Conflict can exist internally and externally to ourselves. How can we bring mindfulness to the experience of this conflict? If we allow compassion for this conflict to enter our hearts, how does this express itself both internally and externally? As an adolescent, I found that I was expressing violence externally and causing others pain and suffering. I recognized that I didn’t want to cause others pain, and found a way to be compassionate to myself.

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René Rivera is a meditation teacher, restorative justice facilitator, and leader, working and learning in all the spaces in-between race, gender, and other perceived binaries, as a queer, mixed-race, trans man. René teaches heart-centered, trauma-informed meditation, at the East Bay Meditation Center and other meditation centers. He has co-led the first residential meditation retreats for transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people. René is a restorative justice facilitator for the Ahimsa Collective, working to heal sexual and gender-based violence.