photo credit:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/salmon-run-to-return-on-klamath-river-in-california-as-dam-removal-begins/
Dear Friends,
As the year approaches its end, I wanted to share some of my reflections about embodiment and its connections that have been living in me this year.
In October I experienced the immense delight of watching the salmon run the river and waterfalls, travelling from the ocean far upstream in the fresh water to reproduce. In certain areas where the river was more still and shallow, it was thick with salmon resting, waiting for the moment to continue upstream. Then they would suddenly swim, and throw themselves many meters out of the rapids, trying to climb the (natural) waterfall ladders. Often, they would just miss, sometimes crashing into the cliffs, or getting pulled back down river by the rapids so strong in places that they would smash or drown a human quickly.
But the song in their salmon bodies is even stronger than rapids, and it pulls them to defy gravity again and again, to keep going on their path, following the call to return. What is more amazing is that in some rivers, the salmon have been following this pull in their bodies to places they haven’t been “home” to in generations.
In 2023, work began to tear down the 4 dams on the Klamath river (a river that runs between California and Oregon states, on unceded Klamath, Modoc, Yurok, Karuk, and Yahooskin Indigenous lands). The dams had disrupted and altered the natural ecosystem for over a century, which severly impacted salmon populations. The dam removal was the result of decades of work by the Indigenous nations of the area, with support by environmental groups. Just one year ago the last dam removal was complete. Astonishingly, within just a few weeks, the salmon began to return to the first part of the river! Now the water quality of the whole river has improved, and algae blooms (a sign of imbalance) have decreased.
Even the plants and trees care that the salmon are back! In the past few decades studies have scientifically reaffirmed the Native peoples' knowledge about the importance of the salmon to the whole ecological systems; the nutrients salmon of salmon bodies provide not only for humans and other animals, but also for plants, trees, and mycelium systems in the interdependent forest ecosystem. Years where there were abundant (and lacking) salmon migrations can be measured in tree ring growth, even at trees some distance from rivers and streams, due to the huge increase in nutrients in the years with many salmon!
This year, just one year after the last dam removal, something even more amazing happened, and many thousand salmon reached their inland ancestral spawning grounds, beyond the last dam's location! Salmon live in the oceans for anywhere from 1.5 – 8 years before returning upriver to their birth sites to spawn (after which they die). Which means that miraculously, after 20 – 40 generations, the salmon still could follow the deep call in their bodies, and still found their way home!
As the year approaches its end, I wanted to share some of my reflections about embodiment and its connections that have been living in me this year.
In October I experienced the immense delight of watching the salmon run the river and waterfalls, travelling from the ocean far upstream in the fresh water to reproduce. In certain areas where the river was more still and shallow, it was thick with salmon resting, waiting for the moment to continue upstream. Then they would suddenly swim, and throw themselves many meters out of the rapids, trying to climb the (natural) waterfall ladders. Often, they would just miss, sometimes crashing into the cliffs, or getting pulled back down river by the rapids so strong in places that they would smash or drown a human quickly.
But the song in their salmon bodies is even stronger than rapids, and it pulls them to defy gravity again and again, to keep going on their path, following the call to return. What is more amazing is that in some rivers, the salmon have been following this pull in their bodies to places they haven’t been “home” to in generations.
In 2023, work began to tear down the 4 dams on the Klamath river (a river that runs between California and Oregon states, on unceded Klamath, Modoc, Yurok, Karuk, and Yahooskin Indigenous lands). The dams had disrupted and altered the natural ecosystem for over a century, which severly impacted salmon populations. The dam removal was the result of decades of work by the Indigenous nations of the area, with support by environmental groups. Just one year ago the last dam removal was complete. Astonishingly, within just a few weeks, the salmon began to return to the first part of the river! Now the water quality of the whole river has improved, and algae blooms (a sign of imbalance) have decreased.
Even the plants and trees care that the salmon are back! In the past few decades studies have scientifically reaffirmed the Native peoples' knowledge about the importance of the salmon to the whole ecological systems; the nutrients salmon of salmon bodies provide not only for humans and other animals, but also for plants, trees, and mycelium systems in the interdependent forest ecosystem. Years where there were abundant (and lacking) salmon migrations can be measured in tree ring growth, even at trees some distance from rivers and streams, due to the huge increase in nutrients in the years with many salmon!
