00:20:13.780And then I think about my ancestors and what they were going through and how they still found time to rest. So it just shows me how far and deep the process of brainwashing and accepting violence towards ourselves is happening.
00:20:27.400that we now in 2020 believe that we can't make take can't take 10 minutes every day close our
00:20:35.500eyes and meditate or 30 minutes to rest and we really literally feel like we cannot do it and
00:20:40.840when we do do it we feel extreme guilt and shame around it so that's where i named the brainwashing
00:20:47.640because of the fact that we're participating in our own demise to think of your son literally
00:20:55.980from birth the rushing of birth i mean that yeah it's just like this is really entrenched my gosh
00:21:02.900yeah yes and um the medical system is you know all the medical system is an industrial complex
00:21:09.860that sits right in white supremacy think about what's happening now and all of the people of
00:21:14.440color who are dying you know thinking about the covet 19 and it's uplifting and illuminating
00:21:19.680the healthcare system which we've always known has been racist and anti-black and it created
00:21:26.260off white supremacy so we keep going back to that white supremacy you keep going back to
00:21:30.740the system that set everything up it really touches everything yeah yeah well i'm i'm wondering
00:21:40.360i think it can be difficult for people to imagine what rest could look like beyond the act of
00:21:46.640sleeping or taking a nap. So how can our waking lives be full of rest or perhaps embody a sustained
00:21:54.460slowness within all that we do? Yes, I love answering this question. It's like one of my
00:22:00.420favorites to dream about and imagine about because I always get to tell the story of my grandmother
00:22:06.680or casting my maternal grandmother who was a Jim Crow refugee from Mississippi and like millions0.56
00:22:14.980of other Black people left the South in hopes of running from Jim Crow terror that was happening
00:22:21.380in their Southern states and of hopes of these new opportunities. And so when I think about
00:22:27.800how she literally built a spaceship out of this uncertainty to float on, like she built
00:22:34.760this way to be like, I'm going to leave and take my children. I don't know if I'll get a job there.
00:22:41.140I don't know anybody in Chicago. I'm a refugee, but I know I won't have my children lynched. And so her and other brave Black people on the Great Migration, which I uphold as one of the most inspiring things to me when I think about resistance and think about really imagining and leaping and being subversive and making a way out of no way.
00:23:04.240I think these are the things that we need to be tapping into right now, this ancient wisdom.
00:23:08.840And so my grandmother left Mississippi, came to Chicago. My mother was one of her nine children.
00:23:15.940She worked two jobs in Chicago in the 50s. Two jobs. One, she was like cleaning for people.0.98
00:23:23.620Another one, she worked at a hospital, like a psychiatric hospital. She was kind of like a CNA,
00:23:28.700you know, taking care of the patients there. She went to church every day. She gardened. She took
00:23:34.100over a garden, this land that was next to her house. She never got any permits from the city.
00:23:39.260She took over like almost like 10 acres of land and made it a farm. She just was out there every0.99
00:23:43.220day gardening, raising nine children. I mean, so many grandchildren. I'm one of the grandchildren.
00:23:49.200And her house was just this hub of activity. And every single day in between her two jobs,
00:23:56.260And believe me, when I say she worked two jobs, she was on her feet all day and night, you know, cleaning for someone else, working in a hospital.
00:24:04.520But she sat on that couch and closed her eyes for 30 minutes every single day.
00:24:09.520And we always thought she would sleep.
00:24:11.800So us as children, we will be with my 15 or so cousins running around the house being wild and crazy children.
00:24:19.740We'd always be saying, OK, be quiet. Grandma sleep. Grandma sleep.
00:29:21.840You know, I want to say that in the past few years, it's been interesting to watch this kind of obsession emerge within mainstream culture around sleep and the marketing of self-care tied to an endless stream of consumption, of course.
00:29:48.820So it seems as though people are quick to share your words on social media or retweet the memes that you create.
00:29:57.580But beyond this, what does it really mean to show up with integrity to this radical work?
00:30:03.980Yeah, I love that you brought this up because I feel like I want to name social media as an extension of capitalism.
