00:03:16.580So in a way, there's always an embodiment. Just what are you choosing to embody? And how do you sustain that in your own body and in the collective body also? So first, I would say that we're in a time, there's another way that I would say yes, we are in disembodied, but there's a way for us also to pay attention to what it is that we have embodied, what do we choose to do?
00:03:41.860And then how do we actually, what's the physicality and physiology of that embodiment too, I think is important for us to notice.
00:03:50.240But to your question around disembodiment, which the way that I hold that question is that move away from paying attention to the signs and the language of the body kind of below our heads, what's happening in those spaces.
00:04:07.100it is ultimately a way of creating in our person a dynamic of domination where the mind where the
00:04:20.260thinking self dominates over the flesh so to speak so that we are expected to do we expect
00:04:27.040from ourselves and we expect from other people that whatever the mind thinks is possible the
00:04:33.800body should obey. And that split of keeping us out of a cycle of sustainability or relationship
00:04:43.140with ourselves can be, it also translates to our relationship to land, our relationship to
00:04:51.660each other, dynamics of gender dominance, of racial hierarchy, class systems, all of these
00:04:59.100things, in some ways, I think, are related to the ways that we have embodied dominance over even
00:05:08.380ourselves and our own feeling. And I think that that serves, ultimately, whoever steals,
00:05:16.080really, whoever is interested in taking from people who aren't able to feel their own lives,
00:05:24.200taking through the method of forced labor, taking people's land, taking the time that people have,
00:05:31.780taking people's attention to profit off of it. It serves people who take and don't give back.
00:05:39.980And that's why for me, it's so important that we start to recover practices and really create
00:05:46.140practices of centering our feeling selves, our bodies, our relationships, really, because it
00:05:55.180starts to illuminate what we really need, what's important, what's possible between us, what it
00:06:00.780really feels like to create intimacy with one another. So that to me is the kind of embodiment
00:06:06.140that I'm working towards. Thank you for grounding our conversation with that intro. That was really
00:06:15.820helpful. And yeah, I'd like to bring into conversation some sentiments around trauma
00:06:24.380and oppression that I've heard you share in conversation with Mark Anthony Johnson and
00:06:30.040Francisca Porches Coronado, which is that trauma is inevitable to all life on earth,
00:06:37.620but oppression is how we organize and distribute that trauma amongst ourselves.
00:06:42.480and I think listeners would really love to hear more about this relationship between trauma and
00:06:49.200oppression and how this approach really informs the work that the Embodiment Institute is doing.
00:06:57.220Yeah I mean again it's kind of like embodiment there's a couple ways to look at it so oppression
00:07:02.000is trauma in many ways it's what it is it's a collective trauma and you know it occurred to
00:07:10.320me a couple years ago and just kind of thinking about it, that we often think about oppression
00:07:15.860through, primarily through and only through maybe the kind of way the systems shape people's lives,
00:07:24.680but not always really feeling into what that means for the day-to-day, for a person's actual
00:07:30.840lifespan, what it feels like to feel the weight of oppression daily, regularly, always. And
00:07:40.200it occurred to me that, you know, oppression really is the attempt, I think, to ensure that
00:07:47.960some people experience pain with the hopes that other people wouldn't, and to organize the world
00:07:55.440and society in that way, in an attempt to kind of outsource pain, and to concentrate it ultimately
00:08:01.720in the people that we've deemed less valuable. And we do that through systems. But I wanted to
00:08:08.580really illuminate that what we're talking about is people's lives. It's not just an idea or theory
00:08:16.140oppression, but that it exists as a million traumas that aren't heard. It exists as a decreased
00:08:26.320lifespan, time that people don't get to have, presence that people don't get to have with
00:08:31.620their loved ones. That's what it means. That's what it actually means. And I think that in some
00:08:36.360ways, that's the intended purpose of creating a system and a society that really relies on
00:08:42.300oppression to function. And in terms of the work of the Embodiment Institute,
00:08:50.220yeah, a lot of the work that I try to do there and we're trying to create is how do we undo
00:08:57.260some of that? Now, we know that it's not all about our capacity to heal. There needs to be
00:09:05.540real systemic and structural shifts that make it easier for people to live and stay alive but we
00:09:15.160also know that there's certain things that oppression does to a life certain things that
00:09:22.340it does to each of us and then there's ways that it gets amplified or concentrated or focused
00:09:28.640depending on how your identity is perceived in the world so when I think about for example
00:09:38.940kind of what anti-blackness has meant for my life it's meant increased policing of myself and
00:09:45.300people I care about which translates to a kind of hyper vigilance that I then have to hold
00:09:51.900colonization has been a disconnection from land and environment so there's a whole resource of
00:09:58.400grounding and attachment that I haven't been able to access because of the way that my
00:10:06.180story thus far has gone. That doesn't mean that we can't recover these capacities and
00:10:10.880relationships. And I hope really that that's what we're going to focus on in the Embodiment
00:10:15.960Institute is how do we recover some of the capacities that oppression and disconnection
00:10:22.200and a culture of denial have tried to institute inside of each of our bodies. So that's the
00:10:28.280question. That's the question. How can we create a space that contributes to
00:10:32.520the lived experience of liberation and freedom for more of us, all of us?
