Becoming the People Podcast with Prentis Hemphill

[Bonus] Prentis in conversation with adrienne maree brown Live from Brooklyn - What It Takes to Heal Book Tour

• Prentis Hemphill • Season 2 • Episode 31

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 1:25:06

This bonus episode is a throw-back to the launch of Prentis’ What it Takes to Heal book tour. This summer marks the two year anniversary of the book’s release and we wanted to share the intimate conversations that happened across the country while Prentis was on tour.

This is a live recording from Brooklyn, where Prentis sits down with their friend adrienne maree brown. The two discuss what it means to write honestly about trauma, why boundaries are really about relationships rather than distance, and how movements for justice can source vision instead of just wounds. 

You can watch the full book tour on our Youtube Channel.

Check out Prentis’ book: What It Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World


Support the show

The Becoming the People Podcast Team:

SPEAKER_00

Um, you're in the place to be. You're in the right place. Indeed. Indeed. It's hot in here. Um, it's really hot in here, so we're gonna collectively generate cool energy before we start doing anything else. Yeah. Inside each of us, there's a fire, and inside of each of us, there's a cool river. So I want you to all think about the cool river pouring from the top center of your head, down your body, past that sweaty hot forehead, past those sweaty hot cheeks, down that sweaty hot neck, down through that heart, down that sweaty hot back, just cool, cool blue, green, cool. When the pool is just a little icy, that energy all through your body and everyone else's. And then as little mouth talking as possible. So we're gonna have a conversation up here with Prentice Hempel, who is my dear friend, my beloved, one of my teachers, my neighbor, and the author of a book that I believe is a gateway for so many people to their healing and to our collective healing, what it takes to heal. I'm so excited about this book, and we thought we would start off with just y'all getting to hear some of it. So we're gonna start off with P reading to you, Prentice reading to you. I'm gonna call you Prentice in front of these people.

SPEAKER_02

You can only call me P if I've known you a little while.

SPEAKER_00

So don't even think about it. Prentice is gonna read for a bit, then we'll have a conversation, and then you'll have a chance to ask some questions. You should have index cards that you can write a question on. Just a hint. Don't write an essay, don't write a paragraph, because I'm not gonna read that, right? Write something that feels like a good, clear, concise question, and then we'll we'll pick a few of those and answer them, and then peel read again before we leave out, all right? Sound like a good evening that you're excited to be a part of? All right.

SPEAKER_02

Wow. I just want to take it in for a second. Wow. Thank you all so much for coming tonight. Thank you all so much. It's so meaningful to me. I feel so tender and sweet. And like, what in the world did I put in this book? My goodness. I put all my business up in this book. Um but may it be of use to you all. But thank you so much for coming tonight. It it means so much to me. And I'm gonna read a little excerpt here. I'm starting in the middle of a paragraph, um, and suddenly realizing that I'm 40 plus in this light, and like trying to read. Um, but it's actually about my first time doing any kind of embodiment work. Can y'all hear me all right? Everybody can hear me? Okay. Um, so I'll start here. During the first session, I spent that initial hour of introductions terrified that I would show unexpected emotion in front of my coworkers. I steeled myself, tightening my body and paid attention to not take too much in or worse, let too much out. First, we worked on centering. A practice meant in essence to ground us. We started with scanning our bodies for sensations that the teachers described as the very language of the body, that the body was always expressing and responding. I noticed how challenging it was to locate my sensations. I was tracking so much outside of me. The breathing of the person next to me, the roaming eyes of the teacher. Next, they instructed us to soften the contractions in our muscles where they explained shame and trauma could lurk. We could take our bodies back from these experiences, reinhabit the places we'd abandon. One of the teachers, Vasi, asked that we feel the edges of our skin, to breathe through our pores. It was a strange instruction. I had just started therapy, and I was still a long way from being comfortable with anything too abstract. I tried it anyway. I took a breath, exhaled. I immediately noticed how tight my ribs felt, like there was a rubber band around their base, how short and shallow my breath was as a result. The teachers encouraged us then to soften and expand the muscles in our chest, to make more room around our hearts, they said. I'd never considered the muscles in my chest at all, but I could feel that my chest was contr was contracted, caved in, exactly around my heart. How long had it been like that? From the strength of the contraction, I could tell it was longer than just that day. It felt familiar, comfortable, and well practiced, even though I hadn't known it just the moment before. I was suddenly in a new conversation with my body. What else was in there? I could keep going, but I won't. That's enough, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

That's great. Okay, great. That's awesome. So weird. I'm captivated. It's so weird, right? Yeah, yeah. Um, it is it's so strange to sit and write something incredibly personal and something that you also want to like land with people, and then time travel to the future when you've got to read it to people, right? And I know you to be someone who um is more internal and is very thoughtful, is very precise, is very much about love and care in how you operate and how you move, and but with a lot of precision. And I want to know what it cost you to write this book because it blows everything kind of wide open, including your own story.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I texted um one of my somatics teachers this morning, and I I said, What do you do when it feels like your body is cracking open and maybe you're growing or maybe you're just cracking? I can't tell. Um what did it cost? It's an interesting question because I know you know it it everything it costs, it returned in a way. It returned something.

SPEAKER_00

That's the next part of the question.

SPEAKER_02

I know that's the next part, but it's it's the part that I'm gonna start with now.

SPEAKER_00

Um what did it give you and what did it cost you to write this book?

SPEAKER_02

I had to confront me. I remember writing. There were a couple things when I was writing, I was like, I'd write something and I'd be like, you're not telling the truth. You're saying something that sounds nice, it's a really pretty sentence, but you're not actually telling the truth because you're not actually feeling, you're not revealing, you're not sharing. I always say, show your work, like as practitioners or whatever it is that you might do that you've been on a path long enough to share with somebody else. It's always important to show our work so that we don't somehow become magical people to other people. That person can do it. That person is so awesome for doing that work. I was like, I have to show my work so that no one gets confused that I'm somehow special or that they're not special. Um, so I had to really confront myself. There were a lot of moments of um tears and fears and memories. And um, I remember when I was first talking to my editors around the book, I said, I have to, I'm self-I have to do this process of self-authorizing myself to know what I know, to share what I know, because there's so much doubt, there's other people's concerns, there's all this stuff that comes in, and I had to be like, you know what? You are you're able to tell your story. I'm self-authorizing you to tell your story, to share what you know. Um, so I had to do that, but it was really, really vulnerable for someone who, you know, I'm not a recluse exactly, but um I'm not not a recluse, you know what I mean? I like to be alone by myself, quiet with my friends. So it was it was exposure, and then it was sort of being in the process of accepting and understanding the importance of that disclosure and doing sharing with love and with the intention of serving.

SPEAKER_00

Beautiful. I think so. Okay, good. Yeah. Um, I also I want to tell you in front of as many audiences as possible, you did it. You know, you did an incredible job with this book. Um so from a place of trying to figure out how to write things that you feel in the body, right? Like I feel it's the hardest thing. I think every book I'm trying to be like, I have this experience and I want to tell everyone about it, but I can't be in front of them and charade it. I can't make them feel I can't. I can, but I can't bring everyone into the circle where I learned the lesson. Yeah. And so we have to hope that the words do it. And I really, um, I was saying this backstage, but I was crying as I was listening to this. I was moved to laughter. I was, I was opened up. Like it just, I was like, oh, this is it. It's it's it it translated all the way through into myself.