00:30:14.620I know it's ironic that, you know, a lot of this, my, the work that people are knowing about me,
00:30:20.080it's because of social media. And I see it as a tool that can be used for some correction. It can
00:30:27.500be used to help in some ways, but for the most part, I'm very anti-technology and anti-social
00:30:33.580media in a lot of ways, because I see it as an extension of capitalism. I see the heart of it
00:30:38.540being that people, what I love about the concept and what underlines is that people just want to
00:30:44.220connect with each other. I love the beauty of interconnectedness, of people wanting to commune,
00:30:50.560of building community. Community care is a major tenet of the NAP ministry. So I love
00:30:55.400technology for what it tries to be and what people are longing for. Like the power and the
00:31:02.860energy of people longing for community, of people wanting to be connected is a beautiful thing. But
00:31:07.900if we don't remember and always uplift that social media is really just another extension
00:31:14.060of capitalism. It's a consumer-driven product where the people who own social media are
00:31:20.400billionaires. And I think what I don't like about it is that it doesn't allow for deep work that's
00:31:26.880intensively understood and slowly imagined. It's quick-paced. The digital realm is just put up a
00:31:34.040hashtag and put it on something. So I've been seeing a lot of people using the hashtag
00:31:37.560like rest is resistance on like to sell things and, you know, a room full of people doing yoga
00:31:44.860saying rest is resistance and rest. And I'm like, what are you resisting about? Do you even know
00:31:49.780what the resistance is about? How do you resist something that you can't name? And so I really do
00:31:53.680think that this obsession that we have with talking about sleep and talking about rest is
00:32:00.340really like just a moment that's happening right now. It's an awareness that's coming up, but a lot
00:32:05.820of the awareness is just people to nap and sleep so they can be better workers you know be more
00:32:11.500productive actually the lens that I'm putting on this actually no this is not about productivity
00:32:16.720productivity is and always has been a scam we've been scammed exhaustion is not productivity and so
00:32:24.040I think the accountability piece is really hard like I'm glad you brought that up because I'm in
00:32:28.700a place right now with my work where I'm really trying to understand what that looks like
00:32:32.200And what I did is my pushback against this consumerist digital quick sharing really came when I started the Resurrect Rest School.
00:32:42.420I started that back in January. We had our first class.
00:32:46.660And what it is, is it's a free school that I'm hosting based on the freedom schools of the 50s and 60s where people were in deep, connective learning with each other.
00:32:56.440And so people come together shoulder to shoulder, looking at each other's eyes.
00:33:01.500We're reading all of the texts that really centers the work.
00:33:04.060We're reading bell hooks and we're looking at womanism and we're looking at soul care.0.83
00:33:09.340We're reading Afrofuturist texts and we're really deconstructing what this movement really is.0.72
00:33:15.200It's so important for me that this movement is continuously frameworked inside of theories, inside of like real stuff.0.86
00:33:23.840And it's not just becomes consumed and eaten up and becomes this extractive, consumptive idea of, I'll put up a meme, Restless Resistance.
00:33:32.120And I wonder, I said to the people on IG the other day, I'm like, are y'all really resting or are you just retweeting the memes?
00:33:39.420Like, I'm trying to get some understanding about what's really happening.
00:33:41.840And so for me, the Resurrect Red School was for me needing to really be with people in real life and like touch their hands and see their eyes and lay them down with a blanket and pillow and see people really coming together and slowly, slowly learning and researching.
00:33:59.900I don't believe that we can really deprogram from our brainwashing with quick, fast information that's just thrown at us.
00:34:07.820It's really going to be a slow, meticulous, enormous effort, slowly understanding the background, slowly understanding what has happened.
00:34:16.220We're going to have to be supported and fortified by information and by community coming together and holding space for each other to speak and really go deep into some uncomfortable conversations.
00:34:30.980And so if we can't talk about white supremacy and capitalism, how we actually are aligning ourselves with it and actually are the ones upholding it, we're actually upholding grind culture.
