For The Wild - TRICIA HERSEY on Rest as Resistance [ENCORE] ⧸267

00:00:00.700 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. This week we are rebroadcasting our

00:00:06.900 interview with Tricia Hersey of the Knapp Ministry, originally aired in June of 2020.

00:00:12.760 We hope you enjoy this special encore episode.

00:00:30.000 I've been wondering about the world, we're living now, yeah, we're living now.

00:00:40.280 All we do is fight for truth, not yet been found, yeah, not yet been found.

00:00:49.960 Who's wrong or right now?

00:00:52.780 Bring it to the light somehow.

00:00:55.020 To not rest is really being violent towards your body.

00:00:58.700 To align yourself with a system that says your body doesn't belong to you, keep working, you are simply a tool for our production.

00:01:07.400 To align yourself with that is a slow spiritual death as well.

00:01:15.480 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.

00:01:19.600 I'm so excited to be joined by Tricia Hersey to speak on disrupting grind culture and finding liberation through rest.

00:01:28.080 Trisha is a Chicago native living in Atlanta with over 20 years of experience collaborating

00:01:33.760 with communities as a performance artist, theater maker, spiritual director, and community

00:01:39.220 organizer.

00:01:40.480 She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organization that examines rest as a form

00:01:46.280 of resistance by curating safe spaces for the community to rest via collective napping

00:01:52.360 experiences, immersive workshops, and performance art installations.

00:01:57.260 Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics, and cultural

00:02:03.880 trauma.

00:02:05.220 She holds a Bachelor's of Science in Public Health from Eastern Illinois University and

00:02:10.540 a Master of Divinity from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

00:02:16.180 Oh, goodness.

00:02:17.580 Well, welcome to the show, Tricia.

00:02:19.700 I really can't think of a better person to offer wisdom and guidance as we move through

00:02:25.200 these strange and troubling times. So thank you so much for joining us today.

00:02:31.300 Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. Looking forward to the conversation.

00:02:36.440 Me too. So to slowly ease into this conversation, I think it might be important to start with a bit

00:02:45.060 of your own personal story and how you arrived at this work, exploring the realm of rest.

00:02:50.100 yeah I love I love to answer questions about the origins because I think it's so important to

00:02:58.420 ground it with this fast-paced digital sharing of information the sharing of hashtags people

00:03:07.240 quickly catch on to something and they take the message and it can just be swept away but it's

00:03:12.540 so important to really ground this work and it's personally important to me because this work came

00:03:18.080 out of a personal connection for me to really convene and also communicate with my ancestors.

00:03:26.220 And so as a person who's an artist and who was working in archives, who loves history,

00:03:32.680 who was studying, you know, reparations theories while I was in graduate school, I started all of

00:03:38.540 this kind of experimenting with the ideas when I was a student in divinity school. And I started

00:03:45.040 there in 2013. I was there and I was a community activist and artist for 20 years. I had been doing

00:03:53.140 that work in Chicago for years. And so here I was showing up at a divinity school, not really

00:03:58.000 knowing what theology was, just knowing I had felt a calling to really study the concept of

00:04:03.480 spirituality and creativity. And I was really drawn by Black liberation theology. I was drawn

00:04:09.260 in by reading a book called Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman. And then I also

00:04:15.100 love James Cone. And my dad was a Pentecostal preacher and pastor of the Church of God in

00:04:22.180 Christ in Chicago, one of the oldest Black denominations in the country. And so I came

00:04:27.380 already with those ideas. And here I landed in seminary and being able to be in the South,

00:04:33.420 being in Atlanta, going to school there, coming from the North, I was able to work in archives

00:04:38.340 and really be able to touch documents and see what plantation label was really doing for us.

00:04:43.340 I was taking classes in cultural trauma and I was really studying Jim Crow segregation

00:04:48.860 and taking somatics classes and thinking about what the body can hold and how trauma is held in the body.

00:04:55.700 And so I was interviewing Jim Crow survivors, wondering, you know, what redemption could look like,

00:05:03.260 what it could look like for our bodies now.

00:05:05.760 as a womanist scholar I was really interested in micro histories like the small little details of 0.76

00:05:11.820 our lives because we believe that in our everyday experiences in our everyday methods of problem

00:05:18.360 solving we can like really heal and so I wanted to really know what was happening on these

00:05:22.060 plantations so I just became obsessed and at the same time I was going through so much trauma

00:05:27.460 personal trauma I was in a white predominantly white university I wasn't being heard at all

00:05:33.540 while I was there. There was some really stellar teachers that reached out and helped me in that

00:05:38.320 space, teachers who were Black, but for the most part, it was a very white institution,

00:05:43.000 very conservative in the South. Black Lives Matter was heating up. That movement was really

00:05:49.720 heating up in 2013, so there were lynchings constantly being played on TV. I was suffering

00:05:56.020 from a lot of personal traumas. Two people in my family died. I was really not liking school. I was

00:06:02.860 really feeling really traumatized by the whole process of being in graduate school so i just

00:06:06.580 started resting and i started digging deeper into the archives and so from that space of really

00:06:12.780 learning about what was happening to my ancestors on plantations how they were human machines they

00:06:18.760 were capitalism's one of capitalism's first experiments and really diving into the details

00:06:24.540 of what a day looked like for them as far as working and um i just felt the calling and felt

00:06:31.180 to pull with my ancestors to really rest for them. So I started, you know, experimenting with

00:06:37.660 performance art. And so our first event was really a performance art piece that I put together called

00:06:43.180 Transfiguration, where I was actually pulling together all of this research from my graduate

00:06:47.820 studies and was going to do a one-woman show that included me reading slave narratives, sleeping on

00:06:54.720 a bed, multimedia film, just really concisely putting together what I had learned over these

00:07:02.500 three and a half years in seminary. And it was just going to be a one woman show. And part of

00:07:07.200 the show was that people actually took a nap and rested with us. And I named the nap ministry. I

00:07:11.700 named the space we were in being a temple. 40 people showed up and I couldn't wake them. You

00:07:17.840 know, it was two hours of people like sleeping and waking up in tears and crying. And there was

00:07:23.900 a rest altar and it just all like landed there but i really just thought that would be the landing

00:07:28.380 place and it'll be the end of it and how many years later i think four years later and we've

00:07:35.120 had over 50 events and it just people kept asking when's the next one when's the next one so i really

00:07:41.100 want to honor that this was really an experimentation of me as an artist of me as a

00:07:46.920 daughter and granddaughter of people who were so innovative and subversive and me really wanting

00:07:53.380 to honor them and seeing rest as own reparations for them. I think many of us come into relationship

00:08:01.740 with harmful narratives of rest and productivity from a really early age. And particularly in the

00:08:09.140 West, we're taught to valorize grind culture and assign success or status to those who work hard

00:08:14.900 to the point of exhaustion, let alone, I think we also potentially get a sense of our purpose and

00:08:20.800 personal fulfillment and personal value connected to this culture of productivity. So I'd like to

00:08:27.920 dig a little bit deeper into where these narratives actually come from. So why are we so attached to

00:08:34.700 the daily grind and what are the consequences when we feel like we can't slow down? Yeah.

00:08:41.880 I think why it's like that, you cannot speak about sleep deprivation or any of a grind culture

00:08:50.100 without talking about white supremacy.

00:08:52.040 And I think you can't talk about any form of oppression

00:08:55.080 without really naming white supremacy colonization

00:08:59.120 as the seat of it.

