Women's Digital Health

Healing Through Technology: Reverend Sonia Russell on Blackfullness and the Power of Mindfulness

• Women's Digital Health • Season 2 • Episode 19

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I had the pleasure of speaking with Reverend Sonia Russell, the CEO behind the Blackfullness mental health app. We delved into her journey, discussing how she overcame personal challenges when she discovered mindfulness.

Sonia shared insights into the app's features, which aims to support Black individuals in managing stress and promoting mindfulness through breathing techniques. The app was developed with a grant from the National Institutes of Health and focuses on making mindfulness accessible to a diverse community.

Blackfullness provides a platform for individuals to engage in mindfulness practices tailored to their needs, with different options based on emotional states like feeling overwhelmed or needing to center oneself. By incorporating technology, the app aims to reach a wider audience and provide a relatable space for Black individuals to explore mindfulness.

Topics include:

  • Sonia's story, and how mindfulness has helped her.
  • The power of focusing on your breath to help center your mind and body, reducing stress, and promoting overall well-being. 
  • Why Sonia developed a digital app that is relatable and accessible to Black individuals seeking mental health support.
  • What mindfulness is and isn't, and a powerful way to begin your practice.
  • Future developments for Blackfullness.

Through a blend of technology, research, and community engagement, the Blackfullness app serves as a valuable resource for promoting mental well-being and self-awareness. Sonia's dedication to creating a platform that resonates with users and fosters a sense of empowerment underscores the app's mission to make mindfulness practices accessible and impactful for all.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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The information in this podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare providers with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment.

The personal views expressed by guests on Women's Digital Health are their own. Their inclusion here does not constitute an endorsement from Dr. Brandi, Women's Digital Health, or associated organizations.

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Sonia Russell:
The first thing ever, ever, ever is to breathe. Just take a breath. It only takes a second. It's $FREE.99. You don't require anything. You don't need our app to breathe. You don't need Oprah to breathe. You don't need any of those things to just stop and take a breath.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Welcome to the Women's Digital Health Podcast, a podcast dedicated to learning more about new digital technologies in women's health. We discuss convenient and accessible solutions that support women with common health conditions. Join us as we explore innovations like mobile health applications, sensors, telehealth, and artificial intelligence, plus more. Learn from a board-certified anesthesiologist the best tips to fill in some of your health experience gaps throughout life's journey. Breathing. Easier said than done sometimes. When your thoughts start to race and your heart starts to pound, sometimes we all need a reminder. to take a slow, deep breath in and a slow one out. In episode 19, we discuss the benefits of breathing plus more as we sit down and talk with CEO and co-founder Reverend Sonia Russell about Blackfullness, a pioneering mental health app that promotes mindfulness and breathing techniques that can support individuals with stress-related health challenges. This mobile health app aims to illuminate the unique experiences of Black individuals who frequently experience challenges within the health care system, such as lack of accessibility to culturally competent health professionals, misdiagnosis of mental health conditions, bias and social stigma for seeking or receiving treatment. All of these challenges can become a barrier to getting the care that someone needs. But what if a mobile health app could help you feel seen? What if there was a mental health app that had pictures of people who looked like you and sounded like you? Is it possible that that could help support you on your mental health journey? Blackfullness is the manifestation of visionary Dr. Natalie Watson Singleton, an associate professor at Spelman College Department of Psychology. co-founder David L. Walker, an experienced marketer with a background in behavior biology and neuroscience, and Reverend Sonya Russell, a minister, licensed spiritual counselor, and an experienced event planner. It is the product of rigorous clinical trials funded by a $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Join us as we sit down with Reverend Sonia Russell, the CEO behind Blackfullness, to delve into our personal journey of overcoming tribulations as a child of the 80s and discovering mindfulness. We will explore some of the features within Blackfullness app and hear her breathing tips that can benefit your entire body and how you show up in the world. Enjoy this episode. Hello, Sonia.


Sonia Russell:
How are you? Good, I'm doing great, Brandi. Great, great, great.


Brandi Sinkfield :
I've been chasing you for a while in terms of trying to get this interview, because I've been so curious about some of the work that you've been doing with Blackfullness. And we're going to talk a lot about that app, some of the work that you've been doing in the community. But could you introduce yourself to Women's Digital Health? Tell us about who you are and your background as a 20-year leader in the community.


