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Welcome & Guest Intro
[00:00:00] Ying: welcome to adhd gathering today. I have a very special guest,
born I / Ofosu. And Born I / Ofosu Jones-Quartey is a meditation teacher, hip hop artist and author whose work sits at the intersection of music, mindfulness, and radical self-compassion. As a teacher was more than two decades of practice. He blends mindfulness with contemporary creative expression to make inner healing accessible to all. His latest projects include the contemplative hiphop album, Komorebi, and the book Lyrical Dharma, Hip-Hop as Mindfulness.
Across retreats, performances, and community gatherings, Born I supports people in remembering their inherent worth and living with presence and courage. So welcome to my podcast. So glad to have you here.
[00:00:47] Ofosu: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:49] Ying: Yeah.
[00:00:50] Ofosu: Wonderful to be here with you. Yeah.
[00:00:51] Ying: So quick context of how I got to know Ofosu is I first came across this amazing Instagram reels of you rapping and the question was, can rap be meditation?
And my thought was like, who is this person? This is amazing. And then I got the great fortune of volunteering at one of the mindfulness family retreat Ofosu was teaching. So that’s how we got to know each other, so thankful that we connected.
[00:01:18] Ofosu: Yeah, me too. It was really wonderful to have you on that retreat and to practice with you and get to know you, and I’m so happy that our connection continues.
[00:01:28] Ying: Yes, so this mini series, i’m creating is the bigger questions of how are we collectively or personally meeting this moment? So that’s my question for you. How are you personally perceiving this moment and navigating this moment?
[00:01:44] Ofosu: Yeah, I think the way that I am meeting and experiencing this moment, it changes from moment to moment, from day to day. There are times when I feel a sense of deep sadness. There are times where I feel rage. There are times where I feel hope. There are times where I feel. That this is a moment of great opportunity. There are times where I feel that this is a moment of great tragedy. And I move through all of those different feelings with an attitude of openness because I know through my practice that none of these particular feelings are permanent. And that this moment in time is not permanent. So there’s a way in which all of this is an expression of the liberated nature of reality. Sometimes reality is free to enrage us. Sometimes reality is free to inspire us, and we are free to respond to reality in whatever way feels appropriate to us in the moment.
Despite how it feels, it’s still all an expression of the great freedom. So I try to find myself wherever I’m at in the flow of it all.
[00:03:11] Ying: That’s beautiful. Thank you for sharing that of just a wide range of feelings. I love what you said about the liberated nature.
Great Freedom Explained
[00:03:21] Ying: So tell me a bit more about what is that and what is the great freedom you’re talking about?
[00:03:25] Ofosu: Yeah, sometimes I feel like when we use words like freedom and liberation, we add qualities to it that immediately limit it. So if we think of freedom as only a positive experiences, or freedom as only brightness, something only joyful. I think we add limits to freedom. We add limits to liberation. How I see it, if we’re really talking about big ideas like freedom and liberation, they involve on the universal scale, all things. That doesn’t mean that in our personal lives, there isn’t oppression, in our everyday experiences that there isn’t harm and that there aren’t limits on our personal freedoms. But there is a way in which in Buddhism, we are asked to look at both the relative and the absolute and to see how they interconnect. And so the great freedom of reality to be whatever it wants to be is part of how we experience it. And the way that this great freedom impacts us individually is also how we experience it. And so I’m trying to walk in a way that is in touch with the big freedom. Just like, yeah, reality is free to just be what it is. And then my personal experience like, yeah, this is also very hard. But because my personal experience is connected to the big freedom. It being hard isn’t the only thing. It is also inspiring. It is also energizing. It is also opportunity for spiritual growth. And my ability to relate to it in different ways is also feeds back into the big freedom that like, yeah, I too am the big freedom.
I am free to respond to the big freedom in whatever way feels right for me. So there’s the dance that that happens and in that dance, I think I narrowly escape despair.
[00:05:41] Ying: That’s lyrical right there.