00:34:43.860And so if we don't want to start talking about the uncomfortable trauma that has caused us to be addicted to grind culture and really want to do their hard work, then the accountability piece is going to be missed.
00:34:56.000this is just so important um how this rest as resistance can be co-opted and that isn't
00:35:08.280the rest as resistance with integrity if you're trying to sell something or rest as resistance
00:35:13.320to be more productive that's absolutely not the the core of what this work is because our addiction
00:35:21.640and our brainwashing to consumer capitalism, high-speed urgency, adrenaline, all of that
00:35:28.920that we're wrapped up in. It's like a response that we've become addicted to through the
00:35:34.000brainwashing, and we can't get out of the urgent addiction with more fast-paced urgent responses.
00:35:42.880But I also think when we use rest or self-care to maintain capitalism, we're also completely
00:35:51.360forgetting the ecological component of rest and that when and i've really been inspired by you
00:35:58.020and thinking when we rest the earth rest if we're not doing as much and if we're slowing down
00:36:04.660then there doesn't need to be as much made resources don't need to be extracted at the
00:36:08.920same pace yeah when we're really fast and we're doing all these all this stuff all the time
00:36:14.240that has a consequence because the earth actually has to keep up with our desires and needs of the
00:36:21.220moment. And so if we say we care about the earth, climate change, the Anthropocene extinction,
00:36:28.580we have to understand that if we are not slowing down, the earth will never be able to slow down0.97
00:36:34.280because we are pushing the earth to keep up with this grind culture because the earth is the basis
00:36:40.100to how we grind. Yes, exactly. The land needs to rest. It needs to be honored. And when I think
00:36:48.080about land is so important to me with this ministry because remember I started by looking at
00:36:54.040what plantation labor was doing and how they were extracting from the earth growing all of this
00:37:00.080agriculture and who was people who were out there doing it the violence that was happening while
00:37:05.500they were extracting from the earth cotton and sugar and tobacco all these things that that they
00:37:11.680were growing in the earth um it's really important like the concept of land and liberation is closely
00:37:17.720connected to this work because I really feel that the land and the people who were stewards of the
00:37:24.560land, the fact that they were stewards of the land in a violent mean that when I think about the
00:37:29.940violence that was happening in those fields and on those plantations and for centuries and centuries
00:37:35.860the land being just cultivated and used and the lives who were dying out there under the heat
00:37:42.600picking cotton and like what what does that say for our ancestor worship and ancestor communication
00:37:48.460and reverence to them when such violent things were happening in that space and so a lot of the
00:37:54.960work started with me resting outdoors sleeping outside and doing public site installations
00:38:01.300outside and reclaiming the land reclaiming the ancestors who were out there working in the
00:38:06.660Southern heat with no type of stopping. During my research, I was reading a lot of slave narratives
00:38:13.800and I was seeing how women were giving birth in the fields and then the midwife would take the
00:38:18.940baby and it kept working. They had 500 pounds of cotton each to pick a day. And if you didn't pick0.71
00:38:24.960it, it was violence or death. And so to think about our world and our American culture starting
00:38:32.980and the culture of pretty much this entire economic infrastructure being built off so
00:38:37.920much violence that the land was having to take.
00:38:40.680And when you think about lynchings and what the trees were seeing and what was happening
00:38:44.060in the land, and now we're like aligning ourselves with that same system and what pain
00:38:48.800that must be causing our ancestors and what disrespect we're just continuing to do to
00:38:53.400the land and to the earth and to what's around us.
