How Healing Changes our Future, Present, and Past with Prentis Hemphill

This episode features a live-recorded critical conversation between Abbie and Prentice Hemphill, a therapist, somatic educator, political organizer, founder of the Embodiment Institute, and writer of the recent book, What It Takes To Heal. In this conversation, we explore the intricate relationship between healing, justice, and the body, and discuss:

• Conflict as a catalyst for growth
• The fallacy of the mind-body split
• Healing as relational rather than individual 
• Visioning as a process to create our own paths and futures
• The importance of surrender in healing

I would love to hear your feedback, take-aways, or comments. So pease feel free to text at the link above or email whatsjustpod@gmail.com And please follow Whatsjust on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn and subscribe to the weekly newsletter to get details on where and when the next live Critical Conversation is happening! 

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Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Healing and Justice

05:37 The Mind-Body Connection

12:49 Embodiment and Its Practices

19:39 Intergenerational Healing and Relationships

27:47 The Process of Healing

35:00 Visioning and Personal Agency

40:28 The Role of Conflict in Growth

42:17 Surrender and Vulnerability

44:24 Trust and Risk in Relationships

46:15 Presence and Parenting

48:15 Authenticity vs. Attunement

51:44 The Power of Ease and Intention

54:06 Visioning and Actionable Practices

56:31 Riding the Edge of Change

58:03 Outrage and Its Impact

01:00:09 Decisiveness and Self-Trust

01:01:36 Surrender and Liberation

01:03:18 Desiring vs. Longing

01:04:59 Somatics and Decarceration

01:07:41 Hope in Conflict Resolution

01:11:12 The Intersection of Vision and Soul

01:12:47 Stress, Resilience, and Community

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Healing and Justice
• 5:37 The Mind-Body Connection
• 12:49 Embodiment and its Practices
• 19:39 Intergenerational Healing and Relationships
• 27:47 The Process of Healing
• 35:00 Visioning and Personal Agency
• 40:28 The Role of Conflict in Growth
• 42:17 Surrender and Vulnerability
• 44:24 Trust and Risk in Relationships
• 46:15 Presence and Parenting
• 48:15 Authenticity vs. Attunement
• 51:44 The Power of Ease and Intention
• 54:06 Visioning and Actionable Practices
• 56:31 Riding the Edge of Change
• 58:03 Outrage and its Impact
• 1:00:09 Decisiveness and Self-Trust
• 1:01:36 Surrender and Liberation
• 1:03:18 Desiring vs. Longing
• 1:04:59 Somatics and Decarceration
• 1:07:41 Hope in Conflict Resolution
• 1:11:12 The Intersection of Vision and Soul
• 1:12:47 Stress, Resilience, and Community

Transcript

Welcome to Critical Conversations. I'm Abbie Henson, a criminologist and qualitative researcher passionate about sharpening our critical thinking skills so we can all play a role in building a more just and compassionate world. In each episode, we'll unpack complex perspectives, challenge our assumptions, and invite the kind of growth that deepens our connection to ourselves, each other, and the communities we move through.

Today's episode is special in that it was recorded in front of a live audience in Phoenix, Arizona. Our guest was the brilliant Prentice Hemphill. Prentice's work has shaped how we think about healing, justice, and the wisdom of our body. They are a therapist, somatic educator, political organizer, and writer.

dedicated to helping individuals and communities realign their practices with their values. They're the founder of the Embodiment Institute and previously the Healing Justice Director with Black Lives Matter Global Network. Their podcasts, Finding Our Way, and their new podcast, which you should all check out, called Becoming the People, have been touchstones for many of us seeking a more honest and embodied way to move through the world.

Speaker 1 (01:04)
achieve.

Speaker 2 (01:13)
Their recent book, What It Takes to Heal, provides readers with tools to actualize a more aligned and just world for themselves and their communities. I hope you all enjoy this critical conversation, and I look forward to hearing your feedback in the reviews, or you can send me a text or email. The contact info can be found in the show notes.

Speaker 1 (01:33)
Hi everybody. Thank you for coming out tonight. Nice to see you. So we're going to do a centering practice and really to start, just find yourself in a position where you feel supported, but alert. So you're not just like drifting off. And we're going to, you know, we don't have to perform center. You can just find our way there. Just being honest with ourselves. And so.

Let yourself get curious about what you're thinking right now. Maybe what your mood is. Is it familiar or not familiar? And then we can start to listen to sensations in our bodies. So we can look for places where we feel tight, where we're holding, we're bracing. We can find places that feel like they're in motion, digesting, whatever it might be. You can feel temperature that's also way in. And start to let that attention to sensation become a little bit bigger. Turn the volume up on sensation, on feeling.

as much as is comfortable for you. Getting curious about yourself and getting curious without trying to shift too fast, without trying to become better. We're gonna kind of stay in that zone with that curiosity, curiosity over control. And we're gonna drop into our centers. A lot of cultures have words for this place. This pelvic bowl, kind of the deep drop in you, a heavy part of your body. I always think of inviting my breath to that place rather than forcing a deep breath.

letting an invitation come in that place. Can I breathe here? Can I also let myself rest into that place? It gets my come from, it's where I come from. That center place. Might tilt your pelvis, play with that a little bit, see if it helps you drop in there a little bit more. One of my teachers used to wiggle her belly. A lot to do it, you can do that. And then from center, that place, that kind of.

think of it almost like place where nothing and everything is happening. It's a deep place that's hard to touch. And letting the energy from that place extend through our bodies along the dimension of length. Letting yourself play with breathfully, how do I extend up and down, opening the bottoms of my feet to listen to the texture of the earth below me, the ground, the floor, and listening all the way into the core as deep as I can.

of the earth. Letting gravity connect you to this place, this earth. You are from this earth. You are of this earth. You are earth. And then simultaneously letting yourself extend upward, connecting up to the sky, to the heavens, opening maybe the top of your head, your crown. Letting your jaw go. Letting your shoulders go a little bit. Breathing.

And then we'll center in a couple more dimensions. So feeling yourself side to side, feeling the width of your head, shoulders, arms, legs, getting curious about your own body. You can feel yourself and be like, you feel these thighs and you feel these calves, widening, softening, falling open like a book. And dignity, didn't say, is where we might feel and express, sorry, length is where we might feel and express dignity. Width is where we might feel and express connection. So letting your dignity, connection be online.

Can I let myself out? Can I let you in? Can I be here with you? And then feeling front to back, your depth, feeling your history, your ancestors, the ones you want to be in this room, maybe not all of them, but the ones that you want to invite, let them stand at your back. And then feeling in into your front, letting yourself really arrive present, softening the front of your body, softening your eyes and the sockets, your face, your throat.

arriving here if it is safe enough for you to do so. And then lastly, I like to draw up from my center what I'm committed to, what I care about, what I want to organize my life around, what I want to be, what I want to express, what I want you to feel from me. So you do that. What are you about? What are you committed to? What do you care about? What do you want people to know and feel about you? And let that start to come up through you. Let it break through some blockages you have, some fear, so that what you care about can be lived out through you.

And then take a moment, just thank yourself for any moment that you were curious rather than controlling yourself, any moment where you got curious. And that's it. Welcome.

Speaker 2 (05:37)
I love that. I think one of the things that I really learned in my own practice was approaching fear with curiosity. I think I mentioned this maybe in the last one, but I was listening to this Michael Pollan podcast episode and they were talking about an LSD trial with terminally ill patients.

Speaker 1 (05:45)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:00)
And this one woman had stomach cancer and she was in an LSD trip and she had her eyes closed and the guide was working with her and she said, I see this monster in my stomach and it's really scaring me. And the guide was like, okay, well rather than running from it, can you ask why it's there? What it has to say? And I remember this like moment I had in hearing that and being like, when I'm feeling scared, I can just approach it with curiosity rather than fear.

