Episode 3: Bodies of History: Trauma, Nervous Systems, & Ancestry (The Grounding)
This episode explores the deep connection between ancestral trauma, somatic memory, and healing through breathwork and spiritual practices. In this profound conversation, Kaydee, a practitioner who works at the intersection of decolonial healing and somatic memory, shares her journey of embodiment, motherhood, and healing from trauma. With personal stories and practical insights on how to access and heal intergenerational wounds, emphasizing the importance of community, trust, and embodiment, she offers her wisdom on how we might reconnect with ourselves and our ancestors.For those seeking decolonial directions into ancestry and intergenerational trauma, and practices that may allow us to move through it with gentleness, in this conversation we explore -
The embodiment and disembodiment cycle
Trauma healing through capacity building and community
Feminine intuition as a guiding force
Tools for grounding and healing trauma
Whether you are here as a student of breathwork or a professional interested in Breathwork Facilitator Training by Inspire Breathwork, come sit with us in the marrow, where we re-learn how to breathe into a body that has been told for centuries that it isn't safe to exist.Connect with Kaydee:
Kaydee is a breathwork facilitator and Reiki practitioner, bridging decolonial healing practices and psychological research on trauma. She feels called to hold space and bear witness for women as they make sense of their experiences, reconnect with themselves, their stories, and their intuition, and cultivate safety in the body, trust in the inner voice, and a growing curiosity about healing beyond talking therapies.
Instagram: @homebody.archive
Watch the incredible, Scar, perform her poem titled “I was not raised by soft women”.She is a young black contemporary Performance Poet, Cultural Storyteller and Writer. And this poem is an honest reckoning with the women who sharpened themselves into weapons so that their daughters might finally have the luxury of laying the armor down.
Audio Transcript:
(00:03) There is a weight in the room with you. It isn't just the air or the furniture or even the clothes on your back. It is the weight of everyone who had to survive for you to be able to sit here and listen to this today. Welcome to the third episode of the breath of liberation. I am your host Suks. If you've ever been told that breathing is just about calming down or managing stress, I want you to set that lie aside for the next couple of hours.
(00:48) Today, we aren't looking for a vacation from our lives. We are instead looking for the map. Your nervous system is not a mistake. Your anxiety is not a glitch. For many of us, that hyper vigilance, that tightness in the chest that never seems to leave is actually an ancestral inheritance. It is a survival strategy that was passed down almost like a family heirloom.
(01:22) Because for someone in your lineage, perhaps staying on guard was the only way to keep the family alive. Today we are talking about the archive of the bone. We're asking, how do we breathe into a body that has been told for centuries that it isn't safe to exist? I'm joined by Katie, a practitioner who works at the intersection of decolonial healing and sematic memory and of course a dear friend of mine through this course.
(02:00) Katie, let's start in the marrow. We often talk about history as something in a book. But where does the British Empire or the middle passage or the forced migration of your people, where does that show up in your physical body on a Thursday morning? I mean, I feel it shows up more now than ever as a as a rage, as a a genuine rage that I feel as I witness what continues in the world around us.
(02:43) Um, for me, I can trace elements of my family lineage back to um, one village, one small village in Ireland that was at one point renamed Queen's County uh, after Mary. And so she chose this county to be her own. And of course within Irish history there is the stealing of language, the forced starvation that we refer to as the potato famine, all of these things.
(03:16) And there is a very deep sense for me as I witness what continues and I reflect on that ancestry that isn't so far back in the past that I feel that I know from displacement that I know from the grief that is carried through my family. And there is this righteous indignation that this continues this continues everywhere uh in all places against all people.
(03:49) Um and I think a huge part of the the rage that shows up is that it's also the people that perpetuate it, right? That have had things stolen from them too. They just don't necessarily recognize name, realize what that is. And what they cling to, they cling to in the name of ancestry without actually having a connection to what that means for them.
(04:20) It's just about I have a claim to this land because I have been here for this long. Um yeah. And so on a Thursday morning when I wake up and I check in with the world and I see where we're at, it's uh it's a rage that colonial that colonial damage continues unfettered despite the knowledge and the history books that we do have that teach us um and the fights that have happened.
