Using Mind-Body Practices to Uproot Unconscious Bias in the Education Profession

Oct 15, 2026

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Many professional development sessions focused on antiracism have become spaces of defensiveness, opposition, and disengagement, especially among dominant-culture participants. This viewpoint paper uses polyvagal theory as a grounding framework to explain why confrontational equity approaches often fail to create lasting transformation in white educators’ mindsets and behaviors. It describes mindfulness-based lessons learned for uprooting unconscious bias, emphasizing felt-safety and empathy. The healing-centered approach supports critical conversations about embodied experiences of bias and racism in schools.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

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Pages24

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Abstract

Antiracism Training Context and Challenges

Kendi’s Anti-Racist Framework

An Urgent Call for Support

Requirements and Backlash After Confrontational Trainings

Participant Reactions and Resistance

Mindfulness-Based Lessons for Change

Using Mind-Body Practices to Uproot Unconscious Bias in the Education Profession Niki Elliott, Ph .D . LaFetra College of Education, University of La Verne Abstract Many professional development sessions focused on antiracism have become spaces of defensiveness and opposition to the methods and language used to engage participants, particularly those of the dominant culture. School administrators have reported that many staff either refuse to attend, avoid participation in the space, or even walk out of trainings when directly challenged to discuss anti-racism. Utilizing polyvagal theory asa grounding framework (Porges, 2017), this point of view paper explores why confrontational approaches to equity work are often unsuccessful at producing a long-term transformation of white educators’ mindsets and behaviors. The author offers a description of lessons learned from implementing a mindfulness-based approach to uprooting unconscious bias that centralizes the primary need for felt-safety and empathy among all participants engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings. This healing-centered approach to equity work offers a glimpse at what is possible for the field, and points the way toward moving the needle on critical conversations about embodied experiences of bias and racism in schools. Keywords: mindfulness, unconscious bias, teacher mindset, teacher socio-emotional learning, polyvagal theory, traumainformed teacher development AILACTE Journal 133 Elliott The brutal police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor gripped the hearts of Americans nationwide in 2020, sparking a dramatic increase in demand for training and professional development in the areas of anti-racism, diversity, and cultural proficiency. In this climate, critical race historian Ibram X. Kendi rose to national prominence when his book, How to be an AntiRacist (2019), topped the New York Times Bestseller list. Leaders across disciplines turned to Kendi and other prominent voices to define exactly what it means to be racist, and how to be an effective anti-racist ally for the Black community during this critical time in history. In the book, Kendi writes: To be antiracist is to think nothing is behaviorally wrong or right—inferior or superior—with any of the racial groups. Whenever the antiracist sees individuals behaving positively or negatively, the antiracist sees exactly that: individuals behaving positively or negatively, not representatives of whole races. To be antiracist is to deracialize behavior, to remove the tattooed stereotype from every racialized body. Behavior is something humans do, not races do. (Kendi, 2019, p 105) From this definition, one may gather that the current work of anti-racism is to identify and dismantle the structures of power (embedded in policies and practices) that result in inequities or justify existing inequities based on race. Kendi suggests that racial inequity is a problem of bad policy, not bad people. His intention is to keep the focus of anti-racist training on the actions, policies, and ideas that contribute to systemic inequalities, not on condemning any specific group of people. To clarify, he states,“To be anti-racist is to never conflate racist people with White people, knowing there are anti-racist Whites and racist non-Whites (p.129).” If all anti-racist theorists and professional development trainers shared a similar perspective and definition as Kendi’s, I would not have received the distressed phone call from a state-level association of K-12 school administrators that I did. An Urgent Call for Support In August 2020, I was contacted by the co-chairs ofthe diversity committee for a statewide body of special education 134 AILACTE Special Issue 2021 Mind-Body Practices to Uproot Unconscious Bias directors. They informed me that the committee was desperately in need of professional development for a group of 200 administrators to address diversity and equity issues

FAQs

Why do confrontational approaches to equity work often fail to produce long-term change?

The paper explains that such approaches can create defensiveness, opposition, and disengagement rather than lasting transformation of mindsets and behaviors. It frames these failures through felt-safety and empathy as key conditions.

How does the author connect anti-racism training to polyvagal theory?

Polyvagal theory is used as a grounding framework to explain the nervous-system-based conditions that support learning and transformation. The central focus becomes felt-safety for participants during diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings.

What happened in the described trainings that triggered backlash?

The paper reports that presenters used directly confrontational language, including statements that many participants experienced as “angry and threatening.” Some white administrators walked out and reported feeling publicly shamed, ostracized, and divided.

Oct 15, 2026

Upload by McQueen