00:09:01.940 And so it's interesting that when I first started

00:09:04.560 the NAB ministry, at least started putting things up on IG

00:09:08.180 because I always had this as my framework. 0.74

00:09:10.480 White supremacy was always the framework.

00:09:13.200 I'm studying slavery. 0.68

00:09:14.280 I'm studying slavery in the American South.

00:09:17.700 I'm studying plantation labor.

00:09:19.100 I'm looking at reparations theory. I'm studying Jim Crow Tara, cultural trauma. How could we not 0.64

00:09:24.280 speak about white supremacy? So it was always in my framework. The IG page came later. This work 0.54

00:09:30.380 was already happening. So, and people were really mad at me for even saying anything about white

00:09:35.820 supremacy. Like when I first started being like, grind culture is making you not sleep. You know,

00:09:41.960 rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white

00:09:46.300 supremacy, I had so much hate thrown at me. So many people who were like, that makes no sense.

00:09:51.560 What does white supremacy have to do with sleeping? And so that's the thing about it.

00:09:57.780 White supremacy has bamboozled us to the point of where we really can't even see what's really

00:10:03.260 happening. And that's why rest is so important because rest does give you the space to actually

00:10:07.960 see what's happening. And so when you talk about grind culture, grind culture is simply white 0.85

00:10:14.600 supremacist work culture. So white supremacist work culture is an extractive culture. It's

00:10:22.020 hustle culture. It's seeing productivity as a function of your worth. So whatever white supremacy

00:10:28.120 is doing on a global scale to us and has done, white supremacy has been using the body as a tool

00:10:34.820 for destruction since the beginning of time. And so to not name and put white supremacy in the

00:10:41.740 center of this would be, it doesn't make sense. So you have to speak about it. When you speak

00:10:48.580 about capitalism, you can't speak about that without speaking about white supremacy. And so 0.56

00:10:52.720 I really was able to land that and understand that by studying what was happening during

00:10:58.120 plantation labor, studying what was happening during the transatlantic slave trade, the middle

00:11:02.880 passage, centuries and centuries of plantation labor. What that all was, was capitalism

00:11:09.840 beginning. It was all done as a tool to be produced, to make money. The whole entire

00:11:16.640 economic infrastructure of American culture was built off the backs of Native people and also 1.00

00:11:23.520 Africans. And so I think we are so used to ignoring, and we think white supremacy is

00:11:32.280 only one thing. It's being pulled over by the police. It's poverty being a reality.

00:11:37.500 white supremacy rules and is the oppressive hand of everything that is happening in our culture.

00:11:45.300 Grind culture is nothing but a continuation of what was happening on plantations for centuries,

00:11:50.560 really. I think the consequence of it is what we're seeing now. I mean,

00:11:55.840 biologically, what is happening to our bodies when we don't sleep, sleep deprivation is a public

00:12:00.020 health issue. It's also a spiritual issue. It's a spiritual death that's happening to us. It's a

00:12:05.460 physical and biological death that's happening to our bodies. Our bodies are being used as a tool

00:12:11.140 of oppression. They want to own our bodies. And so when you look at it from a biological,

00:12:18.120 from a spiritual, from a creative level, it's really what is not going to allow us to really

00:12:25.240 fully reach our full potential and really liberate ourselves and really fully be able to reach that

00:12:31.400 war revolution. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And I'm grateful how you are weaving in

00:12:40.460 the history of slavery and plantation labor as the foundational creation of capitalism and grind

00:12:46.440 culture as we know it. It's really, I think, important for us to be able to zoom out and see 0.60

00:12:50.740 these interconnections. And I'm thinking about many ways in which late stage capitalism feeds

00:12:56.700 off of various forms of forced or invisibilized labor and violence against marginalized community

00:13:03.100 and of course maintaining a population that is traumatized and isolated from their community

00:13:08.000 is endemic to capitalism so i you know you've given us a foundation of the connections between

00:13:17.520 white supremacy and capitalism and this machine level pace of our society and i want to ask about

00:13:24.940 what does it mean for rest to be a right rather than a privilege and maybe within that you could

00:13:32.800 also speak to this brainwashing that you've spoken about before of why we are so attached

00:13:38.220 the daily grind even though it's really hurting us yeah yeah yeah I love I've been hearing so

00:13:47.160 so many people keep saying rest is a privilege it's such a privilege to rest and to me when I

00:13:54.160 hear it it um it just continuously informs the concept that we are truly brainwashed that we

00:14:00.080 really do believe that that we we believe that to be able to lay our bodies down to to look at our

00:14:09.740 bodies as what they are divine holding places of liberation to see what i really think people need

00:14:17.720 to really look at the biology and the science of sleep like there's a whole nother level to this

00:14:22.320 that people are not landing on as far as neurologically and what's happening in our

00:14:26.940 brains. And I've been really having a public health background and really being into community

00:14:31.800 health. I've been really doing a lot of research around what happens to the body when it doesn't

00:14:36.020 sleep. Even if you've never wanted to look at this from a concept of politics or social justice,

00:14:44.140 if you never wanted to look at it from a spiritual lens, if you just simply wanted to stay landed in

00:14:49.100 neurology and biology and health. When you don't sleep, you're literally killing your body. It's

00:14:55.720 not a dramatic over-the-top thing to say that. Now organs begin to break down. To not rest is

00:15:04.420 really being violent towards your body. To align yourself with a system that says your body doesn't

00:15:10.300 belong to you. Keep working. You are simply a tool for our production. To align yourself with that

00:15:16.560 is a slow spiritual death as well and so the brainwashing when you talked about being living

00:15:22.420 in the west from the time you're born maybe even sometimes before you're born you know while you're

00:15:28.120 in the womb where they're beginning the process of brainwashing us towards being tools for

00:15:34.480 production tools for capitalism i say before the womb because i'm thinking about when i was carrying

00:15:40.660 and my son and how he was large and they thought I was having twins but I wasn't I kept telling

00:15:47.560 them he's just a big baby I'm a tall woman every one of my family is over six feet like we have

00:15:53.220 big babies it'll be fine that the doctor pushed a cesarean because it was on a timeline she

00:15:59.620 couldn't fit it in any other time because this is when I can do it you know and so like even the

00:16:04.540 concept of time of allowing my baby to come out when he wanted to come out he was even being

00:16:09.700 of rushed out the womb because of a medical system that doesn't look at us as human beings

00:16:14.000 look at us as a number as this patient who can just be rushed I have more patients to get to

00:16:18.920 hurry up and so that begins and then you talk about public school if you know about public

00:16:25.620 schools they're literally created for us to start the process of training young people to be young

00:16:33.460 workers who will be able to leave the school system and go into a nine to five corporate job

00:16:39.000 to be able to sit still, to be able to sit at a desk, to be able to not embody what their body

00:16:44.300 wants, to refuse to see their bodies as divine, to start looking at quantity over quality,

00:16:51.160 to ignore the pleas of caring and looking at flexibility. And so all of these things are in

00:16:58.280 us from a very early age and everything in culture is supporting this. So when I say that this is a

00:17:03.940 hard resistance when i say this is the resistance it really is because everything in culture is

00:17:09.460 supporting us to not rest to keep going to ignore your body to not sleep to sleep when you're dead

00:17:16.980 like all of these things that we've been socialized to believe are white supremacist work culture

00:17:23.700 brainwashing us from the time we're little um i used to work in schools and teach and i remember

00:17:28.600 young kids stressing out during finals the way the whole academic system is set up is

00:17:34.720 a violent situation when I was in graduate school it was like a badge of honor for people to stay up

00:17:41.200 to four in the morning sleep at the library teachers giving you a thousand pages to read

00:17:47.440 per day if you have six classes you're supposed to sit and you're supposed to just make it happen

00:17:52.000 like no one collaborating with other teachers to be like maybe that's too much for students you

00:17:56.640 know maybe we can like think about a way to help them to like balance this out and so it's really

00:18:02.480 everything in culture is working against us and so when we don't name that we've been brainwashed

00:18:07.720 we need to deprogram that we're going to have to um really be subversive and innovative and

00:18:15.020 intentional and meticulous about deprogramming from this um it's so important that we name it

00:18:21.320 So I named sleep deprivation as a racial justice issue, you know, as a social justice issue, as a public health issue.

