Fellowship Forum: Dr. Sará King on the Science of Social Justice

On January 27, we launched the Garrison Institute Fellowship Forum with a dialogue between Dr. Sará King, Garrison Institute Fellow, and Dr. Angel Acosta, Director of the Garrison Institute Fellowship, on the science of social justice. At the beginning of the New Year, we gathered in shared community to discuss Dr. King’s work and we invite you to revisit this conversation at any time below.

The Garrison Institute Fellowship Forum is a series of conversations with extraordinary leaders with expertise and experience in awareness-based contemplative wisdom, the science of interconnection, generative action, and collective healing. Each conversation will be co-facilitated by the Garrison Institute Fellows and Fellowship Director Dr. Angel Acosta.

Dr. Sará Yafah King a UCLA-trained neuroscientist, political and learning scientist, education philosopher, critical theorist, social-entrepreneur, author, and public speaker. She is an internationally recognized thought-leader and co-creator of the scientific disciplinary field which merges our understanding of the relationship between mindfulness and social justice – having pioneered the first dissertation to explore the relationship between mindfulness, yoga, and embodied education as a liberatory, anti-oppression practice. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Neurology at OHSU (Oregon Health Science University) specializing in the study of the relationship between contemplative practices, complementary alternative medicine, community health and healing justice. Dr. King is also the executive director of “Peace in Schools” a transformative mindfulness non-profit, a dharma teacher with Presence Collective, and a member of Google’s Vitality Labs think tank. She is also the founder of a scientific consultancy, MindHeart Consulting, through which she offers up “The Science of Social Justice” framework for research and facilitation of which she is the inventor/creator. She has been able to promote trauma-informed cultural transformation using the Science of Social Justice from within Fortune 500 companies, global philanthropic agencies, and most recently, through her collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Dr. King has also been an avid student-practitioner of vinyasa yoga, as well as a student of Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism for 15+ years, having completed over 700 hours of training and certification, most notably through Spirit Rock in Marin, CA.