SPEAKER_02

Glad to hear that.

SPEAKER_00

So a lot of what I wanted to do tonight is is offer back some of the pieces of wisdom and then ask you questions in that section. And we did a podcast, um, Prentice just launched a new podcast called Becoming the People. Um, which is incredible. And we got to have a conversation there where we covered a lot about the first chapter and the last chapter. So I'm gonna go into the meat of the middle of the book now.

SPEAKER_02

All right.

SPEAKER_00

Um, but your homework is to listen to that episode too, if you haven't yet, and to tell all your friends and also to like it wherever you listen to it.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00

I'm just telling people how to do it. I love this. I don't even have to do it.

SPEAKER_02

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00

So you have a chapter called Feeling in the Body, yeah, and it's all about embodiment, which really you say is the core of this book in a way. It's the secret core of the book is what does it mean to be embodied? And you speak about it in a lot of ways. Some of the things you say, it we have to practice being what we are becoming, right? You say if we do not feel, or if our society views feeling as a failure, then our culture might lose touch with our humanity. You talk about the grief ritual you came up with when your grandmother died, and it was dancing to a song. Will you be there? And you said tissues and muscles that can hold on to trauma can also learn to dance. And you said, I might not need to tame my body. Yeah. So all of these are like these profound pieces that like I'm like, oh, each one of those, I I feel like I've watched you learn, I've been learning with you. But this piece, all of it requires you to be seen, feeling, and to feel, right? And uh it's the word, you know, as if you've learned to survive in this world where it's not safe to be seen, where people want to kill you because of what they see, what they perceive. How do we learn to see as we are and see as we feel? How do we learn to be seen as we are and be seen as we feel?

SPEAKER_02

Feel is the central piece. Feel is the heart. Yeah, because you know, we talk about feelings, we talk about feeling all the time. Um but a lot of us are trained, taught, encouraged, incentivized away from feeling. And I'll just always think about like if we felt, if we actually felt, a lot of things would have to change. And so there's a lot of reasons why we have to be incentivized away from feeling. What's actually happening for us, what's actually happening in the world. There's a lot of reasons why we get pulled away from feeling. But I think feeling is this profound place of practice. It feels so simple because we use the word all the time, say, I'm fee, I feel this, I feel that, do you feel me? All the things we feel in all, we say the word all the time. But actually, the allowance of what is happening inside of you, the acknowledging that as wisdom, as truth. You know, I I I often say that working with um, you know, folks when I was working in a therapy practice, people would say, like, well, I can't feel that. I'm not allowed to feel that. Or how can I I remember working with clients and you know, they'd be feeling a grief around the loss of someone, but they'd be like, Well, I'm not close enough to feel that. I can't feel that. And I'd be like, who is granting permission for what is actually already happening in your body? You are already feeling it. And by denying the feeling, we deny the wisdom. By the by denying the feeling, we um take away our ability to arrive in the present. And so I think feeling is this profound portal into our present time. It's a profound portal towards growth and maturation. We don't grow without feeling. We spend our lives in all these ways of stifling, suppressing, moving around, coping with, you know, that's when we talk about embodiment, it's like you can spend your whole life trying to suppress something that is is asking to be felt that would actually change you and free you if you were to feel it. Um, so I think feeling is really the the core thing. I feel like that's part of my like ministry in this life, is to like, we have to feel, but but when I say that, I'm also not saying you individually, you better get better at feeling. Feel all that stuff. Because we need support to feel. Sometimes you need somebody to hold your hand. Sometimes you need somebody to hug you. Sometimes you just need somebody to bear witness. Right? We need resource, we need support, we need community and relationship to feel. So I, you know, I think the one thing I'm holding on to is like let this be an invitation, not only to kind of add feeling to our checklist of things to do, but to make it something that we prioritize in our lives and in our relationships because it is so necessary, I think, for us. And it's always necessary, you know. I feel like all these things we talk about in the book, it's like these are things that are always necessary. And I think in this time, they become more and more and more important and harder and harder and harder to do, and we get more and more incentivized away from it. So I think feeling is the first part, and you know, in the in the witnessing and seeing and allowing ourselves to be who we are, I just feel in the journey of that. I think there's something you know, you could internalize a lot of stuff in this world, all the stories and all the rankings, you know, the taxonomy of human beings, who's good, who's but who's on the top, who's on the bottom. Um but to be actually present, to allow yourself to be real, honest, authentic yourself, consistently, there's something so liberating in that, and it is completely dangerous too. Um and I feel very choiceful. I'm like, okay, you can see me, you can't see me, but there's a choice there, but I also live my life as much as I can and with the support of you know, all the resources me. I try to live dangerously authentic. And I find that fewer people, you know, it's it's it's it's being willing to be seen by the ones that are ready. I mean, y'all know this. It's like when you're really yourself, maybe not everybody's gonna be like, oh, you're my favorite, you know, because you're not spending all your time shape shifting for everybody, you know?

SPEAKER_05

Preach about y'all felt that one.

SPEAKER_02

Okay, yeah. When we spend our time shape shifting, we get a lot of encouragement from people like, oh, I see you, oh, I love you, you're my favorite. You know, but but then you're tired. You get home and you're like, well, dang, I was 10 people today. And the actual me feels really, really tired and unseen. I'm lonely still. But I think there's something about being dangerously as as much as you can authentic. Maybe a few people are gonna see you. Maybe a few people will be like, oh, okay. Maybe it's it's fewer than that. But there's some, but I I feel like the the loneliness, the rather the companionship, the accompaniment that gets met when you actually allow yourself to be authentic. It's relative. The less you are yourself, the less you're gonna be satisfied with connection with other human beings. Is it's a it's like math.

SPEAKER_00

Ah not the intimacy math. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I love intimacy math.