Sonia Russell:
So I can be referred to as Reverend Sonia Russell. Raised in Oakland, living a full life with my mother on one side and my 12-year-old daughter on the other side, active in my church community. I've been a minister for about four years now. Before that, I was a licensed spiritual counselor. I did that for about 15 years. And I consider myself to be a lover of people, right? Like I believed in people. I don't always like people and they're very people-y. Yes. I really try to lean into just being curious about who we are and how we move through the world. I think it's really important. And one of those things I think is really important is about self-awareness. Yeah. And how people move through the world in that way and how they understand their relationship with a bigger power than ourselves. Right. And that's what makes me really curious about people. But I've been doing work in the community for that long, through my spiritual community, through working at my child's school, because I'm not one to have a kid that I don't know what's going on, where I spend all day. I want to know all the things. So I consider myself to be very active and organized. I enjoy understanding how a process works, um, how an organization works, how people work in general. And I feel like I'm, I'm about this life. Like I'm about living our best lives and being happy and being fulfilled. And because I spent a long time being really severely depressed, I spent a long time in a place of needing to be on antidepressant and what feels like forever and just being on the road to coming into understanding myself. Yes, I feel like there's a lot of magic in it. Like if we can get to that other side and we can really feel like, ah, Oh, here's my life. I think that's an important part of who I am, really like being able to blend into all of those things. And outside of Blackfullness, I'm an event planner. So I have a, like a need for things to work at night. I have a need for there to be logic and consistency and a process. Yeah. Yes. So I kind of type A. Yeah.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Everything that you've described, even though you said you're not a people person, is a people thing. It's a people thing in the community. It's a people thing in Divinity. It's a people thing in organizing people to get together as an event planner. So just by design, you are a people person. And also you have this very unique aspect in terms of your ability to introspect and reflect on your own role as a person in the people-ness, you know, um, of the world. And so I'm, I'm very curious as to how being in that, in the people space, how you were able to walk on this journey of your own need for mental guidance as you were, you know, certainly providing guidance for others. How did you start on that journey? Where were your beginnings with that as a people person, which, you know, usually are seen as outgoing, happy-go-lucky people. But on the other side of this is introspection that I'm always curious about.


Sonia Russell:
You know, it's interesting because I don't consider myself an extrovert, although I feel like I've taken tests that say I am. I feel like I'm trying like this middle vert idea, right? I need introspection time. I need quiet time. I need solo time. But I can go out and have fun connecting with people because I'm curious about the human experience, right? Like the human condition is fascinating to me. I feel like I have a beginning that's not, you know, dissimilar from a lot of Black women specifically, you know, growing up. in the 80s and the time of the crack epidemic. It kind of ripped through my family. We dealt with homelessness. We dealt with a lot of financial struggles, dealt with some abuse from people that I was supposed to be able to trust. So all of those things kind of compound. And I think there tends to be kind of this perverse story people want to get about, oh, black people, they had all this terrible stuff and then they were right. And I'm not I so I don't often share that piece right because I don't I don't need that I don't need you to understand that part to understand that I did a lot I've worked hard right like I've done the work to get to where I am now and that work came Maybe in spite of, maybe because of the history that I've had, right? The life that I've had, the things that I've had to overcome as a result of that. And so there was always something for me that was partially about how do we figure this out? Like, how do we get to the other side? Right? I have had people ask me, well, what did you do? Like, what made you be able to? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like I can look back and say, oh, well, I had a sense of clarity. I had a sense of, I need to take care of myself because people, the adults around me are unable to care for me. And so I need to figure out how to be cared for. I deserve to be cared for. So somebody has to do it. And so it looks like I'm going to have to do it myself, which isn't ideal, right? Like I, I worked really hard to not have to not have my daughter have a replication of some really major parts of my childhood, which is really important to me. And. I feel like in order to understand ourselves, we can only understand ourselves in relation to other people. Yes. Right. I know when it comes to mindfulness, you know, people think, oh, I can go sit on a, on a mountaintop and cross my legs and say, oh, for a few days and this enlightenment comes. But for me, it's about how do I have a new relationship with my mom? Right. After what I feel like was, you know, a sense of feeling abandoned and not being cared for. How do I have my mom and my daughter in the house and not replicate some of the old habits that my mother got from my grandmother? Yes. Who was also a single mother, right? To be a single mother, born of a single mother, who was born of a single mother, right? There tends to be a narrative of how that situation turns up, right? And I'm willing to be the exception, right? I'm willing to be not part of that. Like I declined to participate in whatever statistics tell me that I have to be a certain way because this is the experience that I had in my life. And so for me, that means a lot of how do I relate to the people I love or grew up with or the people I have been harmed by or the people I have harmed, right? Like, how do I express and discover myself as well as express and discover them? Um, and how do we live here together? Cause I'm not trying to go live on an island. We're trying to be in community with people. There is time that has to be spent in figuring out how to do that.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Well, Sonia, thank you so much for describing that so eloquently. You know, we talk a lot about, you know, these different experiences that we have, particularly as it relates to the Black experience. And it's not, it's not all one, one narrative. The narratives are They vary in terms of where we come from. But I love that how you describe, like, I notice these things, and I'm the one that's saying, hey, it stops here, or I would like to change this thing. And I think it also speaks to this idea of mindfulness. I know earlier we were talking about sometimes When we talk about meditation and mindfulness in the Black community, we don't always often identify with this idea of meditation or mindfulness being a part of our cultural practice. And it becomes a challenge to even talk about it, partly because, well, actually, let me, let me hear from you. What do you think some of the challenges are with us talking about mindfulness, meditation, seeking these other tools of mental health? What, what do you think some of the challenges