Speaker 1 (06:28)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:29)
and feel so much more grounded.

Speaker 1 (06:31)
Yeah. So much wisdom in our fear. So much wisdom. I mean, it's just a ball of like assessments, reactions, projections, and all these things get balled up in that fear and we try to stifle it or put it away or sometimes we amplify it and doom scroll. But yeah, I think the point that you're making of like, how can we stop and get really curious about what our fear is alerting us to, I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.

Speaker 2 (06:55)
I think one of the things too, when I was doing these book club events, I would start with a body scan and go through and bring attention to each part of the body. And one of the things that I would say, which leads into the discussion around the dualism is like, everyone take note of the fact that just your mind was able to change your body. Like just bringing awareness to a part of your body was able to release the physical tension.

And so really captivating the fact that mind is body, body is mind. And that's one of the rooted things that you mentioned in this book. And I'm wondering if you can talk to us about how the dualism of mind and body was formed and how you're attempting to break.

Speaker 1 (07:41)
Yeah, yep, I can talk about that. I could write a dissertation about that. I'm not, I'm not any good at school. Yeah, so, mind-body split. It's a wild thing that we really all got trained into. Like, how do we think over the feeling animal parts of ourselves? I really think that's a lot of it. It's like, the unruly body.

Speaker 2 (07:46)
Uh-oh, but you're not an academic.

Speaker 1 (08:06)
that lives and dies and excretes and sometimes smells and longs and does all these things that we wish it didn't. We wish it didn't because it takes us away from the kind of ideal state, this body as machine, as thing that moves us from one productive moment to another, you know? And, you know, as somebody who was trained as a therapist, people would come to me often because they're like, you know, I'm crying spontaneously and I don't know why, or I can't.

focus at work or whatever it is, it's like my body will not control itself. And part of what I'm trying to say is that the world that we've created is actually anti-body. In all the ways that it's anti-livingness, being alive and aliveness, it's anti-the-body in that same way. It's anti-the unruly, unpredictable, animal, finite, living and dying messiness of the body.

So this split happens, you know, the same way, it's like the same time this world gets constructed, you have to construct the people of this world. So there's a lot of, you know, the early enlightenment scientists and philosophers, the idea of dominating nature, dominating body, dominating woman, dominating child, dominating indigenous, dominating black. That is the same logic, because underneath it has to tell the myth of unruly, emotional, savage, whatever it is.

is all the story of the body. And so in that, the body becomes rational and non-emotional and productive and all these things. And I'm trying to break that, not to say that there's nothing interesting in that. I think there's a lot that's interesting in that, but to say that I'm curious about a world that we build where we get to be in these bodies and actually live through and in these bodies without

spending most of our lives preoccupied with the contortion and the suppression and the, you know, getting in line that's required and even more so now. I I feel like the political moment that we're in, I know you said we're not gonna get too much into this, but I'm gonna get into it a little bit anyway. I think the tendencies, it's a tightening. It's a mechanistic way of doing things to the nth degree. It's a homogenizing.

impulse that's based in a fear of that same stuff. Our aliveness. That's what's underneath it to me. I were to think about the kind of whatever, you know, people say spiritual, emotional, all these things, that feels like the thrust of the moment. You know, the kind of intolerance of our aliveness. I used to say when I started Sematic, it wasn't about people being happy all the time, but I really wanted my people and all people to feel their lives.

Speaker 2 (11:01)
That was one of the things that I really liked what you said in the book. You were talking about how everything we experience is experienced in our bodies. And I think we forget that. Like we...

We think about our experiences and we intellectualize them and we think about the emotional impact that it has. And then we do talk therapy in order to like resolve the trauma without actually recognizing that all of those experiences as well are felt and experienced in our bodies. And so we don't often, we do the like mental work to try to work through the trauma, but we don't often do the physical work because we think of them as separate.

Speaker 1 (11:38)
Yeah, I mean we can think, like I can think about flying an airplane. I always joke with my wife that when I'm on an airplane I never go to sleep in case I'm needed in an emergency. So I'm just sitting there like, I'm here, I got your back. I think that I can do it. But my body has no understanding of what would happen in there. I know I gotta pull this thing and push these buttons. But I say that to say it's like we can have ideas, we can even understand concepts.

But if our body is not able to make those moves, especially in moments of pressure, do we really know them? I think about embodiment and learning as very, I'm not sure if they're the exact same thing, but there's an overlap. know, like, do I know it if I haven't digested it through my body? Because I can have ideas, that's why people can have really great analysis and all this stuff, but they don't know how to talk to the person sitting next to them, they don't know how to do it, they don't know how live it.

There's that disconnect between it's the mind-body split, which I often say is not real. It's just an enforced, it's a trained way of being with your own experience.

Speaker 2 (12:49)
So how do you digest it through the body?

Speaker 1 (12:53)
Developing your awareness of what's happening in your body. Developing an awareness, being in practice. And knowing for me, it's like, thinking is a full body experience. It could happen just up here, but when I think with my whole body, it's more, how do I say? I feel like I'm able to connect with people more. When I think with my whole body, I'm able to generate ideas that are not.

disconnected from my body and what my body feels and experiences and the limitations are, I mean the mind is created throughout the body. It doesn't just live in your head. But ideas can extend beyond what our bodies can do. So when I say, this is why I have like, this is what my schedule's gonna be. I eight calls today, eight Zoom calls. If I run that through my body,

I don't have eight Zoom calls in me. You know what I mean? That's thinking with my whole body, but if I think, okay, well, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, I gotta do this, and I take that out of my body, I can end up overextending myself. But when I think with the whole thing, and it's like, actually I have three Zoom calls today, maybe one of those is a phone call if I can negotiate it, that's actually what's in me.

Speaker 2 (14:06)
interesting the reaction I'm having to that is like yeah we've suppressed that so we can be productive because if I was like actually I only have three and me I think people will be like rolling their eyes like you're like

Speaker 1 (14:17)
Exactly. Let

them roll their eyes. Let more people roll their eyes.

Speaker 2 (14:21)
So I feel like there are two pieces to embodiment and maybe I'm wrong. Two pieces? I'm an academic, I told you. I think in boxes. So there's like the feeling part and then there's the embodied practice. Like you are the embodiment of joy, the embodiment of whatever and to be the embodiment of something is, I didn't realize maybe and maybe I'm wrong, but from your book, like that is something that is practiced. And yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:47)
Mm-hmm.

Keep going. Okay.

Speaker 2 (14:51)
So, one of the things you said that I was like, oh, shit, when you were like, we practice every day how to communicate. Even if it's unintentional, we are practicing. Like all of our actions every day is a practice. And so I'm wondering if you can talk about, because I think, well, first of all, a question is, when do practices become habitual?

Like at what point in our lives do things just become habitual? And I'm sure it's varied, but then thinking of like, okay, if I want to become this thing, how do we get over the fear? Because in practice, there's the concept of failure and there's the concept of fear. And so how do we practice to become an embodied version of what we want to be?

Speaker 1 (15:28)
Yeah.

Sure. Yeah, so embodiment is this funny word because we use it to talk about what we have in us now, what we are already currently embodied in and how we become embodied in things unconsciously. Through training, through growing up around people, we learn the emotional, relational contours of the world through what we witness and what we do. We embody those things. Embodiment is also

having awareness, situating yourself back into your own experience so that you can't fool yourself as easily in some ways or think you're doing something that you're not. So embodiment is that developing kind of sensitivity to your own aliveness and being able to live with more of that, more awareness of that. So I use embodiment in those ways and things become habitual when we do them a lot.

You know, I always go to my kid because I have a kid and she's three and I'm teaching her how to interact with the world in a lot of ways. And she's learning through how I move, how I interact with the world, how to be. And then she practices it. She practices saying the things that I say. She practices as she calls me Poppy and she has a shirt. She says, I'm wearing my little Poppy shirt. She like practices being me in some ways. And those lessons are moving very quickly.

