00:05:21.140really, because it starts to illuminate what we really need, what's important, what's possible
00:05:27.140between us, what it really feels like to create intimacy with one another.
00:05:31.640So that to me is the kind of embodiment that I'm working towards.
00:05:35.860oh thank you for grounding our conversation with that intro that was really helpful and
00:05:45.200yeah I'd like to bring into conversation some sentiments around trauma and oppression that
00:05:54.380I've heard you share in conversation with Mark Anthony Johnson and Francisca Porches Coronado
00:06:01.020which is that trauma is inevitable to all life on earth, but oppression is how we organize and
00:06:08.220distribute that trauma amongst ourselves. And I think listeners would really love to hear
00:06:14.440more about this relationship between trauma and oppression and how this approach really
00:06:20.240informs the work that the Embodiment Institute is doing. Yeah. I mean, again, it's kind of like
00:06:27.600embodiment there's a couple ways to look at it so oppression is trauma in many ways it's what it is
00:06:32.920it's a collective trauma and you know it occurred to me a couple years ago and just kind of thinking
00:06:40.620about it that we often think about oppression through primarily through and only through maybe
00:06:47.640the kind of way the systems shape people's lives but not always really feeling into what that means
00:06:55.680for the day-to-day, for a person's actual lifespan, what it feels like to feel the weight
00:07:03.880of oppression daily, regularly, always. And it occurred to me that oppression really is
00:07:12.200the attempt, I think, to ensure that some people experience pain with the hopes that other people
00:07:21.100wouldn't and to organize the world and society in that way in an attempt to kind of outsource
00:07:26.760pain and to concentrate it ultimately in the people that we've deemed less valuable and we
00:07:33.660do that through systems but I wanted to really illuminate that what we're talking about is
00:07:39.880people's lives it's not just a idea or theory oppression but that it exists as a million
00:07:48.200traumas that aren't heard. It exists as a decreased lifespan, time that people don't get to have,
00:07:58.100presence that people don't get to have with their loved ones. That's what it means. That's what it
00:08:02.660actually means. And I think that in some ways, that's the intended purpose of creating a system
00:08:07.720and a society that really relies on oppression to function. And in terms of the work of the
00:08:18.200Yeah, a lot of the work that I try to do there and we're trying to create is how do we undo some of that?
00:08:26.360Now, we know that it's not all about our capacity to heal.
00:08:32.820There needs to be real systemic and structural shifts that make it easier for people to live and stay alive.
00:08:42.140But we also know that there's certain things that oppression does to a life, certain things that it does to each of us. And then there's ways that it gets amplified or concentrated or focused, depending on how your identity is perceived in the world.
00:09:02.400So when I think about, for example, kind of what anti-Blackness has meant for my life, it's meant increased policing of myself and people I care about, which translates to a kind of hypervigilance that I then have to hold.
00:09:19.880colonization has been a disconnection from land and environment. So there's a whole resource of
00:09:26.440grounding and attachment that I haven't been able to access because of the way that my
00:09:34.180story thus far has gone. That doesn't mean that we can't recover these capacities and relationships.
00:09:39.380And I hope really that that's what we, you know, we're going to focus on in the Embodiment
00:09:43.960Institute, is how do we recover some of the capacities that oppression and disconnection
00:09:50.200and a culture of denial have tried to institute inside of each of our bodies? So that's the
00:09:56.280question. That's the question. How can we create a space that contributes to
00:10:00.520the lived experience of liberation and freedom for more of us, all of us?
00:10:06.640well yeah i'm thinking for many of us the word trauma is sort of inherently linked to notions
00:10:19.220of healing specifically healing with an end point in mind and something i've really been
00:10:25.460working around is this question of how much trauma we can seek to resolve in this life
00:10:32.640given the generations and generations it's taken to come into existence. And I wonder if this line
00:10:40.020of thought sort of plays with your framing of trauma and oppression. And if you could speak
00:10:46.160to this thought around our limited capacity to completely navigate out of trauma.