Sonia Russell:
are there? Well, I think some of it's narrative, right? Some of it is just, we don't see ourselves because to a great extent, I believe that mindfulness has been whitewashed, right? It's become this thing where you're like, you got the right outfit, you're going to the right class. None of that is what we're talking about, right? We're talking about how do you on a day-to-day basis in all of the things that are happening in your life, have the ability to be present with yourself in a way that you're not overwhelmed by all the things that are happening in your day-to-day life. Like, how can you create a clear sense of self to be able to manage life when life is living, right? And so I think what happens with Black folks is, one, is that we see this story of the perfect little feet blonde lady in her yoga pants, with the gongs and the accents and all of those things. Which, by the way, I got yoga pants, I got a gong, I got accents. That's not the point, right? But it's about being able to see ourselves, right? We've never been given the permission to see ourselves in those spaces. And I think that's one really important thing. I also think I also think religion has played a really big part, which is why I've often referenced that I'm a minister, right? Because I get it. Like I get that there is a lot of people are like, oh, meditation, like that's the devil, right? Like that's something that's outside of what I've been taught in terms of my relationship with God. But let's be clear, our app has prayers because we believe that prayer is a mindfulness practice. You know, we believe that it's sort of all about marketing at the end of the day, right? It's the way it's been labeled. It's the way it's been classified. It's the way it's been packaged. And we're saying, strip away all of that. What we're talking about is how do you come into yourself? And people do that. They do that through their Bible. They do that through going to church. But the difference, at least in my mind, the difference is, is that it's got to be about what's happening right here, right? It's got to be about what's happening on my planet, you know, and There's a lot of personal responsibility tied up in being mindful. Right. And that doesn't always, it's hard. It's hard to do. Right. Like I say all the time when people ask me how I am, I'm out here living the dream and it's hard ass work. Right. Because being able to be present to how I'm feeling when someone is triggering me or I'm having a conversation that's uncomfortable or any of those things. So I think with, with black folks, what happens is that we come up against it. We come up against it and we have a lot of. ideas of how it's supposed to be, again, because of the way it's been packaged. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, we do a lot of practices around how do I keep from cussing people out today? Right. That's what I'm trying to get to. That's what the whole goal is. And that's how you work on mindfulness, right? It's not that you're trying to figure out how to be silent and not be around anybody or be perfect. God forbid, like, just please, I need people to stop. Yeah, please. You know, my day of mindfulness can be full of centeredness and joy. And I absolutely probably once a day still will have a moment where, oh. Somebody is about to catch it. Right. Yeah. Right. And that people are more than one thing. Right? Like, and so we have to also be willing to kind of embrace, right? Like that yin and yang idea that we are complicated. People are super complicated. Right? And so we have those moments where we're joyful and centered in presence. And then we have those moments where we're out here wilding out and want to fight somebody. And the key is how do we balance those, right? Like, how do we balance them in a way that allows us to live productive and full lives and keep our hands to ourselves? Like at the end of the day, yes. But I think the real issue for us becomes the marketing of the way mindfulness has been said to be a certain thing. And then the religion that we kind of push against, because we're worried that it somehow doesn't align with that. And we're saying, absolutely. Like, in fact, your spiritual practice is your mindfulness practice.


