnerability as a humanizing and harmonizing influence tool.

Develop group trust and stay present to emotions, biases, and intentions.ย 

Recognize subtle forms of racial resistance within your affinity group and learn how to address their impact.ย 

Recognize barriers to inclusion that impact experiences of belonging.ย 

This Course Includes:

12 thoughtfully constructed lesson plans that stimulate insight and prepare you for engagement within your racial affinity monthly meetings

Racial affinity group guidelines with an emphasis on commitment, consent, and mindful communications, plus monthly instructions for navigating three stages of group life

Roughly 60 hours of instructional contemplations, 35 hours of group engagement

Over 20 instructional videos and more than 20 guided meditations for individual contemplation and group engagement

How It Works

Access the online portal. You will receive new guidance, assignments, and personal reflections each month. The online portal contains all of the material in one, easy-to-access place.

Complete the individual assignments. Take time to engage in deep personal reflection and explore your racial conditioning through the provided assignments. (Estimated at 3 hours per month.)

Meet with your racial affinity group.ย We provide thoughtful guidelines for meetings including guided meditations, a template to structure your time together, and questions for contemplation and group development discussion.

Through the genius of the Brave Space design, you have the time needed to unpack and experience your racial conditioning, out loud and within community. No one is made to feel right or wrong, rushed or judged. Instead, space is structured into the design, ensuring that you are seen, respected, mirrored, and affirmed.

The experience that grows over time allows all members to both learn and embody what they are learning. This is a crucial foundation for racial awareness, connection, and healing.

A Potent Drop of Awareness

Immersive program

Brave Space is not a complete response to racial injury and injustice. Rather, we are deconstructing how we have been programmed to think and respond to race and racism, and recognizing whether our habits are harming or healing. It offers an intentional, structured, and graceful way over time to examine our racial conditioning within affinity community.

The curiosity, sensitivity, and respect you will refine within your racial affinity group over this 12-month period is what strengthens your faith in humanity and purifies a dis-eased social heart. You will be able to stand tall in your understanding of your own race and be able to recognize and respond to social distress with fierce clarity.

Center for Equity & Inclusion, 2019

Brave Space by Beth Strano

There's no such thing as a safe space.

We exist in the real world and we all carry scars and have caused wounds.

This space seeks to turn down the volume of the world outside and amplify the voices that have to fight to be heard elsewhere.

This space will not be perfect. It will not always be what we wish it to be.

But it will be ours together and we will work on it side by side.

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