Flourishing Kin

Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being

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Pub Date Nov 19 2024 | Archive Date Dec 19 2024

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Description

From Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen comes a first-of-its-kind book about our aspiration for sustainable, collective flourishing through Indigenous wisdom, traditions, and practices that bridge Indigenous and Western knowledges and ways.

How do we cultivate happiness? When facing the monumental challenges of our world, we often end up disconnecting in order to focus on our mental health. Dr. Yuria Celidwen explains this focus on our own state of mind alone is precisely why so many of us struggle to flourish. “What’s been overlooked is the Indigenous perspective of relationality,” she says. “It is the understanding that happiness is only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and to our living Earth.”

Dr. Celidwen’s research shows the tremendous benefit of integrating Indigenous approaches into our approach to well-being, while recognizing the gains made by Western positive psychology, mindfulness, and neuroscience. In Flourishing Kin, she identifies seven key principles found in Indigenous cultures worldwide that embrace virtue, ethical living, and spirituality. Each principle—Kin Relationality, Body Seed, Senshine, Heartfelt Wisdom, Ecological Belonging, Collective Well-Being, and Reemergence—is a seed to flourishing kin, and reveals how we can overcome isolation and climate anxiety, nourish healthy relationships with our communities and environment, and build strong foundations of well-being that elevate our life choices for the benefit of our whole planet.

Sustainable collective flourishing goes beyond optimism or resilience. Offering opportunities for exploration, reflection, and personalized insight, here you’ll find shared storytelling, cultural tradition, and other forms of enhanced contemplative practice like ritual, music, movement, and art to support your journey. Through poetic expression and authentic truth telling, Dr. Celidwen invites us to experience a path to fulfillment that allows us to meet the world in all its complexity with reverence and joyous commitment to participate in the flourishing of all living beings.

From Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen comes a first-of-its-kind book about our aspiration for sustainable, collective flourishing through Indigenous wisdom, traditions, and practices that bridge...


Advance Praise

“Spoken as a true sage, Yuria Celidwen has voiced a mindful story of prayer, hope, and remembrance of the Indigenous Spirit of Mindfulness. It is a story of a Spirit that still exists and whispers to us its message of love, kindness, and reverence for undying Spirit of Life. A pleasure to read and an inspiration for all to move forward to mindfully face the intractable challenges of our times!” ―Gregory Cajete, PhD, former director of Native American Studies at the University of New Mexico and author of Native Science

“Dr. Celidwen has made a profound contribution to the study of human flourishing, which has traditionally ignored rich Indigenous traditions and focused on the individual. Flourishing Kin provides a deeply needed antidote by bridging Western and Indigenous science and centering on relationality, interdependence, mutuality, and the meaning inherent in all living phenomena. Celidwen makes a convincing case that only by striving for the flourishing of all our kin can we achieve true well-being.” ―john a. powell, director of the Othering & Belonging Institute and author of The Power of Bridging

“Indigenous cultures have managed to live sustainably in their natural habitats for many thousands of years. They know things about life and land, kin and relationality, nature and sustainability that we humans need to wake up to and instantiate on every level, from the personal to the planetary. In Flourishing Kin, Yuria Celidwen shows herself to be a weaver of worlds, articulating the original Indigenous sacredness and interconnectedness of all life on this precious planet of ours, and the need for us as humans at this moment to live our way into the very real strands of relationality and kinship that might sustainably right long-standing wrongs and injustices and repair the harm, the exploitation, and the grief that our othering and impulses to capitalize, extract, and dominate inevitably lead to. The only way to do this, of course, is for humanity to wake up to its deepest embodied and enacted nature, and this is what this book might just catalyze and nurture in us going forward.” ―Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and author of Full Catastrophe Living and Coming to Our Senses

“In this brilliant and stirring book, Indigenous scientist, activist, and teacher Dr. Yuria Celidwen will take you on a powerful and inspiring tour of Indigenous histories, cultures, and wisdom, all brought together in a moving synthesis of scholarship, personal story, and practice. Reading this book will transform how you live your life, orienting you to your deep relatedness to nature and all living forms and pointing you to a path toward collective flourishing, so urgently needed during these times of crisis.” ―Dacher Keltner, PhD, Distinguished Professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, founding director of the Greater Good Science Center, and author of Awe

“This extraordinary book brings us to the very heart of what it means to flourish in our world today and to nourish flourishing in our world. Drawn from the deep roots of Indigenous wisdom, it is a brilliant light in our imperiled world.” ―Roshi Joan Halifax, PhD, abbot, Upaya Zen Center, and author of Being with Dying

“Yuria Celidwen is an Indigenous healer, scholar, and scientist of Nahua and Maya heritage from Chiapas, Mexico. Flourishing Kin is her extraordinary book that blends the ancient wisdom of her Elders and Mother Earth with modern science and presents a sorely needed recipe for reverence, respect, reparations, and more to help restore our balance with our planet and with each other. She provides simple, accessible Indigenous contemplative practices that are relevant for us all and will help us to reconnect with our Spirit, our kin, and our planet. A very timely manifesto that will be of great benefit to our future.” ―Richard J. Davidson, PhD, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds and coauthor of New York Times bestseller The Emotional Life of Your Brain