00:10:42.300Well, I'm thinking for many of us, the word trauma is sort of inherently linked to notions
00:10:51.220of healing, specifically healing with an end point in mind. And something I've really been
00:10:57.460working around is this question of how much trauma we can seek to resolve in this life,
00:11:04.800given the generations and generations it's taken to come into existence. And I wonder if this line
00:11:12.020of thought sort of plays with your framing of trauma and oppression. And if you could speak
00:11:18.160to this thought around our limited capacity to completely navigate out of trauma uh what do I
00:11:26.120think about that you know I think one of the frameworks that is embedded in my work and and
00:11:32.940what I am trying to do now is a framework for me that comes from my my past as a therapist
00:11:41.660that I don't talk about that much but and my family systems training thinking about transitional
00:11:47.720characters in it. In family systems, you think about transitional characters as a person that
00:11:52.740can kind of transform their life and it changes their family's lives. But I've been thinking a
00:11:59.500lot lately about what our healing contributes to our lineage. And I think about that much more
00:12:05.520expansively than the kind of biological lineage that we're given. But what our healing work
00:12:11.620contributes to, yeah, life across time behind us and in front of us. I've been really interested
00:12:19.140in that question. Maybe it's a kind of adjacent question to the one that you're asking. It's like,
00:12:23.620what impact can we make across time in our relationships? I don't know if it's too much
00:12:32.200to undo in one life. It may not be. It may be. I think I don't know enough yet about it, to be
00:12:39.240honest, to really settle somewhere. I know that it doesn't serve us to be in an approach to our
00:12:52.000own healing that is never satisfiable, that never lets us enjoy our lives, that never lets go,
00:12:58.460that never is able to love ourselves, accept ourselves as flawed, that can't tolerate the
00:13:11.380places where the impact of history just lives, where we tell the story of what's happened before.
00:13:17.100I don't think I'm interested in that kind of healing, where we become perfect. But I also
00:13:23.740don't know necessarily what can and can't be done in a lifetime but I hope that I can you know ask
00:13:29.840me in 20 years what I think about that I might have a different idea okay noted yeah it's it's
00:13:40.420hard to say and I think there are so many questions that are unanswerable and there's so much beauty
00:13:46.480in that too and release of control release of needing to know and maybe even allows us to be
00:13:54.740more present if we're not so attached to some type of completeness yeah and i glean that
00:14:05.380the embodiment institute is really interested in embodiment in terms of how it impacts our
00:14:11.720ways of being with one another. And something I've observed in activist culture is that there
00:14:18.300has been an emphasis on the self in terms of being your own person, defining strong boundaries
00:14:24.740around your preferences and really centering one's truth as being, you know, one of, if not
00:14:31.860the most important thing. And no doubt, a lot of this has really grown out of incredibly important
00:14:38.980dialogues. But it seems that nowadays, it can lapse into these patterns that are really
00:14:46.060antithetical to building communal power and staying in relationship with one another.