SPEAKER_00

Ooh, well, I I love what you just said, this dangerously authentic, and because the danger of this is a two-edged sword, and now something's coming up in me that it wasn't planned, but I'm gonna go there. But you know, when I think about who I am now, you know where I'm going, don't you? You know where I'm going, Maya. When I think about who I am now, it's hard for me to imagine becoming who I am now without our friendship and without the authenticity that you pulled forth in me. That you were like, I'm not interested in the performance of you. I'm not interested in you pleasing me, I'm not interested in you doing the thing you do to everyone. I'm just, are you there? Yeah and can you orient towards me being here? And no one had really quite asked me that in my life. You know, people are always like, I don't know, I either like how you are or you know, you're kind of fake. I'm gonna go the other way, right? Because I was like, I don't know how to be, I don't know how to be something that isn't pleasing to the people in front of me because it would be safe, unsafe, right? I will get hurt physically, I will get hurt, I will get rejected. Like everything I know about showing who I am is unsafe. And I want to point to something because you make this sophisticated, gorgeous thread of what it means to not be able to feel and not be authentic, and then how that becomes the danger that leads into oppression and oppressive society, oppressive systems. It's like all these people causing so much harm can't feel and are not allowed to. You have this section in remapping relationships about what it does to the oppressor. It said, Can I just read this to you? Can I read your whole book to you? Because it's all there was a danger in expressing emotion too, because of what might what it might do to those training to be the oppressor. Hearing the familiar and heart-rending cry of a human in pain who could threaten to interrupt the project of making socially acceptable that which was inhumane. Closing off their ears and hearts to such a sound meant learning to extinguish their empathy, to teach a narrow compassion to their children, and to find a tenuous, anxious safety in pretending that the human they hurt was a monster. And it's not a lie for me to say that I there's a monster in me, and there's a goddess, there's something else. And if I deny the monster, if I deny the training to be monster, to be an American, to be a superpower, to be, you know, the strong bitch bass, blah, blah, blah. You know what? Whatever, if I deny all that, right, then I I'm not whole. I haven't worked on it. I have to feel into the part of me that wants to oppress or that wants to push away or that wants to not feel. I want to ask how you learned that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. I just want to tell you the truth. Yeah, tell me the truth about it. You know, there's something about the mon monsters in us, or that we can be, that they're they're graspy, you know? Yeah. They're like unsure, they are um deluded in some way. I think that though that monster in us always ends up being a kind of unmet need. And yeah, and it's like we also believe that that need cannot be met. I think that's where the delusion comes in, is that we're like, that need cannot be met. And so therefore, I will do, you know, all of these things. Um where did I learn that? I don't know. You know, I try to think about this because I don't think you really learn things on your own, but I do feel that there's like a part of me that. It kind of there were choice points growing up where I felt like I could internalize this ranking and either spend my life grasping and feeling like I hated myself and I'm gonna grasp and grasp and grasp and try to become approximate to whatever power might be. Um and then there was a part of me, I don't know where it came from, but it just feel like there was a part of me that was like, God made you and you're alright, and you're complex and you're on this journey and you're not perfect, and nobody is, and you just gotta wrestle with that stuff, you just gotta work with it. And you're, you know, we talk about, I think we're what we're calling the monster, and some ways can also become that part of us that is it's like the the young needs that didn't get met too, can also, when we become adults and when we have certain kinds of power, can become what we might call monstrous, yes, you know, or those pain parts, if unaddressed, they can become what we might call monstrous.

SPEAKER_00

It's like terrible to becomes terrible you, yeah, becomes terrible lifetime.

SPEAKER_02

It becomes terrible my whole life and generations after me, yeah. Um but I think acceptance, you know, it's like we really wanna. I broke up a long time ago with being good. Yeah, and that really just like calmed me down.

SPEAKER_00

Y'all, can we just take a moment on that? Can y'all is anybody here not not done that yet? Not broken up with being good? Is anybody here out here striving like I'm gonna be good? Can you just let it go? You're gonna be human. Because we're not bad if we're not good, we're something else.

SPEAKER_02

You're something else. You're alive, you're a process. Y'all aren't good. I'm not good. Adrian's not good. Never, but just uh just a process, but that relief of like, oh, I'm not gonna be good. And maybe there are people that want me to be good and are trying to make me good, but I'm actually not that, and I I release that on my life, and I have to be a process, I have to learn, I have to be life learning what it is to be in this body, learning what it is to be in this life. I can't be blocking all my learning all the time. I have to be alive to this life, and I'm not good, but I'm not bad, you know?

SPEAKER_00

I mean, I think you're awesome, right? But only because I know that you like I can bring you my whole self, and you got a whole self to meet me, right? And I think in this moment, this political moment, you write about this really beautifully also. It's so politically divided, right? And we're being encouraged to constantly be dividing further and further and further and saying, they're bad, we're good. That's their perspective, this is ours. And I find that the move inside of that is our we is constantly shrinking. And so you have this counter offer, counter move and the chapter expanding the we, which I love because the idea that we can um or that we're gonna somehow separate out until we just get the good people who are correct on every single issue and only do things and never cause anyone any harm. The three people that live there are gonna be in this beautiful commune that's green and everyone has a garden, and everyone else is gonna be in a shitty apocalyptic world or imprisoned or enslaved or something horrible, right? Or victims of genocide, or right? It's like once someone's on the they we'll allow almost anything to happen to them. So we have to reclaim and retrieve folks, yeah, right? So you say a few things about this. One of them is we are a part of each other. So it's not just that it's like reclaiming all the parts of ourselves, but it's also recognizing like each of us is also part of everyone else. Like this is an organism, humans are an organism. You talk about fixing is just another way of not feeling, right? Like trying to fix all these other people in the world is a way that we don't actually feel our ourselves.

SPEAKER_02

Can I say something?

SPEAKER_00

You can say anything, babes. You're a night.

SPEAKER_02

I want to say something about the expanding our we part because that was a really complex piece to write. Because I don't want to um ignore the fact that part of expanding our we means we have to make sure that people have the resources that they need. There's things that we're gonna have to give up and do differently and not live the same way. It's not just about, oh, I'm related to you and it's nice, and oh, I love you, and let's hold hands and sing songs together. But um our we has to show up in our practice, it has to show up in how our resources are distributed. Expanding our we is uh as a practice of restructuring how we account for each other, how we care for each other. So I want to say that piece about expanding our we. Um, but I do think there's this. I think the other complex thing I want to say about it is that I'm also not expecting everybody to reach across for everybody. I think you is it's like what's the reach that is a reach for you? You know, where's the place places you can be open? I'm not saying you gotta reach all the way, I'm about to reach all the way over.

SPEAKER_00

I need to go to the police. I need to go to the cake meeting, right?

SPEAKER_02

Right. And some people do that. Some people do. I guess it has yeah, but that's not what I'm necessarily saying. I'm saying that this is a lot of these things in the book that I'm talking about. I'm like, can we have an orientation to um safety, to community, to weeness that reaches for people and reaches for people that we see are not being reached for, um, that does the work we talk about and you've talked about so much of repair, which is also the work of changing. I hate to break it to all of us and myself all the time. I'm like, we don't get to actually have conflict without changing. It's got to change you. I don't care what side, quote unquote, you're on, it has to transform you. And I I think that is also the part of becoming our we, softening our edges, softening our sense of who we are, and continuing to become who we are called to be so that we are different the next day. So expanding our we requires us to be different. But the I think the the training and the shaping and uh the the carcerality that I think is so trained into us is breaking us apart. It's breaking us apart and goodness. We talked about rightness is the other one. Wanting to be so right that we're I'm gonna be right and alone. I'm be right and alone, and I'm gonna be right, and our movements aren't gonna have no power, but I'm gonna be right. Let me tell you something, y'all. We gotta move with more curiosity. I hate to be so didactic, but I really do feel this. Moving with more curiosity, more humility, more willingness to change and transform, softer bellies with each other. Safety, yes, safety is important externally, and and there is a safety to cultivate that begins in your belly. There's a safety to cultivate that begins in your belly that allows you to connect and communicate in a way with people, even if there is, and I'm not saying all the difference in the world, but some difference. But there's something in your belly that says, I'm not going to be taken down by wherever this person is because I know who who I am. I know what this life is about. I know what I have what I have organized my life around. And that is powerful. It's so powerful it can be felt. So it's like care, bear Sarah. I think about that all the time with center. And like you just, ah, right? So I can relate to a lot of people. Me, I can relate to, I can relate to everyone, but I can relate to a lot of people because I have inside of me in my belly a thing that I cultivate, that I try to build my life around, is that that sense of power that then can multiply with somebody else's power, then can be curious, can grow and expand, and can also inspire and move and actually organize other people. So I I think that's also part of expanding our we, the safety that we create with each other, but the safety that is untouchable by external circumstances. There is a safety there.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. Sorry. No, that's better than anything I was asking.

SPEAKER_02

So and hi, I'm so glad you're here.

