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Guided body scan/stretch explored on Day 1 of 2

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Stand up, feet planted on the ground shoulder length apart. Bend knees slightly. Take three deep breaths, exhaling each breath fully. Now, begin the following movement sequence.

ANKLES

Pick up your left foot and roll your ankle around in a circle to the left. Now roll your left ankle around in a circle to the right. Now put your left foot down and pick up your right foot and roll your ankle around in a circle to the left. Then roll your right ankle around in a circle to the right.

LEGS

Stand on your left leg and lift right knee; then stand on your right leg and lift your left knee. Hold in your stomach and breathe while you do the knee lifts.

CORE (Back)

Put your hands on your hips. Gently and slowly arch your spine backward, then forward, holding in your stomach muscles (think of pulling in your belly button to your spine). Breathe in as you arch backward, and breathe out as you arch forward, pulling in your stomach.

CORE (Waist & Back)

Put your hands on your hips, and swivel your hips around in a circle to the left. Now swivel your hips around in a circle to the right.

HANDS

Hold your hands out. Roll wrists in circles, in one direction 10 turns and then 10 times in the opposite direction. Make fists and then unclench them doing this 10 times.

ARMS

Lift your arms so they are at right angles with your body. Keeping your arms straight, circle them around in small circles until they begin to become heavy. When this occurs drop your hands to your side. Repeat, only this time rotate your hands in the opposite direction.

SHOULDERS

Bring your shoulders up to your ears, squeeze and hold for a count of 15 and then down again. Do this 4 times.

NECK

Slowly bend your neck to your right side so that your ear is moving toward your shoulder. Hold for a count of 5 and then do the same on the opposite side. Now move your neck forward so your chin touches your chest hold and then slowly move your neck back, lifting your chin. This exercise should be done slowly and very gently.

WHOLE FACE

Scrunch your whole face up: including your eyes, nose cheeks, and mouth. Then release. Make these faces 5 times. Then, stretch your face muscles by opening your eyes wide and lifting your eyebrows up.

CHIN

Make "O" signs with your mouth and then jut out your chin. Do this 5 times.

LUNGS

Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Do this 3 times.

ENERGIZE THE WHOLE BODY

Shake out your body. March in place and shake out your body again.

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Stand up, feet planted on the ground shoulder length apart. Bend knees slightly. Take three deep breaths, exhaling each breath fully. Now, begin the following movement sequence. Pick up your left foot and roll your ankle around in a circle to the left. Now roll your left ankle around in a circle to the right.

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Full Article of the shortened version read in day 1 of 2

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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MEDIUM Article - The Future of Healing_ Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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Circles 5 &6- Planning support in the classroom

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Affinity Group- CIS Est. Healing Centered Environment in the Classroom

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Dreaming As Liberation l Facilitator Guide

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Celebration and Joy l Circle Facilitation Guide

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The Settled Body l Facilitator Guide -- OEA Virtual Series Spring 23

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Facilitators:
Allan Madrid, allan@healingschoolsproject.com
Mia Hunte, mia@healingschoolsproject.com
Nikenya Hall, nikenya@healingschoolsproject.com

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The Settled Body Healing Circle -- OEA Virtual Sessions Spring 23 

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Resmaa Menakem | Embodied Anti-Racist Education

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Moving from race to culture to creation is important, transformative, and takes work. And a lot of reps. I help people, communities, and organizations find strength in healing that is holistic and resilient. Together let's set a course for healing historical and racialized trauma carried in the body and the soul. I am a healer. I help people rise through the suffering's edge. I am a cultural trauma navigator. I am a communal provocateur and coach. I am a Senior Fellow with The Meadows Institute. I consider it my job in this moment to make the invisible visible.

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Moving from race to culture to creation is important, transformative, and takes work. And a lot of reps. I help people, communities, and organizations find strength in healing that is holistic and resilient. Together let's set a course for healing historical and racialized trauma carried in the body and the soul.