00:14:51.600So I'd like to ask about the importance of course correcting with this aspect and how
00:14:59.420embodiment is central to our ability to build strong relational skills.
00:15:05.260Yeah, I think there's a few different things in there for me.
00:15:07.620i will start with yeah the the measure inside of our work in the embodiment institute is
00:15:14.560relationship that it's not about kind of i've healed and i know it and the end but it's like
00:15:24.160you're in a process that manifests itself who you are manifests you manifest yourself in relationship
00:15:31.200and that can include a relationship to yourself but it also includes relationship to place
00:15:37.120relationship to the people around you, the systems that you are in, the communities that you are
00:15:43.480committed to, what are you doing inside of those relationships, I think is an important indicator
00:15:50.080of how we've processed through experiences that we've had. I would say most of the traumas that
00:15:56.660people experience are relational ones. So how we measure healing, and again, you know, I was
00:16:03.040trained as a therapist it can be such an individualized measure of how someone is doing
00:16:09.980but not necessarily relational which you know the way I come up you exist because you are
00:16:17.300related to others or in relationship with others and that I mean that expansively
00:16:22.820and in terms of the kind of course correcting inside of movement
00:16:28.100um i don't know that i like intend to do that necessarily and i guess because in part i don't
00:16:38.680think that the kind of individualism or self-protection that we feel there maybe
00:16:47.360there's a new intensity to it but that's kind of always been the struggle in some ways is that
00:16:54.040there are groups and pockets of people that would protect themselves over everything,
00:17:02.720over the collective. It doesn't feel so new a dynamic to me, but I think the path forward
00:17:12.880or the work to do is always, how are we going to be in relationship with each other? And I do think
00:17:20.740that that takes boundaries. I think boundaries are a relational skill, especially when power
00:17:26.780dynamics have, I was actually just kind of writing a thing about this before we got on that I think
00:17:32.780that boundaries are evidence of our interconnection, not a denial of it. I think when we start to deny
00:17:38.140our interconnection, that becomes something different. That's a wall. That's a generalized
00:17:42.340way of approaching connection. But a boundary is a responsive parameter that allows me to be
00:17:51.780in relationship often. And I think that we can lose that that's really what it is about. It's
00:18:00.460a relational skill. And when groups of people or when individual people have been taught that their
00:18:07.160parameter or their their bounds exist even around the space that you occupy
00:18:17.400it is necessary for us to develop relational skills around boundaries because some people
00:18:21.560have to tolerate um being told no and that will actually create the opportunity for balance too
00:18:31.040So I think we're in such a tangle. There's so many skills and so many tendencies. But for me, it's just like, how do we keep focusing on increasing our capacity to be centered, being clear and precise about what that is?
00:18:48.000how do we keep practicing inside of relationships authenticity and the possibility of intimacy
00:18:55.960how do we keep resisting a kind of tendency towards power over and domination that exists
00:19:02.960in us and keep moving towards the kind of power with it doesn't diminish our own power
00:19:08.500those kinds of things are the things I'm interested in that I feel like I focus on
00:20:04.280Wasn't long before she passed out of my reach
00:20:11.240you know another facet of this work that i think would be really interesting and helpful for
00:20:27.100listeners to hear about is around the idea of having positive arguments or maybe regenerative
00:20:33.900conflict because i think about the world we live in especially the sort of acceleration of the
00:20:40.480political sphere entering into our lives. And we are given zero examples of how to have arguments
00:20:47.140and debates that move us forward. Instead, we're shown probably the most polarizing and vitriolic
00:20:53.820examples that really only serve as a base form of entertainment, if nothing else. And so maybe
00:21:00.900that's kind of maybe where the cultural denial fits into, but how can embodiment practices
00:21:07.240assist with this yeah um it's really interesting
00:21:15.500that when i teach that conflict course you know we talk about conflict aversion like you mentioned
00:21:23.800and i say well most so many of the the shows on tv these days are just people outright fighting
00:21:28.820so there's something about it we're suppressing something at the same time we're just consuming
00:21:37.080so much of it too. I'm probably not the one to call it positive conflict. In some ways,
00:21:43.000I want people to know that it sometimes hurts. It's sometimes hard. There is, you know, there
00:21:49.560may be facilitators. There are likely facilitators better than me at it. But I do think
00:21:59.800one of the first things that I do, I feel like is important, is normalize that it's hard.