SPEAKER_00

So she's like, look at my dress. No, not everyone. Um so I was reading this book and feeling the heartbreak as one of the tributaries, or maybe many of the tributaries that was flowing through the pages. There was heartbreak from movement spaces. There was a real clarity that many of us are heartbroken at home and heartbroken at school, and and something betrays us in the world before we become adult. And then as adults, many of us become social justice workers because we're like, I'm gonna fix that thing that hurt me. And then you go into movement space and you're like, I'm in the movement, and we care about being free and everybody being themselves, and say, you know, we're gonna just gonna liberate everybody and we're gonna be black, queer, we're everything. It's gonna be so dope. And we look good, smell good. It's I love the movement, right? This is how I entered movement. I don't know about y'all. And then you get politicized, and it's like we are we're gonna, there's something beyond our lifetimes that we're fighting for, and also there's something we're gonna get right now, and it feels like we're all on the same page, you know, there's that moment. Yay, we're young, so then you get into it, and movement turns out to be full of humans and people who have never learned how to have conflict, who have never learned how to be themselves, who have never experienced any of the things we're fighting for. And I think what you're saying in this book is that we have to keep believing in our capacity to change after so much betrayal. And so I want to ask you, how do we return, retrieve, repair our relationship to what movement can be or what we can be? Like how do we heal that?

SPEAKER_02

Oh, I don't have the answer to that, but I'm gonna say some words. I wish I did. Um, I I have some things. Um Has anybody ever had their heart broken by the world? Yeah. That was only a few people, so I'm actually quite.

SPEAKER_00

Has anybody ever had their heart broken?

SPEAKER_02

I was like, well, let me pass the mic around because somebody can just take a moment, okay? Okay. Okay. Yeah, like it's hot in here, so um. And you've had your heart broken by people too, I'm imagining also. Ooh, I just felt that for a minute. We all have a little bit of heartbreak. Um yeah, I think one of the things to what you're saying is like we do come into movement spaces, a lot of times sourcing our wounds for energy, for conviction. Uh-oh. All right, somebody felt it over there. We got a share a man back there. Um we come in and we source our wounds, and we don't even we don't even know it. And again, I'm I'm I'm saying these things, and from one perspective, it almost feels like blame, but it's not. It's just I'm trying to illuminate without it's not blame. I did this. We like source our wounds for energy, and it's almost like we gotta keep opening them. We gotta keep opening it. We gotta keep opening the pain. The pain moves us forward, the pain takes us out into the street, the pain, the pain, the pain. And there's so much, there's so much pain. And it is an incredible motivator. And I often think about what if we sourced our visions. Because when I think about this moment a lot, a lot of the assessment I have is like, I don't know that we have a vision. Like we're not all, and maybe it's just me, and some of y'all are in circles that have it, but I don't feel like we're walking around like y'all know what the world could be like. I saw it. I want to tell you what the world could be like. We're not talking to people from that place. Like I I understand where we are, and if we come together, this is what the world could be like. This is what it could feel like. This is what our our friends could feel, our our families, our institutions, they could feel like this. Right? Somebody said it. Radical imagination. That part is so important. Because just, I mean, just feel into it for a second. The energy that is produced from vision. It's like, whoa, it's like a renewable resource. When we can see just a little bit, and you don't have to have the whole picture figured out. There's a whole lot of people in this room that have a piece of it. They've been working on some part of it that we could work with, that we could learn from. But I do think that that's part, that has to be part of our what moves us forward, are our visions. It is compelling, it moves others, it keeps us creating, creative. That's the whole thing. We gotta create, you know what I mean? It's a time of creation. It may not feel like it, but this is the time of creation. And so I I think about, I don't know what your question was, but this is what I'm saying. I love it.

SPEAKER_00

This is how we always talk. I'm not just here we are.

SPEAKER_02

Um, but it feels so vitally important for me. And I I think around the heartbreak piece is um I just think we don't have enough, we be so serious about what we're doing, and it is so serious, but we have to, we just don't have any spaces to grieve. We don't have any spaces to wail. We don't have any spaces to hold each other. We do that stuff privately or with a couple people we know. We don't take it, we don't take that seriously. That which makes us human. But I need to wail, I need to cry. I need to stomp. I mean, that's why we do somatics work. We work with people. What do we do? We do some weird things with people. I don't want to scare anybody, but we stomp and we cry and we shake all the things that are disallowed in our society. We did we disallow them. No one even had to make a you can't shake weirdly in a room. No one had to make a law about that because we disallow it in ourselves. Yeah, we disallow it in ourselves, and we don't allow ourselves to be human, flesh, wild, weird, strange. I'm really into the strange right now. I'm really into weird.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, just right now.

SPEAKER_02

The subtle shade of Adrian. Um, yeah, more and more. I think I have a name for it. I'm really into the strange, and I think that's the way around and through. But I think the heartbreak has to have a place to metabolize compost change. We have to really do that. We have to do that. Um, because again, we have to change. We think as we are, we're gonna do it. We gotta change. We gotta be in the change. We have to be changed, be in the change, changing, changing, changing. Because what? What Octavia tell us?

unknown

God has changed.

SPEAKER_02

I know y'all know. Look, we in the church, God has changed.

SPEAKER_00

God has changed, all that you touch.

SPEAKER_02

Yes. So I don't, yeah, that's how I'm answering your question.

SPEAKER_00

That's beautiful. You know, I want to hone in on that change moment too, because it doesn't look like what you think it's gonna look like. And I think in the book you you cover that in so many different ways. I recently had a panic attack, which to me makes sense given what's going on in the world right now. Like I'm kind of surprised that I'm not having a panic attack at all times. Yeah, but I had a panic attack, and for years, throughout my 20s, I would have these panic attacks, and I would just lock it down, like no one can see this. And so I came really good. Like at the I I'm like the external, I'm like, I'm great. And inside there's an earthquake happening in my body that I'm containing. And uh recently I had one and I was with an old friend, and I've been doing this work for a long time, and I called her over and I was like, I'm having a panic attack. And she was like, You don't look like having a panic attack, you look great, right? And I was like, take my hand. And then she took my hand and she could feel the tremble that was happening in my body. And then she had me reground, place my feet on the ground, just take a few deep breaths until I could start to feel the tremble get a little wider and then eventually slow down. And then I came out, we had been off in a space. I walked into the main room and I told the people there, I just had a panic attack. I'm good, I'm coming back in. Here's what I think was going on. And it was later that night, I was like, that was the change. And I always thought the change would be to not have a panic attack. Right, right, right, right, right, right. Right? And I was like, no more panic for me. I'm good, right? And instead, it was like the change was I wasn't alone. Come on, right? I didn't feel ashamed. You let it happen. I let it come, I let it happen. I I reflected on what the panic attack was trying to tell me. Like what you said, what do you need me to know? You said that in your book.

unknown

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

You can ask your emotion, what do you need me to know? And I asked, and it told me. And this other question you said, we've never been down this road. Someone told you that, you know, when you were feeling hopeless, we've never been down this road. I was like, I've never did that before. Yeah, I've never done that. I never, I, I never just said, hey, I'm I'm terrified. I'm really terrified. And just by letting it be, I was like, everyone reflected, I'm also terrified, it's fucking scary right now. So let me see if there's a question.

SPEAKER_02

Uh I just feel like that's such an important story, though.

