Where we embrace our differences and connect with our common humanity
The Urban Mindfulness Foundation Welcomes You
A Mindful Community Interest Company Based in Newham East London that is committed to embracing our differences and connecting through our common humanity.
The Urban Mindfulness Foundation aims to revolutionise social mindfulness teacher training, making it accessible to existing teachers and marginalised communities.
By sharing our culturally aware, socially sensitive mindfulness practices we aim to strengthen connections, build resilience, and foster personal and collective wellness.
With a dedication to healing the wounds caused by racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of identity-based harm that lead to discrimination. We apply a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) approach to offer transformative mindfulness and compassion-based training designed to empower individuals and communities.
Join our online platform, which offers a dynamic space for connecting with others passionate about mindfulness, racial and social justice, health, well-being, and environmental sustainability.
If you are looking for a Black African Caribbean-led mindfulness organisation that offers evidence-based mindfulness training rooted in spiritual solidarity and a much-needed sense of community then your in the perfect place!
Easily access community feed, groups, forums, courses and moreÂ
Affordable online taster courses and African centred modules
Free and Paid Membership Options
Whats currently happening at UMF
What else do we do?
The Urban Mindfulness Foundation trains mindfulness teachers and organisations committed to creating courageous, psychologically safe, and accountable environments necessary for innovation, transformation, and growth.
We believe our work is essential in expanding the impact of mindfulness to encompass the social, cultural, and personal determinants of health. Through our facilitated pathway to an authentic, socially conscious practice, we offer support in various contexts, from grassroots communities to educators and organisations.
By centring the experiences of the Black, African, Caribbean, Asian, and Indigenous people of colour diaspora, we advocate for a more balanced development of mindfulness that embraces cross-cultural understandings that benefit everyone, including all new and existing educators and organisations, regardless of background or identity. Read more here….
Growing our connections
Fully committed to the work of what we call "JEDI" Warriors!
“Promoting Peace through Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion that’s at the heart of it all!
A JEDI Warrior is a person who tirelessly works for peace, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, using skilfully compassionate means and knowing there will always be work to be done. A JEDI Warrior is not just about identifying where exclusion and inclusion occur. A JEDI Warrior also seeks to understand and address the imbalances within the structures we are expected to be included in. Â
Moreover, JEDI Warriors actively promote happiness, joy, resilience, and stability by acknowledging and celebrating the beauty, wisdom, and importance of social, cultural, physical, and cognitive diversity. All of which makes this a fascinating world of wonder and awe.
As JEDI warriors, we are committed to four key contemplations as follows:
- How does our integrity meet oppression?
- How does our honesty meet deceptions?
- How does decency meet insult?
- How does virtue meet brute force? Â
These contemplations help us to form a more considered and balanced worldview that understands that inclusion, by its nature, also allows space for exclusions when the means are rooted in equity and justice.Read more here….
  There is always good work to be done!
What’s so unique about us?
The Urban Mindfulness Foundation is redefining mindfulness in a way that is as culturally rich and diverse as the communities we serve.
Our award-winning program, created for and by Black, African, Caribbean, Asian, and People of Colour communities, is reshaping how mindfulness is experienced and practised across the world.
We’re bridging cultures, breaking barriers, and building a global community of mindfulness practitioners who understand that true transformation happens through collective growth. Read more here….
The only mindful innovations award-winning program specifically designed for the Black African, Caribbean, and Asian diaspora! Â
Mindfulness Based Inclusion Training (MBIT)
Introducing the UK’s first-ever Mindfulness-Based Inclusion Training (MBIT) program – a game-changer in addressing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion! Awarded at the 2022 Mindfulness Innovations Awards, MBIT is a groundbreaking training that blends mindfulness with social, cultural, and emotional awareness to transform relationships and deepen our understanding of one another.
Designed for beginners, experienced practitioners, and organisations committed to tackling societal gaps, MBIT draws on both traditional and somatic techniques to heal the trauma of identity-based harm. This program sparks powerful change by embedding equity and inclusion into mindfulness practices, creating a space for critical thinking, wise discernment, and the courage to act.
Join us to embrace a transformative journey that challenges conditioning, fosters empathy, and empowers action for a more inclusive world!
Face to Face Sessions inÂ
Westfield Shopping Centre, Stratford
The Urban Mindfulness Foundation are excited to be collaborating with Inspire Stratford CIO, in association with Stratford Churches to provide mindfulness sessions at Westfield Shopping Centre, Stratford.
Welcoming young adults, people of faith and no faith from all backgrounds to explore mindfulness from both a secular and faith-based lens.