(04:50) Yeah, >> I hear you. Rage is definitely not a feeling I'm a stranger to. >> I think being born a woman by gender kind of took care of that. >> So, in our last episode, we looked at the ghost architecture of the wellness industry. We named the giants of capitalism and colonization. And today we're going inside the house.
(05:23) We're looking at that marrow. We often think of our nervous system as a private biological machine, something we manage or regulate in isolation. But our nervous systems are actually archives. They are living libraries holding the echoes of every no our ancestors had to swallow, every fight they had to take, and every moment they had to hold their breath.
(05:51) just to survive. When we talk about decolonizing the breaths, we are talking about remembering. We are asking whose breath am I carrying? And more importantly, how do I begin to exhale the burdens that were never mine to hold? And today you and I, we're sitting in the quiet weight of this history, looking for the light that lives in our blood.
(06:23) Katie, I've been thinking about the word inheritance. We usually think of money or land, but I am realizing my greatest inheritance might actually be the way my ribs expand when I feel safe. Does something come up for you when you think of your inheritance? >> I mean, the the greatest thing that comes up for me when I think of inheritance or my inheritance is the fortitude, this sense of strength that exists within my bones.
(07:01) And it is very much that even when things are difficult or things are trying, things feel like there is no way out. There is very much this sense within me that if my ancestors survived force starvation, if my ancestors found a way through that to still experience joy, still experience love, still experience hope.
(07:32) For me, it is it is that connection to the fight. And I think I feel that more within, you know, I feel it within my within my actual bones, but I feel it in my gut also. And I think when we breathe and we often I'll find it with a um chest or belly. I always call it a chi breath cuz but uh my belly chest and upper chest breath.
(08:01) And when I breathe into that space and I feel how how enormous it can actually be, what can be held there? And I do I find this strength rising up that exists as part of that lineage for me to even be here today. There are so many people that have survived outrageous, horrific things. And yeah, I think I find that to be the greatest gift when I sit with it.
(08:26) Thank you for stepping into this archive with me. I was looking at a picture of my mother pretty much around she was my age and then some from her later life today when I look at her. And I noticed how she scrunches up her eyes, how her chin looks, and I noticed how it's exactly the same way I hold mine when I'm braced for bad news.
(08:54) Before we dive into theory, I want to ask you as you sit here right now, do you think there is a physical signature you carry that you know belongs to your lineage? A way you cross your legs, a specific tension in your jaw, anything that comes up. So I think this is quite interesting.
(09:19) Um my personal lineage is so scattered. So my both my parents were very young when they had me. They both carry a lot within their own lineages. So my mother didn't know her biological father. Um it was the ' 70s. She was born mixed race. There was a lot of shame around it. And so she was raised with her mother and her half siblings but without any connection to that part of her that made her feel so other around other people in the ' 70s.
(09:50) My biological father. It was a very similar story. He was born to a white woman in the 70s, a mixed race man, um, and was placed into care because her family couldn't accept that she had had a a mixed race child. And so even when I look back just one step for me, finding uh finding my ancestry and my connection to my ancestry has been such a such a journey because actually being able to name or see or recognize where I belong within a lineage has been almost impossible, right? Because there's such a fragmentation. And so
(10:30) I mean through breath work and through cultivating my spiritual health there are things that I recognize within my lineage that I carry that are from my ancestors but there's nothing I can actually yeah name and I mean myself I was raised by my mother and my stepfather um and spent my whole life actually wondering when people looked inwards at us when we were all together how they thought I fit into this picture because my stepfather um is white and so we would spend a lot of time with my grandparents on his side and you know
(11:07) we'd be at tables and I would very much feel that I stood out and so in terms of that recognizing ourselves in our lineage. I've never really had that as something to anchor on to but it's something that I sought for my entire life. That's so interesting and so much. Yeah. While hearing it, I I'm quite lost for words on how that feels for me just now.
