Research is an important part of community organizing. It helps us learn more deeply about the issues at hand and launch better and more strategic campaigns. When done correctly, it can also be a tool for community building and member engagement. However, research has a lot of negative associations in our communities, and for good reason. Traditional research has done extensive harm, including treating people as subjects instead of the experts in their own lives. In his book, “Research Is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods”, Dr. Shawn Wilson tells the story of another way to do research, one that honors relationships and holds us accountable to one another, to more-than-humans, and to the spirit world. He weaves together his tradition of oral storytelling with his journey as an Indigenous scholar to carve out the uniqueness of Indigenous research methods. We at Movement Matters found this perspective to be incredibly helpful as we work with organizations and communities to navigate member-led research processes and as we have helped the Indigenous Environmental Network develop popular education curricula for their Indigenous Just Transition framework. Dr. Wilson’s recognition of the need to contextualize understanding within relationships and conditions, to center the role of oral storytelling as a means of holding and transferring knowledge, and to acknowledge the dangers and opportunities of existing in “transitional spaces” between two worlds, are all important paradigms to integrate into community process.
Dr. Wilson also highlights the role of ceremony and ritual to help people “step beyond the everyday”. This transformation of purpose and unity of focus can also connect to the process of understanding the issues we face in our communities. Even for non-Indigenous communities, the integration of ritual and culture can break community members free from dominant paradigms and allow for new insights and understanding to emerge. This book can help organizers think about the ways in which their work on the ground can lead to collectively held knowledge. Dr. Wilson’s own journey is a reminder to honor the ways that our life experiences, our intuition, and our relationships are all elements of how we learn and build our collective knowledge. His words are also a “setting of the stage” to take action and create change around us for the sake of our communities and the relationships we hold. To read more about Dr. Shawn Wilson Watch Dr. Wilson lead a presentation about "Research Is Ceremony" (ceremony focus) Watch Dr. Wilson lead a presentation about "Research Is Ceremony" (research focus) Resmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, trauma specialist, and author of My Grandmother’s Hands and The Quaking of America among others. Resmaa is also the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied anti-racist practice of living and culture building that centers the healing of historical and racialized trauma we carry in our bodies and in our spirits. We have been learning with Resmaa for over three years, deepening our work around somatic trauma therapies and the regulation of the nervous system. We thoughtfully incorporate this knowledge into our work with organizers and community members so that we can cultivate resourcing and shared healing practices, decolonize our bodies and minds, and move to collective action.
Somatic Abolitionism is demanding and requires the commitment of a daily practice and high levels of self-awareness. Resmaa is a direct and compassionate teacher whose brilliance and heart illuminate this hard, necessary work. This is a key study for popular educators, organizers and facilitators working with multi-racial communities that have experienced high levels of individual and community trauma. Resmaa also introduced the term "bodies of culture" to refer to all human bodies not considered white. Read more about Resmaa Menakem. Watch Resmaa discuss racialized trauma. Upcoming Foundations in Somatic Abolitionism sessions. Former community organizer, Lama Rod Owens is a Buddhist minister, author, activist, yoga instructor and authorized Lama, or Buddhist teacher, in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism. He is one of the leading voices in a new generation of Buddhist teachers. He holds a Master of Divinity degree in Buddhist Studies from Harvard Divinity School. He is the co-author of Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation. His teachings center on freedom, self-expression, and radical self-care. A long labor of love, Lama Rod's second book, Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger, was written as a guidebook through these difficult times. It addresses the important work we must do to take care of our deep hurt in order to experience the emotional liberation needed to embody fierce and radical love for ourselves, others, and the planet. Lama Rod writes, "We are now in a period when we are having to confront the reality of truth - truth about ourselves, our relationships to each other, to systems of violence, to capitalism, and ultimately to the fact that we can no longer live like we have in the past. My hope is that this book supports you and contributes to that effort." Lama Rod also leads the in-depth Love and Rage 7-week course and online practice group. The course teachings include: compassion-based processes to manage cumulative trauma; what self-care really looks like; practices to connect and engage with our ancestors in order to ground ourselves during difficult times and enrich our self understanding; and how to be loving, open and vulnerable... but still fierce! Stay tuned for the 2023 course dates.
Visit Lama Rod Owens' Website We are under a great deal of psychological stress. We spend a lot of our time in our stress responses, especially those of us enduring ethnic and race based stress and trauma. These ceaseless stressors impact our bodies in countless ways, showing up as anxiety, inflammation, and much more. Even as we aim to relax and restore ourselves to continue on, it is often difficult to find true release. We can take that stress with us even when we go to bed at night, still not finding the solace our bodies, minds, and spirits really need. The practice of Restorative Yoga can be a gateway to relief that can be difficult to access even in sleep. Restorative Yoga requires little physical exertion, and uses props (like a pillow, bolster, blanket) to support the full release of the body's tension. If you've taken a yoga class, it's possible that you've experienced a restorative posture towards the end of class—with the lights turned down low, and you holding one posture in stillness, maybe lying on your back. The stillness is important. It helps our bodies move into the opposite of the stress response, the relaxation response—where our body is able to engage its processes of long term health, like digestion of our food, strengthening of our immune systems, and processing of the traumas we otherwise have to push down. Restorative Yoga can help us begin to heal, by relearning how it feels to truly be at ease.
Dr. Gail Parker’s Restorative Yoga for Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress and the companion workbook, Transforming Ethnic and Race-Based Traumatic Stress with Yoga are a wealth of information about how our oppressive structures wreak havoc on our nervous systems, and how we can use the practice of Restorative Yoga to heal and sustain ourselves, body and soul. I am currently in the process of reading the book and working with its companion workbook, and am deeply grateful for the resource. As a former direct action organizer, recovering workaholic, and a queer Black woman with a long history of inflammation-induced illness, restorative yoga has become an essential practice of mine. I hope it can offer some rest to you too. Contributed by Asha Carter Certified Yoga Instructor, MM Team Member, & Co-Founder of Cambium Collective Visit Dr. Gail Parker's website. |
AuthorsMOVEMENT MATTERS Archives
October 2023
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