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Creating A Culture of CoCare -- OEA Virtual Sessions Spring 23 

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"The Triumph of Small Victories" Edutopia 2016

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"The Triumph of Small Victories" Edutopia 2016

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https://www.edutopia.org/blog/edutopia-community-triumph-small-victories-rebecca-alber

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Edutopia Community_ The Triumph of Small Victories

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A Powerful Releasing 5 Minute Guided Meditation 

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A Powerful Releasing 5 Minute Guided Meditation 

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A Powerful Releasing 5 Minute Guided Meditation

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Four Agreements of Courageous Conversations 

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Four Agreements of Courageous Conversations 

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https://courageousconversation.com/about/

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"My Grandmother's Hands" by Resma Manakem (online copy)

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"My Grandmother's Hands" by Resma Manakem (online copy)

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Chapter 11 Link

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Additional Reading: "Filmmaker and Activist Tourmaline on How to Freedom Dream"

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Additional Reading: "Filmmaker and Activist Tourmaline on How to Freedom Dream"

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From the early 2000s until 2015, before I started making films, I was a community organizer for Black, trans, queer, gender nonconforming, and disabled communities. It was in that context that I learned about freedom dreaming. Freedom dreams are born when we face harsh conditions not with despair, but with the deep knowledge that these conditions will change- that a world filled with softness and beauty and care is not only possible, but inevitable.

Freedom dreaming starts with asking questions, often the same questions, over and over, allowing ourselves to get deeper each time. Coming out of the long tradition of Freedom Schools, I focused on these three questions as an organizer: What does the dominant culture have that we want?⁣ What does the dominant culture have that we don't want?⁣ What do we have that we want to keep?⁣ These days, it is the third question that preoccupies me.

The thing is, freedom dreaming isn't just about the big things-the huge world changes that we are manifesting in our movements, like police and prison abolition, free universal healthcare, and gender self-determination for all. When I give myself permission to slow down like this-and particularly, when I wonder what we already have that we want to keep-what I always notice are the small things. (Or I should say: What seem like the small things, but really are the big things! The everyday acts of liberatory glamour, care, and openness that keep us alive.) I notice how much I am already surrounded by the world I dream of.

I've begun to realize that I freedom dream every single day:

When I dye my hair blue at home in my bathtub, reclaiming the color from its capture by racist police-and then do my eyeshadow to match-I'm freedom dreaming. I am allowing my very existence to be an aesthetic resistance.

When I take a walk down my block, and slow down to touch and smell the blooming flowers, bursting with vitality, I'm freedom dreaming. I am allowing myself to live in a world where nature is a teacher and friend.

When I Venmo my friend $25 with a heart emoji, so that they can safely take a cab home from a protest or a date or a doctor's appointment, I'm freedom dreaming. I am creating a world in which we can all move around safely, without fear of harassment.

When I stay in bed all day, luxuriating in rest, moving in and out of cat naps, I'm freedom dreaming.I am living in the knowledge that I don't have to be productive in the ways capitalism demands of us in order to deserve relaxation and recuperation.

When I write to an incarcerated loved one, on colorful paper, enclosing exuberant childhood photos, I'm freedom dreaming. I am reaching through the walls designed to prevent connection and delight, and announcing that they have failed in their intent.

When I walk naked from my bedroom to my kitchen, adorned in nothing but lipstick, I'm freedom dreaming.I am communing with Marsha P. Johnson, anti-police activist and sex worker, and her naked walks down Christopher Street five decades ago.

When I sext all my friends, trading sultry photos into the late hours of the night, I'm freedom dreaming. I am envisioning a world in which pleasure isn't a scarce resource, but is something to revel in and share.

When I refuse to make myself smaller to accommodate the demands for respectability put forward by mainstream institutions-when I wear sheer dresses and chokers to art openings and airports alike, when I don't tuck, when I am my fullest and freest self in the most public of places-I'm freedom dreaming.I am expanding in the power of my unruliness and refusal to conform to violent and oppressive normativity.

When I post images on Instagram that will inevitably be taken down because they don't abide by the platform's repressive Terms of Service-images of sex toys, and trans joy, and futanari anime-I'm freedom dreaming. I am reminding myself that we cannot be contained by corporations seeking to stifle our wayward expressions of pleasure.

When I care for sick friends, and let sick friends care for me, I'm freedom dreaming. I am remembering that we do not have to be afraid of each other, and that contagion has historically been weaponized against us, used to stoke fear amongst and alienate trans people, queer people, sex workers, and disabled people from our loved ones.

I want you to know that your freedom dreams can be immediate: the DMs you want to receive tonight, the quality of sleep you want to have, the screen break you want to take, the conversation you're hoping to have with a family member or friend. I want you to know that it's not frivolous to have dreams about seemingly small or pleasurable things; it is vital.