This year, just one year after the last dam removal, something even more amazing happened, and many thousand salmon reached their inland ancestral spawning grounds, beyond the last dam's location! Salmon live in the oceans for anywhere from 1.5 – 8 years before returning upriver to their birth sites to spawn (after which they die). Which means that miraculously, after 20 – 40 generations, the salmon still could follow the deep call in their bodies, and still found their way home!
credit: @estudio.144k
~ ~ ~
What parts of own human pasts have we been been cut off from, across many generations? How does that rupture live in our bodies, and through our daily habits and ways of being in the world?
...When I was in Berlin in June, I took a short trip north to Bremen, where one set of my great-grandparents are from. Though I'd never been to Bremen before, as soon as I got there something in me knew the place, had a wildly clear sense of returning (to part of) home. While this isn't logical to my Western-trained mind, my body just felt inexplicable joy. I also feel some curiosity about the fact that 15 years ago I felt drawn to live in Germany before knowing that my heritage was well over half German. When my great-grandparents immigrated to the US in the beginning of the 20th century, amid fears of anti-immigrant discrimination against Germans in the beginning of the 20th century and during the World Wars, they made choices to assimilate their children (under threats against language use) into Anglo-whiteness for a sense of safety in privilege. And thus, living in Germany, I got to meet some aspects of my cultural history and the language that had been completely cut off during my grandmother's upbringing.
I now feel a similar deep pull in my body to be in relation with these mountains here in the Pacific Northwest, the volcanic Cascade (or Yamakiasham Yaina) range. A large part of my decision to move last year was to follow this "illogical" pull. To be able to show up with my body to listen and learn from these specific lands and mountains, to cultivate relationship based in listening and accountability.
Western white supremacist-colonialist-patriarchal-capitalistic notions of linear time, individualistic limits to memory and knowledge, and dominance over nature are incompatible with such cross-generational and relation-based connections to land. But indigenous worldviews of time as more cyclical and relational, types of knowledge and memory as collective, and land as relation attest to more interconnected possibilities. And the salmon show us this is not just possible, but one powerful reality of embodied existence.
I decided to cancel my trip to Berlin that was planned for November/December this year due to the opposite forces: separation, supremacy, violence, forgetting. Recent government orders here have redefined all that I aspire to embody (antifascism, anticapitalism, critiques of binary-gender, and antiracism) as 'domestic terrorism', while arrests (by police/ICE in the US and UK) and routine brutal beatings and arrests (by police in Berlin) continue to target people objecting to genocide and settler-colonialism. The US is currently compiling 'terrorist watch lists' of people involved in non-violent community solidarity actions. While I was making this decision there were also attempts to pass a law to confiscate passports of US citizens for these things (it didn’t pass but seems likely to sneak into another law at a later point). It didn’t seem like a super wise choice to be crossing borders at the moment when it isn't necessary for me, and while there are other ways I can continue to use my voice and body to resist (and to remember) here. It was a difficult decision because I am sad to not be there and to miss the chance to touch in with each of you in person. I hope to be able to come soon.
What parts of own human pasts have we been been cut off from, across many generations? How does that rupture live in our bodies, and through our daily habits and ways of being in the world?
...When I was in Berlin in June, I took a short trip north to Bremen, where one set of my great-grandparents are from. Though I'd never been to Bremen before, as soon as I got there something in me knew the place, had a wildly clear sense of returning (to part of) home. While this isn't logical to my Western-trained mind, my body just felt inexplicable joy. I also feel some curiosity about the fact that 15 years ago I felt drawn to live in Germany before knowing that my heritage was well over half German. When my great-grandparents immigrated to the US in the beginning of the 20th century, amid fears of anti-immigrant discrimination against Germans in the beginning of the 20th century and during the World Wars, they made choices to assimilate their children (under threats against language use) into Anglo-whiteness for a sense of safety in privilege. And thus, living in Germany, I got to meet some aspects of my cultural history and the language that had been completely cut off during my grandmother's upbringing.
