Research Program

The shared method

Eight steps.

The Charles Mindful Wellness Research Program is the shared foundation under a growing set of research streams. Each one applies that same method to a different part of life.

1. 01FAMILIAR CONDITIONthe arrangement already in place
2. 02ALTERATIONone condition changed on purpose
3. 03EMBODIED ENCOUNTERthe group meets the change in a body
4. 04RECOGNITIONsomething previously background becomes perceptible
5. 05QUESTIONINGthe group asks what else was optional
6. 06REIMAGININGan alternative arrangement gets rehearsed
7. 07TRACEthe encounter leaves a record
8. 08REFINEMENTthe condition is revised, and the grammar closes into a loop

The research practice

What we mean by research

This is practice-based inquiry. Each Lab and each event composes a temporary encounter in which people sense, make, move, choose, refuse, or relate under one deliberately altered condition. What becomes perceptible gets documented: design rationales, facilitator notes, and, where participants consent to it, their own reflections and artifacts. Those traces shape the next iteration, and the accumulating archive is the program's second output alongside the encounters themselves. Findings get evaluated in the open: after each cycle of work the program reviews its traces, revises the next iteration, and publishes what holds as field notes and an annual learning report for each stream. The program separates artistic inquiry, program evaluation, and formal research. Participation is never treated as consent to research, and experiential insight is never presented as scientific evidence. No stream has run its first public iteration yet. The archive begins when it does. The findings are for more than the people who produce them: facilitators doing adjacent work, funders deciding what to back, presenting institutions, and the field studying how people gather.

The research agenda

Questions we're investigating

• Which familiar conditions are most productively surfaced through deliberate alteration?
• What does embodied participation reveal that verbal discussion alone does not?
• How do participants use refusal, observation, silence, movement, making, rest, or alternative communication as legitimate participation?
• Where do altered conditions fail to produce meaningful recognition, and what do those failures reveal about the design hypothesis?

Research Note 001: the program's working vocabulary →

Two streams active, more in development

Current work

Mindful Creative Labs Facilitated sessions that change creative and perceptual conditions, for teams, organizations, and individuals. Workshop-scale, 60 to 180 minutes. In development · available for booking The stream page →

• 
  Make Before You Judge

  What becomes possible when evaluation comes after exploration rather than during it?

  Interrupts premature self-evaluation, so participants experience creating before deciding whether an idea is good.

• 
  Attention Changes the Object

  How does sustained attention change what becomes available to us?

  Slows perception down until what recognition usually skips over becomes visible again.

• 
  Change the Frame

  What happens when the thing doesn't change but its frame does?

  Shows a group how far meaning moves when context shifts and the object itself stays fixed.

• 
  Many Things Can Be True

  How can people encounter the same thing and produce genuinely different information?

  Holds multiple honest observations visible at once, instead of letting the group rush to one consensus account.

• 
  Make the Invisible Visible

  How do we give form to something we know but cannot easily articulate?

  Externalizes something a group already senses but has never had to put into shared, visible form.

Experiments in Being Together A Black queer-centered participatory-art program that changes social conditions inside live events and gatherings. In development · seeking venues and partners The stream page →

• 
  Unfinished

  A studio party where nothing has to be finished, explained, or justified.

  Nobody is required to finish, justify, optimize, or publicly explain what they are making.

• 
  One Question All Night

  The whole gathering stays with one question, encountered through movement, writing, sound, and silence.

  The gathering refuses the pressure to cover many subjects and remains with one public question all night.

• 
  No Explanation Necessary

  An exhibition-party where guests present something meaningful without ever having to explain what it means.

  Participants may present something meaningful without being required to interpret or translate it for others.

• 
  Social Weather

  Internal states expressed through color, texture, sound, and movement instead of words.

  Participants do not have to answer “How are you?” with a conventional emotional label or personal explanation.

This program is built to keep growing. Future streams will be tested against the same thesis, the same ethics, and the same evidence standard before joining it.

About the program

Charles Muhammad found yoga for survival and stayed for peace. The practice he founded in 2018, Charles Mindful Wellness, teaches Black and brown people in Washington, DC from a clear position: the body is political, and healing is collective work. The Research Program formalizes the method that was underneath that teaching the whole time. Alter one familiar condition, and let the room find out what it was holding in place. Charles directs the program and facilitates its work. He teaches yoga at the E-RYT 500 level, and his facilitation has run through The DC Center for the LGBT Community, Capital Pride Alliance, and partnerships with Black Boys Om. The knowledge this method produces is built with the people it gathers.

What we're seeking

Funding partners, presenting institutions and venues, research collaborators, facilitators and artists, and participants curious enough to show up.