SPEAKER_00

Because that's, yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's such an important story because again, you were like, I'm I I will change when I'm good at this. I'll be good at this panic attack thing, I'll get rid of the panic attack instead of I will change when I reach for connection.

SPEAKER_00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02

When I need it.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. And I always say community is the answer. I always talk about relationship. I know we're interdependent. I wrote shit about it. I know we're know. But one of the aspects of embodiment that is so core to the training that we received is that it's what we do under pressure that tells us whether we've changed or not. And so if we've changed everything on the surface, but under pressure, we revert back to I'm gonna hide, I'm gonna eat the box of Oreos, I'm gonna do the sex, I'm gonna do the sex. I'm gonna do the sex, also do the drugs, you know, whatever, right? Do the things we do that we learned very young to cope and cover. And under pressure, I was like, this is pressure. And I did something different, and then was able to be celebrated in that by people who know what it means to me, right? And I felt that throughout the book that was like, oh, I didn't stop the world from being the world. And I didn't stop me from being me. But I let myself be more, more real, more in the moment. You have a whole section on authenticity in the book. And I'll okay, two things. There's a flexi flex. So all of us have heard this quote from Prentice Hempel. I hope boundaries are the distance at which I can love you, Emmy. That's right, okay. Simultaneously, we be loving, we be loving, right? Now, somehow in this book, that quote is right in the center of the book. Like if you accidentally open up the middle of the book, that is the quote that you're gonna find. And I was like, I don't know if you did it on purpose, I don't know if God did that, but I love that because it's so core, right? Boundaries allow me to open in that way. I wouldn't have said that thing about the panic attack to just anybody. I've learned discernment. I learned who I can share and trust to not use it against me, right? Authenticity is also part of that, right? The boundaries are come from an authentic place. Where you're like, no, yeah, no is the authentic answer, or not here, or further away, or not now. And then and then you can be like, yeah, yeah, I'm fucking shaking, you know. And then I had a good night, also. I want to say that part that I came out and then I was like, okay, that happened. I felt it on behalf of the whole world. Another factor, not to go too far down this, but later I found out that something horrific had happened in the world during that time at that moment, right? I didn't know that, and I still don't know what the connection is, but I believe in tectonic plates, you know? I believe that sh stuff is shifting. I believe in the force, I believe in all that connection, right? I think the question I actually want to ask you is about the authenticity piece and how boundaries have allowed you to become. The authentic Prentice Hempel that we are learning from in this book, right? Because you you took the risk to teach us, and I want to understand a little bit about how boundaries allowed that. Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Um, I'm gonna answer that, but I'm gonna start somewhere else, which is that um you know, I think the exploration that I've been in, I feel like we've been in, is just how relationships are the reality. That's just the reality is relationships, and then we get shaped to deny, ignore, um, not be responsible for what we are in relationship to. But relationships are actually the reality. Um, so for example, whatever you ate tonight, touched by many hands, grown by many hands, shipped here by many people. There, as I'm learning from Kasha, their microbiome hopefully is on the food if they didn't bleach it to death. You are you are ingesting the chain of where that food was, where it began, its history into your own body. Because relationship is the reality. So we are in relationship with the trees outside. I know New York is kind of there's like one scraggly tree out there, but that tree is doing a lot of work for us right now. Um, but we are in relationship. That is the actual reality. Boundaries then are boundaries are let me put it this way. Um, a lot of us get shaped in particular ways around relationship. We can be shaped to be extractive in relationship, to be unconscious to others and their needs and how we are interrelated. We can say, my life, you know, is the life that matters. Or we can be shaped so that we are almost constantly uh supporting others' lives, you know, and that's what we do, and we have to leave our own bodies and own feeling in order to do that.

SPEAKER_05

That's what gives us meaning.

SPEAKER_02

It's what gives us meaning, it's how we know who we are, but we might lose access to our own centers and bodies for decades, for lifetimes. So when I talk about boundaries, I'm saying boundaries are the shape of our relationships. They are being authentic and choiceful in relationships, communicative, relational about what those things are is listening to our bodies and saying, Oh, in this way, I am still able to feel. When our relationship is this way, I can still feel and be present. Life can still move through me. I can be in a loving space with myself. I have some love to give to you or to others, but boundaries are simply the shape of relationships. We often take shapes that we learned at some other time and we try to just transpose them onto the relationships that we have now. This is how I learned how we do love. I attend to all your needs, or I ignore all your needs, or whatever mix of that. And we just take that template everywhere. Yeah, but we're not awake. We're not awake to how we are building relationships, and then we do all kinds of things to cope with it, or we're resentful, or we're mad, or we have to dissociate all the time, or all the things that we do. And I'm saying boundaries are just the texture of your relationship, they're how we communicate the bounds of this relationship because this relationship is different than that relationship, is different than that relationship. And so that to me is what uh boundaries are about. It's about being willing to create relationship from your from a centered body. And in a way, being unwilling to compromise that for the sake of a make-believe thing that you're creating, but to say, oh, relationships should allow for my center and for the other center. And we can actually negotiate how that works based on who we are. So I think that's that's how boundaries to me generate and are, they come from a place of authenticity, actual relationship.

SPEAKER_00

Something that you speak about in the book, you know, when you posted that quote, it was because of a process you had been in with your dad, or you had taken a long estrangement, basically, long break, and then you went and sat down and ate with him. And at some point in the book, you asked the question what would have been possible in my father if he had been held differently as a kid. And to me, like that was like the most authentic. It was like the thing that happens when you're like, I took the space, I created the container, I changed the relationship to one where I could be there. But once I was in that place and I was safe and I had this space that I could be, then I could see that my dad was a child who was not held. Right. And I with so many people in my own life, I look at that, I'm like, oh, like I'm angry with you because I'm too close and up in it, and I don't feel like there's any room to And I'm still trying to get something. I'm still trying to get something from you, whether it's space or love or the thing you're never gonna give me, because that's not in you. No one gave it to you. I might be able to actually give it back to you someday, but not until something changes. And there's a no, right? That is sacred, like it's a holy act, it's a prayer.

SPEAKER_02

And again, it's like the risk of it is that it will change you.

SPEAKER_00

And you're willing to walk away.

SPEAKER_02

That's why we don't have boundaries or keep boundaries, is because we know that to do so changes us. It like gives you that funny feeling in your gut, or that like, uh, but what if I just call them and then I'll be okay, you know, I'll get rid of that feeling that I have. But the boundary actually changes you because it's it's it's a vulnerable move of showing who you are and what you long for.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, we're gonna keep talking for the rest of our lives, you and me. Okay? Yes. And even about this book, I have about 18 more hours that I need to um process. And look at my friend Angel here. Angel, look at sharp. All your people look sharp. This whole row is helpful Angel people. Um that's true. But we have questions from the audience. I'm gonna I'm gonna read these and we'll see what happens. Yeah. I've got, hold on, one, two, three, four. Okay. Okay. Lori M asks.

SPEAKER_02

Hi, Lori.

SPEAKER_00

What is needed?

SPEAKER_02

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I know, as Lori are you here. What is needed to create a shared vision of a future we don't remember? What is needed to create a shared vision of a future we don't remember?

SPEAKER_02

In the book, I talk about um, I mean, the first chapter is on visioning, and I talk about Harriet Tubman, who I'm wearing right here tonight.

SPEAKER_00

Um You said you're wearing Harriet Tubman tonight? I am. I just want to make sure your people heard you.