I now feel a similar deep pull in my body to be in relation with these mountains here in the Pacific Northwest, the volcanic Cascade (or Yamakiasham Yaina) range. A large part of my decision to move last year was to follow this "illogical" pull. To be able to show up with my body to listen and learn from these specific lands and mountains, to cultivate relationship based in listening and accountability.
Western white supremacist-colonialist-patriarchal-capitalistic notions of linear time, individualistic limits to memory and knowledge, and dominance over nature are incompatible with such cross-generational and relation-based connections to land. But indigenous worldviews of time as more cyclical and relational, types of knowledge and memory as collective, and land as relation attest to more interconnected possibilities. And the salmon show us this is not just possible, but one powerful reality of embodied existence.
I decided to cancel my trip to Berlin that was planned for November/December this year due to the opposite forces: separation, supremacy, violence, forgetting. Recent government orders here have redefined all that I aspire to embody (antifascism, anticapitalism, critiques of binary-gender, and antiracism) as 'domestic terrorism', while arrests (by police/ICE in the US and UK) and routine brutal beatings and arrests (by police in Berlin) continue to target people objecting to genocide and settler-colonialism. The US is currently compiling 'terrorist watch lists' of people involved in non-violent community solidarity actions. While I was making this decision there were also attempts to pass a law to confiscate passports of US citizens for these things (it didn’t pass but seems likely to sneak into another law at a later point). It didn’t seem like a super wise choice to be crossing borders at the moment when it isn't necessary for me, and while there are other ways I can continue to use my voice and body to resist (and to remember) here. It was a difficult decision because I am sad to not be there and to miss the chance to touch in with each of you in person. I hope to be able to come soon.
credit: @traumatized_thriving
~ ~ ~
There’s a quote about fascism being colonialism turned inward. But in this country, colonialism—or fascism by this logic— has never not been turned inward. (If you don't know: Hitler copied many of the methodological, legal, and propaganda templates from the United State's centuries of expertise in ethnic cleansing and genocide of Indigenous peoples, as well as the justifications for Black enslavement and apartheid between races.) The government here may currently be copying aspects of this well-recognized fascism back, but it has also never stopped for many people who live on these lands. These centuries of fascism have just often spared white folks the full impact of its violence as the reward for ignoring (passively supporting) or actively participating in brutality against, and theft of and from Black and Indigenous peoples.
The rising fascism here and around the world is awful; AND: it's horrifyingly "normal", depending on whose voices get to tell their stories, depending on whose traumas count. Depending on whose lives and dignity matter.
I hope that at least as the danger of these systems begins to be obvious to many more folks previously insulated by privilege and its propaganda, there will be more awareness that there can be no true democracy, safety nor liberation while the gears of colonialism continue to turn through our societies and through all our bodies and minds.
Centuries of colonialial trauma and conditioning have made it "common sense" to be disconnected from our bodies and nature, and "normal" to live in fear of scarcity, to compete for dominance. It is the waters we were born swimming in. We have been conditioned for generations to participate in whatever ways are sold to us (including silence) in the dehumanization and dominance of others and the land. Perhaps with a taste of profit or power-over as a reward. Perhaps a mirage of safety - like my ancestors chose - in the moments the target is aimed at someone else.
Participation in systems of dominance is also reinforced by the avoidance of deeply held shame about ways we, and/or ancestors, were perpetrators of violence. Sometimes we stay stuck in ignorance or denial of facts in order to not have to feel the immense sadness and pain of the past harms. But we can also avoid feeling it by fixating on just the intellectual understanding of past wrongs. Which - within disembodied, intellect-privileging paradigms - seems like learning from the past. But without fully feeling, without ongoing space for grieving the harms we or ancestors have done (and what we lost because of that), we can't think our way into embodied accountability. Instead, shame (which is embodied whether we are able to be with it or not!) becomes stuck as a shadow part, which continues cycles of denial, projection, and harm. Generation by generation.
But the salmon remember the way that was blocked for so many generations.
And the land remembers the salmon too. I imagine the trees (in their own slow and subtle tree-ways) are celebrating the salmon's return.