00:10:53.300What do I think about that? You know, I think one of the frameworks that is embedded in
00:10:59.340my work and what I am trying to do now is a framework for me that comes from my past as a
00:11:09.260therapist that I don't talk about that much, but in my family systems training, thinking about
00:11:15.240transitional characters. In family systems, you think about transitional characters as a person
00:11:20.500that can kind of transform their life and it changes their family's lives. But I've been
00:11:27.100thinking a lot lately about, you know, what our healing contributes to our lineage. And I think
00:11:32.040about that much more expansively than the kind of biological lineage that we're given. But what
00:11:37.540our healing work contributes to, yeah, life across time behind us and in front of us. I've been
00:11:46.420really interested in that question. Maybe it's a kind of adjacent question to the one that you're
00:11:50.860asking. It's like, what impact can we make across time in our relationships? I don't know
00:11:57.800if it's too much to undo in one life. It may not be. It may be. I think I don't know enough yet
00:12:05.500about it, to be honest, to really settle somewhere. I know that it doesn't serve us to be
00:12:14.200in a uh an approach to our own healing that is never satisfiable that never lets us uh enjoy
00:12:24.920our lives that never lets go that never is is able to love ourselves accept ourselves as
00:12:33.040flawed you know that can't tolerate the places where the impact of history just lives where we
00:12:43.040tell the story of what's happened before I don't think I'm interested in that kind of healing
00:12:47.200where we become perfect but I also don't know necessarily what can and can't be done in a
00:12:54.480lifetime but I hope that I can you know ask me in 20 years what I think about that I might have a
00:13:00.260different idea okay noted yeah it's it's hard to say and I think there are so many questions that
00:13:12.140are unanswerable and there's so much beauty in that too and release of control release of needing
00:13:19.040to know and maybe even allows us to be more present if we're not so attached to some type
00:13:28.220of completeness yeah and i gleaned that the embodiment institute is really interested in
00:13:37.120embodiment in terms of how it impacts our ways of being with one another. And something I've
00:13:42.840observed in activist culture is that there's been an emphasis on the self in terms of being your
00:13:50.000own person, defining strong boundaries around your preferences, and really centering one's truth as
00:13:57.320being, you know, one of, if not the most important thing. And no doubt, a lot of this has really
00:14:04.100grown out of incredibly important dialogues. But it seems that nowadays it can lapse into
00:14:11.920these patterns that are really antithetical to building communal power and staying in
00:14:17.720relationship with one another. So I'd like to ask about the importance of course correcting
00:14:24.360with this aspect and how embodiment is central to our ability to build strong relational skills.
00:14:31.760yeah i think there's there's a few different things in there for me
00:14:35.640i will start with yeah the the measure inside of our work in the embodiment institute is
00:14:42.560relationship that it's not about kind of i've healed and i know it and the end but it's like
00:14:52.160you're in a process that manifests itself who you are manifests you manifest yourself in relationship
00:14:59.220and that can include a relationship to yourself but it also includes relationship to place
00:15:05.140relationship to the people around you the systems that you are in the communities that you are
00:15:11.480committed to what are you doing inside of those relationships i think is an important indicator
00:15:18.080of how we've processed through experiences that we've had i would say most of the traumas that
00:15:24.660people experience are relational ones so how we measure healing and again you know I was trained
00:15:31.220as a therapist it can be such an individualized measure of how someone is doing but not necessarily
00:15:39.000relational which you know the way I come up you exist because you are related to others or in
00:15:47.120relationship with others and that I mean that expansively and in terms of the kind of course
00:15:53.920correcting inside of movement. I don't know that I like intend to do that necessarily. And I guess
00:16:04.420because in part, I don't think that the kind of individualism or self-protection that we feel
00:16:13.480there, maybe there's a new intensity to it, but that's kind of always been the struggle
00:16:19.460in some ways is that there are groups and pockets of people that would protect themselves over
00:16:30.020everything, over the collective. It doesn't feel so new a dynamic to me, but I think the
00:16:38.920path forward or the work to do is always, how are we going to be in relationship with each other?
00:16:47.960And I do think that that takes boundaries.
00:16:50.840I think boundaries are a relational skill, especially when power dynamics have, I was
00:16:56.420actually just kind of writing a thing about this before we got on, that I think that boundaries
00:17:01.280are evidence of our interconnection, not a denial of it.
00:17:04.480I think when we start to deny our interconnection, that becomes something different.
00:17:09.000That's a generalized way of approaching connection.
00:17:12.620But a boundary is a responsive parameter that allows me to be in relationship often. And I think that we can lose that that's really what it is about. It's a relational skill.
00:17:29.240When groups of people or when individual people have been taught that their parameter or their bounds exist even around the space that you occupy, it is necessary for us to develop relational skills around boundaries.
00:17:48.980Because some people have to tolerate being told no, and that will actually create the opportunity for balance, too.
