Hi, I’m Annie and Raw Mindfulness is about sharing the work I love − helping people transform and heal for their personal and the collective good.

I am dedicated to understanding the world as it is and responding with compassion and wisdom. With the hectic pace of modern life, we take more in today than we ever have, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. I’ve struggled with this over the years, too and I’ve learned how to bring more calm and ease into my life. Some of my practices are shared here on this site.

You’ll see that I post narratives to inspire others through blogging, social, and newsletters, offering insight on ways to look at the world’s issues consciously and mindfully. Creating relationships and community is critical for exercising self-care, so there’s a focus on building relationships along with more traditional mindfulness practice.. Please explore my site. I hope you will find inspiration and guidance in the readings and in connecting with others, so you can find ways to compost your stress into joy and ease.

Read on for my story +

Engaged mindfulness

I believe that understanding, embracing, and transforming our individual suffering is a starting point for awakening to the pain and suffering of marginalized people globally. As we better understand ourselves and heal our conditioned habits, we can see how our identities relate to the world around us and what our role can be in addressing the injustice that exists in our universe.

Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, impersonal, and challenging nature of the world, while waking us up to the power we have in relationship to all other beings. We can use our suffering as the compost for compassionate awareness and action through our engaged mindfulness practice.

What is Engaged Mindfulness Practice?

Engaged mindfulness puts our practice in the service of the suffering of the entire world. It’s the Bodhisattva path which reminds us that none of us are free until all of us are free. Vietnamese Buddhist Monk and mindfulness teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, says it this way: "Peace in Oneself, Peace in the World." Raw Mindfulness centers teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh, and others, who emphasize that our individual practice contains the larger purpose of engaging and supporting our global community.

Mindfulness communities are essential spaces in the fight for true equality and justice for all because they have this awareness and understanding at their core. Together, we use our practice to cut through the illusions of separateness, greed, and hatred, and find ways to take informed, healing, and collective action.

Inspiration

Thich Nhat Hanh

Thich Nhat Hanh has been a Zen master, teacher and activist since the 1960’s, using Buddhist practice to take on social ills like war and poverty in his native Vietnam. He continues a life-long commitment to making Buddhism more accessible and practicing social justice. His actions, along with those of many others, inspires me to take my own compassionate action and offer reparations work towards liberating marginalized communities.

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the first teachers who inspired me to fully engage in life and use my practice to transform. This helped get me through many dark days of anxiety and despair. The Fourteen Mindfulness trainings of Thich Nhat Hahn’s Order of Interbeing continue to challenge and support my practice. They have taught me that my happiness depends on your happiness and your happiness depends on my happiness.