00:22:07.080That's hard. Your body doesn't always know the difference between this person is coming at me and this person is having an ideological difference than me, values difference than me, because it feels like it's attached to our survival.
00:22:27.740And our bodies are responding, whether or not we pay attention to that or not, your body's going to respond in some way that is meant to save your life.
00:22:37.760And we can try to bypass that, but even the most centered, grounded person is going to be reactive.
00:37:51.620i'd like to move into some reflections you've shared about what we've experienced most recently
00:38:00.920and in a post titled contagion consent and connection you write quote as an embodiment
00:38:07.880teacher i keep thinking about what our somas are learning in this moment what are they deciding is
00:38:13.680the truth about interaction and connection now and what is safe for human relationship i've watched
00:38:20.240human physical connection at least in public dissolve in a week end quote and yeah I'm really
00:38:27.900curious about how the psychology of fear which you know I want to state we obviously have a lot
00:38:34.860to be fearful of I'm not diminishing that but how that translates in our body
00:38:40.420and you know it's interesting because I feel like over the period of these COVID times we've seen
00:38:47.140a lot of things I think you know and I'm making big generalizations but I think we're in that
00:38:53.180period at least with folks around me of fatigue you know both in the grief that people have
00:39:02.800experienced the fear and the adrenaline that's just had to run through our bodies you know when
00:39:07.980it first hit I was watching it in January and trying to let people around me know that I thought
00:39:16.440this thing was coming and I was afraid and trying to like not appear too fearful I think is what I
00:39:23.980was doing because I didn't want to alarm other people but I wanted people to prepare because it
00:39:28.740seemed like something that was happening and going to be in front of us soon my mother is a nurse
00:39:36.240in a Texas hospital that has been hit by COVID in a really heavy way
00:39:43.000um she's older and I was very I mean she's the demographic of people that struggle
00:39:50.300the most in a lot of ways um and I had a lot of fear I had a lot of fear for a long long time
00:39:57.760and found myself just really adrenalized for a long period of time around
00:40:05.460covid you know a certain kind of hyper vigilance i've i've had which is you know i'm making the
00:40:13.180kind of internal distinction for myself between being cautious and taking precautions but it's
00:40:20.260the kind of what i was trying to speak to in that piece was like yeah there are things we have to do
00:40:25.380now and i'm taking it very seriously you know the precautions we have to take but then there's also
00:40:30.660the mood that we bring to those things. There's also the story that we tell ourselves about what's
00:40:38.100happening and how that can be so dominated by fear. And again, there's so much to actually be
00:40:46.160afraid about, absolutely. And what I was trying to kind of point to in that piece was like,
00:40:52.760we could tell ourselves a story that is too dangerous to be connected to one another.
00:40:57.100Our fear could go that far. Our fear could say, it could get overwhelmed. Our systems could get
00:41:05.760overwhelmed and we could say, it's too dangerous. It's not possible to make connection. Or we could
00:41:12.380say, oh, I'm a human being. I long for connection, that principle of connection I long for. So how
00:41:18.080do I create connection in my life? It's not necessarily the same as creating more contact
00:41:23.280in my life? How do I infuse the moments where I am connected to people with more intimacy,
00:41:31.480with more revealing, so that it starts to satisfy that real need for connection that I have
00:41:40.300in a way that's possible in this moment, so that we can be afraid, we can have fear,
00:41:45.240but fear isn't necessarily shaping every aspect of how we relate and live that we get to infuse
00:41:53.840we get to have choice at those points how are we going to do this how are we going to do this in a
00:41:58.960way that fear might tell us to just pull away from it altogether so that's really been my attention
00:42:05.800in my own life over this last year really it's like how do I infuse more presence more intimacy
00:42:13.820more connection so that something gets touched and honestly feel like it's it's really transformed
00:42:20.980my relationships like some relationships have become very sacred some have come out of nowhere
00:42:26.760some have come like blast from the past some have ended in this moment because the intimacy that
00:42:32.680was required was too much so I think that um I think that fear wants to cast a really wide
00:42:39.560blanket over things. It wants to have us withdraw, protect. And I think that embodiment helps us
00:42:47.740ask the questions where we didn't think questions are possible. How might I do this?