00:18:29.400 It's like key to any type of liberation, type of freedom that we can get to.

00:18:34.260 It's going to be centered around rest.

00:18:35.760 And I also believe that our ancestors knew that.

00:18:38.320 My ancestors knew that even though they had no autonomy over their bodies, were human, literally real human machines working 20 hours a day sometimes on plantations.

00:18:47.820 in the sun, picking cotton, picking tobacco, all the other crops. They were human machines and they

00:18:54.280 still found ways to subvert, slow down production, find joy, rest. And so I think it's really time

00:19:02.660 for us to start reimagining what all of this could look like. And I'm always really, really

00:19:07.700 surprised that so many people, when I say to them, you should be able to take a 30 minute nap every

00:19:13.020 day I could never rest I could never do that how and then I think about my ancestors and what they

00:19:19.220 were going through and how they still found time to rest so it just shows me how far and deep the

00:19:25.780 process of brainwashing and accepting violence towards ourselves is happening that we now in

00:19:31.680 2020 believe that we can't make take can't take 10 minutes every day close our eyes and meditate

00:19:39.120 or 30 minutes to rest and we really literally feel like we cannot do it and when we do do it we feel

00:19:44.800 extreme guilt and shame around it so that's where I named the brainwashing because of the fact that

00:19:52.020 we're participating in our own demise to think of your son literally from birth the rushing of birth

00:20:00.640 I mean, that is just like, this is really entrenched.

00:20:04.900 My gosh.

00:20:06.740 Yeah.

00:20:07.060 Yes.

00:20:07.700 And the medical system is, you know, all the medical system is an industrial complex that 0.50

00:20:12.820 sits right in white supremacy.

00:20:14.620 Think about what's happening now and all of the people of color who are dying, you know,

00:20:18.500 thinking about the COVID-19 and it's uplifting and illuminating the healthcare system, which

00:20:24.260 we've always known has been racist and anti-Black and created off white supremacy.

00:20:30.200 And so we keep going back to that white supremacy. 0.59

00:20:32.480 You keep going back to the system that set everything up.

00:20:35.760 It really touches everything.

00:20:37.940 Yeah.

00:20:38.620 Yeah.

00:20:40.420 Well, I'm wondering, I think it can be difficult for people to imagine what rest could look

00:20:48.120 like beyond the act of sleeping or taking a nap.

00:20:51.260 So how can our waking lives be full of rest or perhaps embody a sustained slowness within

00:20:58.020 all that we do?

00:21:00.200 Yes, I love answering this question. It's like one of my favorites to dream about and imagine about, because I always get to tell the story of my grandmother or casting my maternal grandmother, who was a Jim Crow refugee from Mississippi.

00:21:16.380 And like millions of other black people left the South in hopes of running from Jim Crow terror that was happening in their southern states and of hopes of these new opportunities.

00:21:28.800 And so when I think about how she literally built a spaceship out of this uncertainty to float on, like she built this way to be like, I'm going to leave and take my children.

00:21:42.000 I don't know if I'll get a job there. I don't know anybody in Chicago. I'm a refugee, but I know I won't have my children lynched.

00:21:48.960 And so her and other brave Black people under 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.

00:22:07.040 I think these are the things that we need to be tapping into right now, this ancient wisdom.

00:22:11.520 And so my grandmother left Mississippi, came to Chicago.

00:22:16.280 My mother was one of her nine children. 1.00

00:22:17.920 she worked two jobs in Chicago in the 50s two jobs one she was like cleaning for people another

00:22:26.520 one she worked at a hospital like a psychiatric hospital she was kind of like a CNA you know 1.00

00:22:31.700 taking care of the patients there she went to church every day she gardened she took over a 0.98

00:22:37.400 garden this land that was next to her house she never got any permits from the city she took over 0.63

00:22:42.460 like almost like 10 acres of land and made it a farm she just was out there every day gardening 0.94

00:22:46.640 raising nine children i mean so many grandchildren i'm one of the grandchildren and her house was

00:22:53.440 just this hub of activity and every single day between her two jobs and believe me when i say

00:22:59.980 she worked two jobs she was on her feet all day and night you know cleaning for someone else 1.00

00:23:05.440 working in the hospital but she sat on that couch and closed her eyes for 30 minutes every single

00:23:11.780 day and we always thought she would sleep so us as children we will be with my 15 or so cousins

00:23:18.980 running around the house being wild and crazy children um we'd always be saying okay be quiet

00:23:24.140 grandma sleep grandma sleep y'all don't wake her up and she will always without opening her eyes say

00:23:28.660 I'm not sleeping every shut eye ain't sleep I'm resting my eyes so I can hear what God is trying

00:23:34.680 to say to me and then later in her life she started dealing with the illness um she had

00:23:38.980 leukemia and poverty abound you know she didn't have much at all and so for her to be able to sit

00:23:46.320 and intentionally say she was going to rest for 30 minutes and close her eyes when I was a child

00:23:52.680 I didn't understand it I thought oh grandma is just so different you know but now I think back

00:23:56.840 on I said what was she holding in that space what was she meditating on what was she hearing from

00:24:02.280 God that allow her to be able to take such a leap for her to imagine such a way for her to leave

00:24:09.420 such violence that was happening to her and her family in Mississippi and come without any idea

00:24:16.560 if it will work. She just had her radical faith and her radical idea that there has to be something

00:24:22.080 better. I think we have part of the brainwashing, part of white supremacy has taken away our

00:24:28.440 intuition. It's allowed us to not imagine. And when you've stolen a people's intuition and

00:24:36.020 imagination and hope, you've pretty much taken everything from them because those are the things

00:24:40.260 that marginalized people, people who have been living under oppression for centuries, hold on

00:24:45.660 to. When I think about Harriet Tubman and her work on the Underground Railroad and how her

00:24:52.400 imagination led her to be able to be like, I don't even know how to read. I don't even know

00:24:57.240 where I'm going. I don't have a map, but I just know that it's freedom of death. You know, I just

00:25:02.140 know that I'm just going to walk this way and I just got to hold on that it's something else

00:25:05.480 better. And so I have noticed that in these four years of being within that ministry and counseling

00:25:11.160 thousands of people and listening to their stories that we're at this critical place where we actually

00:25:16.580 have lost our imagination. It's been stolen from grind. Grind culture has taken that from us

00:25:21.860 Because grind culture refuses to see a divinity of you as a human being.

00:25:27.120 And if you buy into grind culture, you actually are aligning yourself with the concept that you're not a divine human being and that your worth has already been given to you by the fact that you're alive.

00:25:37.920 Your birth is your worth.

00:25:40.220 To sit with your eyes closed for 10 minutes in daydream, that's rest.

00:25:44.520 To say no more.

