Liberatory Collaboration
Joyful Mind Project founder Meikyo Chelsea True offers a unique type of support called Liberatory Collaboration, aimed at supporting you in your everyday life. This service brings together Meikyo’s training as a lay-entrusted Zen teacher and her education as a clinical psychotherapist.
Liberatory Collaboration takes place outside of the pathology model is based on the work of Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, and Ignacio Martín-Baró, a Jesuit priest and social psychologist. This form of support places healing within the context of an individual's culture and background. It is a collaborative process where equal partners work together in a supportive, non-hierarchical relationship to explore concerns and find a path through.
This process situates individual difficulties within the context of the larger cultural, racial, socioeconomic, and historical conditions in which they are arising. It is a way of working through difficulties by building awareness of how messages from dominant culture can shape our inner-narratives and inform our lives.
Where traditional clinical psychotherapy is focused on diagnosis and treatment, Liberatory Collaboration is focused on developing new ways for acting in the world. Liberatory Collaboration is a partnership with Meikyo — more like a form of coaching and not a clinical service.
If you are experiencing the impacts of significant trauma, prolonged grief, or recurring periods of deep depression, please look into our psychotherapy services here.
shifting consciousness
Whether clinical or non-clinical, a liberatory approach includes raising what liberation theorists call "conocimiento" -- an iterative, nonlinear, and embodied process of shifting consciousness that bridges personal experience with collective social and political engagement. It is considered a path to deeper understanding that links inner reflection (sensing/feeling) with external action (thinking/doing) to challenge oppressive systems and promote healing.
Rather than viewing pathology as something within an individual that needs to be "treated" or "cured," this approach places pathology in harmful systems and supports people in developing skillful responses to the difficulties and injustices of our times.
Rather than asking people to adapt to injustice, a liberatory approach seeks to help people understand the impacts of oppressive systems and to transform both the individual and the collective through practices of empowerment.
Gift Economy Model
Liberatory Collaboration is offered through an equity model informed by gift economy. You are welcome to pay the amount that works for your budget and that represents how you value this service.
For individual support, the sliding scale ranges from $75 to $275.00 per session. When you pay at the higher end of this scale, you help make this service available to people historically denied access to supportive services.
Please inquire for more information about large-scale projects or connect with us here.
“I have been teaching for seventeen years but this is my first in a Title 1 school. I love teaching here but it was a really rough adjustment at first. Students and their families deal with so many obstacles. From the beginning, Joyful Mind Project’s founder, Chelsea True, was always there for me. She listened to me and gently helped me learn centering and breathing techniques to help me get back on track.
I witness and hear of other teachers and students who echo this sentiment around the work that Chelsea has been doing with mindfulness. Her work is only beginning!”