2022 Embodied Social Justice Summit Schedule

DAY 2: Thursday, February 17th, 2022

Atira Tan

6am PT (Los Angeles) / 9am ET (New York) / 2pm GMT (London) / 3pm CET (Paris) / 1am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

"Patriarchy, like any system of domination, relies on socialising everyone to believe that in all human relations there is an inferior and a superior party...and that it is therefore natural for the powerful to rule over the powerless." - Bell Hooks

We live in a patriarchal world where shame and inferiority are used as emotional weapons to devalue the intrinsic worth and power of women. We experience this oppression collectively. However, the personal and collective trauma imprints of gender based oppression can be amplified in BIPOC communities. As activists working within diversity, it is important to understand how these imprints can affect the dynamics of societal and collective change.

Atira Tan is an Asian female activist, a somatic trauma specialist and an educator. She is also a survivor of the lineage of femicide. The generational practice of the intentional murder of girls because they are born female and not male. Breaking free from the trauma imprint of femicide and the cultural conditioning of patriarchy and oppression has led her to her life's work: cultivating freedom, healing and sovereignty with women and girls across South and SouthEast Asia.

Art to Healing, which Atira founded in 2005, is a trauma recovery NGO for women and girls who have been sold into child sex slavery.. Art to Healing teaches women to reclaim their sovereignty, worth and intrinsic value through the innate somatic intelligence of their bodies. Their reproductive health programs support thousands who have experienced sexual abuse, trafficking and exploitation to break free of unconscious patriarchal imprints.

In this workshop/session, Atira shares the work of Art to Healing, and explores how as activists, you can use somatic and creative approaches to support women. With love and strength, you will confront the oppressive cultural and societal conditioning of gender based discrimination, inequality and violence. Using your "felt sense" and "somatic intelligence", you will learn to reclaim your birthright of equality and power. You will integrate this "knowing" with creativity as a resource for activists. You will feel inspired and equipped to support other women in reclaiming their freedom and healing.

In this online session you will learn:

• A cross cultural overview of patriarchal oppressive systems for BIPOC communities.

• How to tap into the somatic intelligence of your female body to reconnect to your sense of self-value and worth.

• How to use creativity and art as a resource to deepen the connection and love for self.

Michelle C. Johnson & Kerri Kelly

8am PT (Los Angeles) / 11am ET (New York) / 4pm GMT (London) / 5pm CET (Paris) / 3am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Centering relationships is one of the most important strategies in dismantling racism and systems of oppression. Join Michelle Johnson, and Kerri Kelly two social change activists, for a workshop exploring how to work across lines of difference and center relationships, even when it gets messy and complicated.

Moving towards equity and collective wellbeing demands that we develop a shared understanding of how racism works so that we can locate ourselves in right role and relationship and work across lines of difference to dismantle white supremacy and create the conditions where everyone can thrive.

As a community, we can't afford to evade our responsibility for creating a just world by believing that our personal transformation is disconnected from collective liberation. We offer this workshop in the spirit of sharing collective space to wade through what arises when we speak truth from our social location or embodied racial identities.

In this online session we will:

• Develop a shared understanding of how the culture of white supremacy works.

• Explore one's right role and relationship in creating equity.

• Build relational skills and capacity to work across lines of difference, reduce harm and build community resilience.

Dr. Gail Parker

10am PT (Los Angeles) / 1pm ET (New York) / 6pm GMT (London) / 7pm CET (Paris) / 5am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

When you are steeped in centuries of resisting oppression, active in your community associations, churches, PTAs, and social justice movements, taking care of your children, aging parents, and relatives, forgoing meals, sleep, and personal time to meet all of your responsibilities, your body pays a price. Since we carry stress and trauma in the body, we need to feel good inside our own skin so that we don’t pass on the legacy of racial oppression, and any of our dysfunctional responses to it.

To the extent that you are focused on your activism, resisting racist policies and doing the heavy lifting without making time to rest, reflect and renew, you are depleting yourself and making yourself vulnerable to burnout and stress-related illnesses. In the face of the Covid-19 global pandemic and the rise in racial violence we are experiencing, we are under more stress than ever. We need our strength as we’ve never needed it before. We need to center ourselves and our emotional health and wellbeing. We must prioritize self-love and self-care so that we can all live healthier and safer lives. Self- care is not selfish. Self-care is community care, and our communities need us to be well. We need practices that help us rest, reflect, and renew so we can continue our resistance to injustice and oppression from a place of strength.

If you are someone who wants to break the cycle of giving when you’re depleted, of pushing through your long list of to do's even when you're exhausted, or of measuring your worth by all of the things you have accomplished or that you do on a daily basis, this workshop is for you.