00:25:46.760 To, like, look at your calendar as a sacred text.

00:25:50.020 to really start to begin to heal the trauma inside of you that's happened to you personally,

00:25:56.760 the collective trauma that's happened to us by living under a system that doesn't see us as a

00:26:01.240 human being. The end result of all of this is that we have to begin to start naming our trauma,

00:26:08.040 taking the painful and uncomfortable steps to grieve it, to heal it, and to see a new way.

00:26:14.320 And so I'm very influenced by Afrofuturism and the concept of deep, deep, deep imagination.

00:26:21.360 And I see people so much being like, that sounds nice, but I could never rest.

00:26:26.540 And I'm wondering to myself, man, to think that we're in this day and age and we feel

00:26:30.520 like rest is a privilege that we don't even have an opportunity in the space to find 10

00:26:35.260 minutes to look outside and stare out your window, deep, deep daydreaming, closing your

00:26:41.120 eyes, breathing slowly.

00:26:42.860 To me, rest is about more than naps. It's really about an ethos and a perspective and a pushing back in a way of living, in a way of life that is slowed down, that is connected, that is magnetic, that is distilled down into a place where we really are looking at ourselves as who we really are.

00:27:04.440 This is a spiritual work that's happening for us to be able to allow ourselves to uplift the divinity of who we really are.

00:27:12.860 Hey, hey, hey, hey.

00:27:16.280 Truth and reconciliation with our minds is a thing now.

00:27:19.620 Is the color of my skin finally the flight in my wing now?

00:27:23.220 Queens stand up or are you still growing our kids now?

00:27:26.000 Kings stand up or are you sweating in our gardens? 0.85

00:27:28.440 Bide on to those in uniforms as they try to be uniform to hopes on paper.

00:27:32.420 Held back by structure.

00:27:33.760 Funny we were the help that built this architecture.

00:27:36.480 Now we're scattered like leftovers.

00:27:37.720 Down our kids is y'all to peg. 0.56

00:27:39.300 Let's make this land brand new now

00:27:51.820 Remember what is true now

00:27:53.280 We are beautiful, man

00:27:54.540 It's the love for this land

00:27:55.900 If we were made of bones and sand

00:27:57.340 We gotta understand that we were made in his image

00:27:59.940 And it's his plan

00:28:09.300 And I, and I, hey, hey, come on, hey, hey, come on, hey, hey, come on, and I, hey, my mother all alone, hey, my sister gone home, you will never be alone.

00:28:31.400 you know i want to say that in the past few years it's been interesting to watch this kind

00:28:42.260 of obsession emerge within mainstream culture around sleep and the marketing of self-care

00:28:48.260 tied to an endless stream of consumption of course so it seems as though people are quick

00:28:53.780 to share your words on social media or retweet you'll retweet the memes that you create but

00:29:00.420 beyond this what does it really mean to show up with integrity to this radical work

00:29:04.760 yeah I love that you brought this up because I feel like I want to name social media as an

00:29:13.600 extension of capitalism I want to name it right now I know it's ironic that you know a lot of

00:29:19.800 this my the work that people are knowing about me it's because of social media and I see it as a

00:29:25.580 tool that can be used for some correction it can be used to help in some ways but for the most part

00:29:33.120 I'm very anti-technology and anti-social media in a lot of ways because I see it as an extension

00:29:38.500 of capitalism I see the heart of it being that people what I love about the concept and what

00:29:45.280 underlines is that people just want to connect with each other I love the beauty of interconnectedness

00:29:51.040 of people wanting to commune, of building community.

00:29:54.540 Community care is a major tenet of the NAP ministry.

00:29:57.280 So I love technology for what it tries to be

00:30:01.880 and what people are longing for.

00:30:04.060 Like the power and the energy of people longing for community,

00:30:07.440 of people wanting to be connected is a beautiful thing.

00:30:10.460 But if we don't remember and always uplift

00:30:13.820 that social media is really just another extension of capitalism,

00:30:17.480 It's a consumer-driven product where the people who own social media are billionaires.

00:30:24.020 And I think what I don't like about it is that it doesn't allow for deep work that's

00:30:29.600 intensively understood and slowly imagined.

00:30:33.560 It's quick-paced.

00:30:35.180 The digital realm is just put up a hashtag and put it on something.

00:30:38.260 So I've been seeing a lot of people using the hashtag versus resistance on like to

00:30:42.600 sell things and you know a room full of people doing yoga saying rest is resistance and rest

00:30:49.980 and i'm like what are you resisting about do you even know what the resistance is about how do you

00:30:53.960 resist something that you can't name and so i really do think that this obsession that we have

00:30:59.060 with talking about sleep and talking about rest is really like just a moment that's happening right

00:31:05.420 now it's an awareness that's coming up but a lot of the awareness is just people to nap and sleep

00:31:11.700 so they can be better workers, you know, be more productive.

00:31:15.140 Actually, the lens that I'm putting on is actually, no, this is not about productivity.

00:31:19.720 Productivity is and always has been a scam.

00:31:23.180 We've been scammed.

00:31:24.600 Exhaustion is not productivity.

00:31:26.060 And so I think the accountability piece is really hard.

00:31:29.820 Like, I'm glad you brought that up because I'm in a place right now with my work where

00:31:32.760 I'm really trying to understand what that looks like.

00:31:34.900 And what I did is my pushback against this consumerist, digital, quick sharing really came when I started the Resurrect Rest School.

00:31:45.120 I started that back in January. We had our first class.

00:31:49.360 And 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.

00:31:59.160 And so people come together shoulder to shoulder, looking at each other's eyes, we're reading all of the text that really centers the work, we're reading bell hooks, and we're looking at womanism, and we're looking at soul care, we're reading Afrofuturist texts, and we're really deconstructing what this movement really is.

00:32:17.860 it's so important for me that this movement is continuously framed, worked inside of theories,

00:32:24.980 inside of like real stuff. And it's not just becomes consumed and eaten up and becomes this

00:32:30.160 extractive, consumptive idea of, I'll put up a meme, Restless Resistance. And I wonder, I said

00:32:35.940 to the people on IG the other day, I'm like, are y'all really resting? Are you just retweeting the

00:32:41.660 memes? Like I'm trying to get some understanding about what's really happening. And so for me,

00:32:45.600 The Resurrect Rescue 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.

00:33:02.600 I don't believe that we can really deprogram from our brainwashing with quick, fast information that's just thrown at us.

00:33:10.520 It's really going to be a slow, meticulous, enormous effort, slowly understanding the background, slowly understanding what has happened.

00:33:18.900 And it's going to have to be supported and fortified by information and by community coming together and holding space with each other to speak and really go deep into some uncomfortable conversations.

00:33:33.680 And 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.

00:33:45.540 We don't want to let it go.

00:33:46.580 And 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 that hard work, then the accountability piece is going to be missed.

00:34:01.340 This is just so important, how this rest as resistance can be co-opted.

00:34:09.220 And that isn't the rest as resistance with integrity.

00:34:13.080 If you're trying to sell something or rest as resistance to be more productive, that's absolutely not the core of what this work is because our addiction and our brainwashing to consumer capitalism, high-speed urgency, adrenaline, all of that that we're wrapped up in, it's like a response that we've become addicted to through the brainwashing.

00:34:37.420 And we can't get out of the urgent addiction with more fast-paced, urgent responses.

00:34:45.580 But I also think when we use rest or self-care to maintain capitalism, we're also completely

00:34:54.040 forgetting the ecological component of rest.