Those happen for all of us. It moves really quickly and it gets inside of us before we were able to go, do I want this? Does this make sense? Is this what I believe? Do I align with this? It's already in us. You already practiced it. You already excellently mastered it. And that's the thing. We practice something over and over again and then it becomes embodied, but also in a way unconscious. It doesn't require our conscious attention anymore. And so that's why we can embody things we don't believe in and not really understand that.

about ourselves, because they're so deep in there, so practiced, we don't have to think about them anymore. So when we talk about practicing towards something, it's kind of a complex word, because in some ways, there's just also this piece, you know, I think I talked to you about this in the green room, that I'm also feeling these days of like joy or, yes, we practice them, but really we're practicing allowing them in some ways.

We're practicing, you talked about fear and these things that come in, or the way that we've practiced avoiding joy or avoiding connection or intimacy. We have all of these coping and numbing and defense mechanisms that keep us from having certain kinds of experience. So before we can even go, this is an opportunity for intimacy. You're going, I'm going to be checking my phone right now. I'm checking my phone because I'm feeling this stress, which is the potential for intimacy and connection with someone else. And so.

embodying intimacy in that situation is being able to be present with the fear, to understand its origins, understand it, but also feel it in our body and be able to work with the sensation so that we can actually experience the thing we long for. The experiences are here and we've created so many blockages to experiencing them. But also there are things we can develop, like I can develop skills around listening. But again, there's always a surrender inside of a skill, not to get too weird.

But there's always a surrender, allowing the thing to actually transpire, that actually builds our skills. It's not just the, you know, that's the rat race feeling. I'm gonna embody this, I'm gonna get better at this. Some of it is surrendering to what is already here.

Speaker 2 (19:09)
So you brought up the intergenerational piece and I think that's really interesting because one of the things that you talk about is how we have intergenerationally embodied a lot of isms, right? Sexism, homophobia, all of the isms. Racism. Thinking about then if we understand that we've embodied these social dynamics through an intergenerational lens, how do we seek up or if we're not aware that we have those

Speaker 1 (19:24)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:38)
then we probably aren't aware that we need to seek out opportunities to become aware. So how do we then become aware of the intergenerational isms that we have that have become embodied within us?

Speaker 1 (19:53)
Probably through relationship with other people. I think that gets skipped over. I think one of the things I wanted to say in the book too is healing is not just this individual thing that is gonna happen. We're gonna go to the right therapist, we're gonna meditate long enough, we're gonna get it right. It is necessarily relational. It is necessarily relational because it...

All of this is about our relationship with ourselves. Can I actually build a relationship with myself? Can I be open and available to having a relationship with you? So healing has to restore relationship, which is what I say in the book. That's what healing is to me, is the restoration of relationship. So how do we do it? We do it through relationship. Somebody telling you. Somebody being close enough and close enough proximity and skillful enough to do it.

in a way that speaks to the part of you that can change. You know the thing about shame? Shame is not all bad, in my opinion. But I talk about it in the book. Shame can impede change if we feel that I'm so bad. Like someone that feels that kind of shame cannot change. If someone is kind of arrested by shame, that means that they are so bad they can't change. And that's how they're gonna hold it.

So in a way, when we work with each other, doesn't mean everybody's work is to work with everybody, I don't believe that either. But when we work with each other, and you are the person to give me an assessment, or I'm the person to give you an assessment or feedback, I'm gonna do it in a way that speaks to the part of you that knows they can change, that is capable, that is resourced, that has dignity, and knows that we are here to change and transform. And I think we have to speak to each other that way. So how do we change it? I think it's through relationship.

And it's through, we're all trying to be perfect and wait till we're perfect to interact with each other instead of like being messes.

Speaker 2 (21:50)
Yeah, that's like been a goal of mine to be more messy.

Speaker 1 (21:55)
I'm gonna achieve messiness.

Speaker 2 (21:57)
Yeah, yeah, a lot of conversations with friends about that. Okay. Okay, but then, like, do you have to learn how to communicate in a way to know that you're going to tap into the other person's place where they're going to change? Or is it like, if you're the right person, it'll be natural?

Speaker 1 (22:19)
It's not learning like you're gonna learn a times table. you know what mean? Yeah, yeah. I think it's important for each of us to know that there's something in you that is not contingent on the world or anybody else. It doesn't mean you won't be impacted by the world. It doesn't mean you can't be hurt, killed, all those things. There's something in each of us that is not contingent on the other's ability to even see it, understand it. No, it's there.

I can have a lot of complex conversations with lot of different people because there's something in me that is un, that can't be touched. That can't be touched by other people's fear or small mindedness or confusion. It can't actually be accessed. can only be, it's like when they are ready to shed so that they can meet me in that place, then we can, then I'm like, hello, I was waiting for you. But that's the thing a lot of us have to cultivate.

order to have these tricky conversations that we have because in a way we offer too much of ourselves up for the other person to see, accept whatever it is. So I think you become the right person to have those conversations with the right people that you have them with when you can know and experience the part of you that is not contingent on them.

Speaker 2 (23:44)
of the things that I want to nerd out about is the idea that healing can change not only our future and our present but also our past. One of the things, so I listened to this radio lab episode a while ago and it was about memory and they did this study where they had people hooked up and they were watching their brain mapping and they found that when they had someone remember something

Speaker 1 (23:54)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:11)
what was actually happening was they were creating a new memory because you can never actually experience the same thing twice because you are always viewing it as an evolved version of yourself with more experiences. so what that said to me was that memory or our past is experienced in a framework. if our reality is our framework, then it makes so much sense when I read that in...

the book of that healing can change our past and our future. And I just want to pick your brain on that because I love that idea. I love that idea. And it's like a, it's a mind trip.

Speaker 1 (24:41)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's more than that.

Speaker 2 (24:52)
Well, sure, it's a body trip too, it's a body trip too.

Speaker 1 (24:55)
Even more than that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:57)
Yeah, wait, does it, okay, hold on. So it changes the framework that you're thinking about, but then does it also change the experience? It must, right? Change the experience in your body.

Speaker 1 (25:07)
Well, I'll say, you know, there's a story I wrote in there, a really personal story, my first memory of life, which is a pretty traumatic moment in my, of abuse. I grew up in a household where there was abuse and there was this memory that I play over and over. It was like my memory came online in that moment. It's like the first thing I ever saw in the world. And I would always go back to it and I was just so, I don't, it's like being thrust into life in this really upending kind of moment.

But I, know, I've done a lot of therapy, done a lot of work around it. But when I wrote it in the book, I stopped, it's like it closed me out. I stopped being able to enter back into the memory in the same way. I can see it still, but it's like EMDR or something. doesn't activate me in the same way. It's changed. It's kind of gray scale now, but I used to like be in it and writing it and learning what was in that moment, seeing it. I mean, I literally took me

decades to have a 360 of what was happening, to see everything that was happening. And when I did that, it was like, okay, you're done, moving on. But it absolutely changed. I mean, it's changed so many things. Changed my relationship with my sister. All of that changed my understanding of what was happening at the time. It's changed me. And I do believe we can, I mean, we don't know what time is, do we? We don't really understand what that is. Yeah. And I mean,

Speaker 2 (26:30)
construct.

Speaker 1 (26:33)
on some level not to get too woo, whatever. I'm about to get all the way woo. I think a lot of this is like, your work is to feel your life. Your work is to feel your life. To feel your way through it, to learn the lessons for all of us, for the collective. So all the contractions and defense and resisting and all of that is avoiding the work. Now you may say, I need help.

Speaker 2 (26:37)
Yeah, we're there.

Speaker 1 (27:02)
and that is part of the work. To be with others to do the work that is yours. But I do think there's something to... I think that when we do our work, when we process through, it feeds into something. And I'm not sure what, but I think that it feeds into the collection.