00:19:32.280Wasn't long before she passed out of my reach
00:19:39.240you know another facet of this work that i think would be really interesting and helpful for
00:19:55.100listeners to hear about is around the idea of having positive arguments or maybe regenerative
00:20:01.900conflict because i think about the world we live in especially the sort of acceleration of the
00:20:08.480political sphere entering into our lives. And we are given zero examples of how to have arguments
00:20:15.140and debates that move us forward. Instead, we're shown probably the most polarizing and vitriolic
00:20:21.820examples that really only serve as a base form of entertainment, if nothing else. And so maybe
00:20:28.900that's kind of maybe where the cultural denial fits into, but how can embodiment practices
00:20:35.240assist with this yeah um it's really interesting
00:20:43.500that when i teach that conflict course you know we talk about conflict aversion like you mentioned
00:20:51.800and i say well most so many of the the shows on tv these days are just people outright fighting
00:20:56.820so there's something about it we're suppressing something at the same time we're just consuming
00:21:05.080so much of it too. I'm probably not the one to call it positive conflict. In some ways,
00:21:11.000I want people to know that it sometimes hurts. It's sometimes hard. There is, you know, there
00:21:17.560may be facilitators. There are likely facilitators better than me at it. But I do think
00:21:27.800one of the first things that I do, I feel like is important, is normalize that it's hard.
00:21:35.080That'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.
00:21:55.820And 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.
00:22:05.740And we can try to bypass that, but even the most centered, grounded person is going to be reactive.
00:22:19.080it's about returning to a wider capacity more quickly. So I want people to know that it's hard
00:22:26.760and we're not always quote unquote good at it. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes we say something
00:22:34.800we wish we hadn't. It doesn't mean that we want to do that, but I want people to know going in
00:22:39.880that sometimes it's hard, but what we're moving towards where it gets really generative is when
00:22:44.180we are vulnerable. One of the things I often say too when I'm facilitating is that there's a direct
00:22:50.180correlation between your satisfaction and your vulnerability. It just is. I'm not saying that
00:23:00.440it's equal, but I'm saying there's a direct correlation between the likelihood that you'll
00:23:05.220be satisfied and your willingness to be vulnerable. So I want people to know that, that that's what
00:23:11.960we're trying to get to. We're trying to settle enough with one another. We're trying to risk
00:23:15.200enough with one another to get to, I'm hurt here. I am worried this means that you think this about
00:23:25.120me. The thing that is hardest to say, sometimes it means I don't want to be in relationship with
00:23:31.760you anymore. That might be the hardest thing to say. Not everything is about coming together and
00:23:38.020holding hands at the end, but it may be about the thing that needs to be said the most. So
00:23:42.680I think embodiment helps us by discerning in this immediate moment, what is life and death?
00:23:52.300When we're able to take a deep breath, our body's able to process, able to record,
00:23:58.680okay, I'm here. I'm not being chased by this person, but I am being hurt by this person,
00:24:05.060right or i am upset maybe i'm hurt about something that actually doesn't even
00:24:09.900is not even real time it's just reminiscent of
00:24:13.720embodiment also helps us settle into those experiences our wisdom
00:24:20.180i know that if i do this most likely it's not going to turn out the way that i want to
00:24:29.000if i get up right now and turn this table over likely won't resolve itself the way i want to
00:24:35.040you. Embodiment is the resource because it helps connect us to the greater resource, which is the
00:24:41.040earth, the ground. You know, when we hold contractions or when we're reactive, it's pulling ourselves
00:24:46.160away from what resources us most, the breath, the body, the ground. And it pulls us into action,
00:24:55.020rightness, doing something, fixing it. So embodiment is tapping into that resource that exists
00:25:01.140uh, underneath and around us. It's beautiful. Yeah. I'm just looking at the ground where I am
00:25:11.560and feeling that, um, that deep comfort and knowing this, that they're here and they always
00:25:20.920are, whether I acknowledge them or not. So that's right. Thanks for the reminder. I know it seems so
00:25:28.440sometimes silly that we even need that reminder but i know that i do oh no yeah me too me too
00:25:37.980very much i really do a lot and um you know there was a post called letting go of innocence
00:25:45.580and you write quote it's time to let go of our interpersonal obsession with innocence and guilt
00:25:54.040and see those concepts as what they are. Having facilitated conflict and transformative justice
00:26:00.520processes, I can feel how programmed we are to grasp for innocence. Innocence offers safety,
00:26:07.120while guilt leaves you at risk for expulsion and isolation. Neither are fixed states. Identity
00:26:13.940traits, but we treat them that way. And so many times in supporting people to wade through hard
00:26:20.440feelings hurt feelings harm i found that so many of us want innocence separate from accountability
00:26:26.580end quote yeah and gosh this binary approach to guilt and innocence feels as salient as ever
00:26:36.280because i see how many are so quick to assign guilt and in turn are also incredibly quick to
00:26:43.980seek out groups that they believe are able to absolve them. So I'd like to bring this up in
00:26:50.680context to conflict and why it's really imperative for all movements to move out of this binary.