(11:43) Uh >> but I felt a sense of um warmth in my body almost. Uh heat not warmth. forth would be. I'm so happy to know breath work is here for you. >> I find it interesting because I think that my story is probably really common, particularly in where I live in the world, but also for any person who's been displaced, right? If you think about >> anyone who, you know, was transported as part of the slave trade in America and thinking about their ancestry and the stories that are held there, their ability to connect back through their
(12:24) lineage is is is broken, right, by what was horrifically done to people. And it's the same for any group of people who've had that force displacement or there's there's a limitation I guess that in in the physical world that can exist for lots of people but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have that connection or that guidance. Yeah.
(12:47) >> Yeah. It brings me back to the social location mapping we did with Hannah in the course. And although I feel nobody's social location map would be identical to anyone else's, there are definitely congruences there where people meet and that's how we relate and connect with the world. Let's stay in that space.
(13:09) Um, and we aren't here to fix that history. We're just here to witness it. >> Mhm. and thankfully have breath work with us to go along on the journey. We talk about coloniality as a political system. >> But knowing you, I know that you see it as a physical constriction too. >> Mhm. >> If you had to map where colonization lives in the human nervous system, >> where would you point? Is it the frozen diaphragm? Is it the hypervigilant eyes? >> I would say it's every person will hold it differently, right? And differently
(13:54) even at different times depending on there is so much within us that is activated. And I think when I think about our nervous system, right, and you think about epigenetics and the fact that we carry our we we literally carry our ancestors stories with us, right? And how they've had to respond. And while what we experience now is like new age colonialism, right? like it's the the globalization the you know h how we've we've modeled that is something that I don't feel we on mass recognize and respond to as colonialism right but there's
(14:41) something within us that does recognize it in this way because our bodies have literally been receiving signals through the gen generations that tell us what parts of our DNA to upplay. What parts of our DNA do we suppress? What responses are the familiar responses that we pass down? Right? So, I know that when I experience it, I experience it as as heat like it's that hypervigilance, but it's not necessarily in my eyes, right? It's like being an animal of prey.
(15:18) And I can feel it within my system if I feel that the other day when Donald Trump threatened to erase the civilization of Iran, right? And I feel it as this this heat spreading that is what would the next action be? But that's just me. somebody else may feel it very much as that constriction that constriction of the breath because it's not safe to feel or to breathe in that moment and I think the more we acknowledge notice that sensation that comes for us personally in the face of it I think that also brings us into those histories that we carry within us
(15:59) as well you know what what was making somebody hold their breath where does this tingle of being prey come from, you know, that I that I experience and and what is the story that somebody else has carried that has told your DNA quite literally? This is how we respond to this because this is how we've responded to it to survive in the past.
(16:23) >> Carrying our histories in our Yeah. Yeah. It's in our DNA. It's in our bones. It's in our skin, >> in our cells. I hear that. I'm curious how uh breath work helps you or would help anyone melt those specific borders. I think if anybody is looking to journey into that, it's a it's a reckoning of sorts that I think there has to be um there has to be a willingness to accept that we exist as the culmination of wonderful people overcoming, you know, uh joy and laughter and love and you know everything that we've looked at
(17:16) when we've we've written you know who we are the children of and that when you are willing to go within your body and explore you don't know what's going to come up there right you so for me I had a readiness uh a willingness to learn I felt very um very segregated and cut off from my lineage. There was a real sadness and grief around it.
(17:48) And a lot of the work that you see online will um you know like make a make an altar and even within that and wanting to create ritual when you don't have a connection to your history. It's very difficult to then think well how do I create an altar for ancestors that I don't know or histories that nobody has told me. Um, and so I think you can come up against stumbling blocks and for me it's had to be a relinquishing of the ideal like the ideal expectation of of what you would have to connect inward.
(18:22) I think there's also a a huge recognition that we carry a lot that we don't actually recognize. that in order to cope with everyday life, it's just a fact that everyone is dissociating to some extent, right? I was speaking with a friend the other day about the experience of being on the tube and it's like in London, nobody nobody is being present in that experience, right? We're all too close to each other. We're all uncomfortable.