00:42:53.780That's what embodiment does for me. It creates possibility. Oh, fear says that's not possible.
00:42:58.440Embodiment says, but how would I do it? If I long for that, how would I do it in this context?
00:43:04.240How would it feel? Can I open myself up to those sensations? So yeah, that's really been my guide.
00:43:09.560I love that. I love that possibility, curiosity, openness.
00:43:16.800I want to also mention in the last post I mentioned, you talk about how this moment is
00:43:23.400really providing us space to re-examine how consent plays out in the world. And you write
00:43:29.540quote, we have for one, the ability to practice consent, consent around proximity, consent around
00:43:36.280touch many of us are realizing how unpracticed we are here this isn't just because we're all
00:43:42.640disrespectful people but also because how many of us are a part of cultures that have norms
00:43:49.760especially around touch that are not consent-based do you reject an elder's kiss redirect that
00:43:56.300handshake decline that hug do you ask before you initiate those same gestures people have always
00:44:03.120needed distance, whether expressed or not, because of what is communicable. For many of us, choice
00:44:10.020has not been something we allowed for our own bodies, let alone been curious about in others.
00:44:16.360Practicing consent brings us closer to a shared reality of experience where multiple needs are
00:44:22.020being honored and known, end quote. I haven't read that in a long time. It sounds pretty good.
00:44:27.980It's so good. It's so good. Yeah. And I'm wondering, how do you see us carrying
00:44:35.780what we've learned during this time forward? Oh, wow.
00:44:45.680Oh, wow. Will we? Yes, we will. Everything is always happening. So yes, we will.
00:44:53.060um yeah you know if I'm real in that moment when I wrote that I was actually struggling a little bit
00:45:00.540to understand the complexities of consent I had just moved um to the U.S. from Hawaii
00:45:08.520and been there for my partners from Hawaii and the culture there is that basically people kiss you
00:45:16.660when they greet you and I was uh texting my friend there I was just like how are people
00:45:24.620dealing like what is happening you know what I mean because it it's just it's breaking down1.00
00:45:32.260an aspect of culture that I think probably many people have I can't speak for people but mixed
00:45:41.440feelings complicated feelings about but I was like oh this is this is uh it's it's infusing a
00:45:48.620new thing into spaces where we had assumed that this was accepted in the norm and I was feeling
00:45:57.680conflicted about that like how is it gonna undo this practice that has been alive in Hawaii for
00:46:04.680so long something about that doesn't seem right to me and then you know I don't have an answer
00:46:11.740to that I'm not going to land anywhere in particular on that because I don't I don't
00:46:14.460think it's necessary to but I do think it has infused consent in a different way it's also
00:46:23.400revealed where some people resist acknowledging the parameters of another's space or being you
00:46:33.160know, the resistance to that. But I hope that we will have a little bit more consent around
00:46:40.600proximity. I think that that will serve us just because there's been maybe it's almost like a
00:46:46.480reset. There's been so many things we've taken for granted. What are we going to choose about
00:46:50.820how we relate to one another now? I think that we will. I don't know how well people have rested
00:46:57.820in this time. I don't know, you know, in the beginning of this time, I prayed every night for
00:47:05.740kids who couldn't leave a home that was challenging for them to be in. So I hold that reality that
00:47:14.540some people are at home and have suffered because of that. I know that that's true.1.00
00:47:19.440and I know that for myself I have been home and I have loved it very much and I have created a new
00:47:29.140capacity for closeness and intimacy in my own home that I hadn't I was traveling so much before this
00:47:36.240year like so so much and now I'm just at home and I thought I would have a lot of anxiety around
00:47:44.360that but I feel like it's been amazing so I hope for some people that there's a I keep saying this
00:47:51.940word intimacy because it's really important for me that there's a reigniting of the space of intimacy
00:47:57.840of deep connection with those that they've potted up with or that they live with or that they have
00:48:05.020you know zoom parties with I hope that that is true and I hope that that permeates into the
00:48:11.340broader culture because I know that's not everybody's experience so I think that's one
00:48:16.060of the things that I hope we get off zoom though that's it that's gonna be that's gonna be hard
00:48:22.260zoom and instagram have become places where our avatars are thriving I hope that we kind of let