In this online session you will learn:

• The power of rest to restore vitality.

• The power of reflection through the use of positive affirmations to relieve stress.

• The power of therapeutic journal writing to process trauma and renew your spirit.

Jacoby Ballard

12pm PT (Los Angeles) / 3pm ET (New York) / 8pm GMT (London) / 9pm CET (Paris) / 7am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

In this workshop, we will explore some methods for solidarity across difference that we can practice in our yoga and dharma spaces based on Jacoby's 2 decades of experience working at the nexus of yoga and social justice, and study of social movements. Various layers of privilege and marginality will be explored, with an emphasis on how to leverage your able-bodied privilege, white privilege, straight privilege, male privilege, thin-bodied privilege, cisgender privilege in service of liberation for all. Jacoby will humbly offer this as a presentation and discussion, and ultimately as a template for all of us to work off of and improve upon through our lived experience and practice of solidarity and accompliceship.

In this online session, you will learn:

• How to move out of shame and into action

• Essential practices of humility and compassionate listening

• Methods to take action to shift dynamics of power and resources

Dr. Jasmine Hines

2pm PT (Los Angeles) / 5pm ET (New York) / 10pm GMT (London) / 11pm CET (Paris) / 9am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement the field of American music education has consistently looked to provide music education experiences that are reflective of students’ cultural backgrounds. Music education’s dedication toward providing more culturally reflective teaching methods can be seen within the scholarship and teaching practices that have progressed since the 1960s. While scholarship and pedagogical approaches have advanced and become more culturally inclusive, many individuals who find themselves at the particular intersection of race and are often excluded from the prototypical attempts of ensuring diversity within philosophy and teaching.

The purpose of this narrative ethnographic study is to share Black female music educators’ experience-based philosophical perspectives and underscore how expressed and embodied moments of epistemic friction within their scholastic music education have impacted their current music education perspective and praxes. This three-part narrative study details four Black female K-12 general and choral music educators and their perspectives towards being Black in culturally White musical spaces, providing cultural representation in the classroom for their students, and philosophical perspectives towards teaching music in a diverse society. Findings include a Black Feminist Informed Music Education Philosophical Model, a diagram of Black Feminist Informed Philosophical and Praxial Tenets within Music Education, and finally, a Black feminist informed praxial model titled Freedom In Teaching.

This study concludes with a creative Black feminist mosaic titled, A Black Feminist Statement of Institutional Reckoning: From the Mouth of a Black Woman.

In this online session we will explore:

• Theorized components of Black Feminist Thought and Epistemology as research and described by Patricia Hill Collins.

• The ramifications of epistemic resistance amongst four Black female K-12 and collegiate music educators from a participant observer point of view.

• Three Black Feminist and thus Critical Race Theory informed praxial pedagogical frameworks developed by the researcher (Dr. Jasmine Hines) as a way to understand how the embodied understanding and importance of music and music education directly impacts the transference of knowledge to future generations of music students.

Anusha Wijeyakumar

4pm PT (Los Angeles) / 7pm ET (New York) / 12am Friday GMT (London) / 1am Friday CET (Paris) / 11am Friday AEDT (Sydney)

Join Anusha for a discussion on how we can decolonize the Yoga Sutras to make the practice more relevant, inclusive and accessible to the time we are in through the lens of social justice.

In this experiential online session we will learn:

• A mindful meditation practice.

• A decolonized overview of the 8 limbs.

• How we can practice Yoga philosophy in our daily lives.

DAY 4: Saturday, February 19th, 2022

Kai Cheng Thom - Community Connection

6am PT (Los Angeles) / 9am ET (New York) / 2pm GMT (London) / 3pm CET (Paris) / 1am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

Camille Barton

8am PT (Los Angeles) / 11am ET (New York) / 4pm GMT (London) / 5pm CET (Paris) / 3am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

At this moment we are facing many global challenges. Within late stage capitalism, responsibility for things such as health or climate change is often individualized and this can lead to a sense of powerlessness or overwhelm. As access to embodiment work expands, how can we ensure that we move beyond the individualism of the wellness industry and explore how embodiment can support collective action? In this session, Camille will make a case for ecologies of transformation: the intentional growing networks of coalitions and collectives that experiment with ways to shift culture as a means to support life. This notion builds on Nkem Ndefo’s concept of Alchemical Resilience and Prentis Hemphill’s urge for us to explore how we can embody interdependence. The session will begin with some context, problematising the notion of the individual and exploring its colonial roots. Some experiential exercises will be used to explore how we individualize responsibility and how we embody interdependence. Strategies will be shared about how to begin mixing embodiment work with collective action. To end, there will be space for questions.