00:34:57.420 And I've really been inspired by you and thinking when we rest, the earth rests.

00:35:04.120 if we're not doing as much and if we're slowing down then there doesn't need to be as much made

00:35:09.780 resources don't need to be extracted at the same pace yeah when we're really fast and we're doing

00:35:14.880 all these all this stuff all the time that has a consequence because the earth actually has to keep

00:35:20.040 up with our desires and needs of the moment and so yeah if we say we care about the earth climate

00:35:28.860 change, the Anthropocene extinction, we have to understand that if we are not slowing down,

00:35:35.080 the earth will never be able to slow down because we are pushing the earth to keep up

00:35:40.020 with this grind culture because the earth is the basis to how we grind.

00:35:44.380 Yes, exactly.

00:35:46.760 The land needs to rest.

00:35:48.080 It needs to be honored.

00:35:50.180 And when I think about land, it's so important to me with this ministry because remember,

00:35:55.340 I started by looking at what plantation labor was doing, how they were extracting from the

00:36:00.940 earth, growing all of this agriculture and who was the people who were out there doing

00:36:05.300 it, the violence that was happening while they were extracting from the earth cotton

00:36:10.500 and sugar and tobacco, all these things that they were growing in the earth.

00:36:16.740 It's really important, like the concept of land and liberation is closely connected to

00:36:21.060 this work because I really feel that the land and the people who were stewards of the land

00:36:27.660 the fact that they were stewards of the land in a violent mean that when I think about the violence

00:36:33.020 that was happening in those fields and on those plantations and for centuries and centuries the

00:36:38.820 land being just cultivated and used and the the lives who were dying out there under the heat

00:36:45.300 picking cotton and like what what does that say for our ancestor worship and ancestor communication

00:36:51.160 and reverence to them when such violent things were happening in that space and so a lot of the

00:36:57.680 work started with me resting outdoors sleeping outside and doing public site installations

00:37:04.000 outside and reclaiming the land reclaiming the ancestors who were out there working in the

00:37:09.400 Southern heat with no type of stopping. During my research, I was reading a lot of slave

00:37:16.080 narratives and I was seeing how women were giving birth in the field and then the midwife would

00:37:21.320 take the baby and it kept working. They had 500 pounds of cotton each to pick a day. And if you

00:37:27.140 didn't pick it, it was violence or death. And so to think about our world and our American culture

00:37:35.060 starting in the culture of pretty much this entire economic infrastructure being built off so much

00:37:40.840 violence that the land was having to take and when you think about lynchings and what the trees were

00:37:45.620 seeing and what was happening in the land and now we're like aligning ourselves with that same

00:37:49.660 system and what pain that must be causing our ancestors and what disrespect we're just continuing

00:37:55.640 to do to the land and to the earth and to what's around us and so I think it's so important I'm so

00:38:01.620 glad that you brought that up about ecologically what's going on and how all of this land and

00:38:06.380 liberation is really connected because you have to understand what was happening on plantations

00:38:11.480 we don't really look at that we know oh slavery happened but to look at the micro details of a

00:38:17.280 day-to-day what it looked like i was able to find that out like they got up before the sun came up

00:38:22.460 most of the time they worked you know 20 hour days sometimes and um they would keep going there

00:38:29.020 were no breaks there was no you know oh you don't feel well or you're pregnant okay keep picking we

00:38:34.200 know how hot it gets outside and what the cotton is such a hard plant to really work with I have

00:38:40.600 cotton you know that I use a lot in a lot of our performance installations just to touch it and feel

00:38:46.120 it to see how bodies were being connected to this plant that was hard to pick and pull and what that

00:38:51.920 did to our bodies and what that also did to the land because a lot of my friends are farmers and

00:38:57.540 they talk about like how soil regenerates and how many centuries on plantations they were just

00:39:03.060 growing, growing, growing. It just never let the earth ever stop to heal. You know, it was just

00:39:08.420 like grow more cotton, grow more. We need more people to do it. And so this industrial human

00:39:14.200 machine level pace really started there and we're actually continuing it, but we're doing it to

00:39:19.320 ourselves now. We're like jumping on board and we've aligned ourselves and have been brainwashed

00:39:25.120 to be a supporter, to uphold this type of work culture.

00:39:28.900 And so that's where I want to like disrupt.

00:39:31.320 And that's why we say rest is a form of resistance

00:39:34.140 because it disrupts and it also pushes back

00:39:36.980 against capitalism and white supremacy.

00:39:39.240 And so this is a pushback and a resistance

00:39:42.000 and a disruption to a very specific thing

00:39:44.840 that's happening to us, that's happened to the land,

00:39:47.940 that's continuing to happen to the land

00:39:49.680 and to the resources that we are around

00:39:51.480 and how we just need to slow it down.

00:39:55.120 things cannot be at this machine level pace. But at this point, I think sometimes people are saying

00:40:02.120 now that to slow down now, it feels so uncomfortable to them because they're so used to like being on

00:40:07.480 this grind machine. Yeah. I think it is uncomfortable because it's become habit. It's

00:40:16.200 become not only psychologically addictive with our value systems, but it's also, I think the

00:40:24.820 adrenaline, our bodies somatically have gotten used to it. And yeah, so I think it is really

00:40:31.000 challenging, but on this ecological thread, a question I'm sitting with is slowing down in the

00:40:37.400 context of resistance and direct action. And I see this capitalist grind culture is quite literally

00:40:43.380 killing us and seeding toxicity. But I'm wondering if we can separate this from the urgent action

00:40:49.780 required to, say, stop a pipeline or shut down detention centers and private prisons or defend

00:40:55.600 a forest from being logged. So I'm curious what you think about bringing a culture of slowness

00:41:01.020 and rest into movement spaces facing so much trauma and state violence. Yes. Yeah, I think

00:41:08.740 it's important to note that I am an activist and a community servant. And this work started

00:41:13.520 20 years ago with me working in direct actions, leading workshops, trainings, being on the front

00:41:20.560 lines and movement spaces around violence, gun violence, school justice in Chicago. And so

00:41:27.440 I understand the urgency because you're working on this timeline. Someone got killed today. We

00:41:35.380 need to go there today you know someone was arrested um in a way that was not humane we

00:41:41.400 need to be there now and how direct actions are really quick paced and have to be a reaction to

00:41:46.960 what is going on and I understand that but I also understand that movement work is spiritual work

00:41:53.780 I've noticed that in a lot of movement spaces since I've been in them since I was in my 20s

00:41:58.060 and I'm now 45 the people working in movement work are folks who have been traumatized just

00:42:04.720 like everyone else by the oppressive systems that we live under and that we need healing too and

00:42:09.780 that we need to understand that there is spiritual work that has been done for us behind the scenes

00:42:15.440 that can help move movement work forward that isn't going to be us killing ourselves and

00:42:22.100 working 80-hour weeks and re-continuing to traumatize each other by copying white supremacist

00:42:28.560 work culture. That's where the spiritual piece comes in. There is work that has been done already

00:42:33.600 for us behind the scenes that we can tap into native people understand this you know African 1.00

00:42:40.140 people understand this I mean we are losing those ancient techniques and those ancient 1.00

00:42:45.200 understandings to be able to balance and I've been in movement spaces where we've had trainings

00:42:50.660 we're in a training literally all day for 12 hours there's no bathroom breaks there's no

00:42:55.680 where to eat. There's no concept of resting. It's just like we really literally are continuing to

00:43:04.840 use this white supremacist work culture to do our work. I don't think that we can

00:43:09.620 use the master's tool to dismantle the master's house. This is a beautiful quote by Audre Lorde.

