Black Zen started with a need. The founders each had extensive meditation experience, but at the time, didn’t see the BIPOC community reflected in wellness-based practices and a lot of the online materials about meditation didn’t resonate with their current struggles. From there, Stacey established the fiscal sponsorship service BE Meditation Group to support mission-aligned organizations. However, there was still a desire to take the concept directly to the community.

Stacey and Jasmine then set out to curate content, gather resources and build a wellness hub to openly share knowledge and experiences with others who have felt underrepresented in the wellness and meditation space. Black Zen is focused on incorporating wellness in communities that currently bear the brunt of social, economic and political injustice, yet this movement is about all people finding more peace. In a society of increased social tensions that seek to divide, this is an effort to share the benefits of meditation – specifically compassion and empathy – to create a more thoughtful and just society. Black Zen is not another self-help initiative, but a social movement dedicated to changing the course of human tolerance and interaction.