00:38:58.700I'm so glad that you brought that up about ecologically what's going on and how all
00:39:02.860of this land and liberation is really connected because you have to understand what was happening
00:39:07.700on plantations. We don't really look at that. We know, oh, slavery happened, but to look at the
00:39:13.320micro details of a day-to-day, what it looked like, I was able to find that out. Like they got up
00:39:18.160before the sun came up and most of the time they worked, you know, 20-hour days sometimes and
00:39:24.380they would keep going. There were no breaks. There was no, you know, oh, you don't feel well
00:39:29.700or you're pregnant okay keep picking we know how hot it gets outside and what the cotton is such a
00:39:35.080hard plant to really work with I have cotton you know that I use a lot in a lot of our0.85
00:39:40.320performance installations just to touch it and feel it to see how bodies were being connected
00:39:45.920to this plant that was hard to pick and pull and what that did to our bodies and what that also did
00:39:51.420to the land because a lot of my friends are farmers and they talk about like how soil regenerates and
00:39:57.400how many centuries on plantations they were just growing, growing, growing. It just never let the
00:40:03.580earth ever stop to heal. You know, it was just like grow more cotton, grow more. We need more
00:40:08.460people to do it. And so this industrial human machine level pace really started there and
00:40:14.540we're actually continuing it, but we're doing it to ourselves now. We're like jumping on board and
00:40:19.400we've aligned ourselves and have been brainwashed to be a supporter, to uphold this type of work
00:40:25.540culture. And so that's where I want to disrupt. And that's why we say rest is a form of resistance
00:40:31.440because it disrupts and it also pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy. And so
00:40:36.840this is a pushback and a resistance and a disruption to a very specific thing that's
00:40:42.400happening to us, that's happening to the land, that's continuing to happen to the land and to
00:40:47.180the resources that we are around and how we just need to slow it down. Things cannot be
00:40:53.600at this machine level pace. But at this point, um, I think sometimes people are saying now that
00:41:00.020to slow down now, it feels so uncomfortable to them because they're so used to like being on
00:41:04.760this grind machine. Yeah. I think it is uncomfortable because it's become habit.
00:41:13.220It's become not only psychologically addictive with our value systems, but it's also,
00:41:20.880I think the adrenaline, our bodies somatically have gotten used to it. And yeah, so I think it
00:41:27.820is really challenging. But on this ecological thread, a question I'm sitting with is slowing
00:41:33.840down in the context of resistance and direct action. And I see this capitalist grind culture
00:41:39.520is quite literally killing us and seeding toxicity. But I'm wondering if we can separate this
00:41:45.680from the urgent action required to, say, stop a pipeline or shut down detention centers and
00:41:51.600private prisons or defend a forest from being logged. So I'm curious what you think about
00:41:56.920bringing a culture of slowness and rest into movement spaces facing so much trauma and state
00:42:02.320violence. Yes. Yeah, I think it's important to note that I am an activist and a community servant,
00:42:09.560And this work started 20 years ago with me working in direct actions, leading workshops, trainings, being on the front lines and movement spaces around violence, gun violence, school justice in Chicago.
00:42:24.420And so I understand the urgency because you're working on this timeline.
00:48:34.300so much wisdom that you just shared with us it's a lot to part yeah i think rest is a third space
00:48:46.240it's a portal yeah for new ways what type of innovative ideas can you offer to us you know
00:48:52.740how can you heal from your own trauma a lot of these movement spaces are being led by people
00:48:57.500who have unhealed trauma and they're continuing to traumatize others but i i want to speak more
00:49:03.720to this rest as portal and in many ways it seems that the nat ministry is about embodiment
00:49:10.440and as you name our bodies also hold inherent wisdom strategies and tools for repair and our
00:49:18.420bodies are so resilient so i'd love if you could speak more to the importance of surrendering to
00:49:24.220our somatic intelligence what resources are available for us within the unconscious wanderings
00:49:30.560dream space. Yeah, so beautiful how you said that. Yeah, the third tenet of the NAP ministry is our
00:49:40.180bodies are a site of liberation. So wherever our bodies are, we can find a liberative space. And so
00:49:46.060the somatics of all of that, I come from a background in Black Pentecostalism, which
00:49:52.960looks at the body, you know, as being a space where the laying on of hands and the catching
00:49:59.720of the Holy Spirit. And they wake up and they just look so different. And they look like they've
00:50:04.400healed from so many different things. And so I really believe that we are missing the magic of
00:50:10.380what is happening on a somatic level in our bodies, that our bodies hold everything, the memory that
00:50:17.160in the wisdom that's there, the body wisdom, the body memory. And if you aren't resting, and if we
00:50:23.520are at a sleep deprivation level, think at what level are our bodies and minds actually working.