00:26:58.200That's right. That's right. Yeah, I wrote that after facilitating some conflict and
00:27:09.500being on the phone with people that were just vying for innocence with me. And there was a
00:27:18.660part of me that was like, I'm not a judge. I'm not going to bestow innocence on you.
00:27:23.940But at the same time, I could hear their desperation in a way, their fear of what would
00:27:30.040happen if they were made guilty and all of that all of that obscures um what actually happened
00:27:41.100what actually needs to happen um what do we do from here and that's the most important work
00:27:49.440to me that's where things really change where things really transform is when we get down to
00:27:56.560that. But if we are afraid, if we're afraid to say, if we're afraid to reflect, then we don't
00:28:08.360ever get to that work. And I think that's what the judicial system has really trained us into,
00:28:14.260that we have to vie for our innocence or else. And so we do that amongst each other, but we never get
00:28:22.760to um what now we never get to healing we never get to any of that that's that's much more
00:28:30.520transformative and i think you know the binary way of approaching our goodness or innocence
00:28:37.760is so detrimental to liberation of any kind to being authentic in any way to having sustainable
00:28:47.980relationships it's a it's a paradigm that you know we talked earlier about culture of denial0.72
00:28:53.980you know james baldwin really taught me this that that is you know as an example whiteness
00:29:01.100that is one of the things that gets folded into the concept of whiteness is perpetual
00:29:05.940innocence and so no matter what whiteness does it has to be innocent because of how it
00:29:14.360it was created. Now this isn't white people, but it's like the concept of whiteness must be0.92
00:29:19.320innocent, must have a justification for what it's done. And that's where I think we get,0.84
00:29:28.600I mean, also kind of Christian hegemony, it also offers us this and kind of like0.95
00:29:36.060good and evil, these binary ways of being. But it really keeps us kind of like scrambling for0.99
00:29:43.600these assignments or these declarations especially for people or groups that don't have access to
00:29:49.560innocence very often we have to scramble because we know what guilt brings but I think there's
00:29:56.160another way I just think it it requires a different attention inside of our cultures and inside of our
00:30:03.220groups or communities that it's it's we can stay in a little bit more complexity
00:30:11.340we can do a little bit more thoughtful work there we can ask who is hurt and what can be done
00:30:19.360we can care for healing we can tend to one another it just it requires a lot of things
00:30:25.220that are not quick and easy flashy for us to really live in that space in between
00:30:32.080wow there's so much there yeah i'm the the innocence um guilt binary thinking about
00:30:44.980also what you know what is connected to whiteness in our culture and how
00:30:50.040somehow even if like part of me is like well sometimes you know let's just say corporations
00:30:56.040are guilty but they are somehow deemed innocent because of the pervasive whiteness that upholds
00:31:05.800them and so it's just really i definitely want to shatter the binary and then there's that also
00:31:11.680that part of me that's like and what's so frustrating is that it's not even even when
00:31:18.680the binary is put in place it's not actually it's not right it's not correct um and so then it's
00:31:26.200like yeah this isn't even working I mean I've watched so much in the legal system even in my
00:31:31.800own life just be crazy I mean like it doesn't even it's not even rational and so um yeah gosh
00:31:41.200I just have so much that I'm that that came from me in your response and the corporations you know
00:31:48.140it's like are they innocent or are they guilty that matters to the point of like what are we
00:31:53.560going to do about them what are they doing to people what do we do next what's actually the
00:31:58.620impact can we measure that and take that seriously it's like we can't stop at these
00:32:03.740terms because we we're not thinking through what are they teaching us about who we are
00:32:11.300what are they telling us about our culture what do we need to do to transform i'm not saying that
00:32:15.700obviously we're thinking about that, but trying to pin them down in this way obscures the real
00:32:21.300work, I think. Yeah, because it, right, it's too theoretical or something. It doesn't come
00:32:30.200back down to the ground. How do we even deal with, even if we were to say they are guilty,
00:32:36.900how do we even materialize that? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I'd like to
00:32:45.500highlight some of your thoughts around reclaiming our right to feel, but also maybe interrogating a
00:32:53.360bit around our capacity for feeling. And you've written about the connections between freedom
00:32:59.240and feeling. And as I sit with this, I'm thinking about my own capacity for feeling. And
00:33:05.960if I'm being honest, you know, I go in waves. I feel a lot and I act, and then I need to feel
00:33:13.560less as sort of a survival mechanism. But I do wonder how much of this sort of desensitization
00:33:23.080process that has unfurled in I know my lifetime and whether or not this is authentic or where my
00:33:31.560own capacity might be stuck. And I'm not asking about myself. I'm just using myself as an example.