There’s a quote about fascism being colonialism turned inward. But in this country, colonialism—or fascism by this logic— has never not been turned inward. (If you don't know: Hitler copied many of the methodological, legal, and propaganda templates from the United State's centuries of expertise in ethnic cleansing and genocide of Indigenous peoples, as well as the justifications for Black enslavement and apartheid between races.) The government here may currently be copying aspects of this well-recognized fascism back, but it has also never stopped for many people who live on these lands. These centuries of fascism have just often spared white folks the full impact of its violence as the reward for ignoring (passively supporting) or actively participating in brutality against, and theft of and from Black and Indigenous peoples.
The rising fascism here and around the world is awful; AND: it's horrifyingly "normal", depending on whose voices get to tell their stories, depending on whose traumas count. Depending on whose lives and dignity matter.
I hope that at least as the danger of these systems begins to be obvious to many more folks previously insulated by privilege and its propaganda, there will be more awareness that there can be no true democracy, safety nor liberation while the gears of colonialism continue to turn through our societies and through all our bodies and minds.
Centuries of colonialial trauma and conditioning have made it "common sense" to be disconnected from our bodies and nature, and "normal" to live in fear of scarcity, to compete for dominance. It is the waters we were born swimming in. We have been conditioned for generations to participate in whatever ways are sold to us (including silence) in the dehumanization and dominance of others and the land. Perhaps with a taste of profit or power-over as a reward. Perhaps a mirage of safety - like my ancestors chose - in the moments the target is aimed at someone else.
Participation in systems of dominance is also reinforced by the avoidance of deeply held shame about ways we, and/or ancestors, were perpetrators of violence. Sometimes we stay stuck in ignorance or denial of facts in order to not have to feel the immense sadness and pain of the past harms. But we can also avoid feeling it by fixating on just the intellectual understanding of past wrongs. Which - within disembodied, intellect-privileging paradigms - seems like learning from the past. But without fully feeling, without ongoing space for grieving the harms we or ancestors have done (and what we lost because of that), we can't think our way into embodied accountability. Instead, shame (which is embodied whether we are able to be with it or not!) becomes stuck as a shadow part, which continues cycles of denial, projection, and harm. Generation by generation.
But the salmon remember the way that was blocked for so many generations.
And the land remembers the salmon too. I imagine the trees (in their own slow and subtle tree-ways) are celebrating the salmon's return.
~ ~ ~
Embodiment means remembering, reconnecting to fragmented parts of our wholeness. It ALSO means changing our conditioned relationship to land.
In Cartesian dualism (with roots in Plato), it's mind over matter. Bodies are separate, mechanistic, nature-bound. Humans are unique in soul and consciousness, and "matter" of all kinds is meant to be used, subjugated and dominated. In this ideology, the "matter" of certain bodies is exploited in order to exploit the "matter" of land.
But these exploitative hierarchies didn't just appear in philosophy and suddenly become the intellectual status quo of Western/Colonial societies. Not by coincidence, Descartes "Thought, therefore he was" superior during fervent years of colonization, genocides and mass enslavement. His philosophy both grew out of and further justified the dominance ideologies of his milieu. The embodiment and land-connections of Indigenous peoples from different continents was cited as evidence of "primitiveness," "backwardness," "being uncivilized"; thus, not fully human. (Side intersectionalism note: Women are also more closely associated with body and nature than "rational" men. And colonialism and the creation of racial categories exported and reinforced strict gender binaries, and vice versa - see, for example, the book The Gender Binary and the Invention of Race by Sally Markowitz ).
The ideological fragmentations of mind/body and human/land were not just a philosophical thought, rather they were enacted over centuries through bloody subjugation, theft, mass kidnappings, torture, and extreme exploitation. They were violently enforced by and through our ancestor's lived experiences. Which became the current world, and the paradigms that we live in. They carry on through us, unless we work to break the cycles.
For almost all of us, our bodies' relationship to land was traumatically ruptured in past generations from the communities, rhythms, rituals, and sometimes even languages that were rooted in a relationship of belonging to the land. As Resma Menakem speaks about in his book My Grandmother's Hands, these ruptures are unhealed generational traumas that nearly everyone carries, though in importantly different ways.
