This semester has been a purposeful deepening of life-long iterative practice of intentional, self-reflective adaptation toward the person I want to be within community. By seeking out wisdom from deeply intelligent and generous teachers of somatic anti-racism, I have been exposed to a layered and fluid web of self-reflective, embodied practice that leads practitioners on a pathway toward healthier selves, relationships, communities, and societies. My intention is to practice

The following is an outline of the embodied practice session I facilitated for the white-identifying members of my research seminar class on 3/23/21. It is a sequence of somatic experiences intended to guide white folx into noticing their bodies’ reactions to conversations around race, and to notice how those reactions are effecting their ability to support anti-racism efforts. Below is a brief introduction to the work we did together and some discussion about why portions of

During our week 3 meeting for LISTEN IN, our white working group discussed and worked through some somatic practice focusing on our symbolic bodies. Our symbolic bodies as in what we, as white bodies, represent in a context of racism and white supremacy. We conceptualized this by thinking in scales: if 1 is the personal body (who we are on a personal level), then 5 is the symbolic body (all that is attached to our body including history, culture, race, social positionally, pr

Something I wrote in my notebook on 1/28/21: I have begun to more acutely observe the white people I interact with when topics of race and racism come up. Today I noticed how quickly people remove themselves from the conversation when I mentioned my participation in ARWG (the student-led anti-racist group). In our weekly LISTEN IN sessions, I notice how people often get stuck resisting the container or structure of the group and express that resistance over and over instead o

An example of an embodied practice to notice and counter white supremacy in my body: Today I noticed white supremacy in my head. I felt a furrowing of my brow and tension across my forehead while considering the power that white bodies have. Was this defensiveness? Discomfort? Guilt? Skepticism? This I do not know, but I do know the tension, the bracing. Placing my hand over my forehead, I considered what that place represents in white culture: the Cartesian split between min

Something I wrote a couple months ago… 2.19.21 This week I was placed in a breakout room with a fellow attendee of LISTEN IN to discuss Audre Lorde’s Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. While discussing, the two of us connected over similar experiences with silence/inaction, realizing that we both struggle with anxiety. We noted that for both of us, anxiety and white silence/inaction have very similar physiological effects in the body: the rumbling/turning of

White supremacy lives in my body. It lives in the way I treat my body. In the way I discipline, chastise, abuse, negate, belittle, and train my body. White body supremacy—the notion that there is a supreme, perfect, ideal, white body. The notion that my goal is to be that body. (Menakem). How do I begin to challenge this notion? How do I being to change the practices, habits, and deep thinking that intertwine me with white supremacy culture? “I often feel I am trapped inside

An Experimentation with Communicative Processes in Dance Screenshot by Mollie Wolf. I started this process with an open inquiry about body to body transmission. In Sensational Knowledge, Tomie Hahn discusses what she terms “‘dance speak’…a metalanguage, a unique dance instructional language reflecting a varied and deeply complex matrix of information. This ‘dance speak’ comprises a fragmented yet completely fluid combination of the musical vocal line, instrumental vocables, e

Americanness, as an identifier, has always been tricky for me. For most of my life I have been resistant to labeling myself American, because I see ‘America’ as an oppressive world force, a place of inequality and hypocritical values. As a kid, I could never understand why every single morning we were required to stand with our hands over our hearts, staring at the dinky flag in the corner of the classroom to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Most days I quietly refused to par