00:43:15.320 You can't do that. It's not going to work. I think that we've lost our way as movement workers and

00:43:20.060 movement spaces, we've also been caught up in the grind. We've also are working on deadlines and

00:43:25.820 working on grants and things that have to be done. But I really believe that rest can be a portal

00:43:31.420 in a third space, in a place that we can go and imagine and actually gain more knowledge of how

00:43:39.140 we can actually do this work in a different way. If you believe that rest is a portal for invention,

00:43:43.840 I believe that when we rest, that we can actually tap into some ideas, into some new energies, new ways of actually approaching this situation.

00:43:54.000 But we can never do that because we also are grinding.

00:43:57.880 And I've actually done a lot of trainings with people who are in movement spaces right now.

00:44:01.980 And a lot of them are suffering from so much mental health, physical health, working 80 hours a day, having brain aneurysms, being sick.

00:44:09.780 I did one here in Atlanta last year for some movement workers who are working on human rights

00:44:14.980 campaigns and everybody in the room was so exhausted. As soon as I asked them, are you guys

00:44:20.340 tired? They just started weeping and they was just like, you know, I'm tired. I'm sick. You know,

00:44:26.540 I keep going. I keep going because the work has to be done, but I don't feel like we can

00:44:30.480 actually get to liberation by repeating the same trauma that has been done to us. I just don't

00:44:36.820 believe that we have to be traumatized to be able to get to the other side. I don't, I won't ever

00:44:42.880 believe that we have to be having some of our executive directors of some of these organizations

00:44:47.720 have never taken a day off work in a year. Their children, you know, are suffering because they're

00:44:53.280 not home to be with them, that they're actually, I've talked with a movement worker who was saying

00:44:58.100 that she had a brain abhorism. The next day she was up trying to like get online to organize a

00:45:02.540 direct training. I don't see how we believe that that energy and the spirit of that in the spiritual

00:45:09.100 components of that is ever going to give us the results that we're looking for. And so I want to

00:45:13.640 uplift spiritual work that's been done for us and how our ancestors have done some things in the

00:45:18.820 past that are still working for us right now. And so a part of grind culture makes us

00:45:25.040 believe that if I don't see the result of something, it's not happening. If I'm not doing

00:45:30.880 something, then it's not happening. And I think that that's a false belief. And I think that's

00:45:35.480 a belief rooted in white supremacy. I believe that there's always things being done behind the

00:45:42.220 scenes for our spiritual greatness. And there's always things that are happening to be able to

00:45:46.860 help get us to the other side. When I keep going back to Harriet Tubman and going back to my

00:45:51.880 ancestors who weren't seeing anything happening, but they were believing and trusting in a greater

00:45:57.200 power and you know looking up at the stars and following the paths of the freedom and just

00:46:02.980 trusting and believing that their ancestors were already putting a word in for them and already

00:46:07.400 you know seeing them and they're able to communicate with them they're able to like

00:46:12.340 use that energy to be able to come up with dynamic solutions now and I don't think that you can

00:46:17.880 actually um get to a liberative state if you're exhausted and rested I believe that the revolution

00:46:23.900 will be led by well-rested people, people who are connected, who are inventive, who

00:46:29.900 are tapped into the spiritual component of rest and what it can do for us.

00:46:53.900 Wait no Jesus to take me home

00:46:58.200 Even though hold no

00:47:00.340 Even though hold no

00:47:02.580 Even though hold no

00:47:04.820 Even though hold no

00:47:06.840 I need peace

00:47:09.040 I need hope

00:47:10.820 Wait no Jesus

00:47:12.740 Take me home

00:47:14.940 Even though hold no

00:47:17.440 Even though hold no

00:47:19.460 Even though hold no

00:47:21.560 Even though hold no

00:47:23.540 so much wisdom that you just shared with us it's a lot yeah i think west is a third space

00:47:48.940 it's a portal yeah for new ways what type of innovative ideas can you offer to us you know

00:47:55.440 how can you heal from your own trauma a lot of these movement spaces are being led by people

00:48:00.200 who have unhealed trauma and they're continuing to traumatize others but i i want to speak more

00:48:06.440 to this rest is portal and in many ways it seems that the nat ministry is about embodiment

00:48:13.120 and as you name our bodies also hold inherent wisdom strategies and tools for repair and our

00:48:21.120 bodies are so resilient so i'd love if you could speak more to the importance of surrendering to

00:48:26.920 our somatic intelligence yes what resources are available for us within the unconscious

00:48:32.540 wanderings of dream space yeah so beautiful how you said that yeah i'm the third tenet of the

00:48:41.180 that ministry is our bodies are a site of liberation. So wherever our bodies are, we can

00:48:46.980 find a liberative space. And so the semantics of all of that, I come from a background in Black

00:48:54.060 Pentecostalism, which looks at the body, you know, as being a space where the laying on of hands and

00:49:02.060 the catching of the Holy Spirit, and they wake up and they just look so different. And they look

00:49:06.620 like they've healed from so many different things and so I really believe that we are missing the

00:49:12.280 magic of what is happening on a somatic level in our bodies that our bodies hold everything the

00:49:18.940 memory that in the wisdom that's there the body wisdom the body memory and if you aren't resting

00:49:25.600 and if we are at a sleep deprivation level think at what level are our bodies and minds actually

00:49:31.880 working. I believe that when you rest and go into that portal, that you can wake up with new ideas.

00:49:40.080 The science of sleep tells us that there are chemicals that are released in our brains when

00:49:44.440 we sleep that actually can help us move through trauma, can help us to kind of heal ourselves.

00:49:50.560 And so there are already, our body is already this beautiful place that wants us to heal,

00:49:56.920 that wants to be well that can move at the space in the pace that um is most um ideal for us and

00:50:05.920 so we've forgotten that we've totally just missed out on any of the sleep the sleep wisdom and the

00:50:11.500 body wisdom we've ignored that we've ignored it all for sleep until i'll sleep when i'm dead

00:50:15.800 we've ignored it all for productivity as a function of our words for perfectionism for um

00:50:23.200 profit over life, you know, for seeing burnout as normal. We see burnout as just a normal phase

00:50:30.140 of life. It's not normal to burn out when you're, you know, that's not normal. So I think

00:50:34.760 rest actually disrupts the cycle of trauma. And I believe that grind culture is trauma towards us

00:50:43.000 and also grind culture feeds off of trauma. And so to take a moment to intentionally say no

00:50:49.140 and push back. My body doesn't belong to capitalism. My body belongs to me. My body

00:50:56.220 is a divine being. It is divinity inside to embody that wisdom. Every time we feel like we want to

00:51:04.320 rest and our body feels that and we ignore it, each time we ignore it is another moment of us

00:51:09.380 putting trauma onto our physical bodies. And so to intentionally do that is really

00:51:14.100 such a beautiful offering to ourselves. And I actually think collectively doing that together

00:51:20.940 also is a direct action. So we do our collective napping experiences. We've done them as large as

00:51:26.380 50 people in the room at the same time, all taking a nap that's been kind of curated by myself. And

00:51:32.660 I'm usually the only person who's up and everyone else is resting and I'm holding space in the room

00:51:37.940 and to feel the energy and for people to wake up together and magical and spiritual things happen

00:51:43.580 in these spaces people have woken up and don't even know each other and have had the same dreams

00:51:47.860 like someone don't want to be in the back of the room and be like I had a dream you know about this