Speaker 2 (27:17)
Yeah, one of the things you say is that healing is an orientation rather than a destination. So can we ever be healed in the past tense?

Speaker 1 (27:26)
Do you even want to? Maybe you could, but like...

Speaker 2 (27:28)
No, I got-

Like, did you feel healed in that moment from that memory?

Speaker 1 (27:34)
No, I feel pretty committed to being a process my whole life. I hope that I'm a process till the day I die, till the moment that I die. And I hope I continue to be a process after that.

Speaker 2 (27:47)
away

because I think to some people they would hear that and feel exhausted. Like they're just like, I just want to get there. Like being a process is exhausting, but I think that there can be a lot of joy in being a process and I'm wondering if you can unpack that.

Speaker 1 (28:02)
To me, denial, suppression, those take a lot of work. And if you've done body work or anything like that and something moves in you, something leaves your body, suddenly you have a lot of energy, a lot of movement, things free up. Contractions take energy to maintain. The stories that you have and the contractions that they create in your body, you go to sleep and you wake up and you that on, because that's what I believe about the world. That is energy.

to maintain that. I've worked with people that I'm like, you've been flexing this muscle for 10 years. Do you understand what I'm saying? When you don't need it, when you're bracing or holding, you are flexing your muscles for years. That's energy. That's energy. So yes, that is also exhausting. And I think people get exhausted by that. I don't actually think being a process is exhausting. It's just being honest. It's being real. It's like, I'm not going to sit up here and say,

I have everything figured out, I'm healed, let me show you how. It's gonna cost you 24.95. That's a lie. What I'm trying to encourage us into is not to be healed, perfect beings, but to be and allow each other to be the processes that we are. The rigidity of how we live and think of ourselves is killing us, y'all. We've got to give some breathing room to being alive, to the aliveness around us. We gotta breathe, we gotta shake, we gotta feel.

We gotta figure out even what it means to be a human being in this moment, in this time. That's a big question. That question is up for us right now. And we have to, I think, get into it. They were like, let's call it What It Takes to Heal. That was the original title, and then I was like, no, that's not it. And then they were like, let's call it What It Takes to Heal. I was like, it's kind of a trick, because there is no period at the end of that sentence. To me, it's a question of what it takes to be

alive, what it takes to mature, what it takes to grow, what it takes to surrender. That is the stuff. That's what we're up to right now. The healing of like, if you go this retreat, if you buy this candle from Gwyneth Paltrow, if you do, you're going to heal. It's out. It's not real. It's not real. Let's get extremely real in this time. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:22)
of the things that you just you were saying how like I know that when we do this work it just like creates this thing I don't know what it is but it's like this collective thing and I think one of the things that you emphasize in the book and I think that's really like the permission that you give in this book to do self work in a chaotic social time is really gentle and nice because I think sometimes

In chaotic times and when you're someone who is social justice oriented, you're like, I have to put my energy here in helping the collective and helping others and self work can feel self-indulgent. And I really like the ways that you describe how that self work is a prerequisite to a collective good. Like a collective good cannot exist until there are individual goods and an individual good cannot exist unless you're in the process of healing.

Speaker 1 (31:16)
It's all like that. know? It's all like that. You're doing it all the time. It's in a way, it's like, let's stop the bifurcating of it all, but let's move with intention and let's develop a kind of, one of my mentors, Alta Star, she talks about self-possession, self-responsibility, not in an individualistic bootstraps way, but this life, someone put this consciousness in charge of this situation and I wanna be responsible to that. I'm going to.

Speaker 2 (31:18)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:45)
move through my life with intention. And it matters how I do that. How I organize matters. It doesn't mean that you heal and then you organize, or you heal and then whatever you resist, but how you do it matters. That space that is hard to quantify and therefore commodify, the how is that's where the power's at. Because if I organize, I used to train organizers and we'd do door knocking, we'd do embodiment practice and then we'd do door knocking. The first day we would do nothing.

and we just go door knocking and see what happened and we count our numbers and all that stuff. And then we teach them centering and we do centering practice in all these different ways. Then we go door knocking again. And the how, qualia, that stuff shifted dramatically. The depth of interaction, the listening, the attunement changed other people's investment in what we were talking about. Changed their openness to what we were talking about. How

matters. So that's where it meets. It's like, yes, we have to do this work. And how you do it matters. It's not just about the numbers. It's not just, I'm going go out here. How you connect with people is the stuff. It's the stuff. So let your center compel other people's center. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:59)
One of the things that I try and do in my classroom and usually at the beginning of podcast episodes, but I feel like your drop in took it over in a good way, but I usually try and have a collective breath because I'm like, we're running from one thing to the next, to the next, to the next. And so often we're bringing that and we're not even really present. And so to just take literally a moment to take one deep breath.

to be like, we're here. And it changes so much.

Speaker 1 (33:30)
Yeah, it changes everything. changes time. I think presence is really, I mean that's the thing we're moving towards. Can we be present? And I think that's a measure. It's like how much of me can be present right now. And I think it changes outcomes. It changes what happens next.

Speaker 2 (33:48)
So one of the things that I'm so excited about that I felt most motivated around was this idea of visioning that you have. And one of the things that was so impactful to me was this idea that we are born into other people's visions and other people's visions are all around us, even thinking about just like this space.

Right? Like this was someone's vision and they brought it to fruition. The street that we were on, like the urban planning of this city was someone else's vision that we just live within. thinking about just the visions of what it means to be a woman, what it means to be in a relationship, like all of these norms that we are born within are just other people's visions. And it's so simple and

so fragile when you realize that, when it feels so hard and so ingrained. And so I love, it feels very liberating and exciting to think that we can create our own visions outside of this. I'm curious how you even became aware of that. Like how did you become aware, or when, I guess, did you realize I have a different vision for myself?

Speaker 1 (35:00)
I mean, I've been a weirdo 100 % of the time. So I don't know. I do, you know, I think there was a point when I was like 11 or something where I felt really clear that I had, there was like a choice point. You know, I grew up in a town called Grand Prairie, Texas. And I had this moment where I thought, okay, either I'm gonna have to do this internalizing racism thing to make it through.

I felt it, it felt very clear. was like, I'm have to internalize this and tell a bunch of lies. Or I'm gonna have to go this other road and feel really alone. And I was like, I'm going this way. Because I'd rather there be honest about what's going on. It felt like a spell was over everybody. And I was like, I'm gonna have to be under that spell. I don't wanna be under that spell. It's not true. And it requires so much pretending, like being in pretend land.

Speaker 2 (35:38)
Yeah.

than energy.

Speaker 1 (35:59)
I think maybe just my lack of energy has helped me throughout my life. I just don't have any energy for that. But that felt like a choice point for me. was like, yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. But having a vision actually for my life, mean, the challenge of that is that I didn't think I would live past 23. I had this idea in my head, I'll be 23 and then I'll die. I didn't know how I was going to die. But where I was from, there's a lot of different ways. So I thought you can live this way, but you can't live long in this world.

So actually having a vision, I mean, I think it came through somatics when I found somatic. It was, I was in my mid to late twenties, long time ago, y'all. I guess it was, yeah, it was a while ago. And I was, I stumbled into somatics. The fact that I'm here, I was real anti-feeling. I was out here like, I don't do that. I don't cry. I don't feel, I do none of that. That's what I was on. And I had a job.

Speaker 2 (36:33)
One was a

Speaker 1 (36:58)
that was making us all do a somatics training. And I was like, what is this? This is annoying. What is this weird stuff? They're talking about feeling your feelings. Feeling my feelings with my boss? I don't want to do that. And it changed my life. Just the invitation. And so working with a somatic therapist, she was like, what do you want from your life? And I was like, what? What do you even mean? What do you want to feel? What do you want to do? I was like, I want to make it through. I want to just.