[00:05:43] Ofosu: Because I see that nothing is the end, nothing is the absolute end. There are ends and there are new beginnings. And so it helps me to lean more towards optimism or even equanimity. Or to have a place to come back to when I’m riding these waves. Come back sometimes to a more centered place before I take off again.
[00:06:05] Ying: That’s so beautiful. The analogy I have in my head is, talking about freedom and liberation only as the good parts, which is how I assumed until this moment that you shared, is as if we’re assuming plants only have flowers and spring. But plants are free to be however they are moving through the season, and we can choose our response and how we relate to the plant however they are in whatever time. And how we are responding to that plant is also going back to the greater freedom, like how the life is expressing itself. That’s how I’m understanding it. Yeah.
[00:06:44] Ofosu: yeah, that resonates with how I’m feeling about it.
Self Compassion Practices
[00:06:47] Ying: So you are already talking about it like narrowly escaping the despair and the dance of it all, and some things that’s helping you to come back to equanimity. And so what are some practices you have now that are sustaining you?
[00:07:02] Ofosu: I talk a lot about self-compassion across all of my work. I was talking with my oldest daughter, she is experiencing young adulthood and the challenges that come with that. My wife and I were both trying to let her know that, you don’t have a precedent for this.
This is all brand new to you, so don’t think that you should know how to do it. Don’t put that pressure on yourself. And she responded quite wisely, she said. Yeah, I guess that’s why it’s important to practice being kind to yourself in the downtime so that when it gets really hard, it’s not hard to be kind to yourself. And I think that that has been true for me is that I’ve been working for a long time to develop a friendly relationship with myself inwardly. And so when times are difficult, I am not making them more difficult by being an enemy to myself. It’s not perfect, like any relationship. But having a voice and a perspective on the inside that is kind or that is understanding or that is ready to repair injury, is a real kind of buffer to the external realities that I don’t have any control over. I don’t have control over what the government’s gonna do, how people are gonna respond. What I find across my social media feed, what my particular state of mind or body is from moment to moment. But I do have control over whether or not I somehow shoot myself with the second arrow of being unkind to myself or taking more responsibility for the state of the world than is truly mine. So I would just say that learning to speak to myself and relate to myself the way that I would speak or relate to a friend in any given situation. I’ll give an example. Whenever the people who I disagree with politically suffer some kind of, disadvantage. Somebody gets fired or, a bill that they were trying to pass doesn’t pass. Anytime there’s a part of me that starts to feel this sort of righteous glee at their downfall, you know, and then the wise friend inside says, yeah it’s pretty cool, but also we could be spending our mental energy elsewhere rather than celebrating the suffering of someone else. Even though it feels so juicy to feel like you’re winning one side or the other. Then the part of me that is a practitioner and that is a friend says, don’t get so caught up in duality.
You don’t know how all of this is going to shake out. Perhaps it’s nominally good that this happened or didn’t happen, but who knows what else will happen. It kind of brings me back to equanimity because I can start to get swept up and having a friend on the inside can remind me, like, Hey, take it easy. There are other times where I get so angry and as a parent of a transgender child, as a parent of queer children, as a person who is non-binary myself, I see the activities of people in power who want to eliminate people like my children and my family from the world.
And I get furious. A feeling that borders on hatred, or perhaps it is hatred. And then the friend on the inside reminds me that you cannot let these people or their ideas rob you of your peace of mind.
Your peace of mind is like the last thing you’ve got. So don’t give it up to them. Actually bring your peace of mind to your family. Bring your peace of mind to yourself. Bring your peace of mind to the people that you love. Because things are so delicate right now, the best thing you can do is to bring some love to yourself and some love to the people that you love. And so self-compassion for me isn’t just like inner sympathy. But it’s developing a wise friendship on the inside that can catch me when I’m falling into any extreme state. That’s what’s been helping me having a friend on the inside.
[00:11:24] Ying: I love it. I love how you expanded my idea of what self-compassion is.
Building the Inner Friend
[00:11:30] Ying: It’s not just this warm cheerleader or the compassion and like you say, inner sympathy, but more so there is almost like a wise guide within, and I’m really curious about how did you develop this wise friend with yourself?