Sessions uniquely integrate education, culture, meditation, contemplation, and reflective practices that welcome the wisdom of all faith traditions and none to what is an inclusive, socially engaged secular mindfulness practice.Â
If you are curious, come along to one of our FREE Saturday drop-in sessions to learn more.
Hear what previous participants have to say!
BIG UP YOUR CHESS - 2025!
The young adults mindfulness project
Free bursaries are now available to join this unique and culturally informed mindfulness-based community health and wellbeing programme for 18 to 24-year-olds in Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney.
The courses are funded by East London NHS Foundation Trust and well run over 8 weeks during the summer on a Saturrday afternoon.
If you need a couple of hours break from it all, or you wish to avoid the weekly shopping trip to Westfield, why not join us on a Saturday afternoon to explore how mindfulness might help you stay focused, achieve your aspirations and improve health, well-being and positive social relationships.
Please register your interest today!  Â
Big Up Your CHESS
Is an acronym for:
C – Choosing
H – Health
E – Education and
S – Strategic
S – Solidarity
This project is fully funded and supported by:
Courses restart late Spring 2025
Location: Westfield Shopping Centre Stratford
For more information check out the project page here
CALLING ALL PARTNERS & SPONSORS:Â Â
If you would like to support this project please contact us or make a donation:Â
unity@urbanmindfulnessfoundation.co.uk
We’re published… and trending!
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for our time: A curriculum that is up to the task
Check out this paper we co-authored as part of a diverse team of mindfulness, teachers, educators, researchers and leaders in the UK and USA, raising awareness to social and cultural issues of our times to encourage prosocial change.
Abstract: There is currently heightened public consciousness of the intersecting challenges of social and racial injustice, other forms of inequity, and the climate and biodiversity crisis. We examine how these current realities influence how we engage as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Program (MBP) teachers and researchers. Although Kabat-Zinn developed MBSR as a vehicle to enable engagement with both the individual and the collective drivers of distress and flourishing, predominant research and practice trends within the MBP field have prioritised individual wellbeing, and have not been accessible to the full societal demographic. Read more here….
Free online drop-in sessions
Free online sessions for BAPOC Men onlyÂ
Coming again soon
This is an online community solidarity gathering for Black, (African and Caribbean) Asian and indigenous men of colour and culture (BAPOC) aged 18+. These morning sessions offer opportunities to engage with formal mindfulness practice to help settle the nervous system, release trauma, and ground the mind and body in the present moment as a process of creating the conditions for new insights relating to our personal and collective healing and flourishing to arise naturally.Â
Free online sessions for BAPOC Women only
Coming again soon
This is an online community solidarity gathering for Black, (African and Caribbean) Asian and indigenous women of colour and culture (BAPOC) aged 18+. These morning sessions offer opportunities to engage with formal mindfulness practice to help settle the nervous system, release trauma, and ground the mind and body in the present moment as a process of creating the conditions for new insights relating to our personal and collective healing and flourishing to arise naturally.
Free drop-in sessions
Online Sessions
coming again soon
This is an online community solidarity gathering for all 18+ folk. These morning sessions offer an opportunity to engage with formal mindfulness practice to help settle the nervous system, release trauma, and ground the mind and body in the present moment as a process of creating the conditions for new insights relating to our personal and collective healing and flourishing to arise naturally.Â
Drastic times require DRASIC measures – A successful 2022 project that now informs all the work we do!
>Â PROJECT DRASIC <
Covid-19 Mindfulness Resources
Important Mindfulness reading for a reflective practice
- > Can mindfulness help us midst covid 19 and beyond?
- > Time for new thinking about mindfulness and social change
- > Social mindfulness as a force for change
- > Mindfulness and It’s Limitations in a Neoliberal Society
- > The mindfulness conspiracy, capitalist-spirituality
- > The Myth of McMindfulness.
- > Moving mindfulness from ‘me’ to ‘we’
Donate to our mission
All of our drop-in sessions are offered freely.
However, we welcome adults to donate £3 to £5 per session to help us continue our services.
You can also donate using Paypal
The Urban Mindfulness Foundation is passionate about the well-being of everyone in our community. However, to have maximum impact, we need your help to ensure our programs remain freely available to those from underserved, underrepresented, or disadvantaged backgrounds who might not normally be able to access such training due to financial constraints.
So please help us to keep our service accessible and free to those who are unable to afford mindfulness or self-development training elsewhere.
Every donation makes a vital difference to our work continuing so please donate what you can or wish and follow the suggested donations of £3 to 5 per session where possible.
Giving thanks!