I have enough, wanna, you know? I didn't have a vision. But she activated in asking the question, there was a longing in me, but I had so much disbelief. It felt so unsafe that it was pushed way down in there. But when there was room for me to long, all this stuff came forward. All this stuff came out. And it's not wanting. I wasn't like, well, I want this and I want that and I want that. It's like longing to be known, longing for connection, longing for love, longing.

to be able to use my gifts in the service of others. These things came forward and they started to, over the years, of craft themselves and shape themselves into what my life has become. But it was that activation. was someone asking me.

Speaker 2 (38:09)
So in the green room you were saying when you could like see my energy you're like I can see people's energy like it's just how I see the world I can see people's bodies and them living through their bodies so did that crack open when this was put in your face or was it the process of surrender that you discussed earlier where it was like

Speaker 1 (38:30)
I always there, but I was just using that. I don't know if it developed out of safety or I was using it in the service of safety. I was using it to remain safe. The seeing that I had. But finding this work helped me. I was like, I can use that here. Our gifts are important. The things that we just naturally, uniquely bring to the world help weave something together. I found a place for my gifts and expression for my gift.

Speaker 2 (38:38)
interesting.

Right.

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:02)
But you know, I would use it to slice and dice people up. I use it for all kinds of things. You know, I had to learn to use my powers for good. I use them for protection. dark arts. yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:13)
Okay, so I had my students read this piece by Galton, I was telling you about this, where he talks about how structural violence, or violence, but often structural violence is a thing that distances our potential from our actual. And you say that visioning is an uncovering of our potential. And some of the things that you mentioned that suppressing your visions, I would say fit into the framework of structural violence, right? Racism, sexism, all these things. And so,

I'm wondering, you say that, and I know I kind of got this wrong so you can correct me again, but you say that visioning is rooted in longing and then you also say that conflict can be rooted in longing and so then is visioning rooted in conflict?

Speaker 1 (39:59)
In the

way that, how do I say this, is it rooted in conflict? I don't think so. But you know, I don't know. Maybe somebody in here knows better than me. I think conflict is necessary and helps refine. I don't know if it's rooted. think vision precedes all of that, or I think all of that proceeds. There are things that I want to express and then there's all these barriers that I then have to move through in order to refine and share.

what it is that I'm sharing, I think the vision precedes that, vision precedes conflict, but conflict can be a developmental tool.

Speaker 2 (40:39)
or like a catalyst or something.

Speaker 1 (40:41)
can be a catalyst, but it can also just grow you up. Just grow you up, gotta grow up. Conflict is the growing up because you're confronting all these other realities that exist.

Speaker 2 (40:50)
Right.

Yeah, I liked that you were talking about conflict as expansive, but I guess... Yeah, you did. Well, I don't know if you used the word expansive, but it was something along those lines of like, helps us grow.

Speaker 1 (40:55)
Did I say that? I don't ever know.

Absolutely. It absolutely helps us grow. Yeah, it's one of the major ways that we grow is through conflict.

Speaker 2 (41:08)
Yeah.

So, okay, this kind of goes back to another green room, but it was on me. thinking about like, okay, if conflict helps us grow, how far do we lean? Okay, good. Can. Can. Asterix, yeah. that's a good asterix because...

If conflict can help us grow, how far do we lean into the conflict before it can be like maladaptive or problematic or actually hurt us? Or is the hurt always expansive and always helping us grow no matter what?

Speaker 1 (41:48)
Well, I don't know about that. How to lean in. It's a surrender. I don't know. You know, I always say like, surrender is a thing that you really can't teach anybody, but it is the key to everything. know what I'm saying? You gotta let go. You gotta know how to let go and let something else happen that is, that maybe is wiser than the thing that got you into the conflict in the first place. Your thinking or whatever, your best strategies. Figure this out.

Speaker 2 (42:02)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:17)
Whatever that is, your kind of conditioned responses, it probably is what led you into this situation. So let something else come online. Maybe the whole body situation can come in. But yeah, I think that's part of it. We don't know that surrender move, let go. And I was on a podcast recently. was like, we gotta die a bunch in this life. Your idea of who you are has to die a little bit. That's how you change. You gotta die a little bit all the time.

Speaker 2 (42:38)
Hmm.

How do you make that not scary? I guess you approach it with curiosity.

Speaker 1 (42:49)
Why?

It is scary. I can't make it not scary, because it is. It's vulnerability. You know, we talk about it gives you strength and it's all these things. Absolutely. But you could also die. To be vulnerable is to be on the edge. You know, we talk about, you know, and when I would practice I Keto and you do it like an overhead strike, you're bearing your chest. In that moment, you're able to generate the most strength.

Speaker 2 (42:54)
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (43:18)
but you're also leaving yourself the most exposed. It's a risk that you take. It's inherent in life. And I think that's actually part of our maturation is knowing the fragility of each moment, the risk in each moment, and not to live our lives or even be coerced into avoiding these risks all the time and then more and more cornering ourselves into some comfort place, but to know that there's inherent risk. And sometimes we choose that because it develops us, it grows us. So I can't make it not scary.

Speaker 2 (43:48)
Yeah, one of the things you talk about in the book around fear is that you don't overcome the fear.

Speaker 1 (43:53)
You just

shake. it. That's the best I got. That's why I was like, nobody wants to heal. Nobody wants to talk about this stuff, because I'm not going to tell you, and then you're going to feel peaceful all time and happy, and everything's going be unicorns and rainbows. You will probably feel your love more intensely than you ever could have dreamed. But you'll also get real scared, and you'll shake. You'll feel real sad. That's the journey. I can't make it. I can't give it a better tagline. Make it more appealing. And we can't avoid those things.

Speaker 2 (44:16)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:24)
But the problem is that oppression makes sure that some people experience certain things more. And that's the point that I think is really important.

Speaker 2 (44:29)
Can you talk about the experience of trust with your daughter? The story you give around her trying and it's this mutual trust where it's trust to risk and then trust to... Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 1 (44:42)
Sort of, but it seems just finish what and then I'll talk about.

Speaker 2 (44:46)
Well, there was this trust that you had in allowing her to take the risk and the trust that she had in knowing you would allow it.

Speaker 1 (44:53)
Yeah, I think it's attachment theory stuff in some ways. Like she trust is that field of like risk and safety. How do I do it? And so she, know, in her developmentally, she's taking risks. She does things now that I'm like, I joke all the time that like parenting, most of what I do is like geometry, physics, because I'm like, okay, how close do I have to stand so that if she falls off of that, I can catch the back of her head.

You know, I'm always doing calculations and I try not to be like, don't do that. Be careful. But I'm just, I have to go, I'm just going to stand over here just a little bit and keep talking to you just in case I have to, you know. That's the relationship we're in. She's constantly taking risks and she's, she's also doing that because she trusts that I am there. She doesn't want me hovering over her, but she also has something in her that's like, my poppy might catch me. My poppy cares about me. My poppy is going to.

let me take appropriate risks. that's that expanding, she's developing her self-trust, but it's happening in the context of this trust that we cultivate together. it's, yeah, risk. She's full on risk. We're hanging off of things, we're climbing on things. I'm like, okay, all right. And our knees get scraped sometimes, we get hurt. Those things happen, but we're building trust.

Speaker 2 (46:05)
Yeah.

you? So you're saying like, okay, I'd move this way and I'd be in conversation with you, but my attention is also over here. Yeah. So as a parent, how do you practice presence then?