And especially, if any of your identities comes into play, I imagine being born to a male body or being shaped in that masculine expectation, have a certain influence on how lack of access self-compassion may be. I listened to your podcast about OCD, the thought loops and all that.
I’m really curious about how did you cultivate a friend with everything else together?
OCD and Healing Tools
[00:12:12] Ofosu: I think self-compassion, developing inner friendship was kind of a lifesaving measure for me, given those precursors that definitely were not supportive of self-compassion. Growing up with an undiagnosed condition. I was only recently in the past two, going on three years recently diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, which, if anybody is not aware, is a neurodivergent autism spectrum disorder where that can manifest in multiple ways. The type of OCD I have is clinically known as pure O, which deals primarily with negative, intrusive thoughts and where as a neurotypical brain will also have negative, intrusive thoughts and just dismiss them as a blip. My brain works is that it sees them as real danger, real harm or real potential harm and obsesses about their continued arising, creating a lot of generalized anxiety and. A really, really difficult time being with people, places, and things that activate those negative thought loops. And so I lived with that condition for many, many years for the majority of my life, thinking that somehow I was a bad person or that I was a bad meditator. My spiritual practice became another kind of yardstick by which I judged myself. And it led to a lot of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, drug and alcohol abuse, all kinds of unskillful behavior, trying to mitigate, this very difficult and debilitating inner condition that, because it doesn’t really have a lot of external symptoms. It’s like you’re only dealing with it by yourself.
I didn’t even know there was a name for it. As a Buddhist practitioner, I was still learning a lot about compassion, but, I think that I was able to access it externally to offer it. Now, what I realized is that you’re only offering a sliver of it really if you haven’t built it up in yourself.
But I could definitely conceive of this idea of caring for others and having a deep concern and the desire for others to be happy as the definition or the activity of compassion. I think as I got more and more depressed on my condition, I just one day started talking to myself.
I was kind of like at the edge of holding on. I started speaking to myself the way that you might write a goodbye letter to a friend. I was talking to myself like, yeah, it’s been so hard. You gave it your best shot and I know you’ve been trying and I love you and I’m just sorry it’s been so hard and just that whole kind of way of talking to myself. I had never really done it before, and it really took the edge off. I was almost saying goodbye to life, in that way of talking to myself. But I noticed that I was feeling better as I was speaking to myself in this gentle, caring, understanding way.
So I just started experimenting with it. This became the model. If my best friend was experiencing what I’m experiencing right now, what would I say to them? And then I would respond that way. At first it felt kind of silly and disingenuous, but it still felt good.
It felt good to not put myself down for everything because having this condition, how I would open and close a refrigerator is something I would criticize myself for. Any little thing was a source of deep criticism. So me just pivoting a little bit and when I would close the refrigerator door, I might just say, good job, buddy.
Or just getting out of bed in the morning and brushing my teeth and say, Hey, not too bad. Just developing this kind way of relating to myself. Gosh, it was just such a different approach.
It wasn’t the only thing because it’s what kind of got me through the worst parts of my experience. I worked with a therapist who really helped me dive into the self-compassion work. So also learning how to journal and also continuing studying people like Kristin Neff and listening to talks by Louise Hay. Really encouraging me to continue to practice this kind inner voice coupled with what I had been learning for years about Buddhism ended up becoming this wise friend inside over time. The wisdom of Buddhism of Hey, this is not gonna last forever. You don’t have to be soattached to this. Hey, anger is going to harm you more than the object of your anger. Wisdom side of Buddhism was then meeting the compassion side, the kind inner voice. And so over time, this wiser, kinder aspect of myself came to be more in the forefront than in the background.
It’s not just Buddhism or self-compassion that has addressed my mental health and neurodivergent issues, but it’s also therapy and medication.
The stigma being born in a male body, being born, in a black body, being born in an African family.
The stigma behind mental health, the stigma behind taking medication. All of those things were pretty significant barriers to move through that I could only have moved through by being kind enough to myself to know that I needed more help. So it’s like this self-compassion and the dharma helped fuel me taking better care of myself.
