Women who took a 12-week college meditation course showed greater decreases in negative affect and larger increases in mindfulness and self-compassion than men. Women's improvements in negative affect were linked to gains in both mindfulness skills and self-compassion, while men showed non-significant increases in negative affect and their affect changes correlated only with the ability to describe emotions, not with experiential or self-acceptance measures. The findings suggest that women may respond more favorably than men to school-based mindfulness training and that tailoring interventions by gender could improve effectiveness.
Psychology's colonial roots of disconnection and domination obstruct collective well-being through individualism, disembodiment, and secularization. The antidote is love as a decolonial praxis of reconnection to each other, to bodies, and to Spirit. This praxis is illustrated through the creation of a community intervention called critical contemplative dialogues (CCD), tailored for Black, Indigenous, and peoples of color and piloted with seven contemplatives. The intervention is grounded in critical, contemplative, and dialogic frameworks and manifests love through themes of witnessing, dialogue, embodied practice, emergence, and ceremony. Eight emergent guiding values center radical healing and liberation, pointing toward broader applications in psychology.