(18:52) We're all dissociating. And it's, you know, what Hannah on the course has always spoken to us about, how much to what extent do you dissociate? And I think when people come into doing this work, if they have and they are aware that they carry within their nervous systems a lot that can overwhelm them, there needs to also be the the recognition that this will actually potentially be really emotional, really painful, really destabilizing.
(19:22) Like it does have that potential. And um I know I've joked about it before, but there is that element of, you know, the we're going on a bear hunt. Can't go over it. Can't go under it. Can't go around it. Have to go through it. And and it does take a certain amount of bravery to say, "Yeah, like I I will sit with this and I will acknowledge it.
(19:43) " And what comes up can be really uncomfortable. I mean, um I'm currently doing the tide ritual as part of the inspire breath work offerings. and um you know the emotions that have come up for me there around rage and shame and guilt that I process as my personal experience but also thinking about the experiences within my lineage that session does not end on a oh I feel regulated it ends on a like I actually feel disregulated right this breath has been amazing for bringing me somewhere so it's like you also have to be ready to meet that and look after
(20:24) yourself, right? Be ready to meet that and know yourself. Whereas in the past, pre being on this journey, that would have left me feeling really raw and vulnerable and wanting to, you know, potentially be, you know, destructive. Even if that destruction is like, I'm going to go and spend now because I need some dopamine to write whatever the thing is.
(20:48) And knowing yourself enough to know if I leave a session disregulated because actually what's come up within me is intense and a lot that you you can trust yourself to look after yourself right you trust yourself to know yourself and I think yeah even precoming into a session where you're ready to have this big exploration of like what is held within my nervous system where does it come from I suppose you have to initially cultivate even a small amount of trust with yourself like genuine trust with yourself that you have you throughout
(21:22) it. Um that you will look after you. Which again in cultures and societies that demand that we don't actually look after ourselves beyond performative self-care that can be quite a difficult concept to even grapple with that. Do we trust ourselves? Do you actually look after yourself? And yeah, I think I answered what you said.
(21:45) Yeah, I think you also answered something I had on my mind to ask you while you were speaking. >> Great. >> I do still have a slight extension to it. Anyway, um I'm curious. You you conduct sessions for people at the moment as well. >> Yeah. So I predominantly do um Reiki sessions and I incorporate breath work as part of that and it's been something that I've been grappling with actually because Reiki is something that is considered um well it's like purely spiritual right there's no research on it. I'm very very big into research
(22:26) >> so there's no research on it. I mean the NHS will offer it as a complimentary therapy because they say there's no contraindications and it can have you know positive impacts. Um for me I think on a basic level when I when I came to experience Reiki um I was like so I was like this is whatever this is whatever I'm going to go and have it cuz someone's recommended it to me and I've been really anxious lately so I'm going to go and have it.
(22:54) And I think the first time I experienced it, I felt incredible. I did feel like a nervous system release and I was like this is amazing because it's co-regulation. So I do believe in the spiritual aspects as well. But actually in Reiki itself, you're moving through the energy body. You are breathing whether or not you always realize it with the person who's receiving.
(23:20) If you're the sharer, you're in each other's energy space. You are breathing together. you are giving reassuring touch or you know hovering just over um and then when I started to practice raiki and so I trained and um started to practice and share raiki with others for work and I came to realize that when I was sharing and in somebody's energy body I could feel the breath that they needed in that moment which again sound when I say it out loud as somebody who's very research focused I'm like there's no there's there's currently no explanation for this um
(23:55) that exists within science, right? But it it was suddenly feeling where they were holding breath, where breath was reaching. Um and so I I did a course, a very short breath work course, and started to incorporate that breath work into my Reiki practice. So it would be sitting within your energy, feeling where your breath is moving to.
(24:20) Um and so coming on to Hannah's course was this this realization that I was already working with quite trauma bodies that the term traumainformed can be used really lightly um and while I have done on intergenerational trauma and you know those things that's not enough to say that I am trauma informed in the concept or in the the context of of breath work and actually where people go within their bodies.
(24:54) Um, and so I still offer breath work uh with my Reiki uh which is something that's expanding and I have, you know, regular clients and friends who are currently my uh guinea pigs where I'm like, I'd like to try this. Are you open to it? And they're like, you know, most of them are very happy to try uh the stuff that we're learning on our course.