[00:18:16] Ying: Thank you for sharing that. I really like how you said it’s the wisdom from Buddhism and the self-compassion piece, and I love what you said about even closing the fridge door. Just say good job. That’s a lot of what I help my clients with is radically change how we talk to ourselves. Sometimes it’s like you finish a task, you’re allowed to do a celebration dance like who is stopping you from doing it nobody. So I really love how it’s the wisdom and the compassion coming together. And I love what you said about it’s the love and compassion, helping yourself to rise above the barriers that come from the cultural and identity all the barriers. ’cause yeah it’s true. Neurodivergence may still have a lot of stigma. Like even from where I’m from in China. Huge stigma with adhd or in Asian American communities in general. So being able to love ourselves enough to seek help. It is huge.
Engaged Practice Through Art & Community
[00:19:11] Ying: We talked about the inner side.
I’m also curious about the outter side. Not that inner and outter really is a separation, but what does engaged practice or value-driven action look like for you in this moment of time?
[00:19:24] Ofosu: Yeah. I posted something in my Instagram story last night. Every time I go on Twitter, it’s a bad idea. I’ve never gone on Twitter in recent years and come away feeling like, oh, that was great. I mean, generally that’s how I feel about social media, but Twitter especially, and I went on Twitter and it was just like, ugh. I came away with just not good, not pleasant, not feeling optimistic about the state of the world. And then a question for myself like, well, what am I doing about anything? again, sort of friendly voice on the inside respondents that, well, you’re making contemplative art and you are encouraging people to love themselves. That is my response to these times, and so I put in my Instagram story. am clear that my role at this moment in time is to make contemplative art and to encourage people to love themselves. Those are what I’m good at.
Those are the kind of the gifts and the inspirations that I have been given by the universe, my family, my practice, my teachers, and that’s what I’ve got to offer, to make art, whether it’s books or albums, videos, movies, to make art that makes me look deep within myself and asks what is there, then encourages others to do the same and to also vocally and, energetically encourage people to please be kind to yourself. ’cause I think so much of the horror that we see in the world comes from people who are deeply unfulfilled. And who are trying to fill a void that can only be filled really by recognizing ourselves as precious, fleeting, and lovable. Sometimes I wonder, am I doing enough? But I feel if we place our intention on our actions, if we’re clear about why we’re doing stuff, then there’s a real energy behind our response. Thich Nhat Hanh said, you are motivated by a desire to transform yourself and to help your community transform, you become a very alive and dynamic in your thinking, and you have access to an infinite source of energy. That’s almost verbatim, but not exactly. But I feel that way. I feel like I have access to a lot of creative energy, and that creative energy is primarily pointed towards my inner self discovery and my message “that you are enough. Please be kind to yourself”.
[00:22:17] Ying: Wow. That’s so beautiful. I love the quote and I love what you said about putting intention behind our action. I think that’s a huge thing in this world, I see a lot of folks just doing things and they don’t really question why they’re doing things. And I’m over here being like, why don’t you question it?
What’s your intention behind it?
Being very clear of our intentions and putting it behind our gifts. Yeah, you have accesses to this beautiful creative gift and if I may add onto it, as a fellow meditation practitioner and teacher, it is so inspiring for me to see a people of color meditation teacher just embracing themselves purely as who you are, with your rap, with how you dress, with your nail polishes. It’s just amazing. ’cause we don’t really get to see that, in the larger mindfulness community. So I get a lot of inspiration just by watching you as well.
[00:23:11] Ofosu: Thank you. No, I feel the feeling is mutual. The work that you’re doing to de-stigmatize neurodiversity, to just to be a real human, and to normalize real human experiences. If what you just shared about encouraging your clients to give themselves a happy dance when they’ve completed a task.
And the care and compassion that I’ve seen you bring to the young people that we were working with on retreat and the stuff that you post, I feel like perhaps our generation of teachers might be realizing that there’s real value in, sharing from the heart and, and normalizing our humanity. ‘ cause we’re all in process. We’re all in this process of unfolding and we’re all just trying to help each other out and ourselves out.