00:33:38.280So with that as a preface, I wonder how you see the beginnings of recovering our capacity to feel
00:33:45.700taking shape. I think for me, when I think about freedom and the freedom that I want for all people
00:33:54.760and the freedom that I want for my people, I want us to be able to, in part, feel our lives
00:34:02.120and feel the joys and feel the sorrows and feel the grief and feel the love and feel all those
00:34:10.180things. And there's so many ways that we are not able to feel the ups and downs, the ebbs and
00:34:18.900flows and that our ebbs and flows are often very dramatic highs and lows so that is kind of how I
00:34:27.580came to feeling you know I was like what in some ways what good is freedom if we don't feel it
00:34:32.500and what I'm actually interested in is the the feeling of freedom being discovered being you
00:34:42.120know blossoming inside of people and what it takes to create an environment where that's possible
00:34:48.860That doesn't mean we feel good all the time. It just means that we feel our lives as they are. And we have enough space to do that. And recovering the capacity to feel for me has been, you know, it's been a kind of thawing.
00:35:06.660I think in a lot of ways, I was taught that I couldn't feel. It wasn't time to feel. It was
00:35:12.020inappropriate or dangerous to feel. Or honestly, impossible to feel everything that I might feel
00:35:18.880if I opened myself up to it. And so it's, for me, been a journey of getting curious about myself.
00:35:26.520You know, I feel my freest when I can be present, when I'm here. Like, I'm here with you right now.
00:35:32.020We're having this connection. And we're having this conversation. That's when I feel free.
00:37:06.480I'd like to move into some reflections you've shared about what we've experienced most recently
00:37:28.920and in a post titled Contagion, Consent, and Connection you write quote
00:37:34.440as an embodiment teacher I keep thinking about what our somas are learning in this moment what
00:37:40.600are they deciding is the truth about interaction and connection now and what is safe for human
00:37:46.300relationship I've watched human physical connection at least in public dissolve in a week end quote
00:37:52.940and yeah I'm really curious about how the psychology of fear which you know I want to
00:38:01.360state, we obviously have a lot to be fearful of. I'm not diminishing that, but how that translates
00:38:07.700in our body. And, you know, it's interesting because I feel like over the period of these
00:38:13.940COVID times, we've seen a lot of things, I think, you know, and I'm making big generalizations,
00:38:19.740but I think we're in that period, at least with folks around me of fatigue, you know,
00:38:26.660both in the grief that people have experienced the fear and the adrenaline that's just had to
00:38:34.880run through our bodies you know when it first hit I was watching it in January and trying to
00:38:42.620let people around me know that I thought this thing was coming and I was afraid and trying to
00:38:48.540like not appear too fearful I think is what I was doing because I didn't want to alarm other people
00:38:54.920but I wanted people to prepare because it seemed like something that was happening and going to
00:38:59.440be in front of us soon. My mother is a nurse in a Texas hospital that has been hit by COVID in a
00:39:09.920really heavy way. She's older. And I was very, I mean, she's the demographic of people that
00:39:17.820struggle the most in a lot of ways and I had a lot of fear I had a lot of fear for a long long time
00:39:25.760and found myself just really adrenalized for a long period of time around COVID you know a certain
00:39:36.300kind of hyper vigilance I've I've had which is you know I'm making the kind of internal distinction
00:39:43.560for myself between being cautious and taking precautions but it's the kind of what I was
00:39:49.280trying to speak to in that piece was like yeah there are things we have to do now and I'm taking
00:39:54.740it very seriously you know the precautions we have to take but then there's also the mood
00:39:59.240that we bring to those things there's also the story that we tell ourselves about what's happening
00:40:06.480And how that can be so dominated by fear. And again, there's so much to actually be afraid about. Absolutely. And what I was trying to kind of point to in that piece was like, we could tell ourselves a story that is too dangerous to be connected to one another.