(25:14) Um but yeah, I think for my individual practice, I genuinely feel like the breath is a fingerprint. Every person I work with, the way that they experience the breath within their body, the way that they might visualize or have imagery, feel, you know, um vibrations, feel tensions, feel heat, like everything that comes through.
(25:41) I've never had a session where I'm like, "Oh, that's exactly like so and so." So, it's um yeah, the expansion with breath is is really interesting and powerful with where it takes people to. That's um yeah, I did hear during one of our sessions that you practice raiki and you did some with Shika as well, which was really fun to know. Yeah.
(26:07) And I'm really looking forward to all of us meeting next year and then sharing each other's practices. It will be so exciting. >> Yeah. So while you do some of these practices with people and when you guide them you said there's a certain level of co-regulation because your energy is >> existing with the person not towards or for I'm curious how do you handle the moment when an ancestral memory shows up for someone something they didn't personally experience suddenly wakes up in their muscles.
(26:46) How do we hold a grief that is hundreds of years old without drowning in it? And I we went over this just now a little bit where you spoke about uh finding that safety within ourselves. And even though yes, there are courses like Hannah's, this one that we're part of that allow us space to sit with these thoughts and these structures for two years of time and work through them.
(27:15) But if we were talking to someone who say wanted to inculcate some of these practices on a daily basis, let's say someone who works in a corporate and has to live that life, may even be happy living that life, but still has these moments where ancestry wakes up in their muscles. M >> how how would you as a Reiki practitioner and a breath work practitioner advise to hold that grief? >> I think for me it's about what's cultivated before you go into doing that work.
(27:56) So I personally um wouldn't go into something of that depth on a one session basis. It would be cultivating tools and exploring um your current tolerance, right? And your current so noticing what comes up within you, being able to notice if it belongs to you or not or how much of that belongs to you, how much of it is carried forward and having that separation, being able to become an observer of yourself and what you're carrying.
(28:32) Um and again, yeah, that distinction between what is mine, what is theirs. Um and that's something that again within within one session, you can't necessarily do for a person, right? Because you need to have an amount of a toolkit. This is personally how I feel when you're doing the depth of that work.
(28:52) I mean when you are working with people who live in bodies that have experienced extensive uh generational trauma, what comes forward, you need to know that that person is able to create safety within themselves. And so that foundation of what breath makes you feel safe. Do you know that you can titrate and go in and out of this, right? which are the tools that then if you're in your corporate job and you're experiencing something and it's bringing everything up within you then you can have that skill of titration.
(29:27) It's not necessarily about the what you meet in the one session and like how profound that can be. It's like how do you once you've opened that up within you, how do you carry that forward and and work with it. And I think it's, you know, hugely once you do open those doors and you have that experience, you'll notice those things coming up in a way that you don't necessarily control.
(29:55) They aren't necessarily in a in a setting where you have someone to support you. Um so yeah I would say it's that having your own first aid kit which obviously Hannah has told us is and taught us the you know imperatives of that and yeah anybody I work with there is an element of that foundational first aid kit. While you were talking about some of the earlier stuff another question that was popping up for me was while you spoke about not being familiar with a lot of your lineage >> and you explained how that played out.
(30:36) You also have a daughter today >> and I imagine she's going through a completely different experience of life >> and I find myself really curious just to learn more about how you will be her ancestor and what is this new breath that you're trying to encode for those who come after you. I mean there is a certain amount of recognition.
(31:10) I think when I when I first became a mother, I had this idea that um generational healing generational trauma meant that I would be a complete shelter for her, right? That there would be nothing that she would experience that would be from, you know, previous histories, which now four years in, I'm like, there's also a naivity to that, right? Like you are from my lineage, you're also from your father's lineage.
(31:38) So where do I you know you carry this whole new unique set where I am one side of your ancestry but there is a whole other team there's a whole other experience there's a whole something else going on for you there and I think I would describe so the first time I had this profound um sensation and connection was when we did the decolonial breath work uh decolonial directions for the first time.