Speaker 1 (46:30)
Yeah, I'm present in a couple places. You know, I was thinking about this because I was like, know, meditation teachers will tell you you got to be, you know, present, sit here very still and be present. I was like, why don't we ever have parents teaching meditation classes? Because the level of complexity I have to hold in a moment should be taught. Do you understand what I'm saying? The level of

Speaker 2 (46:57)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:58)
The kind of presence that I have to have should be taught. It's not like, well you ascend because you get rid of all that and all these relationships. Yes, I get that, I understand that. And why isn't it also an ascension? That I can be deeply present with you and know mathematically exactly where my child's head is. Don't you think we should be training for that? Because that's the deep, it's also care. It's like the presence of care. And we don't really train for that. It's not just my singular body.

I can feel that that's also a part of my body. This person is so deeply connected to me that I'm like, I know what's happening, I know how she moves, I know what's happening, and I can really be present with you too.

Speaker 2 (47:36)
I'm wondering, you describe a somatic's practice, the mutuality. Yeah. And you describe it as like the practice is putting a hand on one person, they put a hand on you. Yeah. And you try and feel them at the same time that you feel Exactly. And it kind of sounds like that to some degree, right?

Speaker 1 (47:53)
That's right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so I'm not over you and I'm not also hiding so much. I'm not expending my energy in that way. I'm actually in an easeful place where I'm allowing the transmission. I'm allowing myself to be felt, allowing myself to feel you. But yes, it's that flow of things. Multiple things can happen at once.

Speaker 2 (47:57)
in you.

That's really hard. I often find that I am lost in someone else. I transport myself into the other person and I feel like I'm seeing the world through their eyes. I'm seeing myself through their eyes. I had this very crazy moment where I was in this yoga class. I'll never forget this. It was so bizarre. I went to get a

block and I was walking back to my mat and there was this guy and he was looking at me and I like saw who he was looking at and it was different than the person that I, it was at a time where I was going through like a lot of self work and a lot of shifting of my self perception and the self talk that I was doing. At the time I was like hyper critical of myself.

and I realized that the person he was seeing was very different than the person that I would often see in the mirror. And it just was like this huge revelation for me of who others see me as, where I feel like I realized in that moment when I'm like transporting myself into you to see me, I'm just seeing me through my own critical eyes, right? Not your unbiased eyes. It was this very interesting experience.

Speaker 1 (49:37)
thought you were going to give me a telepathy tape story for a minute. I love the telepathy tapes. was like, ooh, what did you say?

Speaker 2 (49:40)
like listen to it.

Yeah. It's really hard to feel your own self and then the other and not project onto the other person.

Speaker 1 (49:53)
Yes. The hard part is the unexamined projection. seeing that is good because then you go, that's somewhere to look. Presence is ease. I know it may sound weird. You were asking me again in the green room, are you nervous? And I was like, I don't get nervous. Maybe I should. But I'm going to be myself. Because then I won't be like, left them with somebody who was pretending to be Prentice Hemphill. Or I'm

leaving with the shame of hiding myself. I'm just gonna be myself, which means you're gonna have whatever judgments or assessments you have about who I am, and I can't control that. You're gonna be like, mm, I don't like that, ooh, I like that, I had fun here, ooh, I hated that. What can I do? What can I do about that? So I leave you with your assessments, but I live with my own ease.

Speaker 2 (50:42)
How do you balance the desire to be your most authentic self and being attuned to the energy of the other person and what they need? So being malleable in a way of, I'm not necessarily going to approach you in the way that I approach this person and this person and this person. I'm going to attune, see what their energy is, kind of align, meet them where they're at. But how do you do that and maintain authenticity?

and this kind of like, this is me, take it or leave it.

Speaker 1 (51:15)
It's interesting, I don't know that I try to give people what they need. But maybe that's a character flaw. You mean just being responsive to people? Yeah, I think that's... My answer is going to be ease again. My answer is going to be ease and flow. I don't know how to anticipate what you'll need. Something in you will activate something in me and that's just what's going to happen. And maybe something in you is activating something in me because of some other story that's running in me. That's good for me to know, but it's just going to happen.

Speaker 2 (51:21)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:44)
This is gonna happen. You don't have to over effort. That's my message. If nothing else, y'all, let's cut down on that efforting. You know what saying? Some of that's fake. Let's cut down on being fake for real. Because when you're fake, you can't learn. You can't be real with yourself. You can't be real with each other. You can't really change. If we are a room full of people that are not fake and we know that we mess up and that we fail, I failed this week at something big. I messed up. Okay. What you gonna do? What am I gonna do?

lower the effort, but increase the intention in a way. Like lower the pretending. are all, especially social media. I feel that pressure too. I'm like, gosh, this is like, everybody is an actor. Everybody's acting out themselves. I had a reading this, my dear friend, Sonia Renee Taylor gave me an astrology reading this week. It was on point. And she was like, if it is, if you are over-efforting, cut it out. It's not for you. It's not for you. So that's my message is like,

Speaker 2 (52:26)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:44)
Let it come easy and even if you mess up, that is the lesson that you needed to get. That's it. But when you're pretending on top of it, when you're trying to be a good person or a right person, you can't even get to the thing that you actually need to learn how to do. Because you're in all of this pretend land.

Speaker 2 (53:03)
When you said the thing about social media, could the perception that is being cultivated be the vision that someone wants of themself? Okay, so is that a bad thing?

Speaker 1 (53:15)
Is it a bad thing? No. I don't know. I don't think it's bad. think...

Speaker 2 (53:20)
Or is it fake if it's still a vision that we?

Speaker 1 (53:22)
The fun part is understanding what is the distance between that and you. That's the fun stuff. But you stay pretending your whole life, I guess. You still won't ever be that person. You know? So you gotta get real at some point to get there.

Speaker 2 (53:26)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure,

Yeah.

Totally. Yeah. Okay, I wanted to close before we get into the Q &A. I wanted to close with three prompts to leave you all with and you can write this and just kind of take it home and think about it. But the first prompt is what is a vision I have for myself in the future? The second question is what is a practice I can implement to realize that vision? And the third is what is a resource I can pull on?

to help me with that practice. So I just wanna kind of have you walk away feeling like there's something you can really implement now that's real. So I said this to you before, I've been in so many rooms where all we're doing is like brainstorming without action and it drives me insane. And so I really want people to walk out of here feeling like they have action. They have not necessarily homework.

but just something to chew on and actually implement. So do you have anything that before we get into the Q &A that you feel like is pressing or something that you want to share that you feel would be helpful or important in this moment?

Speaker 1 (54:53)
I think whatever practice you generate, find something that makes you tremble and ride that edge a little bit. Because that edge is the unraveling, the undoing, the changing. And if there's not much in your life, not everything, I don't want people to just be dysregulated all the time. But in some ways, if there's something you really long for, find the edge. Ride it with consciousness, with awareness, stay there and watch yourself open. I think sometimes they're so scared of the tremble because they're like, I'm dysregulated. It's like.

Disregulation is a thing and there's this like place where change is on the other side of the tremble. That's what I want you to know. You gotta break open a little bit in order to let something new root in.

Speaker 2 (55:37)
I love that. Yeah, I love that. And just having agency too. When you recognize, like if we're talking about the potential, the uncovering of your potential and realizing that there are these structures that have created visions for you, taking agency and being the breaker, right? Breaking that mold is so terrifying and also

Speaker 1 (55:43)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:07)
I feel like now I'm like, I want fear. I'm like, give me the fear because that'll like, I love this idea of the edge because the edge is unfixed. It's malleable. always like, when you get to your edge, the edge then expands and you'll get to your edge and the edge will then expand and you'll just forever be expanding when you're getting to your edge because yeah, you're always evolving and growing. love.

Speaker 1 (56:31)
We're gonna need that edge a lot right now. We're gonna have to find the edge, we're gonna have to ride the edge. I hope we know that every things that we've done before are not going to work in the same way. I was just talking to someone a few days ago saying like, it used to be a point in time where it felt like our outrage would make something move. But when the paradigm has accounted for your outrage and figured out how to use it, configure it,

It doesn't do what you thought it did anymore. And that doesn't mean that we're not outraged, but it means how do we, the reactive parts of ourselves, how do we work with that reactivity, with that fear, and what are the new things we will do? Where are those trembling edges? I think we have to find them in a different way right now.