00:50:29.720I believe that when you rest and go into that portal, that you can wake up with new ideas.
00:50:37.200The science of sleep tells us that there are chemicals that are released in our brains when we sleep that actually can help us move through trauma, can help us to kind of heal ourselves.
00:50:47.720And so there are already our body is is already this beautiful place that wants us to heal, that wants to be well, that can move at the space in the pace that is most ideal for us.
00:51:03.140And so we've forgotten that we've totally just missed out on any of the sleep, the sleep wisdom and the body wisdom.
00:51:09.280We've ignored that. We've ignored it all for sleep until I sleep when I'm dead.
00:51:13.080it. We've ignored it all for productivity as a function of our worth, for perfectionism, for
00:51:19.940profit over life, you know, for seeing burnout as normal. We see burnout as just a normal phase
00:51:27.440of life. It's not normal to burn out when you're, you know, that's not normal. So I think
00:51:32.040rest actually disrupts the cycle of trauma. And I believe that grind culture is trauma towards us
00:51:40.300and also grind culture feeds off of trauma.
00:51:42.920And so to take a moment to intentionally say no
00:51:46.440and push back, my body doesn't belong to capitalism.
00:52:09.040And so to intentionally do that is really such a beautiful offering to ourselves.
00:52:15.080And I actually think collectively doing that together also is a direct action.
00:52:20.180So we do our collective napping experiences.
00:52:22.760We've done them as large as 50 people in the room at the same time, all taking a nap that's been kind of curated by myself.
00:52:29.780And I'm usually the only person who's up and everyone else is resting and I'm holding space in the room.
00:52:35.240and to feel the energy and for people to wake up together and magical and spiritual things happen
00:52:40.880in these spaces people have woken up and don't even know each other and have had the same dreams
00:52:45.160like someone don't want to be in the back of the room and be like I had a dream you know about this
00:52:49.600other person like I had the exact same dream can you pick up where I left off and it's the exact
00:52:53.220same dream people have um woken up and was I didn't even realize how I haven't taken a nap in
00:52:59.140three years now I feel like I can take on the world like I really feel like collectively when
00:53:05.080we put our bodies in this space of healing together and honoring it. We're doing so much
00:53:11.440for our future, for our liberation. And so I don't think that we can get there without
00:53:15.840looking at rest for what it is. It's a dream space. And I believe that it's been stolen from us. And
00:53:22.860one of our other tendencies is that we want it back and we can reclaim it via rest. And so
00:53:28.160the dream space is this place where we can go and um and just be i always thought this when i was
00:53:36.140studying my ancestors i was like what could they have imagined and figured out if they were allowed
00:53:41.680a space to rest could they have you know been able to come up with um plans that have helped
00:53:48.440them escape a little bit quicker could they have been able to come up with ideas on how they could
00:53:53.600have revolted. Maybe they could have had, you know, what could have happened if we were allowed
00:53:59.480a space to rest? If they were allowed a space to actually go into a dream space, could their
00:54:04.460freedom have been closer? Could they have had more intricate ways? Could the Underground Railroad
00:54:10.340have been even a larger system? Because we had so many inventive ideas, because we were working on
00:54:15.900a well-rested mind and a well-rested body that was able to take on these oppressive systems. And so
00:54:21.700I think we must fortify our minds and our bodies and rest is the way to be able to allow us to get
00:54:27.520there. I really believe that the more we rest, the more we're able to wake up and use the sacredness
00:54:33.280to help fortify our movement. I actually think that the powers that be don't want us rested
00:54:39.020because they know if we are rested and if we are at our full potential brain waves and if we're
00:54:45.440like thinking and connected, what could we figure out quicker? I feel like we're in this dumb0.97
00:54:50.780zombie phase when you're not rested you're like in this sleep deprived non-woke phase of just0.98
00:54:57.320you know go with the flow and take things i feel like you're the power rest is like a power it's
00:55:03.960a slowing down that allows you to be able to be like you know what i actually don't want to be
00:55:08.760treated like this yes the veil is lifted yeah i was reading how to do nothing by jenny odell and
00:55:18.980She writes, civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention. I'm less interested in a mass exodus from Facebook and Twitter than I am in a mass movement of attention. What happens when people regain control over their attention and begin to direct it again together?
