Lineages + Principles

Our Roots: Knowing where we come from, who and what has informed our work, and thus how we move, are necessary to inform the present and future.

Somatic

‘Somatics’ is a modern term, coined by Thomas Hanna in 1972, to describe an ancient human experience and knowledge around our bodies/somas as integrated and connected biologically, psychologically, socially and energetically. This is something that all of our ancestors, pre-colonial times, were in touch with continuously and collectively. Somatics is also an umbrella term for many different practices and philosophies from different lineages. Colonization and systemic oppression continue to erase and rupture our awareness and connection to these lineages, as well as our own connection to our bodies. This is serious violence, and I am committed to tending to both of these ruptures.

While I was trained through the lineage of Strozzi Institute, which primarily draws from Western somatics leaders such as Strozzi, Gindler, Reich, Rolfe, Feldenkrais, Stone and others, these people and the practices have also been heavily influenced by Eastern and Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) cultural and spiritual traditions. To learn more about the lineages of Strozzi & generative somatics, check out this living lineage narrative.

As I think about the foundational tenants of somatics as practice and that which supports aliveness, I too can’t not include my background in singing, playing cello, gardening, and community organizing work.

I am in continued study following the leadership of Susan Raffo, Dara Silverman, Prentis Hemphill, Staci Haines, and the Strozzi Institute.

Political

I have deep gratitude for so many mentors, people, and collectives for my political education and consciousness. Primarily from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), the Indigenous-led Water Protector movement, and the abolitionist movement. As well as with every racial justice community group I’ve organized with.

Over ten years ago, through PISAB, I learned and was invited into organizing with white folks against racism. This profoundly changed my life in multiple ways, including setting me on the path I am on now. Spending time at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline and in Minnesota against Line 3 with indigenous Water Protectors has taught me lessons I don’t have words for-from gaining a somatic experience of state surveillance and violence to the other side of the spectrum of spiritual and cultural resilience and wisdom. The Abolitionist movement, led by many Black queer feminist thinkers and organizers (Audre Lorde, Angela Y. Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, Andrea Ritchie, to name a few) has imprinted in me a sense of possibility, a practice of mutual care, embodied courage, experimentation, and the power of collective action.

When organizing in collectives, principles are critical and offer a roadmap for how we ‘be’ with each other in practice, in conflict, in joy. We look to principles to help us problem solve, to create a safe and sense of community, and to not get thrown off. May we all have our own sense of values, principles, and practices as we move through the world.

Spiritual

Finding spiritual and ritual lineages that I feel connected with and aren’t culturally appropriative, has been a deep inquiry of mine for years. As someone who was raised as a “priest kid” in the Episcopal church and comes from a long Protestant lineage, I’ve found deeper alignment with non-religious, earth-based traditions.

For the vast majority of us on Turtle Island/The U.S., our lines to such practices and ways of being with the land and each other have been ruptured through violence. Two primary ways I’ve been exploring all this for myself are through ancestral recovery, meaning researching who my ancestors are and their land-based practices prior to colonial times, and my own felt sense of re-connecting with the land in ways that feel authentic, mutual, generative with the earth, and not appropriative of local Indigenous practices. In this exploration, I have discovered both animism and the Wheel of the Year, which is of Celtic roots that are connected with my Germanic, British, Scottish and Irish ancestors.

I continue these studies through people and places like: White Awake, Mythic Time, Ancestral Medicine, Stephen Jenkinson, and the earth.

All of this heavily influences my ‘ritual’ practice, as does the Restorative Justice movement, which uses practices from various Indigenous traditions like circle keeping. I am also currently studying Joanna Macy’s work of The Work That Reconnects through The School for the Great Turning and Gaia Wisdom, to deepen in grief and climate crisis/action work and ritual.

MY PRACTICES & PRINCIPLES

I commit to:

  • An anti-oppressive, anti-racist power analysis

  • Transformative and Restorative Justice methods

  • Working now toward the future of our descendants 

  • Deepen connection and being in right relationship

  • Accountability for myself and others

  • Centering dignity and care