For most of the European settlers to the Americas, for example, their own relationship to the land had already been ruptured, through waves of internal-European colonization, crusades, and then as the remaining "commons" were made illegal and privatized during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (which was accompanied by further cycles of witch hunts of those who resisted and continued to honor the traditional healing approaches, land relationships, matriarchal aspects, and collectivism). “Denied access to the former commons … for the first time in human history, the majority of Europeans depended for their livelihood on a small wealthy minority, a phenomenon that capitalist-based colonialism would spread worldwide.” writes Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in An Indigenous People's History of the US.
No longer rooted in the communal land practices and its collective survival, some people left completely in order to become settler-colonialists in the "new world", projecting that trauma of disconnection into power-OVER others and land. They became part of the violent, colonial creation of "whiteness" and the modern categories of race by Anglo settler-colonialists (and later other Europeans - both settlers and those in the European continent - who over time gained access to the power to dominate by 'becoming white' through adapting ideology and behaviors to white supremacist culture, - or see this book). The trauma of internal European rupture from land escalated brutally onward through the new collective identity of "white" bodies. WEB Du Bois named it the “new religion of whiteness” that spread in both the colonies and in Europe; white supremacy became an opiate for people hungry for lost dignity, identity, community and security.
Through generations and generations these ungrieved traumas have continued to violently enforce systems of disconnection and supremacy.
Part of embodiment is remembering the land, learning to hear the wisdom and relationships there again. Which cannot be done without acknowledging and beginning to unwind some of the psychological and generational traumas and paradigms of white supremacy and colonialism (which is obviously different work for racialized and for white bodies). Whatever various identities we embody, and whatever roles our various ancestors played in the last 500 years of white supremacist cispatriarchal capitalist dehumanization, land exploitation, and genocides, how can we begin to take accountability NOW for these traumas passed down in our bones, and through all the direct and subtle conditioning in families, society, and our personal experiences?
Embodiment means remembering, reconnecting to fragmented parts of our wholeness. It ALSO means changing our conditioned relationship to land.
In Cartesian dualism (with roots in Plato), it's mind over matter. Bodies are separate, mechanistic, nature-bound. Humans are unique in soul and consciousness, and "matter" of all kinds is meant to be used, subjugated and dominated. In this ideology, the "matter" of certain bodies is exploited in order to exploit the "matter" of land.
But these exploitative hierarchies didn't just appear in philosophy and suddenly become the intellectual status quo of Western/Colonial societies. Not by coincidence, Descartes "Thought, therefore he was" superior during fervent years of colonization, genocides and mass enslavement. His philosophy both grew out of and further justified the dominance ideologies of his milieu. The embodiment and land-connections of Indigenous peoples from different continents was cited as evidence of "primitiveness," "backwardness," "being uncivilized"; thus, not fully human. (Side intersectionalism note: Women are also more closely associated with body and nature than "rational" men. And colonialism and the creation of racial categories exported and reinforced strict gender binaries, and vice versa - see, for example, the book The Gender Binary and the Invention of Race by Sally Markowitz ).
The ideological fragmentations of mind/body and human/land were not just a philosophical thought, rather they were enacted over centuries through bloody subjugation, theft, mass kidnappings, torture, and extreme exploitation. They were violently enforced by and through our ancestor's lived experiences. Which became the current world, and the paradigms that we live in. They carry on through us, unless we work to break the cycles.
For almost all of us, our bodies' relationship to land was traumatically ruptured in past generations from the communities, rhythms, rituals, and sometimes even languages that were rooted in a relationship of belonging to the land. As Resma Menakem speaks about in his book My Grandmother's Hands, these ruptures are unhealed generational traumas that nearly everyone carries, though in importantly different ways.
For most of the European settlers to the Americas, for example, their own relationship to the land had already been ruptured, through waves of internal-European colonization, crusades, and then as the remaining "commons" were made illegal and privatized during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (which was accompanied by further cycles of witch hunts of those who resisted and continued to honor the traditional healing approaches, land relationships, matriarchal aspects, and collectivism). “Denied access to the former commons … for the first time in human history, the majority of Europeans depended for their livelihood on a small wealthy minority, a phenomenon that capitalist-based colonialism would spread worldwide.” writes Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in An Indigenous People's History of the US.