The world that I dream of is filled with ease. ⁣⁣I'm not satisfied with Black trans lives mattering; I want Black trans lives to be easy, to be pleasurable, and to be filled with lush opportunities. I want the abundance we've gifted the world-the art, the care, the knowledge, and the beauty-to be offered back to us tenfold.

In the world that I dream of, it's easy to move about. It's easy to walk home at night with a bag of Skittles. It's easy to relax in your own house. It's easy to resolve conflict. It's easy to hang out on the street. It's easy to do the work you want to do. It's easy to come together. It's easy to have sex, to seek pleasure and joy, to wear what feels right. It's easy to be soft. It's easy to remember your power. To be in public. To use. It's easy to not have to work. It's easy to be in bed all day. It's easy to be free. ⁣It's easy to be alive. ⁣
Fashion Editor: Tess Herbert

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Filmmaker and Activist Tourmaline on How to Freedom Dream

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"Freedom dreams are born when we face harsh conditions not with despair, but with the deep knowledge that these conditions will change-that a world filled with softness and beauty and care is not only possible, but inevitable."

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Warriors Against Violence fight inter-generational Indigenous trauma through healing circles

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Warriors Against Violence fight inter-generational Indigenous trauma through healing circles

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Warriors Against Violence fight inter-generational Indigenous trauma through healing circles

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"When You're Bypassing or Overriding Your Body's Genius" Blog Post April 2021

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"When You're Bypassing or Overriding Your Body's Genius" Blog Post April 2021

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Resmaa Menakem | Embodied Anti-Racist Education

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Settling your body and exploring the edges of discomfort

KEY POINTS

Settling is not the same thing as calming.

The settling process is also a tempering and conditioning process.

We all need to develop discernment.

Bypassing is not enlightenment.

The central message of the Somatic Abolitionism blog is to learn to trust the genius of your body. In this post, let's look at the flip-side of that message: notice when you're bypassing or overriding your body's genius.

We do this more often than we realize. In fact, sometimes when we think that we're settling our body, we're actually avoiding its experience.

As I wrote in My Grandmother's Hands, "Few skills are more essential than the ability to settle your body. If you can settle your body, you are more likely to be calm, alert, and fully present, no matter what is going on around you." A settled body enables you to harmonize and connect with other bodies around you, while encouraging those bodies to settle as well-and creating possible somatic alignment.

When your body settles, it relaxes into its own experience in the present moment. It accepts whatever is happening-including any pain that you may need to acknowledge and metabolize.

In short, settling is a form of presence that supports discernment, healing, and growth.

Unfortunately, when people face stress or conflict, they often try to calm their body rather than settle it. When their body quakes or constricts or hurts, they don't lean into that experience. Instead, they try to use meditation, or yoga, or a mantra, or MBSR, or a visualization to lean away from it. Rather than becoming present to their own pain or discomfort, they dissociate or move into a trance state. This process is sometimes called bypassing (or spiritual bypassing).

If you have long experience with meditation, yoga, mantras, visualizations, or MBSR, you know that this is a misuse of these practices, which are designed to make bodies more present to whatever is happening, not less.

Another common dodge is trying to override your pain or discomfort by focusing your attention in a different direction. If you have a conflict with a co-worker, you leave the room rather than deal with the issue. If you dread making a difficult decision about your dying father's medical care, you binge-watch Schitt's Creek instead. If a discussion about race makes your stomach and shoulders tighten, you quickly change the subject.

At the time, you might imagine that you have solved the problem. But you haven't. You've just overridden your pain or discomfort for the moment. That override doesn't disperse or diffuse the pain; it simply stores it within your body. That pain will re-emerge eventually, and you will need to reckon with it.

There can be times when overriding is your wisest choice. For example, imagine that you're having an argument with your partner about how much of your paycheck to save. A moment later, your four-year-old runs into the room, falls, hits her head on the floor, and begins screaming. Both you and your partner need to quickly override any emotional heat around money in order to take care of your child. But the two of you will need to return to the issue-and the heat that it generates-at a later time.

Body Practice Number 1: Tempering, Conditioning, and Discerning

Think of something that makes you slightly uncomfortable whenever you encounter it. It can be anything-heights, bees, pit bulls, people with Down's syndrome, soldiers carrying rifles, or the way your partner looks at you when they're angry.