00:48:28.640that go a little bit um but I doubt it I think a lot of folks are in that boat and agree with you
00:48:35.720on that I've you know in certain ways they're magical technologies that allow us to connect
00:48:42.940with one another like at this moment but I definitely see the flip side and and I think
00:48:48.420the memes around being on zoom are hilarious and I really appreciate when people can make fun of
00:48:57.120and be in laughter around the ridiculousness of these technologies and try to you know not take
00:49:04.720it's too seriously although it's very strange and you know very uh potentially problematic so
00:49:11.300i hear you yeah and there was a conversation you had with adrian marie brown titled how the wonder
00:49:18.820of nature can inspire social justice activism published in yes magazine and you share quote
00:49:26.180sitting on that ground it occurred to me through my body first then my thoughts that the earth
00:49:32.740the land was the key the earth has held everything that's ever happened to us and in psychology we
00:49:39.380see health indicated by our romantic or familial or work relationships but there is never an
00:49:45.800assessment of our relationship with place and land it was a huge realization for me to feel
00:49:51.480that as a healing justice organizer and practitioner i could borrow from the ground
00:49:56.680because it has always had the most capacity and I keep pointing our people in that direction
00:50:03.240of the ground and the land to hold what seems impossible for black people in the U.S. this
00:50:10.440is a complicated conversation and one I feel is critical to our collective healing end quote
00:50:16.400I forgot that I I forgot that until just now you brought that back and I was like oh wow yeah
00:50:23.260Yeah, it's, it's powerful. And yeah, I think about this a lot, you know, how, if we want a chance, we need to reconnect, but it becomes complicated because of histories and severances. And somehow in the past couple of years, I think this complication has really been commodified by massive corporations who have heard these conversations.
00:51:16.860that i'm um very much in process around i moved i'm from the south i moved back to the south
00:51:24.460last year and it has been quite a journey and i live you know i live out in the country
00:51:33.320and i live not terribly far from where my ancestors were brought enslaved to the united
00:51:42.120States and where they settled for many years. And it has been grieving around all of that to
00:51:52.360begin a relationship with land and place. A few things that come to me when you ask a question,
00:52:01.540one, a good friend of mine, Sindolo, who's an organizer here in Durham, North Carolina,
00:52:09.460we were sitting on the porch last summer and he said you know the stories are around us even if
00:52:15.340we don't know them we can feel them you know the stories the history we can feel them it's here
00:52:22.800it's it's mediating our relationships with one another and that just felt so real to me that so
00:52:31.700many of us are trained out of paying attention to the ecosystem in which we are that creates us
00:52:42.780makes us every day um but it still does and it is still doing whether or not you know where your
00:52:50.520watershed is or whether or not you know the quality of your soil or which zone you're in or
00:52:54.500what what the native plants are to a place they're still very much impacting your life so
00:53:00.560it's um for me an ongoing process of grieving the painful process of losing knowledge and I feel
00:53:12.080like there's a couple losses of knowledge I you know I have to grieve for my ancestors who never
00:53:18.280saw their land again the land that they grew up on that they knew so well that they cared for
00:53:24.820I'm imagining how much that hurt probably much the same as not seeing the faces of their family
00:53:32.160members again you know but to also you know I was interviewing someone recently they were talking
00:53:38.840about their great great great grandmother bringing seeds in her hair to this continent on the
00:53:46.520slave ships so that her food could be grown here too and sustain her family I have to feel those
00:53:54.280stories. I have to know that I'm grieving that. And then, you know, I have to grieve for the
00:54:04.480people, the knowledge, especially in this place where I live, there was just such a massive
00:54:10.580displacement of the people who are indigenous to the place, massive, massive displacement
00:54:16.780and efforts to erase and I have to care about that because that you know it it shapes my0.99
00:54:27.600relationship it shapes what I can know it shapes what we can know to live in the wake of such an
00:54:37.040attempt to erase knowledge now we know that's not erased we know there are people who hold it but
00:54:44.440there are many things that are lost and have to be rediscovered over time. And that's just the way
00:54:51.460that's going to be. And I don't think, I think the last thing I'll say, there's no magical return.