SPEAKER_02

I'm wearing Harriet Tubman tonight, yes. Um, but I was just, I've been always struck my whole life by her ability to see, I think what I say in the book, to see around reality, to see underneath and to the side and through the cracks and around it. She saw through the reality that people are like, this is reality, this is the way things are. Not only that, it's violently enforced. This is so real that it's by actually, you know, it's so unreal that it's violently enforced. But she saw around it. She was like, okay, yeah, yeah. Almost total reality. I'm gonna move that out the way. And I'm gonna see something else. I'm gonna see in the places you're not looking. I'm gonna see in the places I I feel long in. I'm gonna see in I'm gonna see in friendship. So I I just feel like there's a way of looking, and this is what I mean by that strangeness that I'm really curious about right now. I want to be very strange to this world, you know, to be able to look in between and underneath and around. And I think that's one part, one place we have to begin. Listening to dreams, the unconscious, the not seen, the not yet, the possible, the ridiculous. I'm really um curious about more of us to spend more time in that because we'd be so practical. And me, I'm the number one. I'm so practical and pragmatic, y'all. I'd be like, mm-mm, doesn't work. Cannot compute. Did do it. Right. But getting into the space, I think, is so, so important. And I I think we're just what I really believe is that there's a lot for us to be reactive to. We all know this, and we have to steal away, like baroons have stolen away, to have spaces to to dream. Because if if the people who I call transformational characters, the people that are activating in this moment to do to change themselves, to change conditions, we will be reactive because the the the rug is being swept out. We're we're seeing the basis of what's possible. There's so much that is being stripped and taken away. There's so much risk and threat and not enough. And we have to steal away. We have to steal away in moments to dream. Not only to dream about how we respond to what's been taken, but dream, look in the crevices and the corners of what's being missed. I think about all the time, all the things that are being privatized and uh monetized and commodified, including our attention. And like a lot of the things that are are being packaged to us, don't, it's like they've they're they have no worth really in the world. Things I'm supposed to be, I'm supposed to wear, I'm supposed to do. And like when I hold it up, I'm like, oh, this is nothing. There's nothing here. What is life and what is living is so rich, we're often not paying attention to the world outside. The the you know, I'm my my child right now is really interested in the process of decomposition right now. And we're like in this whole thing of like, where did the deer go when the deer died? What happened to the deer's body? What have she said? What happened to the deer's brown skin? What happened? And we're just like in the wonder of the world, in the awe of the world, and we've forgotten not all of us, obviously, but we've forgotten the wonder of the world. This world is magnificent. And I think if we start to remember and cultivate that in our pull away with each other, like we pull away sometimes, like I pull away with the team that I work with, they pull away and and we vision because it's not far. It's not far. What's really important is not far. Um, but we have to make room for that. And I know the reactivity is so compelling and needed in sometimes. But what center gives, what stealing away gives, what that path of maroonage gives, those secret hideaways, those portals, those spaces of opening is so important. And I know this talked a lot, so we're not gonna get to all these questions, but I just had to say We are.

SPEAKER_00

So I also want to say, I noticed I'm wearing Octavia also, and you bring her up in the work, you talk about the parables, we're in 2024. We talk about vision, go read those books. Um, I just had this little vision that was like so sweet in my mind, which is like imagining if when we went places, instead of being like, Oh, you're wearing Gucci, oh, you're wearing Fenty, you're wearing it, it'd be like, I'm wearing Harriet today, I'm rocking Octavia right now, I'm giving a little Baldwin energy, you know, and it's just like you rock in it. You're always rocking a little Baldwin energy, even when you got a Harriet necklace on, you know. So I anyway, vision. Okay, what role does spirit, God, universe, source play in being fully embodied in ourselves?

SPEAKER_02

It's funny because it's a question I'm always I've always been really private about, especially because I've been in so many serious movement spaces. We don't be talking about God and stuff. Um some of y'all are like, uh-huh, and we don't talk about God. We don't do that. That's not serious.

SPEAKER_00

Keep your keep your hearts open. The wisdom's coming to you.

SPEAKER_02

I I don't know. Um you know, I I try not to begin there with embodiment because I think there's such an awe in in feeling, beginning to feel, allowing feeling, getting curious about all those sensations, everything that's happening in your body. There's something really magical about that, about letting yourself be alive and not so I gotta be a machine, I gotta be the best robot me that I can be, instead of let me get, hey girl, hey, this is God's calling, right? God's calling. But I found as I've done embodiment practice, as I've actually um allowed myself to feel that is the most, that is the closest I've ever felt to spirit, to God, to everything that we talk about. And I realized that, you know, I talk about this all the time, and I heard when I was growing up, people say the body is a temple, you know, and I'd be like, I don't really know what that means. But the more that I am with and allow the wildness and the beauty of my body, the more the message is so clear for me. I'm like, oh, this is this portal, this place, this configuration of cells and tissues and flesh and stardust. It is the portal to the absolute infinite all it really is.

unknown

It really is.

SPEAKER_02

We were just talking about this the other day that there's like the what we can feel, that portal, it's like I can't, as an embodiment teacher or whatever, or even as writers, we can't take you there. We can't take nobody there. I can't say, okay, and if you do step one, step two, step three, you're gonna be embodied and you're gonna feel magic, and you know, it's gonna be like glitter. And I I I can't do that. I could just keep trying to point in the direction of a thing that is unnamable, yeah, that no language can touch, that I can't speak to. I just kept saying, Oh, try a little over here, try a little over there, try, and then one day you will realize that it is never about instruction, it is always about allowing. When I had that, when I was like, oh, all these instructions are just like stay on the path, stay in the question, fall open, stay there, and then you do, and you're like, whoa, that's the best thing. But no one can take you there. But when you are there, you can connect to all. And when you are there, you are no longer confused about your power. You are no longer confused about our power. That place I find less confusion about that. I find like, oh right. What I do, what I'm here to offer, my liveness, what is honest. It doesn't mean in my lifetime we're all gonna get there together, but wow, what a place to live from. What a place to dwell in is that. So again, don't know what the question was, but that was the answer that I had.

SPEAKER_00

Um that piece, I think there's something that I want to reflect to you, which is also something I generally keep private, but I really experience God in people. I really experience God in other people. And I've really been noticing that, you know, a few years ago we were in this conversation about God, and I really see God in you. And it's trying to be friends with someone when you like see God in them is always fun.

SPEAKER_02

You know, it's like You're like, what are we gonna talk about today?

SPEAKER_00

So I slept with God. Um like literally, but it's and you're not the only person I see God in, right? And the more awe I allow, the more I more people I can see God in, if that makes sense. It's like the more soft I get, the more I'm like, oh, it's all that, you know. Um and I think there's something about how you be, right? That like you are so coherent on these pages. You are so thank God, it's so thank God. It flows, right? It's like a clear, clear channel. It feels like so trustworthy. And I think that that's there's something holy in it that you don't have to believe in God to receive the holiness of it. And I I don't know how you did that, but I really want to say you it's so skillful because I've been noticing this. I keep asking people like why they tune into certain teachers. And it's almost never what they say. And it's almost always how they are and how they make you feel to be around them. And how it feels to be around you is immediately to drop further into the dirt, which you talk about putting your hands in the dirt, you talk about composting, you talk about really a relationship with the earth. This isn't one of the questions that was sent up, so we don't have to ask it, but you know, someday I would like to have people hear you talk about your relationship with the earth and how that flowed into these pages because it it feels like a dirt book. You know what I mean? It feels like you know, yeah, it feels like composted soil. Like it's like you took it all and you did that. Okay, so okay, all right, keep going. Do you can you talk about that for a moment?

unknown

Of course.