No longer rooted in the communal land practices and its collective survival, some people left completely in order to become settler-colonialists in the "new world", projecting that trauma of disconnection into power-OVER others and land. They became part of the violent, colonial creation of "whiteness" and the modern categories of race by Anglo settler-colonialists (and later other Europeans - both settlers and those in the European continent - who over time gained access to the power to dominate by 'becoming white' through adapting ideology and behaviors to white supremacist culture, - or see this book). The trauma of internal European rupture from land escalated brutally onward through the new collective identity of "white" bodies. WEB Du Bois named it the “new religion of whiteness” that spread in both the colonies and in Europe; white supremacy became an opiate for people hungry for lost dignity, identity, community and security.
Through generations and generations these ungrieved traumas have continued to violently enforce systems of disconnection and supremacy.
Part of embodiment is remembering the land, learning to hear the wisdom and relationships there again. Which cannot be done without acknowledging and beginning to unwind some of the psychological and generational traumas and paradigms of white supremacy and colonialism (which is obviously different work for racialized and for white bodies). Whatever various identities we embody, and whatever roles our various ancestors played in the last 500 years of white supremacist cispatriarchal capitalist dehumanization, land exploitation, and genocides, how can we begin to take accountability NOW for these traumas passed down in our bones, and through all the direct and subtle conditioning in families, society, and our personal experiences?
~ ~ ~
These traumas and ideologies all live and cycle onward through our bodies as we move through the world. What can we do now to break these cultural and generational cycles of rupture from land and wisdom and our wholeness and each other?
Dehumanizing anyone disconnects all of us from our wholeness and inherent dignity. Ecocide and exploitation of the land for profit disconnects all of us from our birthright of being part of the land and each other (which is the opposite of claiming a birthright in order to violently colonize and exploit land).
How can we take accountability now for the many ongoing genocides of indigenous peoples?
Where do we subtly continue to agree with, or stay silent around aspects of dehumanization and colonialism? What parts of ourselves and the earth are we continuing to disconnect from by doing that?
.... If we are willing to sit and learn to listen, our bodies start to speak to us of all of this... first in languages of pain, of fear, of anger, of shame, of immense grief… If we are able to continue to return to listening (with time for integration and rest to not trigger fight/flight and disconnection patterns), our bodies begin to share other layers of remembering: insights, wisdom, healing, impulses for movement and actions.
This usually needs many forms of support to hold and integrate. (I'm available for Zoom somatic sessions if I can support your exploration in that way.) There is so much that has been lost and that continues to be harmed that we must grieve, in ourselves and collectively, remembering the possibilities of connection through loving presence with truth. To re-member: to come back to the memories that have been lost. Like the water and the salmon meeting again, they are still here, waiting to tell their stories.
May we be willing, and may we keep learning how to listen and be changed by that listening.
These traumas and ideologies all live and cycle onward through our bodies as we move through the world. What can we do now to break these cultural and generational cycles of rupture from land and wisdom and our wholeness and each other?
Dehumanizing anyone disconnects all of us from our wholeness and inherent dignity. Ecocide and exploitation of the land for profit disconnects all of us from our birthright of being part of the land and each other (which is the opposite of claiming a birthright in order to violently colonize and exploit land).
How can we take accountability now for the many ongoing genocides of indigenous peoples?
Where do we subtly continue to agree with, or stay silent around aspects of dehumanization and colonialism? What parts of ourselves and the earth are we continuing to disconnect from by doing that?
.... If we are willing to sit and learn to listen, our bodies start to speak to us of all of this... first in languages of pain, of fear, of anger, of shame, of immense grief… If we are able to continue to return to listening (with time for integration and rest to not trigger fight/flight and disconnection patterns), our bodies begin to share other layers of remembering: insights, wisdom, healing, impulses for movement and actions.
This usually needs many forms of support to hold and integrate. (I'm available for Zoom somatic sessions if I can support your exploration in that way.) There is so much that has been lost and that continues to be harmed that we must grieve, in ourselves and collectively, remembering the possibilities of connection through loving presence with truth. To re-member: to come back to the memories that have been lost. Like the water and the salmon meeting again, they are still here, waiting to tell their stories.