00:55:36.000end quote and i love that because it reminds me um like reclaiming rest reclaiming attention
00:55:43.240reclaiming how we think and feel about the world rather than this zombie vibe that you're talking
00:55:51.160about where we just are in this complacent zombie hood where we're just in the grind we're not
00:55:56.840giving ourselves space to actually think whoa is is this actually what i want to do with my life
00:56:01.940I'm really with you. And I just have two more questions. And I was reading a paper you wrote
00:56:09.520for graduate school. And it says, quote, when we stand in the gaps for each other and decide to be
00:56:15.260relentless in our support and witness, we can shift oppression. The beauty of this reality is
00:56:21.600that it repeats itself in many forms on our journey in life, childbirth, graduations,
00:56:27.680in protest marches, at weddings, in classrooms, with strangers on public transportation,
00:56:33.820in elevators, in courtrooms, in church pews, on war fields, on streets, in gang territory,
00:56:40.740and in death. We are intimately tied to each other. We find God through each other.
00:56:47.980So beautiful. It takes me back to that. When I wrote that, I kind of framed it around the
00:56:55.300concept of when my father died suddenly and how the community rallied around us in such a deep
00:57:01.640way that I actually I felt the presence of people even though they weren't around me I felt like as
00:57:07.080if hundreds of people were like holding me up and um I felt it in my body and my my mom also said
00:57:14.360that she felt like um God was seeing us through other people you know that that that the community
00:57:19.900became the hand of God and I don't actually like to use the word self-care I always talk about
00:57:25.140community care and I talk about soul care. I talk about community care as the practice of freedom
00:57:32.020and how I believe that we really cannot heal alone. And that's why I named our first signature
00:57:39.320program, our collective napping experiences, which have since taken a hold because of what's going on
00:57:45.400with this pandemic. We can't be in spaces with each other physically. And so last year we did
00:57:50.900close to 50 of them all over the country. We'll go in and install safe spaces for the community
00:57:56.260to rest together, sacred spaces. We go in art direction and put out blankets and pillows,
00:58:03.220every single event that we've ever had. There is a rest altar built. Some of them are very
00:58:07.920elaborate, 20 feet high, but some of them are just a small, you know, jar of cotton or either
00:58:14.380a photo of my grandmother, you know, or who's the muse for resting and what reimagined rest can look
00:58:20.220like her picture is always there. It's always an altar there to ground the space. Even there's
00:58:25.660three people there or there's 50 people there. There's something unique about collectively
00:58:30.100resting and napping together. It's like vintage intimacy. And I think the piece that you just
00:58:35.960read, the quote is really getting at this concept of intimacy and vulnerability. And I think that
00:58:41.280that's such a powerful place when we talk about liberating ourselves, we talk about movement,
00:58:46.880When we talk about really what a full resistance must look like, it must look like this intimate, vulnerable connectedness, this interdependence on each other, this interconnectedness.
00:59:01.080It's so important. We're seeing it so much now.
00:59:04.320I love Fannie Lou Hamer. One of her quotes is, no one's free until we're all free.
00:59:09.540um i'm a womanist i don't claim feminism at all i claim womanism because i believe
00:59:15.160womanists have understood the concept that all forms of oppression and all people are kind of
00:59:23.440tied together and that we have to restore the balance between people and the environment in
00:59:29.060nature and reconcile human life with the spiritual dimension of life and so womanist theology and
00:59:35.820Womanism as a whole looks at how we're all interconnected in intimacy, vulnerability, and soul care is so important to me.
00:59:46.640The care of our souls, we want to name another thing that's been called, they've co-opted self-care to men going to buy an expensive facial or going to a spa or buying some new $2,000 mattress to sleep on.
01:00:00.680And I don't rock with any of that. I feel like if we have our bodies, we have a liberative space.