Close your eyes. Imagine that your source of discomfort is in front of your face, just a foot away. Imagine that you're looking right at it.

For three slow, steady breaths, stay with that image. Don't try to run from it, or turn away, or brush it aside. Don't try to do anything about it at all. For three long breaths, simply be with it.

As you do, notice:

Where your body constricts, or freezes, or relaxes

Any other sensations in your body

Any impulse to move or act

Any images or emotions that arise

Any thoughts or stories that pop into your head

Do this once a day until your body is able to discern the constriction from expansion. Then select something else that makes you uncomfortable, and begin working with that.

Continue with this process-and one source of discomfort after another-for the rest of your life. If it becomes too much or overwhelming, stop and try something less activating at another time. It's fine to start with small discomforts and work your way up to larger ones until you notice other things.

This is the beginning of discernment. This is the process of tempering and conditioning.

Body Practice Number 2: Staying With Discomfort

I've done the following practice nearly every day for the past two years. It's a simple way to begin conditioning and tempering your bodymind to accept and move through discomfort. And it takes only 30 seconds.

Each morning, at the end of your shower, once you're warm and clean, turn off the hot water. For five breaths-no more-let the cold water flow down your body. No matter how much you might want to leap away, stay under the water as you follow five inhalations and exhalations.

During these five breaths, notice the following:

Any sensations of cold, wetness, pressure, or pain

Where your body constricts or braces itself

Any impulse to move, or avoid the cold, or block the water flow, or turn off the faucet

Any images or emotions that arise

Any thoughts, questions, or stories that pop into your head ( Why the hell am I doing this?, etc.)

If you need to briefly shout, or curse, or gasp, that's fine.

After five breaths, get out of the shower, dry yourself, and warm up.

At first, your five breaths may be quick and sudden-more like gasps. Over time, though, your breathing will slow down, until you're able to stand under the cold water for five natural breaths with your toes relaxed. Over time you will notice things about your bodymind that you do not now.

With enough reps, as the weeks pass, you may find your body beginning to settle into the cold instead of constricting or bracing itself. You will notice your edges and your expanses.

All this in five seconds ... repeatedly.

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When You're Bypassing or Overriding Your Body's Genius | Resmaa Menakem

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KEY POINTS Settling is not the same thing as calming. The settling process is also a tempering and conditioning process. We all need to develop discernment. Bypassing is not enlightenment. The central message of the Somatic Abolitionism blog is to learn to trust the genius of your body.

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“The center of the wheel represents internal dimensions that are usually most permanent or visible. The outside of the wheel represents dimensions that are acquired and change over the course of a lifetime. The combinations of all of these dimensions influence our values, beliefs, behaviors, experiences and expectations and make us all unique as individuals” (Johns Hopkins Diversity Leadership Council, n.d.).

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"The difference between giving and receiving care is very much timing."

- ELLIOT KUKLA

Cultures of Care celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Care is an essential, immediate and practical way to create belonging. Perhaps most vitally in our urgent times, at the heart of each profile you will find provocations that are seeds for reshaping society and how we relate to each other and the world.

Cultures of Care was initiated in the fall of 2020 as we faced a deepening pandemic and economic inequality, popular uprisings against state-sanctioned violence against Black people, an expanding border wall and a deluge of traumatic climate events. These conditions continue to grow today. In the chaos, isolation and fear of these multiple storms, we also witness beautiful points of shelter. These practices center an ethos of collective care in the face of multiple forms of overlapping othering and oppression. Some of these are new and emergent, like harnessing technology to adapt to social isolation. Others are long-standing, such as stewarding ancestral lands through fire. Most, if not all, are an evolving mix of new and old ways to practice collective care. Cultures of Care are practices that create belonging in the context of othering. A Culture of Care is an affirmative, generative form of resistance and adaptation.

As many of the practitioners noted, care is undervalued in society. This is a direct result of capitalism and its intersections with patriarchy, ableism and white supremacy. Capitalism chases profit in large part through increasing efficiency. This means moving faster and lowering costs. One of the main ways to lower costs is to erase externalities from the balance sheet⁠-to make someone else pay for something that is essential to the profitable business. Care work is one of the largest erasures.

