Journey Within - Teen Mindfulness & Meditation Fellowship

Today, more and more teens are taking a year off - a gap year- before college, feeling unsure of what’s next after high school and ill equipped to pursue professional/higher learning. Teens are sharing a desire for time to search within themselves, to find what at their core gives them meaning, wanting to avoid falling into jobs, paths, or patterns that are inauthentic to their being. As a response to these sentiments heard a first account from hundred of teens they support, a group of educators, mentors and directors of programs centered on meditation and mindfulness for teens, joined efforts to pilot a three month fellowship where in a young person who has participated in similar programming for a year or longer and has built their own personal connection to the practise, will be offered the chance to further explore some of the questions and insights one experiences when attending long mediation retreats at various retreat centers across the nation and abroad.

Richard Louissaint, a teen who has demonstrated a great commitment to the practise of mindfulness, meditation and self discovery will be the first to receive this fellowship offering himself and in part teens alike to know how an opportunity like this can support them exploring their passions and what inspires them. From July to August, Richardson will attend four residential retreats in four different cities across the United States and sit over 130 hours of mediation. This will serve as his first time traveling across the country by himself. The apprenticeship is constructed to support the growth of a teens level of accountability and responsibility through navigating various transpiration and logistical details, maintaining an outlined schedule and itinerary, and meeting the requirements of each retreat.

Each fellow is required to maintain a journal documenting their travels and experiences, is asked to consider specific questions that support their process while on retreat and also help assess the benefit of the fellowship. They will also blog and contribute to a youth centered podcast that supports the experiences of other youth who are building a mediation practise and who are looking for ways to show up for their lives and those of others with more awareness and mindfulness.

From July to August, Richard Louissant will attend four residential retreats in four different cities across the United States and sit over 130 hours of meditation. In addition to holding interviews with mentors and teachers post retreat, Richardson will also be keeping a journal with personal reflections about his experience to contribute to a larger initiative through teen mindfulness education program iBme's youth podcast and the blog site for Envision's website, a youth and whole community mindfulness consutalting group. The retreat costs themselves are being provided through through scholarship support from Envison, whole community and youth advocacy consulting group and iBme, inward bound mindfulness education program.

Many more young people are being impacted by the many gifts of mindfulness and meditation either through their learning environments, in their communities or through social media as mindfulness becomes more and more infused into todays pop culture. And for over a thousand teens across the country and soon various parts of the world youth mediation retreats through organizations like iBme and Insight Meditation Society will touch at first hand the ways that being in safe, non judgmental, inclusive, open and nurturing spaces can make the journey of looking within an invaluable tool they will use for the rest of their lives.  

Apprentice Richardson Louissant says that his first retreat experience changed his "outlook on life' giving him a "confidence and faith" in himself he hadn't known. He like many other youth who have attended teen mediation retreats or who are participants in mindfulness and meditation programs like the Awake Youth Project (of whom he is a graduate of) live in communities where they experience the effects of being policed daily, while systematically unacknowledged. Fighting to let go of the conditioning from the injustice they face that push against the hope and belief they deserve for a better and brighter tomorrow. 

"Mindfulness and meditation have helped me to appreciate the qualities in myself and others that I have often taken for granted and to put an end to harmful cycles that impede my growth and development. These are the same challenges and setbacks I've noticed that also exists in the lives of my peers. I know people on my block and in my neighborhood who believe that the cold steel on their waist is their best friend and others who feel a deep sense of hopelessness. I want to learn as much as I can about this practise, about what it can offer so that I can help others like myself find a path to the future they envision." Richard Louissiant