[00:24:01] Ying: Yes,
[00:24:02] Ofosu: Yeah.
[00:24:03] Ying: Yeah, it feels like a group hug. Like a lot of times I go on social media. All I’m watching is art, people dancing, or other people’s dogs, or some version of those two things.
[00:24:13] Ofosu: Yeah.
[00:24:14] Ying: Then some wisdom. Like sprinkle through like
[00:24:16] Ofosu: that too. .
[00:24:17] Ying: Yeah.
[00:24:18] Ofosu: Yeah.
Hope in Community
[00:24:19] Ying: You’re already talking about this a little bit.
What are you seeing in your community that’s sources of hope or examples of how they’re navigating this world that you feel like it’s skillful.
[00:24:30] Ofosu: Yeah. I think that’s something that I try to highlight when I am on the teacher seat is I have a thing that I like to say is that just because you have a headache doesn’t mean that your leg hurts, and what I mean by that is that just because things are bad in this one way doesn’t mean that they’re bad in every way. We tend to inflate our difficult or painful experiences as if they were the only things going on. But if we look deeply, we can see that that is not the reality. We see that in meditation, that there might be pain here, but if we move our attention to another place that there’s ease or stillness or even pleasure somewhere else. And so I feel that way about many different communities right now who are finding their strength and finding their voice, whether it is people of color, and then within the umbrella of people of color, I just saw this beautiful post from, an indigenous person here in the DC area, just expressing their truth and expressing themselves artistically, culturally. And I think any time any person or group is being authentically who they are or even exploring what does it mean to be myself, especially in these times, is an act of revolution. So the transgender day of visibility was not long ago from the date of this recording and to see the amount of allies who were posting and to see the vibrancy and strength of transgender people who were posting, the history that trans people have always existed.
And just being able to see that messaging coming from multiple sources, that was inspiring to me. I’m working with this organization called City Kids, with young people, primarily young black adolescents, and offers mindfulness and wilderness experiences for them.
I’m gonna be teaching a retreat. with people from city kids in a couple of weeks, and that is also happening on planet Earth. So sometimes I say this thing okay, this is not a headline, but it still is a happening. It’s still happened
[00:26:55] Ying: Yes.
[00:26:56] Ofosu: There are all kinds of people doing amazing stuff.
And then the art that’s happening right now.
Just incredible there. There are all kinds of established artists who are changing the way that we feel and experience about art or even creating soundtracks to this revolution, whether the music is overtly political or not.
I really do feel that people expressing themselves from the heart right now is own act of affirmation, defiance, revolution, et cetera. So I’m getting life from. All over the place. Yeah.
[00:27:35] Ying: I love that. Just people exploring authentically who we are and expressing ourselves from our hearts and build allyship and love across different groups. Yeah, what more inspiration could we ask for? Absolutely. .
[00:27:50] Ofosu: One thing that have noticed the tour that I’ve been on is there are people of all ages that are coming to my stuff. I did my first hip hop sound bath retreat, a couple weeks ago. The youngest person there was 17. The oldest person there was in their seventies and it’s just wonderful to see people coming together from all types of backgrounds and identities and generations. I went to Kansas City and did a two day workshop there, and it was the same sort of thing, just think the youngest person at the thing I did in Kansas City was like seven, and then the oldest person was like 80.
We had people from all kinds of racial identities, all kinds of gender identities. It was really wonderful and I hope it continues like that. My tour is rolling on and I feel like that’s kind unique in my experience, but it’s beautiful, the idea of community can really be anything, and I’d love to see more intergenerational, inter identity communities coming together, to take care of each other.
Upcoming Tour and Neurospicy Retreat
[00:29:01] Ying: I love you have this ability , to gather people, intergeneration and inter identity and, and speaking of that, what are some projects that’s coming up? I know there’s exciting one as neurodivergent related. So please tell us more about any exciting projects that’s coming up in the summer of 2026 and beyond.
Yeah.