00:55:00.100We're not all going to return to an unblemished time in history. And if we know that, I mean,
00:55:08.280that's at least what I believe. I don't think there is an unblemished time in history. If we
00:55:11.960know that if we're here now what do we have to do who needs to have conversation with whom who
00:55:18.680needs to heal what relationship who needs to ask for what permission who needs to offer something
00:55:24.440back I think that's where we're at right now and I'll also just say lastly that um what I've found
00:55:31.060so far is like growing food relating more to land it's not just some beautiful magical relationship
00:55:38.380It's like every other relationship. It's hard. It's beautiful. It's messy. You know, we had birds last year and many of them were just killed in one night by a raccoon that was hungry. Do you know what I mean? That happens. That's life.
00:55:53.460and we have to know that it has every that relationship has every lesson in it that we
00:56:01.500can learn about attachment about loss about love about sacrifice but it's going to be like every
00:56:08.700other relationship it's going to be full of beauty and pain and it's going to keep teaching us you
00:56:15.140know when we long for attachment when we don't have anywhere else to go it's right there for us
00:56:21.720to attach to there's a place where you always belong and it is planet earth and i don't mean
00:56:27.620that in some cheesy kind of way you just do but you have to choose it you have to choose that
00:56:33.860belonging which means you have to learn you have to be yourself you have to not know you have to
00:56:40.580learn the name i always say to people learn the name of the tree outside of your window learn what
00:56:48.220its poisons and medicines are. Start there. And then the world will keep just revealing its magic
00:56:56.880to you. Wow. That was so moving to hear you speak those words. And yeah, personally, I woke up with
00:57:08.380this feeling of loneliness and this kind of chronic oh like low fog and hearing you say that
00:57:18.080really brought me back to my senses and brought me back to the earth which does always hold me
00:57:25.680and I am so grateful for them for always being here even when I'm
00:57:32.620naughty or not not good and messy and sloppy and all of those all of it you know all of the
00:57:42.160humanness and gosh I think just hearing that from another human is so heartening and relieving and
00:57:52.440like okay deep breath like here we are and so I yeah just appreciate you saying that on a collective
00:58:00.440and a personal level and Prentice thank you so much for your time and attention and presence
00:58:08.740and depth I mean this conversation put me in chills more than once and I just yeah I'm so
00:58:17.600grateful for this time with you and as we close I would just like to offer any final words or
00:58:24.400ways to direct listeners to learn more about your work and that of the Embodiment Institute
00:58:29.300yeah um i'm doing most of my work through the embodiment institute right now so the next
00:58:37.660year we are building out opportunities to come together together around what it means to
00:58:46.800have a body why that's important for our healing what does rest mean what does resilience mean
00:58:53.000what does it mean to heal shame in this context that we're in we have a project called the black
00:58:58.240embodiment initiative which will is kind of rolling out our black space where we're going to
00:59:04.860be kind of working to heal in particular the way anti-blackness shapes our realities and we just
00:59:12.600hope that this can be a place to really ignite our curiosity our healing journeys and our kind
00:59:22.020of work towards becoming more embodied. I also have a podcast called Finding Our Way, which will
00:59:29.000be launching its second season soon. I don't want to tell you the date. I don't know exactly when
00:59:34.340this podcast is coming out, but soon. I don't know exactly when. And I think those are the
00:59:40.280main things, main places where I spend my time these days. But I feel really grateful for the
00:59:47.640invitation for the thoughtful questions they felt depthful from the start and i i really
00:59:53.500really do appreciate that it means a lot to me to be able to jump into the deep waters together so