Speaker 2 (57:21)
The change that occurs from outrage is what I was talking about at the beginning, is that it's fleeting because it's based out of fear. Like I'm changing because I'm in fear of your outrage rather than it being a grounded moment of understanding why there's outrage and really getting into the root of it to some degree. Cause I see like, I don't know all the...

the stuff that happened after 2020 and you saw all these cities who were like, okay, now we're going to defund the police and all this stuff. And then they backtracked because they just reacted out of fear. They were like, I don't want my city to go up in flames. Let me just appease so that I can suppress the outrage. But there wasn't actually an underlying.

Speaker 1 (58:03)
Well, I think that's the issue. I think the outrage is necessary, needed. I think what wasn't happening was the other organizing that would put, you know, like when people are saying right now, like, I don't want to be on the front lines, I'm tired. There's some people that have not been carrying their weight. And so now it's like that outrage didn't have anywhere to go because those people hadn't been organized well. Like a lot of these white people out here.

that are succumbing to these ideologies and these myths of supremacy have not been organized by the people they would trust to actually transform and reshape who they could be now. And so they are being organized by forces that say, they don't want you to be here, they don't want you to exist, they're anti-white, et cetera. When actually it's like, who is organizing people to understand that there's another way that we can be? There's another way you can be, it's not about.

Speaker 2 (58:38)
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 (58:58)
It's not in the context of violence and white genocide, which is such a... That is outrageous to me. That is outrageous to me. But who is organizing those folks? And I know there are people, so please don't at me. There are people that I honor and respect, but there's not enough. And so, yes, people's outrage didn't move people, but there's other things that need to move in order for that to actually fall in place. So I'm not saying we aren't outraged. I feel rage.

Speaker 2 (59:22)
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:27)
I feel outrage, I feel anger, I feel all of that. All of it. I cycle through it every day. What I'm saying is, is that we are in such an inflamed moment and they are accounting for our outrage and our rage. They're accounting for it and using it in a different way than we've seen before. I'm still gonna feel what I'm gonna feel, but I also have to understand the context that I live in in this moment. So that's what I'm saying. Some of that.

Speaker 2 (59:52)
Yeah.

I like that. Good. Good. All right. We'll take some questions. How can I be more decisive and confident in my decisions and choices when second guessing and overthinking make me feel wrong or incorrect?

Speaker 1 (1:00:09)
Second guessing, overthinking. Maybe this is also an astrological question. I don't know you and I don't know astrology. but second guessing and overthinking, I think it's like, I really want to break out, not just you, but everybody. It's like this good, bad binary is sort of what I've been pointing to. We're always trying to be good so that we're not bad. And that's what I mean about being a process. Like if you really can sit with yourself, meditate with, I'm a work in progress. Yes, I will disappoint. It might hurt people. I might mess up.

But there's something that part that can't be touched. There's something in me that is beyond value. It's not like I'm worth, self-worth, I have worth. It's beyond even that concept. It's so vast and real and constant. It's not like, am I worthy, am I valuable? It is beyond those concepts that we've created as human beings to decide whether we like something or someone or whatever it is. There's something in you that is beyond that.

that transcends even those flimsy little concepts. That is the part of you that can learn and grow. So I think practicing listening to that part and then working with that sense of failure, messing up, being wrong, you're just gonna have to stew in it. There's no way to avoid it, unfortunately. Sorry. I don't think, maybe somebody's gonna come and figure out a shortcut, but I've looked.

Speaker 2 (1:01:31)
What is the connection between the surrender healing you're describing and liberation?

Speaker 1 (1:01:36)
Surrender and liberation. Liberation is this big word and maybe people have ideas but a lot of us don't really know what we mean by it and what it will feel like. We have kind of like, this will be in this place and we'll move this here and then it'll be liberation. But I think it's that, I think surrender is going to get us there but surrender changes like, it changes your priorities. It changes how you believe life should be lived. It changes who you think you are.

When you surrender in the healing process, or I know this through body work, I don't know it in, this is what I mean semantically. It's like I can feel something bigger, I can feel aliveness. I can feel aliveness in the aliveness that is in everything. That has shaped, reshaped the idea of liberation I had that I was organized into. My felt sense has changed even what that

is, what I long for, what I feel like I'm moving towards when thinking about liberation. It's like an inside out experience. And so I do think that's part of the thing. It's like, we're moving towards liberation. It's going to have to be both inside and outside and not let's all go away and, you know, whatever, disconnect forever. But it's inside outside. It's inside. We're pattern making creatures like a spider creates a web. I'm going to create a web of my unconscious material and unprocessed stuff.

of relational webs. going to hang out with these kind of people, I'm going to do this kind of work, I'm going to organize in this way. I'm going to create a web that mimics what I believe is true.

Speaker 2 (1:03:11)
Can you talk more about discerning the difference between wanting and longing in the body? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (1:03:18)
What you think of wanting is like, you know, that craving feeling you get and you know it's not gonna last? You know, I want this thing, but I know it's gonna like, it's gonna be gone before I even have it. If I get this, I want this, ooh, I gotta have this. It's so charged and it will never live up to what, you know, the thing you want it to be. I was walking down at Street in Berkeley recently and I saw in the window of this thrift shop this purse that all the cool girls had when I was in the seventh grade. was a Dooney and Burke.

Hittiest, actually. Like a hideous purse. And I saw it, I was like, there it is for $15 in Berkeley. I was like, mom, I really want this purse. She's like, that purse is $120. There's no way. But I wanted it. But what I wanted was the acceptance. That I thought, did I really want a Dooney and Burke purse? No. I wanted the belonging. Or I longed for belonging.

and it produced this want in me that gets, you know, it's like, let's put all these things in front of people and pretend like it's acceptance and belonging and all these things, but they're not, they never are. They like fall away, you know? And we can have things. I mean, I have things that I love to look at or inspire me or move me, but I think that wanting, that craving, that grasping always tends to fall away. There's something underneath. It's like, get to the underneath and then see if you still want to do an Amber purse.

Speaker 2 (1:04:43)
Okay, how can we incorporate semantics into a practice of decarceration? Thinking specifically around incarcerated individuals whose very experience in carceral spaces relies upon separation of self and dislocation from others, geographies, and one's personal world making.

Speaker 1 (1:04:59)
I think I've done some somatic work with people who are inside, but I always find that it's like there's such a mutuality there because I feel like they know, they can know somatics and embodiment in a way that is different than even, than we can. And so I feel like I've had teachers that are incarcerated that are teaching me about embodiment, about presence, about feeling, about connection, about protection, about safety.

I did a training years ago with folks that had just within the year had gotten out. And I remember there's like a practice where you walk through the room and we just kind of feel and people were walking in a circle right behind each other. Cause I was like, just walk in the room and everybody, the embodiment was walking formation. And I was like, stop y'all. Let's look, let's look at what has been embodied in it. It was like a portal into.

Speaker 2 (1:05:49)
information.

Speaker 1 (1:05:58)
What are, what did they come to embody through incarceration? What is the embodiment of incarceration? And what is the path into, you know, because that middle space in the room, I was like, there's so much opening here. We're not moving towards the opening. Why aren't we moving towards the opening? There's risk and there's all these things that can happen in that open space. And so it was like, how can we practice? And to me, again, it's very mutual. It's like, we can notice and we can practice and people can teach me things about

Speaker 2 (1:06:03)
Totally.

Speaker 1 (1:06:29)
about feeling and presence in environments that are so anti that, that people can still find it. Do find it all the time. Find it without it being called somatics. know, find it because it's just there, but you find it in these little pockets. I think it's, I mean, and then there's a whole thing I could say we could be here all night about just like how the embodiment of our current systems creates the logic of incarceration or like it makes sense.