“The essential truth reflected in this heartfelt and scholarly work is the powerful Indigenous wisdom of community. Yuria shows how much the beauty and vision of the collective has been neglected in the individual focus on contemplative practice and how important it is to awaken together with all!” ―Jack Kornfield, cofounder of the Spirit Rock Center and the Insight Meditation Society and author of A Path with Heart

“Our ecological crisis and global violence arise from us humans forgetting our belonging, our embeddedness in the web of life. Drawing on the vast repository of wisdom from Indigenous contemplative traditions, Yuria Celidwen offers us a pathway of awakening from an individual identity to the cellular realization of our collective belonging. This powerful guide is a spiritual transmission that flows from Yuria’s own Indigenous roots and directly evokes a reverence for the sacredness and connectedness of all life. Flourishing Kin is profoundly relevant to our times, an urgently needed medicine for planetary flourishing.” ―Tara Brach, founder of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC, and author of Radical Compassion

“Spoken as a true sage, Yuria Celidwen has voiced a mindful story of prayer, hope, and remembrance of the Indigenous Spirit of Mindfulness. It is a story of a Spirit that still exists and whispers to...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781649632043
PRICE $19.99 (USD)
PAGES 256

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Featured Reviews

From Indigenous scholar Yuria Celidwen comes a first-of-its-kind book about our aspiration for sustainable, collective flourishing through Indigenous wisdom, traditions, and practices that bridge Indigenous and Western knowledges and ways.

How do we cultivate happiness? When facing the monumental challenges of our world, we often end up disconnecting in order to focus on our mental health. Dr. Yuria Celidwen explains this focus on our own state of mind alone is precisely why so many of us struggle to flourish. “What’s been overlooked is the Indigenous perspective of relationality,” she says. “It is the understanding that happiness is only possible in community, when we cultivate our relationships toward all kin, from human to more-than-human, and to our living Earth.”

Dr. Celidwen’s research shows the tremendous benefit of integrating Indigenous approaches into our approach to well-being, while recognizing the gains made by Western positive psychology, mindfulness, and neuroscience. In Flourishing Kin, she identifies seven key principles found in Indigenous cultures worldwide that embrace virtue, ethical living, and spirituality. Each principle—Kin Relationality, Body Seed, Senshine, Heartfelt Wisdom, Ecological Belonging, Collective Well-Being, and Reemergence—is a seed to flourishing kin, and reveals how we can overcome isolation and climate anxiety, nourish healthy relationships with our communities and environment, and build strong foundations of well-being that elevate our life choices for the benefit of our whole planet.

Sustainable collective flourishing goes beyond optimism or resilience. Offering opportunities for exploration, reflection, and personalized insight, here you’ll find shared storytelling, cultural tradition, and other forms of enhanced contemplative practice like ritual, music, movement, and art to support your journey. Through poetic expression and authentic truth telling, Dr. Celidwen invites us to experience a path to fulfillment that allows us to meet the world in all its complexity with reverence and joyous commitment to participate in the flourishing of all living beings.

IIt is no exaggeration to state that this work profoundly touched me. For those seeking insight into thriving both individually and within a community, this book is a must-read. Approach it with an open heart and embrace the scholarship and knowledge it imparts. I would suggest it for DEI practitioners, scholars of Indigenous cultures, mindfulness practitioners, among others.

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n Flourishing Kin: Indigenous Wisdom for Collective Well-Being, Dr. Yuria Celidwen presents a profound and timely reimagining of mental wellness, integrating Indigenous wisdom into the modern conversation on flourishing. Through seven core principles rooted in Indigenous worldviews, the book calls for a shift away from the individualistic, often commodified focus of Western mental health paradigms. Instead, Dr. Celidwen emphasizes collective well-being, interdependence, and spiritual connection, challenging readers to embrace an "eco-identity" over the Western ego-centered approach.

Dr. Celidwen’s deep dive into Indigenous cosmovisions is illuminating. The text is rich with academic rigor, making it feel at times like a dissertation. However, the scholarly tone is balanced by the inclusion of meditative practices and reflective prompts that invite readers into a shared experience of introspection and ecological kinship. These exercises help bridge the gap between theory and practice, offering a way for readers to embody the teachings rather than merely intellectualize them.

I appreciated the book’s critique of the Western mindfulness movement. Dr. Celidwen skillfully articulates how contemporary contemplative sciences have become insular, serving primarily privileged, Western audiences while neglecting the ethical, relational foundations of the traditions they borrow from. This disconnect, she argues, perpetuates cognitive imperialism and fails to acknowledge the ongoing harm caused by colonial systems. Her call for decolonizing methodologies in both academia and contemplative practices is a powerful reminder of the value and validity of diverse ways of knowing.

The concept of collective flourishing, central to Indigenous approaches, offers a compelling alternative to the Western pursuit of individual happiness. By highlighting the importance of relationships—both human and ecological—Dr. Celidwen extends the definition of well-being beyond personal satisfaction to include a deep reverence for nature and communal responsibility. Her reflections on compassion, not as a hierarchical benefactor-beneficiary model but as a reciprocal, transformative act, stand out as a particularly resonant message in these divisive times.

While Flourishing Kin is an enlightening read, its academic prose may present a challenge for readers seeking a more accessible narrative. Yet, for those willing to engage with its depth, the book offers a transformative vision of well-being that is both grounded in ancient wisdom and urgently relevant to contemporary challenges. The text is an invitation to participate in the co-creation of a new story—one of reciprocity, ecological stewardship, and shared flourishing.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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