00:40:25.100Our fear could go that far. Our fear could say, it could get overwhelmed. Our systems could get
00:40:33.760overwhelmed and we could say, it's too dangerous. It's not possible to make connection. Or we could
00:40:40.380say, oh, I'm a human being. I long for connection, that principle of connection I long for. So how
00:40:46.080do I create connection in my life? It's not necessarily the same as creating more contact
00:40:51.280in my life? How do I infuse the moments where I am connected to people with more intimacy,
00:40:59.480with more revealing, so that it starts to satisfy that real need for connection that I have
00:41:08.300in a way that's possible in this moment, so that we can be afraid, we can have fear,
00:41:13.240but fear isn't necessarily shaping every aspect of how we relate and live that we get to infuse
00:41:21.840we get to have choice at those points how are we going to do this how are we going to do this in a
00:41:26.960way that fear might tell us to just pull away from it altogether so that's really been my attention
00:41:33.800in my own life over this last year really it's like how do I infuse more presence more intimacy
00:41:41.820more connection so that something gets touched and honestly feel like it's it's really transformed
00:41:48.980my relationships like some relationships have become very sacred some have come out of nowhere
00:41:54.720some have come like blast from the past some have ended in this moment because the intimacy that was
00:42:00.800required was too much so I think that um I think that fear wants to cast a really wide blanket
00:42:07.900over things. It wants to have us withdraw, protect. And I think that embodiment helps us
00:42:15.740ask the questions where we didn't think questions are possible. How might I do this?
00:42:21.780That's what embodiment does for me. It creates possibility. Oh, fear says that's not possible.
00:42:26.440Embodiment says, but how would I do it? If I long for that, how would I do it in this context?
00:42:32.220How would it feel? Can I open myself up to those sensations? So yeah, that's really been my guide.
00:42:36.600i love that i love that possibility curiosity openness
00:42:42.880i want to also mention in the last post i mentioned you talk about how this moment is
00:42:51.400really providing us space to re-examine how consent plays out in the world and you write
00:42:57.540quote we have for one the ability to practice consent consent around proximity consent around
00:43:04.280touch, many of us are realizing how unpracticed we are here. This isn't just because we're all
00:43:10.640disrespectful people, but also because how many of us are a part of cultures that have norms,
00:43:17.880especially around touch, that are not consent-based? Do you reject an elder's kiss? Redirect that
00:43:24.300handshake? Decline that hug? Do you ask before you initiate those same gestures? People have always
00:43:31.140needed distance whether expressed or not because of what is communicable for many of us choice has
00:43:38.420not been something we allowed for our own bodies let alone been curious about in others practicing
00:43:44.740consent brings us closer to a shared reality of experience where multiple needs are being honored
00:43:50.640and known end quote i haven't read that in a long time it sounds pretty good it's so good it's so
00:43:58.700good yeah and i'm wondering how do you see us carrying what we've learned during this time
00:44:06.120forward oh wow oh wow will we yes we will everything is always happening so yes we will
00:44:21.080um yeah you know if i'm real in that moment when i wrote that i was actually struggling a little bit
00:44:28.540to understand the complexities of consent I had just moved um to the U.S. from Hawaii
00:44:36.520and been there for my partners from Hawaii and the culture there is that basically people kiss you
00:44:44.640when they greet you and I was uh texting my friend there I was just like how are people
00:44:52.620dealing like what is happening you know what I mean because it it's just it's breaking down1.00
00:45:00.260an aspect of culture that I think probably many people have I can't speak for people but mixed
00:45:09.440feelings complicated feelings about but I was like oh this is this is uh it's it's infusing a
00:45:16.620new thing into spaces where we had assumed that this was accepted in the norm. And I was feeling
00:45:25.680conflicted about that. Like, how's it going to undo this practice that has been alive in Hawaii
00:45:32.340for so long? Something about that doesn't seem right to me. And then, you know, I don't have an
00:45:39.520answer to that. I'm not going to land anywhere in particular on that because I don't think it's
00:45:42.700necessary to. But I do think it has infused consent in a different way. It's also revealed
00:45:51.740where some people resist acknowledging the parameters of another's space or being,
00:46:00.960you know, the resistance to that. But I hope that we will have a little bit more consent
00:46:08.020around proximity. I think that that will serve us just because there's been, maybe it's almost
00:46:14.200like a reset. There's been so many things we've taken for granted. What are we going to choose
00:46:18.620about how we relate to one another now? I think that we will, I don't know how well people have
00:46:25.420rested in this time. I don't know, you know, in the beginning of this time, I prayed every night
00:46:33.160for kids who couldn't leave a home that was challenging for them to be in. So I hold that
00:46:41.540reality that some people are at home and have suffered because of that. I know that that's
00:46:47.220true. And I know that for myself, I have been home and I have loved it very much. And I have
00:46:55.600created a new capacity for closeness and intimacy in my own home that I had. And I was traveling
00:47:03.040so much before this year, like so, so much. And now I'm just at home. And I thought I would have
00:47:11.220a lot of anxiety around that, but I feel like it's been amazing. So I hope for some people that
00:47:16.960there's a, I keep saying this word intimacy, because it's really important for me, that
00:47:22.200there's a reigniting of the space of intimacy, of deep connection with those that they've potted
00:47:29.180up with, or that they live with, or that they have, you know, Zoom parties with, I hope that
00:47:35.500that is true. And I hope that that permeates into the broader culture, because I know that's not
00:47:40.960everybody's experience. So I think that's one of the things that I hope we get off Zoom, though,
00:47:47.440that's, that's gonna be, that's gonna be hard. Zoom and Instagram have become places where our
00:47:53.500avatars are thriving. I hope that we kind of let that go a little bit, but I doubt it.