00:51:52.300 other person like I had the exact same dream can you pick up where I left off and it's the exact

00:51:55.920 same dream people have um woken up and was I didn't even realize how I haven't taken a nap in

00:52:01.860 three years now I feel like I can take on the world like I really feel like collectively when

00:52:07.780 we put our bodies in this space of healing together and honoring it. We're doing so much

00:52:14.140 for our future, for our liberation. And so I don't think that we can get there without

00:52:18.540 looking at rest for what it is. It's a dream space. And I believe that it's been stolen from us. And

00:52:25.580 one of our other tendencies is that we want it back and we can reclaim it via rest. And so

00:52:30.880 the dream space is this place where we can go and um and just be i always thought this when i was

00:52:38.860 studying my ancestors i was like what could they have imagined and figured out if they were allowed

00:52:44.380 a space to rest could they have you know been able to come up with um plans that have helped

00:52:51.140 them escape a little bit quicker could they have been able to come up with ideas on how they could

00:52:56.320 have revolted. Maybe they could have had, you know, what could have happened if we were allowed

00:53:02.200 a space to rest? If they were allowed a space to actually go into a dream space, could their

00:53:07.160 freedom have been closer? Could they have had more intricate ways? Could the Underground Railroad

00:53:13.060 have been even a larger system? Because we had so many inventive ideas, because we were working

00:53:18.460 on a well-rested mind and a well-rested body that was able to take on these oppressive systems. And

00:53:24.120 So I think we must fortify our minds and our bodies and rest is the way to be able to allow us to get there.

00:53:30.540 I really believe that the more we rest, the more we're able to wake up and use the sacredness to help fortify our movement.

00:53:38.600 I actually think that the powers that be don't want us rested because they know if we are rested and if we are at our full potential brain waves and if we're like thinking and connected, what could we figure out quicker?

00:53:51.540 I feel like we're in this dumb zombie phase when you're not rested you're like in this sleep deprived

00:53:57.940 non-woke phase of just you know go with the flow and take things I feel like you're the power rest 0.98

00:54:05.340 is like a power it's a slowing down that allows you to be able to be like you know what I actually

00:54:10.580 don't want to be treated like this yes the veil is lifted yeah I was reading how to do nothing

00:54:20.400 by Jenny O'Dell. And she writes, civil disobedience in the attention economy means 0.85

00:54:26.340 withdrawing attention. I'm less interested in a mass exodus from Facebook and Twitter than I am

00:54:31.680 in a mass movement of attention. What happens when people regain control over their attention and

00:54:36.660 begin to direct it again together? End quote. And I love that because it reminds me like reclaiming

00:54:44.420 rest reclaiming attention reclaiming how we think and feel about the world rather than this zombie

00:54:52.200 vibe that you're talking about where we just are in this complacent zombie hood where we're just

00:54:58.080 in the grind we're not giving ourselves space to actually think whoa is is this actually what i

00:55:03.640 want to do with my life is this i'm really with you and i i just have a two more questions and i

00:55:10.520 was reading a paper you wrote for graduate school and it says quote when we stand in the gaps for

00:55:16.200 each other and decide to be relentless in our support and witness we can shift oppression

00:55:21.940 the beauty of this reality is that it repeats itself in many forms on our journey in life

00:55:28.040 childbirth graduations in protest marches at weddings in classrooms with strangers on public

00:55:35.320 transportation, in elevators, in courtrooms, in church pews, on war fields, on streets, in gang

00:55:42.560 territory, and in death. We are intimately tied to each other. We find God through each other.

00:55:50.720 So beautiful. It takes me back to that. When I wrote that, I kind of framed it around the concept

00:55:58.520 of when my father died suddenly and how the community rallied around us in such a deep way

00:56:04.580 that I actually, I felt the presence of people, even though they weren't around me. I felt like

00:56:09.500 as if hundreds of people were like holding me up. And I felt it in my body. And my mom also said

00:56:17.060 that she felt like God was seeing us through other people, you know, that the community

00:56:22.600 became the hand of God. And I don't actually like to use the word self-care. I always talk about

00:56:27.840 community care and I talk about soul care. I talk about community care as the practice of freedom

00:56:34.720 and how I believe that we really cannot heal alone. And that's why I named our first signature

00:56:42.020 program, our collective mapping experiences, which have since taken a hold because of what's going on

00:56:48.120 with this pandemic. We can't be in spaces with each other physically. And so last year we did

00:56:53.620 close to 50 of them all over the country. We'll go in and install safe spaces for the community

00:56:58.980 to rest together, sacred spaces. We go in art direction and put out blankets and pillows,

00:57:06.000 every single event that we've ever had. There is a rest altar built. Some of them are very

00:57:10.640 elaborate, 20 feet high, but some of them are just a small, you know, jar of cotton or either

00:57:17.080 a photo of my grandmother, you know, or who's the muse for resting and what reimagined rest can

00:57:22.700 look like her picture is always there it's always an altar there to ground the space even there's

00:57:28.360 three people there or there's 50 people there there's something unique about collectively

00:57:32.820 resting and napping together it's like vintage intimacy and I think the piece that you just read

00:57:39.040 the quote is really getting at this concept of intimacy and vulnerability and I think that that's

00:57:44.380 such a powerful place when we talk about liberating ourselves we talk about movement when we talk

00:57:50.360 about really what a full resistance must look like. It must look like this intimate, vulnerable

00:57:57.000 connectedness, this interdependence on each other, this interconnectedness. It's so important. We're

00:58:05.440 seeing it so much now. I love Fannie Lou Hamer. One of her quotes is, no one's free until we're

00:58:11.560 all free. I'm a womanist. I don't claim feminism at all. I claim womanism because I believe 1.00

00:58:17.860 Womanists have understood the concept that all forms of oppression and all people are kind of tied together and that we have to restore the balance between people and the environment and nature and reconcile human life with the spiritual dimension of life.

00:58:35.720 And so womanist theology and womanism as a whole looks at how we're all interconnected in intimacy, vulnerability, and soul care is so important to me.

00:58:49.300 The 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.

00:59:03.380 And I don't rock with any of that. I feel like if we have our bodies, we have a liberative space.

00:59:09.900 I 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.

00:59:22.600 And so I really want to get to the heart of the issue and look deeply at the soul.

00:59:27.820 Self-care has been co-opted to be just consumerist capitalism.

00:59:30.720 and i also deeply believe that we can't heal by ourselves that we have to have community

00:59:36.900 i think that the slowness that's being you know it's like i can intellectually understand a lot

00:59:45.340 of this stuff but to somatically and spiritually let it sink in um it does take time and i'm really

00:59:53.360 looking forward to laying down with this conversation again and letting it sink in

01:00:00.540 and i'm really hoping that everybody who listens gets to listen in a time where they're not feeling

01:00:05.140 rushed yes because i think everything is extremely life-changing what you're speaking to and i don't

01:00:13.620 think we're going to be able to deal with climate change or the anthropocene extinction or colonization

01:00:21.280 capitalism so on and so forth without really listening deeply to your words and understanding

01:00:29.280 that this is actually a necessary part of decolonization this is actually a very necessary

01:00:35.440 part for us to move forward we cannot break down the system what you were saying with the master's

01:00:40.880 tools like that's not going to work so i really appreciate that and for our last question today

01:00:48.640 I would love for you to walk us through your dreamscape, a world in which perhaps the daily

01:00:54.380 grind ceases and business as usual is no longer an option. I like to imagine this all the time.