Brandi Sinkfield :
I totally agree with that. I think as a matter of fact, when I was kind of doing some research for this interview, one of the things that came that came up was that sometimes in, and it's not just African-Americans, many communities, our religious community that is very much responsible for building connections, sometimes it's being presented to us as the only option. And so then that creates a barrier, particularly when we're talking about considering getting access to mental health. I wanna talk about that first, that you brought up catching these hands. I do want to speak about this, the Blackfullness app. So I've used this app and I've noticed that it's evolving. That's how we word on it. Yes. So before when you came, when you went to the app, it would say, you know, are you ready to get your mind right? But now when you go on there, there are one, two, three, there are four options. The first option is you know, I'm just here to get my mind right. That's one option. Okay. So, and so we'll talk about what that, what that option means. You just mentioned that there's one for player, right? Play for me. There's one option for that. Yes. There's one about, I'm in my feeling and I would love to hear, you know, kind of your perspective. And then the last one, like so many people, can relate to this last one. Wish I could use this in multiple scenarios, but it's all these mothballs, right? Yeah, they get mixed in all of the things that, you know, are coming in your life all the time that perhaps mindfulness is an opportunity for you to collectively say, hey, what was that? What's going on here? You know? So let's start with, I'm just here to get my mind right. What is that? What is that? What would that mean for someone who's going to go to the Mindfulness Act and they're just here to get their mind right?


Sonia Russell:
Right. Absolutely. So, you know, it's interesting because most often we talk about mindfulness as a way to heal something that's wrong, right? That's an acute awareness of, oh, this is a problem, so let me fix it. But sometimes life is good, right? Like I'm just here to make sure I stay, you know, I say all the time, you cannot get a six pack from one sit up. Like you just can't. Cause I had a six pack over and over, right? Like it's a bit clear, right? So sometimes you just need to get there and be in the practice. I'm just here to make sure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Right. And I'm just going for my daily walk. I'm reading my daily devotional, right? Like I'm just having my moment. And that's what that piece is. Like I'm not in crisis. I don't necessarily need help acutely right now, but I could use a moment to just make sure my mind is right. Okay.


Brandi Sinkfield :
And so that's, that's where we lean into there. Okay. And then the next one is I'm in my feeling.


Sonia Russell:
Yeah. Cause we do, we do. And you know, what's interesting is for a long time, I had exactly two emotions, happy and pitch. Those were the two emotions I had the most understanding of. And as I've evolved, as I've really come into self-awareness, there's so many layers in there, right? Like there's so many different places where I could use help, whether I'm feeling down, whether I'm feeling agitated, whether I'm, you know, whatever the case is, there is an opportunity to just be with the feelings, right? So we spend so much time squashing our feelings, so much time not... getting in touch with them, we're in a rage over here, but really, you know, and we also say, you know, we're never actually upset for the reason we think we're upset. Yeah. Right? Like it's usually something happened that just triggered you and it made you think about when so, so, and so did such and such. And now you're all in a frenzy, right? Like Tasmanian devil style, like you're like spinning out and Sometimes we just, we just need to be reminded. I'm just in my feelings. It's okay to be in our feelings. It's what we do with them. That's the problem, right? Like, so how can I just be in my feelings and get a little bit of support? And that's for us is that idea. Like, how do I just feel a little, I'm feeling some kind of way today. Yeah. This is the practice that I think that could help me.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Okay. Leave no foes. Bureau.


Sonia Russell:
Like, I just, like, I just, like, sometimes, right? Like, sometimes, like, I think these people might catch hands today. I start feeling like... Did he just, or did he just, or how dare they? Who do they think they talking to? Or is she just trying to touch my hair? Do I have to say the same thing in email again? Like just all of those things that kind of bring us into that like boiling point where we're just about to tip off. That's this, these mofos are Yes. And so we. Yes. Let's just take a moment. Right. I guess. Let's get dialed in. Yeah, absolutely.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Hey, listeners, it's Dr. Brandi. Thanks for listening to this episode of Women's Digital Health. Subscribe to Women's Digital Health on your favorite podcast platform. If you want to know even more about how to use technology to improve your health, subscribe to our newsletter on womensdigitalhealth.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Enjoy the rest of this episode. So even thinking about these small balls, I looked at my heart rate and it just went up. Like, I mean, right? And so a lot of times what we don't connect is the fact that our emotions, our, you know, frustrations affect our, the rest of our bodies. It affects our health, our heart health, our everything. And we're not mindful. that these things are happening on a regular, continuous, repetitive basis. And so I'm just curious to know, like, you know, a lot of the techniques that I see in Black women seem to focus on breathing, seem to focus on, you know, centering us, to remind us that, hey, like, you can make a different, you can make some different choices here. You can choose to kind of step into this space, let out for a second, hey, you know, what was going on here? and kind of get some control back. But could you walk me through someone who, like, may not, has never tried? Mindfulness has never tried an app before who's not comfortable using something like this. Could you walk me through what things you would recommend them to start with if they were to try to consider using the Blackfullness app for the first time?