[00:29:21] Ofosu: Yes, so right now I am on my Hip Hop Sound Bath tour, and I am going to various cities around the country and also in Canada and Europe from now through the end of the summer. And if you go to my Instagram at Born I Music. I will have, my tour dates are all listed in my link tree and I’m gonna be updating them on my website soon.
So please check out where I’m gonna be and if you’d like me to your city, let me know. We can definitely make something happen. While I’m on this tour, gonna be teaching a series of retreats. For all of my neurodivergent friends. I’m going to be a neuro spicy retreat with my friend Jeff warren. Yeah, and this is gonna be a three day retreat for people who identify as neurodivergent. And it’s really gonna be an opportunity for us to come together and practice in ways that are supportive for us.
So we’re not trying to prescribe a particular practice that will. Be a one size fit all, but we actually just want to have a space where everyone can come and bring their practice, bring their wisdom, , and feel seen and cared for by this wide and beautiful community. So we gonna be doing that at the Art of Living in North Carolina and would love to see anybody who identifies as neurodivergent there.
It’s gonna be the inaugural Neurospicy Retreat. You can find information about that@neurospicyretreats.com.
Yeah, I’m working on a new album, but I’m gonna be sharing songs from Komorebi, while I’m on tour. And actually, because I’m antsy and I kind of wanna see how these new songs travel, i’m gonna be sharing some sneak peeks of the new project I’m working on, , while I’m touring too. So come out and see me on the road and hear some new stuff and some old stuff.
[00:31:24] Ying: So exciting. This is the coolest job I’ve ever heard. So you’re like a musician touring and teaching retreats at the same time. What kind of a unique combination that is.
[00:31:34] Ofosu: Yeah, I’m just putting something together.
Guided Self Compassion Practice
[00:31:36] Ying: So as our time is closing, I would love to invite you to close with a short practice for my listeners. Anything that you felt like is top of mind for you that you feel like would be a good wrap up of our time together.
[00:31:49] Ofosu: Yeah, absolutely.
For anybody listening, if you in motion, then obviously you don’t need to close your eyes but if you’re in a still place, you can lower your gaze or let your eyes close. And if you’re in motion, you can just bring your attention to the posture that you’re in and allow yourself to feel a little bit more settled. And the invitation is to begin with a few deep breaths as you breathe out, giving your shoulders permission to drop down away from your ears. Taking a moment to just let yourself be as you are, I invite you to take a moment and just notice how you feel, how you’re feeling in your mind, in your heart, in your body, noticing without judgment. And as it becomes clear to you how you’re feeling right now, imagine that your best friend or someone you love, if they were feeling exactly how you’re feeling right now, what would you say to them? Or how might you treat them? Whatever you would say to them, whatever gesture you might offer them, you can offer those things to yourself. You can say those things to yourself. Taking a moment to speak to yourself with kindness, speak to yourself in the language of a friend. If there aren’t any words, maybe just offering yourself your own kind presence. That could be a hand on the heart or the shoulder. That could just be a smile says, I’m here. If it’s not easy to offer yourself some kindness right now, that’s okay. being willing is enough. Know that this is a practice that you can return to formally or informally anytime you need to. As we bring our practice to a close, we can take another deep breath. And I’ll offer one sound of the bell that’ll bring our practice to a close.
[00:35:18] Ying: Thank you.
Gratitude and Closing
[00:35:19] Ying: Thank you so much Ofosu for this time together and for. Your presence, your energy, and the way you being yourself, and the art you’re creating. And thank you for sharing this time with me.
[00:35:32] Ofosu: I appreciate you, ying. Thanks for having me. I’m really grateful that you’re doing this and, support you a hundred percent. And happy to be back if you want to talk some more.
[00:35:42] Ying: I could already tell our neurodivergent brains could go into so many rabbit holes.
[00:35:46] Ofosu: Oh my gosh. Yep.
[00:35:48] Ying: I was about to ask like, what’s your definition of liberation and freedom? But was like, no, we gotta keep track on the outline
[00:35:58] Ofosu: Next time, we’ll
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