In this online session we will learn:

• How the concept of the individual is limited and linked to colonial legacies.

• How collaboration and interdependence is key to solving the global challenges we face.

• Strategies for weaving embodiment with collective action for social change.

Resmaa Menakem & Rev. angel Kyodo williams

10am PT (Los Angeles) / 1pm ET (New York) / 6pm GMT (London) / 7pm CET (Paris) / 5am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

Kelsey Blackwell

12pm PT (Los Angeles) / 3pm ET (New York) / 8pm GMT (London) / 9pm CET (Paris) / 7am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

It’s wonderful that there are calls to decolonize many aspects of our lives and work. There are movements to decolonize education, birthing, social work, healthcare and more. Some of us may wonder though, what does decolonizing mean inside of these contexts? Are we talking about abolitionism? Un-hooking from patterns of white supremacy? Where do we begin? In this session, Kelsey suggests any relationship with decoloniality must first begin with our own bodies. Our bodies are the location of the ancestral inheritance, formed before colonialism, that resides in our bones. From a space of gentle inclusion, feeling for how systemic oppression operates in us internally, paves the way for imagining, engaging and creating from a new place. This session will introduce embodied practices of reclamation that put us in contact with the wisdom of the decolonized self – a multi-dimensional refuge in touch with our intuition, interconnection, spirit and rituals. Our time will include space for learning, slowing down and being in practice together.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How systemic oppression “shapes” our bodies

• A practice for recontacting indigeneity

• A framework for weaving decolonial somatic practices into our lives and collective spaces

Kesha Fikes, Ph.D.

2pm PT (Los Angeles) / 5pm ET (New York) / 10pm GMT (London) / 11pm CET (Paris) / 9am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

Disagreements in diverse spaces commonly hold tensions between 1) racialized communities’ expressions of discontent, regarding the replay of inconscient systemic harms that span past and present, and 2) white personal expressions of care and sympathy that contextualize repair of feelings in the immediate, a-historicized present. This confrontation – normed as dangerous disruption and individual rational benevolence, respectively – is hierarchically paired and judicially codified: "racialized" affect has historically been construed as bestial and monstrous, among other nonhuman or "uncivilized" expressions, which have "justified" criminalization, erasure, and death; "white" affect and its various expressions have been and remain universally instantiated as embodied reason across time and space. This session offers a slow, careful introduction to the practice of somatic extimacy to support tracking such persistent imbalance and its historical underpinnings in action. The intention is to transform this tension space, when/if all parties agree to be present, in the effort to build conditions that enable all parties to be able to choose to stay in the room, together. ‘Extimacy’ is a Lacanian term that disrupts the space between what’s personal and social. It’s politicized here to explore the radical potential in practicing historically contextualized, relational communication that de-centers white affect as norm, while demythologizing and thus 'person'-alizing racialized community responses to systemic harms and terror.

In this online session we will:

• Discuss how affect is racialized

• Extimate communication

• Extimate sensing

Niralli D'Costa, LMFT

4pm PT (Los Angeles) / 7pm ET (New York) / 12am Sunday GMT (London) / 1am Sunday CET (Paris) / 11am Sunday AEDT (Sydney)

We may suffer with painful feelings about our bodies based on the value, or lack therof, assigned to them by society. In this workshop we will explore the ways that our perceptions of our bodies have been shaped by oppressive systems and find pathways to connect with our own inherent and sovereign power. A patriarchal and colonial worldview based in competition, and arising out of perceived scarcity has shaped our collective understanding of power as control over others. This view has infiltrated our perception and aesthetic perspective of the body through the vehicles of white supremacist, capitalistic, patriarchy. 

An alternate way to perceive power is through our internal sensing of the body. This is a generative, creative power that is also mirrored to us throughout the natural world and the cosmos. This is the power we feel when we sense our relationship to the spaciousness of the night sky, the warm glow of the sun, the rootedness of the trees, and the play of our breath with the wind. The distortions of power we’ve been fed by society play out in our relationship to our bodies at such a level that we have forgotten how to perceive the power inherent to our own bodies. 

In this workshop, we will deconstruct the lens through which we see our bodies, shedding light on the external and oppressive power structures that attempt to dictate, manipulate, and control beauty. We will work through conceptual frameworks and experiential practice to develop an inner sensing of the body based on a sovereign and expansive relationship to power, releasing aesthetic conditioning, and affirming our sense of belonging to the larger field of life.