Speaker 2 (1:06:40)
Right,

Speaker 1 (1:06:56)
inside of how we structure the world and the ways that we treat each other, even people who are not incarcerated, the rigidity of how we treat each other, all of our tactics around non-changing, non-accountability, expulsion, all these tendencies and trends create then, I think, the carceral system itself. We could talk about that for, I mean, so long.

Speaker 2 (1:07:18)
I mean,

when dealing with a bully who approaches conflict through mainly domination and oppression, is there hope for forming connection or relational healing when they are not able or willing to surrender or die a little bit to reconfigure their worldview? If not, is our biggest hope to outnumber them and push out the bullies. Thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 1 (1:07:41)
I'm

not gonna pretend like I know the answer to this. I have some ideas, but I think I have the answer yet. I'm listening. Yeah, is there hope? Yeah. There's hope. I don't know exactly how to get to it yet, but there's hope only because, you know, I was talking to you earlier, there's something in us. My partner's always like, you talk to everybody. I be talking to people at the grocery store, at the coffee shop. like, I love to talk to strangers. I have a hard time talking to people I know. But people I don't know, I'm like...

I'm in, but I think it's, I'm always looking for that part in them, which I have never not found it really, that is present, is aware. There's like, there's always something in someone, like a kernel, a light or whatever it is. And I try to talk to that when I talk to people, I try to talk to that part of them that is aware, that is awareness itself.

So that gives me hope, just that practice gives me hope. So I do have hope, but that doesn't mean that just talking to that part is going to be able to move through the contractions when they may be well practiced and reinforced and the threat that people are experiencing, the fear. I mean, cause to me, the bully is terrified. To me, the bully is terrified. That doesn't mean that I'm absolving them of anything, but I think there is a fear inside the bully, a fear of their own self. I don't know yet.

how to change that dynamic, but I know that there is hope. But I also think, I think to your second point, the fixation on the bully is part of the problem too. So moving our attention a little bit away from the bully, but also from, it's not just the bully, it's also the celebrity. It's the, whatever that dynamic is, where we take somebody and make them.

pedestal or whatever, we take them out of our same plane. It doesn't mean that people can't be special or, you know, they're fancy or you like them a lot. But there's nothing, there's no, there's no real difference, you know, fundamentally, there's no real value difference. So I think we've all got to kind of break up with that, that feeds, feeds this outsizing of individuals and traps them in a way, away from their own humanity and connection. So I think it's about that bully, but it's also

I think we gotta disperse the work a little bit. It's actually not so much about them.

Speaker 2 (1:10:03)
wonder if too this is something around like who the message is coming from where you're not going to be the person like the general you is not going to be the person for everyone to change that other person recognizing that the messenger

Speaker 1 (1:10:18)
Yeah, but I don't think anybody's gonna walk up to Donald Trump right now and have him go like, yeah, I feel connected to my inner child right now. I don't think there's one person on earth that's gonna do that. I guess what I'm saying is like, I think there's a lot of other things that have to change and then that becomes more possible. But we have been in a long move towards this moment. I mean, I think my whole life I thought this moment would happen. You know what I'm saying? I was like, we're headed to that bad place. We're headed there.

Speaker 2 (1:10:38)
Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (1:10:48)
And then, Yeah,

Speaker 2 (1:10:49)
We're here.

Speaker 1 (1:10:50)
but we're here and there's other places that we are too and I think that's what I'm saying is like, put your attention on where else we are. The bully is important, the bully can do a lot of damage. And is. And what are we divesting from that makes the bully less possible?

Speaker 2 (1:11:06)
How does our visioning relate to or intersect with our soul and how would you define soul?

Speaker 1 (1:11:12)
I don't know if I can answer that. I mean, I can say, I think there's something that you're here to do. What a soul is, I can't do all that. mean, know, psychedelics have been helpful. Understanding somebody actually, to me, raises more questions than provides clarity. I'm like, wait, what? The soul is like an equation riding on a neon.

What I believe, what I can wrap my human mind around somewhat is that I think there's something inherent to each of us. There's something to express. And when we do it, we feel more ease. We don't, I think, then create more pain and trauma and as much pain and trauma in the world. think I'm, I can tell that I'm here to do some things when I feel the flow. I'm like, that's the thing I was supposed to do. Got it. And maybe that's my imagination, but it.

It makes my life feel well lived and it makes the impact that I have feel in line with my intention. I don't know what a soul is.

Speaker 2 (1:12:20)
Do you feel like a soul was just someone else's vision that we've bought into and that we're just like endlessly seeking?

Speaker 1 (1:12:26)
feel like

this is the high thoughts. You gotta say when you don't know. I don't know if that's somebody's idea. I know what I can feel inside of myself and that's something. I like soul music. I think that had something to do with the soul.

Speaker 2 (1:12:40)
What is the nerdy topic that you would love to talk about if given the opportunity full nerd, full.

Speaker 1 (1:12:47)
my gosh, okay, wow, all right. The thing I'm nerding out on right now that I'm trying to figure out how to share with the world is really nothing that hasn't been said before, but I'm really interested in stress. We were talking about this backstage. And shifting the conversation from strictly one about trauma and healing to stress and resilience, because I think that frame helps us to understand that life is going to have challenges, tragedies, pain, beauty, love.

joy, awe, and when we face something, because there's a definition of stress and I can't remember the scholar's name, Sarafino I think is her last name, but she says stress is basically, I can't remember the exact words, but it's concern that we do not have the resources to face the challenges that we face. I like it a lot too, I was like wait a minute. And so that means that stress in a way itself is neutral, because we can garner, accumulate.

get the resources we need to face the challenges that we face. But if we're individualistic, it's hard to get those resources. It's hard to be in community and connection with enough people or even beings life in order to have to be resourced to face the challenges that we face. So we are stressed. Trauma is an extreme stress. It's, I did not have the resources or the resources I had in terms of my stress responses were overwhelmed by the experience. That's what creates the traumatic residue in our.

bodies and physiologically. So we focus on trauma, which is really important. I think it's really, really, really important. But I want to also expand the frame so that we're seeing stress because I think that brings us back into connection with each other in a way that I think we are going to need and need now. So I would really nerd out with you if you were to sit with me for an hour about stress and physiology of stress and what it means to get resource.

through people, through connection with nature, through all these places that we get resource to face challenges and how we can practice around that for what's to come, how it helps us in conflict, crisis and chaos, these things I've been thinking about a lot. And one nerdy thing, I was in conversation with somebody this week about one of my teachers I work with, Trujillo, he said that chaos is, okay wait, I want y'all to bear with me. Have y'all heard of five rhythms?

It's like a somatic practice, it's like these different rhythms you do practices. But the last one is chaos. This woman, white woman, went to the continent and she gathered these polyrhythms and it's like chaos is this place where you're just supposed to let your body do everything. And so I was listening, and if you were into five rhythms and I said that wrong, my apologies. But I listened to the chaos rhythm and I was like, that's polyrhythms. That's not chaos. I can hear all those rhythms and I could dance to all those rhythms. And so what...

Oscar and I have been talking about is how chaos is actually, has, I mean it's chaos theory. It has a logic in it, but it feels like chaos when it exceeds our capacity to decipher the patterns inside of it basically. And we were trying to figure out what are the somatic practices for chaos? And some of it is that perception of the logic inside. I'm sorry. Can you imagine being married to me? I think about my wife all the time.

Cause she'll be like trying to go to sleep and I'll be like, have you ever thought about, I just thought about this thing. And she's like, shh. Stop talking. That happens every day.

Speaker 2 (1:16:08)
I think that you're brilliant. So thanks. really loved this conversation. This was so nice. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1 (1:16:18)
Thank you. Thanks, y'all. Really appreciate it. Thank you.