00:48:00.300I think a lot of folks are in that boat and agree with you on that. In certain ways,
00:48:08.100they're magical technologies that allow us to connect with one another, like at this moment,
00:48:12.900but I definitely see the flip side. And I think the memes around being on Zoom are hilarious.
00:48:19.100and i really appreciate when people can make fun of and be in laughter around the ridiculousness
00:48:27.960of these technologies um and try to you know not take it too seriously although it's very strange
00:48:34.940and you know very uh potentially problematic so i hear you yeah and there was a conversation you
00:48:43.320had with Adrienne Marie Brown titled, How the Wonder of Nature Can Inspire Social Justice
00:48:49.580Activism, published in Yes Magazine. And you share, quote, sitting on that ground, it occurred to me
00:48:57.020through my body first, then my thoughts, that the earth, the land was the key. The earth has held
00:49:03.580everything that's ever happened to us. And in psychology, we see health indicated by our romantic
00:49:09.480or familial or work relationships, but there's never an assessment of our relationship with
00:49:15.400place and land. It was a huge realization for me to feel that as a healing justice organizer
00:49:21.760and practitioner, I could borrow from the ground because it has always had the most capacity.
00:49:28.360And I keep pointing our people in that direction of the ground and the land to hold what seems
00:49:34.480impossible for black people in the u.s this is a complicated conversation and one i feel is
00:49:41.860critical to our collective healing end quote i forgot that i i forgot that until just now you
00:49:49.300brought that back and i was like oh wow yeah yeah it's it's powerful and yeah i think about this a
00:49:57.840lot you know how if we want a chance we need to reconnect but it becomes complicated because of
00:50:05.900histories and severances and somehow in the past couple of years i think this complication has
00:50:12.660really been commodified by massive corporations who have heard these conversations and think about
00:50:18.940the amount of money that can be made in encouraging folks to reconnect with earth
00:50:23.200And while it's had some positive impacts, of course, it's also really unspiritualized this practice. So I wonder if you could share what an embodied and spiritual approach to mending one's relationship with place and land means to you.
00:50:41.020hmm yeah you know this is something that I'm um very much in process around I moved I'm from the
00:50:51.260south I moved back to the south uh last year and it has been quite a journey and I live you know
00:51:00.380I live out in the country and I live not terribly far from where my ancestors were brought enslaved
00:51:09.340to the United States and where they settled for many years. And it has been grieving around all
00:51:18.200of that to begin a relationship with land and place. A few things that come to me when you
00:51:28.780ask a question, one, a good friend of mine, Sindolo, who's a organizer here in Durham,
00:51:36.660North Carolina we were sitting on the porch last summer and he said you know the stories are around
00:51:42.820us even if we don't know them we can feel them you know the stories the history we can feel them
00:51:50.300it's here it's it's mediating our relationships with one another and that just felt so real to me
00:51:58.960that so many of us are trained out of paying attention to the ecosystem in which we are
00:52:06.960that creates us makes us every day but it still does and it is still doing whether or not you
00:52:18.100know where your watershed is or whether or not you know the quality of your soil or which zone
00:52:21.920you're in or what what the native plants are to a place they're still very much impacting your life
00:52:28.260So it's, for me, an ongoing process of grieving the painful process of losing knowledge. And I feel like there's a couple losses of knowledge that, you know, I have to grieve for my ancestors who never saw their land again, the land that they grew up on, that they knew so well, that they cared for.