01:00:07.200I feel like the concept of self-care can't really be got at until we start talking about, you know, what has happened on that soul level that we think that we aren't worthy of a 10-minute nap.
01:00:19.880And so I really want to get to the heart of the issue and look deeply at the soul.
01:00:25.120Self-care has been co-opted to be just consumerist capitalism.
01:00:28.020and i also deeply believe that we can't heal by ourselves that we have to have community
01:00:34.180i think that the slowness that's being you know it's like i can intellectually understand a lot
01:00:42.620of this stuff but to somatically and spiritually let it sink in um it does take time and i'm really
01:00:50.660looking forward to laying down with this conversation again and letting it sink in.
01:00:57.920And I'm really hoping that everybody who listens gets to listen in a time where they're not feeling
01:01:02.440rushed because I think everything is extremely life-changing what you're speaking to. And I
01:01:10.640don't think we're going to be able to deal with climate change or the Anthropocene extinction
01:01:17.100or colonization, capitalism, so on and so forth without really listening deeply to your words
01:01:25.780and understanding that this is actually a necessary part of decolonization. This is actually a very
01:01:32.260necessary part for us to move forward. We cannot break down the system, what you were saying with
01:01:37.640the master's tools, like that's not going to work. So I really appreciate that. And for our last
01:01:44.600question today I would love for you to walk us through your dreamscape a world in which
01:01:50.540perhaps the daily grind ceases and business as usual is no longer an option
01:01:55.620I like to imagine this all the time and I think the main when I start imagining the first
01:02:06.140query that comes up in my mind is how can we access pleasure and joy and liberation if we're
01:02:14.460too tired to experience it you know if we're so exhausted how will we be able to recognize that
01:02:20.880we've reached our liberation will we be too tired to know it and so I really think that
01:02:27.440I call rest a meticulous love practice the practice of love towards yourself towards
01:02:33.060or community, but it is going to be meticulous, uncomfortable at times. And people are always
01:02:38.820like, oh my goodness, I want to rest, but it's just so hard. I'm like, yes, I know it's going
01:02:43.120to be very hard. James Baldwin has a quote where he talks about the enormous effort it takes to
01:02:50.520really get to liberation. People aren't born in a place when they're born under oppressive system
01:02:57.480where they're able to just kind of imagine and feel in their bodies what it feels like to be
01:03:02.480liberated. And so I think it's going to take us to be really imaginative. And I don't think we're
01:03:07.980able to get to that imaginative space without resting. And so my dreamscape looks like
01:03:12.900breaking down and burning down and pulling down white supremacy and capitalism. Like they both0.82
01:03:20.380have to die. We can't talk about any type of movement towards soul care, self-care,
01:03:26.880getting to anywhere without those two systems continuing to exist. And I think we have to
01:03:31.980see disruption and we have to reimagine what that can look like. I think my grandmother was sitting
01:03:39.240on the couch for 30 minutes every day when, you know, she was living as a woman running from
01:03:47.480Jim Crow terrorism, running from the KKK. When she's sitting there for 30 minutes and closing0.57
01:03:52.540her eyes, I believe that that fortifies me now. To be honest, I really would think that I would
01:03:59.720love to see um people detoxing from technology as much as they possibly can like i don't think
01:04:05.380we're able to get to like the full liberation rest if we're continuously scrolling and online i wrote
01:04:09.960a um a small blog post when i did a i did a 30-day detox from social media and i wrote up things that
01:04:16.880i learned from that 30-day period of being off of social media email and just any technology
01:04:22.340people cannot make space for you to rest if they don't know what it looks like to rest so that
01:04:27.980goes back to that interconnectedness of we we're going to have to embody this message my dream is
01:04:34.020that for every person who retweets you know one of our memes that they take a nap right after they
01:04:39.540retweet it you know if i like if that could happen i think we actually would be further towards our
01:04:45.040goal but i don't i don't think that that form of technology is allowing us to see that because
01:04:50.240how they've created social media they've created it so that we never get off of it the scroll