Sonia Russell:
Right. Absolutely. Thank you for that question because it is an idea. We always say that the first thing ever, ever, ever is to breathe. Like every time. Right. And I think one, most people aren't really breathing well, right? Like just as a general, a general thing we do, right? We breathe up in our chest, real shallow because we're holding our breath most of the time, right? We're waiting for something to happen or, you know, worried that something's not going to happen or whatever the case is. And so we're really shallow. And so for me, my first recommendation is always to breathe. Can you just take a breath? Like just, It only takes a second. It's $FREE.99. Exactly. Right? You don't require anything. You don't need our app to breathe. Nope. You don't need Oprah to breathe. That's right. You don't need any of those things to just stop and take a breath. And I think what happens is we underestimate the power in that. We assume, no, I'm so bad. A breath ain't gonna help. Right. Exactly. Try and take the breath, right? You know, there's so many things that, you know, settle our nervous system down, just to be free, right? Like a little fact is that if you exhale for a longer time than you inhale, right? So you take an inhale and then you long, slow, long exhale, it signals your body to calm down.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Absolutely.


Sonia Russell:
Right? Like it just, it rearranges your nervous system. Right. And it gives you the opportunity to come back into yourself. And so it's not necessarily easy, but it's simple. Yeah. Right. Like really simple. Take a breath like that. That's that's the first thing you don't have to actually meditate. If you just every time you weren't feeling clear and centered. Stopped what you were doing, closed your eyes if you could, if you were safe to do so, and took a long, deep breath, everything would change. And I feel like people just don't believe it. Nah, that's too easy. Yeah, it really actually is because the breath is connected to so many things in our body, right? And the oxygenation of our blood, our heart rate, our blood pressure, even how we digest food. All of it is connected to us making sure that we have a clear sense of our breath. And that's always my, you don't know how to meditate. That's all right. You know how to breathe, right? Like let's breathe together. And that's, that's the first when we're doing. When we're doing sessions, when we're working with people, the first thing we do is stop and take some deep breaths. My co-founder and I, the first thing we do in a meeting is stop, we take a few deep breaths, and then we pray before we start any meeting, before we start our workday, before we do any of those things. And it don't take us more than five minutes to do that, right? And so I think part of it is believe the hype, right? Like, it really is simply about the breath. And that's the best place for folks to start.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Well, and I think, I think the point you brought up earlier about representation, I think I'm just wondering if maybe that part of it is that it is not been packaged for us. So people have heard about breathing before, but maybe they are just feeling like it's not for me. Right. And so that's why I love, that's what I love about blackfulness because It's really addressing, you know, the stigma around getting this access to care in a way that looks like them, that helps people find something more relatable than maybe what was packaged previously as a breath and it being just as simple. I wanted to talk to you about, you know, your jump from being a community leader, which and a mother and a daughter, and this jump from that, which is full to exploring technology, which is the Blackfield is mental health. It's a mental health app. You know, now you're adding another hat. So walk me through kind of why did you use technology as the approach rather than other. other ways that you could get access to mindfulness for the community.