00:52:52.800imagining how much that hurt probably much the same as not seeing the faces of their family
00:53:00.160members again you know but to also you know i i was interviewing someone recently they were talking
00:53:06.840about their great great great grandmother bringing seeds in her hair to this continent on the
00:53:14.540slave ships so that her food could be grown here too and sustain her family i have to feel those
00:53:22.280stories. I have to know that I'm grieving that. And then, you know, I have to grieve for the people,
00:53:33.200the knowledge, especially in this place where I live, there was just such a massive displacement
00:53:39.220of the people who are indigenous to the place, massive, massive displacement and efforts to
00:53:46.980erase and I have to care about that because that you know it it shapes my relationship0.96
00:53:56.180it shapes what I can know it shapes what we can know to live in the wake of such an attempt
00:54:05.480to erase knowledge now we know that's not erased we know there are people who hold it but there
00:54:12.580are many things that are lost and have to be rediscovered over time. And that's just the way
00:54:19.460that's going to be. And I don't think, I think the last thing I'll say, there's no magical return.
00:54:28.080We're not all going to return to an unblemished time in history. And if we know that, I mean,
00:54:36.280that's at least what I believe. I don't think there is an unblemished time in history. If we
00:54:39.960know that if we're here now what do we have to do who needs to have conversation with whom who
00:54:46.680needs to heal what relationship who needs to ask for what permission who needs to offer something
00:54:52.440back I think that's where we're at right now and I'll also just say lastly that um what I've found
00:54:59.060so far is like growing food relating more to land it's not just some beautiful magical relationship
00:55:06.380It'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.
00:55:21.460and we have to know that it has every that relationship has every lesson in it that we
00:55:29.500can learn about attachment about loss about love about sacrifice but it's going to be like every
00:55:36.700other relationship it's going to be full of beauty and pain and it's going to keep teaching us you
00:55:43.140know when we long for attachment when we don't have anywhere else to go it's right there for us
00:55:49.720to attach to there's a place where you always belong and it is planet earth and i don't mean
00:55:55.620that in some cheesy kind of way you just do but you have to choose it you have to choose that
00:56:01.860belonging which means you have to learn you have to be yourself you have to not know you have to
00:56:08.580learn the name i always say to people learn the name of the tree outside of your window learn what
00:56:16.220its poisons and medicines are. Start there. And then the world will keep just revealing its magic
00:56:24.880to you. Wow. That was so moving to hear you speak those words. And yeah, personally, I woke up with
00:56:36.380this feeling of loneliness and this kind of chronic oh like low fog and hearing you say that
00:56:46.080really brought me back to my senses and brought me back to the earth which does always hold me
00:56:53.680and I am so grateful for them for always being here even when I'm
00:57:00.620naughty or not not good and messy and sloppy and all of those all of it you know all of the
00:57:10.160humanness and gosh I think just hearing that from another human is so heartening and relieving and
00:57:20.440like okay deep breath like here we are and so I yeah just appreciate you saying that on a collective
00:57:28.440and a personal level and Prentice thank you so much for your time and attention and presence
00:57:36.740and depth I mean this conversation put me in chills more than once and I just yeah I'm so
00:57:45.600grateful for this time with you and as we close I would just like to offer any final words or
00:57:52.400ways to direct listeners to learn more about your work and that of the Embodiment Institute
00:57:57.300yeah um i'm doing most of my work through the embodiment institute right now so the next
00:58:05.660year we are building out opportunities to come together together around what it means to
00:58:14.800have a body why that's important for our healing what does rest mean what does resilience mean
00:58:21.000what does it mean to heal shame in this context that we're in we have a project called the black
00:58:26.240embodiment initiative which will is kind of rolling out our black space where we're going to
00:58:32.860be kind of working to heal in particular the way anti-blackness shapes our realities and we just
00:58:40.600hope that this can be a place to really ignite our curiosity our healing journeys and our kind
00:58:50.020of work towards becoming more embodied. I also have a podcast called Finding Our Way, which will
00:58:57.000be launching its second season soon. I don't want to tell you the date. I don't know exactly when
00:59:02.340this podcast is coming out, but soon. I don't know exactly when. And I think those are the
00:59:08.280main things, main places where I spend my time these days. But I feel really grateful for the
00:59:15.640invitation for the thoughtful questions they felt depthful from the start and i i really
00:59:21.500really do appreciate that it means a lot to me to be able to jump into the deep waters together so