PRÁTICAS MEDITATIVAS E EDUCAÇÃO NÃO FORMAL: FORMAÇÃO PARA O ESCAPISMO OU PARA A IMPLICAÇÃO SOCIAL?

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of whether meditative practice can provide practitioners with the means to pursue and develop cultural transformation through social engagement and involvement. It aims to identify and analyze the processes and practices of meditation within the field of non-formal education, as well as the personal and societal developmental projects embedded in these proposals. The study adopts a qualitative, participatory approach with descriptive and analytical objectives. Data collection procedures include field journals and interviews with five participants selected through the snowball sampling technique, using a semi-structured interview guide, audio recordings, and transcription. The theoretical framework is based on decolonial authors and scholars from the field of non-formal education. The data align with the social dimension of education as they focus on socialization, solidarity, concern for social change, and the formation of individuals within their social spaces through meditative practices. It is concluded that meditation, as an educational practice in non-formal education, operates through access to an alternative way of feeling and being, which fosters cultural change. However, what Walsh (2013) refers to as action-reflection-action is needed in order to transcend modernity and coloniality. Thus, by combining potentially educational spaces with collective engagement in interventions, cracks are opened in the walls of the hegemonic capitalist, modern, colonial, heteronormative, and anthropocentric system.