SPEAKER_00

I don't know what our time is. I our time is ours.

SPEAKER_02

Right. Um you know, I think always I had this like, I don't know if this happens to all of us, but like the whisper. It felt like, you know, everything outside would just be like ps. Hey, look at me real fast. And you look and be like, whoa, okay. But I didn't have a kind of practice of it, but it was always like a ps, you know, see me. And I I don't think until my relationship with Kasha that I I I would have moments where she would go, you know, I'd be so like in my stuff and stories and busyness, and she would go, look at that. Look at that flower. Look at that butterfly that just went by. And I would be like, I'm trying to tell you a story right now. You keep interrupting me with like butterflies and stuff. I was. No, yeah, and then I realized what was happening. She was always like pointing me back to the path, pointing me back to the path. And you know, years ago, it's so weird now, you know, because you like reference, you're like years ago, I posted on social media something that I want to share now. Like you can like reference it like an article, but years ago.

SPEAKER_00

It's awkward, but that's our reality now. I know. Years ago, I made a you mentioned Baldwin being like on Facebook.

SPEAKER_02

I said that makes it so embarrassing.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, but it is what it is.

SPEAKER_02

That's so embarrassing. No. I can't imagine that. Um but I, you know, I I was just like, if if you knew there was as much God in the sky as there is under your feet, you would dance outside a lot more. And I realize that about the world. It's like we the fact that we can we can be in places of worship and they never take you outside, or never mention outside, or never name a tree, or never tell you what medicine is there, or what poison is there. I get so confused. What? I'm like, did God not create this? Did God not create all of this? This we have forgotten how to look on the creation with wonder and awe and beauty, reverence. So, you know, I think it was that pointing back that I was like, oh, this is where I belong. Oh, this honors creation and and the all. Oh, who am I? What is a human? How can I imagine myself civilized if I don't listen here? My civilization is for somebody else, for some productivity that will never materialize in my life, but I have learned to look away from the aliveness of the world. So I just like being outside.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you do. Yeah, and it's too outside all the time. I want y'all to know that when I met Pete. They were a a city dweller. That's how I experienced you. I felt you that way. You lived in Oakland. It was like I thought of you as a I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01

But I'm not from a city city.

SPEAKER_00

I didn't know. It took time. Then I had to learn you were a country boy, a country human person, Texan, right? Then I saw you in Hawaii, and I was like, okay, you kind of like being outside a lot. Like you keep making us go stand out in the dirt stuff. Um and then you moved to North Carolina, and I was like, the first time I came to see you, you're like, here's the huge garden that we have planted. I mean, it really was a transformation. That's like Kasha is such an incredible spiritual teacher as well, and makes it feel very accessible. Y'all make it feel like, oh, we could do this. This could be life. So it is life. It is life. I mean, for y'all now, it really is life, right? And then I feel like, you know, our friend Courtney came and put an herb garden in for me because I was like, I want to know how to do garden, you know. I was been talking about it. Um, I would like to know how to take care of one living thing, right? And now I have a vibrant herb garden that I'm like going out and like of my own volition.

SPEAKER_02

And there's so much complexity there. So much toxic. Things live and die. There's hard choices to make, there's abundance, there's pests, and I didn't even know.

SPEAKER_00

There's so much, like, as soon as you put a seed, it's like, I didn't know you were gonna give me that much basil. I don't know how to do anything with this much basil.

SPEAKER_01

You become generous. Yes. That's the lesson of that much basil.

SPEAKER_00

But it also makes me like if I feel angry about the world, a lot of it is from that. That I'm like, wait, everything is abundant, like on this level, like just me by myself can produce more food than I could ever eat. Why is anyone hungry? Why? Why is anyone homeless? We can build, we can grow up. There's so much, right? And as soon as you tune into the earth, the the it just flips it. It's like, oh, we live on an abundant earth, so we're just confused. That's it. And we can feel the abundance of the earth. And and then you don't have to believe in God to you don't have to believe in anything but what you can actually feel, but you have to be able to feel it. So this question. I'm trying to get there. We're gonna do it. Ah, and getting to the question. It doesn't have a name on it, but I suspect I know who it is, but I'm not gonna say because they didn't put a name on it. It says, I feel ready to feel more.

SPEAKER_02

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00

What do you suggest as first steps?

SPEAKER_02

I heard some somebody's like um first steps is I mean really the step is listening. It's listening to yourself and listening to the point that you can surprise yourself. Like we'd be listening, like, okay, I'm listening. All right, ain't nothing happening. But I mean, listen with the kind of attention that allows something to emerge. And that is the first step. So any body scan practice, any censoring practice, really the practice underneath it all is learning to listen to what you have suppressed. Because you don't even know how you learn to suppress, you learn how to suppress it based on what your parents are doing, um, what people at school were doing, what made you cool, um, what made you feel safe. You learn, you practice all these ways of suppressing and compartmentalizing and tightening and vacating. And so the first step is wide listening, soft listening, and the allowance of what comes for it to come. And that can be really scary. So you might want to do that with somebody. If that feels safe for you, you might want to do that with somebody, somebody that I think works with other people. Like me, I work with people, and you know, I was working with someone recently, and they were like, at the end of the session, they said, Can you just tell me that that was okay? That you don't feel worried about being with me. Right. And so I was like, I feel like I'm rejoicing. I'm I'm witnessing life. I'm rejoicing at what has come through you, what wants to be expressed through you. So um sometimes we need to be with people that we might call practitioners, but really those are people that have been there enough or done it enough so that they know how to rejoice at the sight of life. And their own stories are known enough so that they can stay present with you. So that might be necessary in order to be with that listening and allow the strange to come out of us because we're a lot stranger than we know.

SPEAKER_00

We are. When people ask me this question from now on, I'm gonna give them this. I just want you to know I'm gonna give them this book because this is the answer to this is one of the answers really it is, of how to feel, and it talks so many ways in. There's one example you give that I just want to share with people, which has been a game changer. I had a a serious loss last year. And um I made a playlist that makes me think of this person, and I know it's gonna make me cry. Whitney's on there, didn't we almost have it all? Right? And I know if I put it on, I've got before five minutes have passed, I will be ugly crying, and that's what I need to do, right? And and so I want to suggest that because I loved you talked about it in here as a practice that you used, and I'm like, music, culture, you know, ritual, right? These things they exist for a reason. Our peoples, before any colonization happened, all of our peoples have rituals for being with the earth and being with our feelings and being with each other and being with change. Um, and that practice now, music to me is like one of the quickest ways in, whether I'm singing my own songs or listening to Whitney or putting on some somebody I need to dance. Something my friend was someone I went dancing and partying with. So it's like there's certain stuff that I'll put on Janice all for you, and that will be my ugly cry song. Cause I'm like, remember how good we danced to that? Like we were the best that ever danced to it, right? So it's also like letting letting those cultural artifacts touch you. And the question that's next, I think is connected to this. It's connected, it's connected. I know, baby. See, I wouldn't set you up like that. What rituals do we need to transmute our collective heartbreak?

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah?