May we be willing, and may we keep learning how to listen and be changed by that listening.
And, as we rest with the Winter Darkness approaching the end of the calendar year...
May all our different cultural and faith traditions celebrating the light in the darkness of these times support us to also honor - through both listening and learning and actions - the light in each other's humanity, and in the land that holds us all.
Happy Holidays, Happy Solstice, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Shab-e Yalda, Happy Lailat al Miraj, Happy Kwanza, Merry Yuletide, Happy Makara Sankrānti, Happy Bodhi Day, Happy New Year !!
🕯️🕯️🕯️
May all our different cultural and faith traditions celebrating the light in the darkness of these times support us to also honor - through both listening and learning and actions - the light in each other's humanity, and in the land that holds us all.
Happy Holidays, Happy Solstice, Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Shab-e Yalda, Happy Lailat al Miraj, Happy Kwanza, Merry Yuletide, Happy Makara Sankrānti, Happy Bodhi Day, Happy New Year !!
🕯️🕯️🕯️
"Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
~ Chief Seattle
“When you hear the words decolonization, white supremacy, patriarchy or even racism, do you feel something? Do you get a chill down your back, randomly start crossing your arms, get tense all over your body, or even just feel an urge to resist? Well good! When your body is cold it shivers, when it’s hungry it growls, when it’s in fear it shakes and when it’s sad it cries. Your body is meant to respond, whether that be physical or emotional, and it’s the same when deconstructing what you’ve been taught. It tells you that something is there and that you must go through it and find ways to process it.”
~Kris Archie, Executive Director of the Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples
~ Chief Seattle
“When you hear the words decolonization, white supremacy, patriarchy or even racism, do you feel something? Do you get a chill down your back, randomly start crossing your arms, get tense all over your body, or even just feel an urge to resist? Well good! When your body is cold it shivers, when it’s hungry it growls, when it’s in fear it shakes and when it’s sad it cries. Your body is meant to respond, whether that be physical or emotional, and it’s the same when deconstructing what you’ve been taught. It tells you that something is there and that you must go through it and find ways to process it.”
~Kris Archie, Executive Director of the Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples
What does it mean to re-cultivate an embodied and respect-based relationship of belonging to the land and each other ?
What does it mean and how does it feel in body, in heart, in nervous system, to work on unbuilding the "dams" that have conditioned our body-minds into hierarchies, the dams within us and around us that uphold systems of injustice and separation and domination (whether intentional or not) ? In order to work on unbuilding them, do you know where they are (metaphorically) and what they feel like (physiologically and energetically) in body, heart, nervous system, society? How does that actually feel when we run into that, or someone else does? Internally? Externally? What is the flavor of that? What is the energy? How does our body react?
Really... what is the felt-sense of these walls we have built or inherited (usually both), that fragment and attempt to control and dominate? And what do we have to let go of, or give "back", or heal, or take accountability for, or listen to or re-learn in order to be able to unbuild.
And...
...What is the feeling of the body "remembering" ?
What does it mean to follow the deeper currents our bodies-hearts-bones hold, and explore the slow journey upstream ?
Swimming the songs of embodied return.
What does it mean and how does it feel in body, in heart, in nervous system, to work on unbuilding the "dams" that have conditioned our body-minds into hierarchies, the dams within us and around us that uphold systems of injustice and separation and domination (whether intentional or not) ? In order to work on unbuilding them, do you know where they are (metaphorically) and what they feel like (physiologically and energetically) in body, heart, nervous system, society? How does that actually feel when we run into that, or someone else does? Internally? Externally? What is the flavor of that? What is the energy? How does our body react?
Really... what is the felt-sense of these walls we have built or inherited (usually both), that fragment and attempt to control and dominate? And what do we have to let go of, or give "back", or heal, or take accountability for, or listen to or re-learn in order to be able to unbuild.
And...
...What is the feeling of the body "remembering" ?
What does it mean to follow the deeper currents our bodies-hearts-bones hold, and explore the slow journey upstream ?
Swimming the songs of embodied return.
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