Sonia Russell:
Yeah, you know, I'm actually kind of a gadget girl. Like I've been doing events since the 1900s. So I've been in there, I've been in the game for a minute. And I kind of pride myself on productive use of technology, right? Because it can absolutely go awry. And not to say I don't spend too much time maybe scrolling on Insta or a game that the words with friends don't need no more of my attention. But there is something to be said about having immediate access, right? And so when the app was developed, it was developed with a grant from the National Institutes of Health, which is the largest funder of medical research in the world. In fact, the content was developed at Spelman with a clinical psychologist named Dr. Natalie Watson Singleton. And they were working on this idea of would a mobile app support Black folks in reducing their stress, right? We know factually, scientifically, that stress is killing Black folks. That's just bottom line, right? And so is there a method in which we could deliver mindfulness in a way that was easily accessible? The other thing about Black folks is that, you know, we are born of a diaspora. Right. I mean, we're spread out. It's hard to find like a, you know, a single community like we congregate for sure. Right. But it's hard to sort of be able to say, OK, you know, there's there's a Chinatown. Right. There's like the area where there's a, you know, in Oakland, it's the Fruitvale where the Latinos are. Not hardly. But there's not exactly a spot where Black folks feel like this is where we are. At least not one where they feel like a sense of pride, right? A sense of reverence for it. And so for us, there was also something to be said about meeting people where they are, right? And most people, in fact, Black folks lead a lot of groups in adaptation of apps and use of mobile devices, of having, you know, even I think we lead in having more than one device. Yeah. Right. And so to meet us where we were, we were like, how do we get to the most people as possible? Our big, hairy, audacious goal is all of our people. Just all of them. You know, not all we don't get there, but we just know that our goal is to be able to affect as many as possible. And this felt like the way, and since I have a history of, I was a part of the event planning team that launched the Palm 5, which if you weren't born in the 1990s, you probably don't know what that was, but it was like the first handheld device precursor to the cell phone, right? And so, I've been in the tech space for a long time and I've seen it do miraculous things for communities when put to use in an effective and efficient kind of way. And so I was like, that's for me. Like, let's get that. And I've used the other apps, right? I've used all those other ones because I was like, no. okay, like this has something, right? Now, the uphill climb is to get over the sound of their voices, get over the fact that they don't look like me. And we're like, well, what if we remove all those barriers? Remove those barriers to entry, right? And instead of being like the black section where I had target, well, we be target, right? That's sort of what we were kind of leaning into.


Brandi Sinkfield :
I love it. I think it's going to, it already is impacting a large group of people in a way that they can see themselves. And so Reverend, I just appreciate you for being a part of this, you and your co-founder and your entire team for creating something that's so well needed in the community. We really appreciate it.


Sonia Russell:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. It is our pleasure to serve. Yeah.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Forever, where can we find more about you, more about the app, more about what's coming down the pipeline for Blackfullness?


Sonia Russell:
Absolutely. So blackfullness.com, make sure there's two L's. Anecdotally, we came up with the name Blackfullness because we had another name previously. I was reading an article about Audre Lorde, and she actually said about an experience she had in that 80s of being in St. Croix. And she said, there is a refreshing sense of Blackfullness here. And I immediately knew that's what we're trying to get to, right? How can Black folks be full? How can we live our best lives and lean into that? So that's sort of what we're doing. So when you look for us, especially with the 2Ls online, you do a quick Google search, it's all us, right? You can find us on LinkedIn, on TikTok, on YouTube. on Instagram where the blackfulness otherwise could find us in all of those places. We also have a gratitude journal coming out in January. that you can pre-order on Amazon, which is really exciting, because gratitude is another mindfulness practice, you know, that we can tap in. I believe it's a divine multiplier, right? What you focus on expands. So focus on the stuff that you love and focus on the stuff that you appreciate and more of those things expand. Yeah. We've got this beautiful, just beautifully designed, you know, the cover is beautiful, like all the things you want to have in like a journalistic carrying around with you everywhere. this beautiful 12 week guided gratitude journal that's happening in January. We do some live experiences. And so we're always posting on our social about where you can find us at like a Juneteenth celebration or or, you know, different places where we're in the community just to be of support, because we feel like we got it. We got to take it to the people. Yeah. I like our goal is to make sure that we can get as many people involved as possible. But otherwise, our website is where you can find links to all the other places. Blackfullness dot com. Trina.


Brandi Sinkfield :
Thank you so much. I really appreciate this time with you and I look forward to watching Blackfullness grow and we probably will have you back for a future update. Thank you so much for having me.


Sonia Russell:
Thank you for having me.


Brandi Sinkfield :
That concludes episode 19. I hope that you enjoyed hearing from Reverend Sonia Russell. You learned from her her own personal journey into using mindfulness what you might experience using the Blackfullness app that promotes both breathing techniques and mindfulness. And we also explore some of the benefits of using breathing techniques right now. If you want to learn more about what mental health apps can do for you, check out episode 11, where I give you a lot more information on how to use mental health apps like Blackfullness and others to support you through your health journey. As always, our newsletter is loaded with a lot more content and support on digital mental health. So make sure to subscribe to learn more. If you liked this episode, please make sure you give us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. Bye for now. Although I'm a board-certified physician, I am not your physician. All content and information on this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute medical advice and it does not establish a doctor-patient relationship by listening to this podcast. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast. The personal views of our podcast guests on women's digital health are their own and do not replace medical professional advice.