SPEAKER_02

Um, I do have an answer for that or some thoughts. Yeah. Uh, but really, I'm like, let's uh some of y'all are already creating some of that, um, but we need more of it. I do think we need circles for grief, yes, which are also circles for love, which are also circles for what is. Um we need spaces to process where where it is, you don't have to do it, but where it is welcomed to feel those places of loss that you have either been unwilling to feel or unresourced to feel, or both. I think we need circles of grieving which you know can often turn into places of immense love and overflowing of love. Um I think we need that. And you talked about this thing that I often kind of harp on is like, you know, it's not that we aren't creating culture, and there are artists in this room that are creating for us, that are channeling for us. It's not that we're not creating culture, it's that often our culture has it's been intercepted in a way where the practice of it doesn't get to um apply to the need of the community, where it's intercepted for someone else's gain and someone else's intention, and it doesn't actually get to serve. So our music doesn't get to serve our collective grief or our collective love. Our music doesn't get to serve our repair or the cultivation of our love. Our music is intercepted so that it can respond to the profit margin, and this got somebody hype last year, so we're gonna keep getting hyper and hyper and hyper. Which we need that, but also we need art and creation that responds to the moment because I'm a little nervous how how woo I'm about to sound, but I know I'm in I'm in woo company, okay. Come on over. But I think often about how we've given over the world, and I'm not saying we gave it over voluntarily, but it is in the hands of those who um, you know, this some of y'all may have heard me talk about this, but this profit margin always, always up, up, up, up, up, more, more, more, more. And the the rhythmic nature of of reality is forgotten. Things ebb and flow. We exert and rest. You know, we are it's waves that move through us, and we're always more. I gotta do more, produce more, make more, oh, more, more, more, more, more. It's rhythmless.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

It's rhythm.

SPEAKER_02

There's no rhythm in that. We need rhythm. The reason why we can listen to music and it moves stuff through us, it dislodges something just by the way the music sounds. The thing you thought you could hold on to, the right, like I wrote in the book, the right sade note or hit, and you're like, oh, I can't hold on to that no more. It just, I just came, it came out, I had to cry it out. Whatever it is, you can't hold on to it no more just because of the way that it moves through you. So we need creation that is connected to the actual needs of community, the needs of us. And there, again, there are people that are doing that, and we need more. It needs to be. I know what we're inside of, too. So I I get all of that, but to connect up everything that we already do to the purpose. It's not that we don't know how to do it, it's that it's disconnected, and it it there's this something that comes in and intercepts it from its purpose and it's its work in the world. So I think everything that we do culturally, food, dance, music, visual art, jewelry making, all of it, it needs to be connected to the purpose, what our community needs.

SPEAKER_00

Perfect. Perfect, as you know. So uh I'm gonna ask one final question. We can keep it short, and then I want to have you read one more short excerpt from the book on courage. Okay. So you and Kasha started a project called the Embodiment Institute.

SPEAKER_02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, that's what it says. And I wanted to ask you, we're so excited it exists.

SPEAKER_02

You're on the advisory board.

SPEAKER_00

I'm on the advisory board, so I'm a little biased, but I do think it's one of the most important things to exist. And I wanted to ask you a little bit about how it connects to this work. Like, is it a way that's bringing the work into the world? Are is there a way to practice with that? Like what you know, what does the embodiment institute have to do with what it takes to heal?

SPEAKER_02

Thank you. Um, yeah, essentially it's our kind of community of practice. It was like we were talking about who are the people that are trying to be awakened in this moment, trying to show up, trying to do their work, trying to do work in the world. We're talking to y'all. We're not talking to the people that got it figured out, that know how to do it already, that are perfect at it. We're talking to everybody that's trying. Let this be uh a movement and a world filled with people that are trying. And so um the embodiment institute is really the place where we practice developing, I mean, we can call it healing, transformation, developing these embodied emotional and relational skills that we feel like we need for this time and really all time. And, you know, we train together, we have online practice space where we convene together, and we're just trying to figure out this question of authenticity, how to be real with each other, how to be committed to practice, how to stay on the path, how to support each other and accountability. And, you know, this book is written for those transformational characters, those people that are trying. This is sort of like me saying, Hey, trying to sit alongside you and go, I know this is hard. I can't do it for you, I can't do it for anybody else but me, but I'm right here next to you. And that's what the book is about, and to talk about what it is that we're practicing in this book. But the embodiment institute is a place where we're act actually practicing, and our hope is we have a vibrant online community space. Our hope is that people also begin to self-organize and place, that it serves the work that people are doing, serves people in their own leadership and in their purpose, that it's a place to return to when you're like, I gotta fill me up. I I have work to do. You know, we talk about political homes and how important those are. We also think about healing homes, places where we can actually transform and do our work and return to and be in practice, and that's what we're trying to do there.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that's what you're doing. It's happening, it's beautiful. So at the table in the back on your way out, if you're moved by all this and you feel called towards it, you can actually sign up to be a part of that community of practice and you can tell a friend about it, and you can go to their Instagram page at the Embodiment Institute, and there's practices there that I am finding. So I go do them. I'm like, are we gonna sit and lean on a tree? I love it. There's a beaver in my backyard. I was like, I'm supposed to try to hug you. Anyway, that's it. They don't like that. Um, so we've talked about a lot. We've covered a lot of ground. And we did it while hot, so thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Shout out to y'all.

SPEAKER_00

Um, toasty one of the answers in the book, I feel like, or one of the directions in the book about how we compost the current mess that we're in into soil of the future is courage. And you wrote beautifully in the book about courage. So I I wonder if you'd close us out with that.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I can do that.

SPEAKER_03

All right.

SPEAKER_02

You know, it's funny because obviously I wrote this book in a different time, and as soon as I turned, I thought, well, I would write a totally different book now, but I don't know. We'll see. Um hopefully some of it is is helpful. Um as we look at the world around us, it is clear that we need large-scale change, but it will not happen without risking something of ourselves. Perhaps by seeing ourselves honestly, by stepping up to lead, by speaking out, by feeling discomfort as we move outside our usual patterns, we shape change in such moments and transform ourselves in the process. Courage changes things, and courage changes us. It's how we become. I have found that there is a right-size fear inside any vision for change. And in taking courageous action, we develop a part of ourselves that can talk back to and hold the fear without letting it lead. Guided and inspired by what we care about, we become able to express our courage and act. The courage we need is the courage to fail and stay. The courage to reimagine every aspect of our social relations. The courage to relinquish grasping what was and build piece by piece a new structure for how and what we produce. The courage to exit the safety of our dying delusions. The courage to reach for one another. The courage to be honest. The courage to ask questions. The courage to listen. The courage to feel uncomfortable. The courage to be part of the circle. To be fed by and to feed, the courage to surrender, the courage to know when our time is over and our roles have shifted. The courage to love and be loved. We need courage, especially now. This courage to heal and change, the courage to come to terms with our history and the complexity of the challenges we face, the courage to lead and create, the courage to be nuanced when everyone around us is rigid, the courage to be thoughtful in our solutions even when we are faced with the most reactionary tendencies. When we are courageous, we can do the unexpected and start to mold the world around a vision bigger than one produced by fear. Every inch of progress, every ounce of love, every truly meaningful action from here on out will happen through courage, not comfort.

SPEAKER_00

And so it is.

SPEAKER_02

And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Princess Hemphill. We're having a great time over there, building community, learning together. Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming the People.