Care work includes the daily labor that it takes to survive⁠-changing diapers for babies, taking seniors to appointments, doing the dishes, cooking, fixing the broken window, organizing daily medicine or helping your sibling with homework. Through a combination of unpaid labor and low wages we end up covering private sector costs while devaluing care, one of the core acts that connects us to our humaneness. This type of care-giving labor (also called reproductive labor) is seen as "naturally" outside of the economic sphere, and therefore of less value. This is not accidental. As Kristina Wong's Auntie Sewing Squad reminds us, care-giving labor has historically been⁠-and continues to be⁠-done by women, people of color, and especially women of color. These groups fill in as stopgap workers in the absence of a functioning social safety net or government response. The political and economic power of care workers is growing (see for example, the National Domestic Workers Alliance) and comes from a long legacy of organizing, but still remains limited and under attack. To say it another way, care doesn't pay, care workers and those who need care do. This is intimately connected to who does care work.

"What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, in experiments and possibilities."

- RUTH WILSON GILMORE

Cultures of Care learns from and builds on the legacy of care work. The practices in Cultures of Care might take the form of a party, a social space, work culture, the grief circle, or a previously unseen image. These practices are innovations that respond and adapt to needs by creating systems and knowledge. For the practitioners profiled here, their collective care practices arise out of a need to protect against forms of violence perpetuated by multiple forms of othering. They have reclaimed the value of care not just as a practice of love, but as explicit and implicit refusals of our dominant economic and political systems.

It is not insignificant that many of the practitioners we profiled have had to combine multiple sources of income and become exceptional in their craft in order to maintain and grow these practices. Many did not name care as an explicit element of their work but resonated deeply with it in the process of the interview. This doesn't mean that cultures of care are limited to exceptional individuals. Quite the opposite. We drew from such a wide set of activities in order to expand upon the boundaries of what is considered care and reflect upon the transformative power of care in practice. We know that you are engaged in or have been part of a culture of care. We hope these materials help you grow care wherever you are now.

A society where all belong requires that we are cared for in the ways that we need. It is by following this thread through cultures of care⁠-the one that centers love and relationship while refusing exploitation and isolation⁠-that we can imagine a path from the dance floor to a society rooted in belonging. These are evolving and responsive forms of care that center rest, joy, intimacy, trust, reciprocity and cultural sovereignty. This is not to say that these cultures of care are perfect or utopian⁠-they don't claim this and neither do we. But their work is a testament to care finding a way even under enduring, oppressive conditions. It is with these understandings that we have come to see how the growth of the cultural power of collective care⁠-and the myriad practitioners who center it⁠-is intrinsically tied to social transformation. For this reason we celebrate cultures of care.

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Overview | Why Cultures of Care? | Cultures of Care

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Cultures of Care celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Care is an essential, immediate and practical way to create belonging. Perhaps most vitally in our urgent times, at the heart of each profile you will find provocations that are seeds for reshaping society and how we relate to each other and the world.

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Rest as Resistance l Circle Facilitation Guide

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Mini Meditation | RECOVERY | 5 Minute Guided Recovery Meditation

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 The real reason why we are tired and what to do about it | Saundra Dalton-Smith | TEDxAtlanta

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 The real reason why we are tired and what to do about it | Saundra Dalton-Smith | TEDxAtlanta

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The real reason why we are tired and what to do about it | Saundra Dalton-Smith | TEDxAtlanta

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Article: "The 7 Types of Rest You Need to Actually Feel Recharged."

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Article: "The 7 Types of Rest You Need to Actually Feel Recharged."

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The 7 Types of Rest You Need to Actually Feel Recharged _ Shine

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Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey | Hachette Book Group

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Rest Is Resistance by Tricia Hersey | Hachette Book Group

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Formats and Prices

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 11, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

Description

***INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER***Disrupt and push back against capitalism and white supremacy. In this book, Tricia Hersey, aka The Nap Bishop, encourages us to connect to the liberating power of rest, daydreaming, and naps as a foundation for healing and justice.

What would it be like to live in a well-rested world? Far too many of us have claimed productivity as the cornerstone of success. Brainwashed by capitalism, we subject our bodies and minds to work at an unrealistic, damaging, and machine‑level pace -- feeding into the same engine that enslaved millions into brutal labor for its own relentless benefit.

In Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey, aka the Nap Bishop, casts an illuminating light on our troubled relationship with rest and how to imagine and dream our way to a future where rest is exalted. Our worth does not reside in how much we produce, especially not for a system that exploits and dehumanizes us. Rest, in its simplest form, becomes an act of resistance and a reclaiming of power because it asserts our most basic humanity. We are enough. The systems cannot have us.

Rest Is Resistance is rooted in spiritual energy and centered in Black liberation, womanism, somatics, and Afrofuturism. With captivating storytelling and practical advice, all delivered in Hersey's lyrical voice and informed by her deep experience in theology, activism, and performance art, Rest Is Resistance is a call to action, a battle cry, a field guide, and a manifesto for all of us who are sleep deprived, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive grip of Grind Culture.

"Rest Is Resistance left me feeling elated. This book reminds us that we are in charge of our restoration. In these pages, Tricia has offered us an invitation to take our power back." -Alexandra Elle, author of After the Rain and How We Heal

"With Rest Is Resistance, Tricia Hersey helps us understand that rest is how we can sustain ourselves as we awaken to the truth of the toxic systems of our times. She is not ahead of or above us in this journey, but right here in the midst of social media addiction and overwork and systemic frustration, shouting that she can see an opening. She offers us rest not instead of the incredible work we are doing, but as a way to undergird all our efforts against capitalism and white supremacy. She shows us that our dream space is sacred, and rest is how we reclaim access to the wisdom there. Naps and all kinds of rest are portals through which we return to ourselves. Tricia, sounding like an ancestor who is DONE seeing us suffer, is inviting us to join her and step on through."-adrienne maree brown, author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism

"If the rude stillness of rest is a sermon, Tricia Hersey is its underground prophet. Tricia's fierce insistence that rest is resistance is more than a plea for us to take occasional vacations, and nothing less than a spell masterfully crafted to evacuate us from the settlement politics of capture. Read this book. Then sleep, irreverently, knowing you shake worlds as you do." -Báyò Akómoláfé, Ph.D., author of These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity's Search for Home

"Vivid, deeply researched and moving... Hersey's manifesto towards radical restoration is lifegiving"-Glory Edim, author of On Girlhood and Well-Read Black Girl

"This book will save lives and transform the world. Tricia Hersey speaks the truth about rest, a truth that begins our unraveling from the lies of white supremacy and capitalism. Gradually we refuse to live at a machine pace. We surrender to the beautiful experiment of being human. We return to our truest selves. This is a book to read again and again, slowly, savoring it sentence by sentence. I'll be giving copies to everyone I work with and everyone I love."-Emily Nagoski Ph.D., Bestselling author of Come As You Are and Burnout

"Tricia Hersey whispers 'rest is a form of resistance' to me, to you, to those who think resistance is always movement. Her message is essential: Sit. Lay down. Slow down. Rest is a necessary step in reclaiming our power to resist systemic oppression."-Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning

"Hersey's ministry background shines through in her passionate and eloquent arguments that read like a clear-eyed sermon... the provocative message will appeal to those tired of grind culture."-Publishers Weekly

"Exquisitely beautiful...a book to read and reread with a pen in hand and pad beside you; one that you will find yourself wanting to give to friends, coworkers, and strangers." -BookPage

"A plan of action to help people challenge the idea that our bodies are machines to be used for capitalism's profit as opposed to truly belonging to us"-Essence

"In a culture that often seems obsessed with output, Hersey is more focused on the inner calm and self-knowledge that can come with proper rest...and on investigating who has traditionally been denied that rest and its myriad benefits."-Vogue

"[Hersey] is an artist at heart...She approaches the notion of collective rest as a form of performance art, incorporating elements of Black liberation theology, Afrofuturism and poetry into her messaging."-The New York Times

"A stunning call to a slower, richer life of faith"-Sojourner

"Get the book and then read, nap, rest, relax and repeat"-Ms. Magazine

"extremely important and brilliant work... [Hersey] is a revolution"-Glennon Doyle

"[A] thought-provoking manifesto against 'hustle culture'"-News@Northeastern

Narrating her own work, Hersey makes the most of her experience as a poet, infusing her words with a driving cadence tempered by her compassion for the suffering that she sees around her...Hersey's thoughtful championing of rest and resistance makes an impact.-Sarah Hashimoto, Library Journal

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Formats and Prices This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around October 11, 2022. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control. ***INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** Disrupt and push back against capitalism and white supremacy.