01:04:55.600technique is something that they've studied and researched so that our brain doesn't know when to
01:04:59.940stop we don't know when to be full and so to know that technology is working against us so that we
01:05:06.300don't know how to stop and feel full and that our brain is being triggered and I'm very very
01:05:13.760influenced by a sabbath and what a sabbath can be in the ancient technique of a sabbath and
01:05:20.480how a Sabbath is really a radical pause and what that could be. And I'm really dreaming about
01:05:28.420embodiment and people just, cause I think people a lot of times hear the message and then they're
01:05:33.960like, oh, that sounds okay. But when they come to one of our nap events or when they actually take
01:05:38.400a nap or they actually, then they wake up and they're like, oh my goodness. Like I never knew
01:05:44.040it could feel that way. And I'm like laying folks down, like it's such an honor. And I'm so humbled
01:05:49.920to be able to just lay a body down and to put a blanket over them and but now that we aren't able
01:05:55.280to do them because of what's going on with this virus and pandemic I want I want to be able to
01:06:00.940hold space for people in a spiritual way I want to be like this you know pillow for them just
01:06:07.620be able to like for them to really feel that you can lay down right now you don't have to wait
01:06:13.400the time is now you can take 10 minutes right now and even 10 minutes every day we're collectively
01:06:19.540doing that in large numbers. I believe that we can slow down capitalism. And I believe that grind
01:06:25.640culture right now is on its knees. And so I imagine us being able to like help pull it down0.99
01:06:32.460by actually collectively resting, even in your homes right now, go take a nap. I believe that
01:06:39.480a direct action could look like all of the movement leaders just sleeping for a day. You know, that
01:06:44.740would be a beautiful and magical pushback and a way for us to spiritually connect. And so I'm
01:06:51.820always thinking about blankets and pillows and softness, softness in the real world. Metaphorically,
01:06:58.100I'm thinking about ancient pausing and just stopping and slowing down. And I'm always
01:07:04.100thinking about grief and mourning and silence and how rest supports all of that.
01:07:10.420yes well thank you for sharing a guiding dream to um to know that we can imagine beyond perhaps
01:07:21.900what we've been imagining to push our own limits of dreaming and it will be challenging because
01:07:29.040we're breaking addictions we're breaking that brainwashing that we spoke to earlier but it's
01:07:36.180such a worthy practice. It's a necessary practice. And you have been a huge inspiration
01:07:43.780for us and for me personally. And there are so many years where I thought self-care and rest
01:07:49.820was for somebody else, or it wasn't actually necessary. And I didn't really have time to do
01:07:54.340that because the world's burning and it's just not, it just was like, no, I can't do that. And
01:07:58.960that's not going to help me. And it's not going to help the earth because what I felt the earth
01:08:04.080needed was this urgent response system all the time and and since that click moment I haven't
01:08:12.540turned back and like I said I'm not perfect like there's definitely times where I'm like oh darn
01:08:16.800it like I'm grinding again I'm freaking grinding again like I gotta get off the grind it can be a
01:08:22.600challenging journey but we can keep getting back on the horse so to speak because I very much agree
01:08:29.020that that the earth is crying for us to rest such important work and thank you so much for spending
01:08:36.100this extra time with us this has been amazing it's been such an honor i've had such an amazing
01:08:40.740time speaking with you i'm so humble i'm so honored i'm in awe really it's going to be a
01:08:47.460slow meticulous process but to be able to just be easier on ourselves and um be so soft with
01:08:53.920ourselves and vulnerable and intimate with each other around this, that we really can bring down
01:08:59.460and disrupt and push back. And my dream is that this pushback and disruption will lead to a full
01:09:05.580breakdown and a full burndown of these systems that are on our neck daily. And so the more you
01:09:12.280can rest, the more you can stop. I'm always talking about deep daydreaming and reimagining
01:09:18.260what it can all look like and I think we have the power to do that and so and I so appreciate
01:09:23.840the time so thank you it's been an amazing conversation yes I rise up in every way
01:09:34.500that feels right in my own soul I rise up in every way