01:01:04.900 And I think the main, when I start imagining it, the first query that comes up in my mind is

01:01:11.060 how can we access pleasure and joy and liberation if we're too tired to experience it you know if

01:01:19.400 we're so exhausted how will we be able to recognize that we've reached our liberation

01:01:24.780 will we be too tired to know it and so I really think that I call rest a meticulous love practice

01:01:33.140 a practice of love towards yourself towards your community but it is going to be meticulous

01:01:38.460 uncomfortable at times. And people are always like, oh my goodness, I want to rest, but it's

01:01:43.600 just so hard. I'm like, yes, I know it's going to be very hard. James Baldwin has a quote where he

01:01:50.220 talks about the enormous effort it takes to really get to liberation. People aren't born in a place

01:01:58.040 when they're born under oppressive system where they're able to just kind of imagine and fill in

01:02:03.480 their bodies what it feels like to be liberated and so I think it's going to take us to be really

01:02:08.840 imaginative and I don't think we're able to get to that imaginative space without resting and so

01:02:13.880 my dreamscape looks like breaking down and burning down and pulling down white supremacy and 0.79

01:02:21.340 capitalism like they both have to die we can't talk about any type of movement towards soul care

01:02:28.040 self-care, getting to anywhere without those two systems continuing to exist. And I think we have

01:02:34.440 to see disruption and we have to reimagine what that can look like. I think my grandmother was

01:02:41.720 sitting on the couch for 30 minutes every day when she was living as a woman running from 0.75

01:02:50.180 Jim Crow terrorism, running from the KKK. When she's sitting there for 30 minutes and closing

01:02:55.260 her eyes. I believe that that fortifies me now. To be honest, I really would think that I would

01:03:02.420 love to see people detoxing from technology as much as they possibly can. I don't think we're

01:03:08.220 able to get to the full liberation arrest if we're continuously scrolling in online. I wrote

01:03:12.680 a small blog post when I did a 30-day detox from social media, and I wrote up things that I learned

01:03:20.020 from that 30 day period of being off of social media, email, and just any technology, people

01:03:26.600 cannot make space for you to rest if they don't know what it looks like to rest. So that goes

01:03:30.920 back to that interconnectedness of we're going to have to embody this message. My dream is that

01:03:36.880 for every person who retweets, you know, one of our memes that they take a nap right after they

01:03:42.240 retweet it, you know, if I like, if that could happen, I think we actually will be further

01:03:47.140 towards our goal but I don't I don't think that that form of technology is allowing us to see

01:03:52.280 that because how they created social media they've created it so that we never get off of it the

01:03:58.020 scroll technique is something that they've studied and researched so that our brain doesn't know when

01:04:02.520 to stop we don't know when to be full and so to know that technology is working against us so that

01:04:08.840 we don't know how to stop and feel full and that our brain is being triggered and I'm very very

01:04:16.460 influenced by um a sabbath and what um a sabbath can be in the ancient technique of a sabbath and

01:04:23.180 how a sabbath is really a radical pause and um what that could be and i'm really dreaming about

01:04:31.040 um embodiment and people just because i think people a lot of times hear the message and then

01:04:36.560 they're like oh that sounds okay but when they come to one of our nap events or when they actually

01:04:40.760 take a nap or they actually then they wake up and they're like oh my goodness like I never knew it

01:04:46.880 could feel that way and I'm like laying folks down like such an honor and I'm so humbled to

01:04:52.780 be able to just lay a body down and to put a blanket over them and but now that we aren't

01:04:57.780 able to do them because of what's going on with this virus and pandemic I want I want to be able

01:05:03.420 to hold space for people in a spiritual way I want to be like this you know pillow for them just

01:05:10.300 Be able to like for them to really feel that you can lay down right now. You don't have to wait. The time is now. You can take 10 minutes right now and even 10 minutes every day. We're collectively doing that in large numbers. I believe that we can slow down capitalism. And I believe that grind culture right now is on its knees.

01:05:30.380 And so I imagine us being able to like help pull it down by actually collectively resting even in your homes right now.

01:05:39.720 Go take a nap. I believe that a direct action could look like all of the movement leaders just sleeping for a day.

01:05:46.940 You know, that would be a beautiful and magical pushback and a way for us to spiritually connect.

01:05:53.520 And so I'm always thinking about blankets and pillows and softness, softness in the real world.

01:06:00.080 Metaphorically, I'm thinking about ancient pausing and just stopping and slowing down.

01:06:06.120 And I'm always thinking about grief and mourning and silence and how rest supports all of that.

01:06:15.120 Yes.

01:06:15.840 Well, thank you for sharing a guiding dream to know that we can imagine beyond perhaps what we've been imagining to push our own limits of dreaming.

01:06:29.800 And it will be challenging because we're breaking addictions, we're breaking that brainwashing that we spoke to earlier, but it's such a worthy practice. It's a necessary practice. And you have been a huge inspiration for us and for me personally.

01:06:48.600 And there are so many years where I thought self-care and rest was for somebody else, or it wasn't actually necessary. And I didn't really have time to do that because the world's burning and it's just not, it just was like, no, I can't do that. And that's not going to help me. And it's not going to help the earth because what, what, what I felt the earth needed was this urgent response system all the time.

01:07:10.000 and and since that click moment I haven't turned back and like I said I'm not perfect like there's

01:07:17.800 definitely times where I'm like oh darn it like I'm grinding again I'm freaking grinding again

01:07:22.140 like I gotta get off the grind it can be a challenging journey but we can keep getting back

01:07:28.280 on the horse so to speak because I very much agree that that the earth is crying for us to rest

01:07:35.560 such important work. And thank you so much for spending this extra time with us. This has been

01:07:40.300 amazing. It's been such an honor. I've had such an amazing time speaking with you. I'm so

01:07:44.840 humble. I'm so honored. I'm in awe, really. It's going to be a slow, meticulous process, but

01:07:51.780 to be able to just be easier on ourselves and be so soft with ourselves and vulnerable and

01:07:58.180 intimate with each other around this that we really can bring down and disrupt and push back.

01:08:03.520 And my dream is that this pushback and disruption will lead to a full breakdown and a full burndown of these systems that are on our neck daily.

01:08:13.540 And so the more you can rest, the more you can stop.

01:08:17.640 I'm always talking about deep daydreaming and reimagining what it can all look like.

01:08:22.640 And I think we have the power to do that.

01:08:24.680 And so I so appreciate the time.

01:08:27.060 So thank you.

01:08:27.660 It's been an amazing conversation.

01:08:29.840 Yes.

01:08:30.280 I rise up in every way that feels right in my own soul.

01:08:44.840 I rise up in every way that feels right in my own soul.

01:08:57.180 I rise up in every way that feels right in my own soul.

01:09:12.240 I rise up in every way that feels right in my own soul.

01:09:23.860 you've been listening to trisha hersey on for the wild podcast i'm ayana young the music we

01:09:32.720 are enjoying today was provided by seba kapstad real j wallace and beautiful chorus i'd like to

01:09:41.280 thank our podcast production team francesca glassbell andrew stores hannah wilton aiden

01:09:48.140 McRae, Erica Ekrem,

01:09:50.480 Carter Lou McElroy, Chris

01:09:52.200 Hudson, and our guest producer

01:09:54.100 March Young.

01:09:56.000 If you're moved by this episode,

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For The Wild - January 05, 2022

TRICIA HERSEY on Rest as Resistance [ENCORE] ⧸267

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