By Kimine Mayuzumi There is nothing passive about stopping, and when you decide to go, it’s a different kind of going because you stopped. — Jon Kabat-Zinn A few weeks ago, I led a session called Exhale – Reset through Reflection and Practice for a group of academics transitioning out of their academic year. I was reminded again how exhausting this season can be for many academics — trying to wrap things up while…
By Kimine Mayuzumi Ten years ago, I wrote a short post called “5 Ways to Slow Down NOW.” At the time, I didn’t know whether anyone would read it. I simply felt pulled to explore gentler ways of living and working — especially in environments organized around speed, output, and performance. I kept writing, not because I had a grand vision for what Being Lazy and Slowing Down (BLSD) would become, but because each piece…
By Riyad A. Shahjahan My recently published conceptual paper “Am I a Scholar” began with a keynote invitation. I’d been asked to deliver a keynote at an international forum I hadn’t attended in some time. The theme was “I Am a Scholar.” But as I sat with that phrase, it didn’t settle in very well. The certainty of it felt out of step for me. My experiences have been shaped more by ambiguity, deferral, and…
By Riyad A. Shahjahan When graduate students and early career faculty struggle to clarify an argument, I always give the same advice: find a model to follow. Look for an article, proposal, or dissertation that resonates to help articulate and organize your own ideas. Study how it builds its case, what kinds of evidence it uses, and how it structures its ideas. This is exactly what helped me develop a concept I call decolonial…
By Kimine Mayuzumi It’s been quite a while since I created my first guided meditation audio for writing. Since then, I’ve received so much positive feedback … and, in fact, it’s been one of our top three most viewed blog posts ever. That’s why I thought it was time for a refresh. So I asked our listeners what they’d love to see (or hear) in an updated version. Through a recent survey, I gathered…
