I was looking for a seat at a local conference about meditation when I saw it: “‘In a racially unjust world, what good is mindfulness?” read the t-shirt. The quote was from civil rights activist and author Angela Davis, in conversation with mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn.

Intrigued by the shirt, I soon learned that the woman wearing it had given a presentation at the conference. Her name: Angela Rose Black.

Black, who has a Ph.D., recently left a 15-year academic career in which she researched health and stress in the lives of black women. She is now the founder and CEO of a Wisconsin-based organization called Mindfulness for the People.

Black describes Mindfulness for the People as a “for-profit, Black-owned social impact entity that is radically re-imagining the mindfulness movement.” Judging from the reaction she got at the conference we both attended, Black is well on her way to just that kind of radical reimagining.

It was during her own search for mindfulness practices that Black, who is African-American, says she realized how inaccessible mindfulness practices can be for people of color. The question, she says, is “Who gets to be well?”

“Showing up in this body, asking the question, ‘Who gets to be well?’ became a way to disrupt the universal bliss and current narrative of the mindfulness movement,” says Black, who often uses the hashtag #WhoGets2BeWell when attending mindfulness conferences, retreats and teacher trainings.

The current narrative about mindfulness “asserts ‘universal’ access for all without ever having to ask access for whom, based on what or for how long,” says Black. A crop of recent studies in Mindfulness, the Journal of Holistic Nursing and by Northwestern University have sought to address this dearth of research available on diversity and mindfulness.

In her own experience with mindfulness, Black says she’s felt “alternately unwelcomed and curiously hyperfocused on, unseen yet aggressively overdirected by White practitioners and teachers.”

“So, while trying to ‘pay attention with intention’ to my breath, I felt like my presence — my very embodiment of Blackness — was both triggering and intoxicating for the White folks there,” she adds.

Enter Mindfulness for the People, an organization born from Black’s desire to center the voices and wisdom of people of color in mindfulness research, teaching and practice. To do this, Mindfulness for the People offers trainings, presentations and consultations for businesses.

ParentMap recently talked with Black about her work and what families of all backgrounds can learn from it.