(32:13) Um and it was a very bizarre I will say bizarre. I'd never had any kind of connection with um ancestors before. You know, I've never engaged in like prayer or having an altar or anything like that. I was desperate for connection, but I didn't really know where to start. Um and in that breath work, I remember feeling this this heaviness, this weighed downness behind me as we were breathing into our depth and we were thinking about our ancestors.
(32:45) And in that moment, I also felt them pushing something through my heart space. There was just this real a whole bunch of desperation. I know it's really beautiful. And this is what I think is amazing because I'm like that is just through the breath. as someone who is highly skeptical. It's like, you know, like just through the breath I felt this.
(33:09) I felt their history, their desperation, and I felt very much they wanted to give me something. They wanted to give me the good that they had. And I felt this sort of sweet corn piece of of gold coming through my heart. And as we were breathing into this idea of the people that we will be ancestors to, I felt these golden threads of light.
(33:30) And you know, I am very lucky to be a mother and I have nieces and I have nephews. And to me, it's wild to think that in years to come, you know, their children will think of me as, you know, some wizard. I'm like, that's wild to me because I'm still figuring everything out. Um, but for me, it it is kind of honoring that she has her own journey, right? So through the work that I do, I mean, she already exists.
(34:04) She already carries the epigenetic coding that says we respond to stress like this and we will respond and react in, you know, in XY Z situations. That's already within her. And so I have to honor that she is on her own journey within that, which is wild to say cuz she's only four. And obviously my job is to guide and to share tools um and to encourage her to breathe when she can.
(34:33) And sometimes she's very receptive to it and she will tell me that we should both take a belly bath. And other times I will see that she's, you know, in need of taking some breaths and I'll suggest it and she'll straight up tell me no, she doesn't want to talk to me. So and it's like honoring that.
(34:50) Like even when I um you know became a Raiki practitioner or a breath practitioner, I was like this is great. I'm going to like pass this all on. But actually, she is her own person on her own journey already. And I think it is just that. It's knowing that I am on a path to connect us to the tools that our ancestors used.
(35:10) I will share those tools with her. It's also her path. And uh you know, I am hers, but she does not belong to me. and her soul came here to do whatever it is supposed to be doing in this lifetime and I'm merely a chaperone for this this part and for as long as she needs me. Um, it's also about being candid and open about generational wounds and I speak with my brother all the time about what we carry from our parents and our childhood experiences.
(35:44) It's a real horrible willingness to see when you are perpetuating generational cycles because every parent I know doing the most, doing the best. We are encoded with what we have learned through how we were treated, what we have learned from what we have witnessed, what we carry through again our bones and our genetics.
(36:08) like everyone is going to make mistakes and I think that's part of connecting to your ancestors as well. I don't think we can. Our ancestors are flawed and they're messy and even if they did wonderful things and gave us wonderful legacies, like what person is not flawed and messy and I think that's a huge um a huge part of being an ancestor, right, is knowing that you have to face the difficult conversations and acknowledge that you actually are going to make mistakes and that's part of this journey and your learning and their learning.
(36:43) I think you brought up a really interesting thing for me. The amount of self-control one would have to have even though it's your child and you want so much for them, I imagine. >> And then to give it space to unravel how it must. >> Mhm. I I really feel like connecting with you on the topic of spirituality because I heard you bring it in a few times >> and I hold spirituality very close to a lot of my practices.
(37:23) Spirituality holds a lot of that space for me while I'm practicing anything really. There are uh subjects like mindfulness and non-violent communication that I practice and and breath work of course and spirituality kind of ties it all in together for me and I have my own ways I express it and I hold weight for it and I would love to know where that lands for you.
(37:55) How does that weave into all your practices and your life? Because I also believe our practices are yes the two hours we put in a day to dedicate dedicate devotion to something yet are again back to the spirituality the devotion is just to humanity and existence I'd love to hear more about your spiritual spaces my before I entered kind of the wellness space I was a religious studies teacher uh which meant I spent uh a lot of time yeah surprise.
(38:32) Um so I was teaching about the six major faiths world faiths which meant you obviously have to know a lot and I was teaching teenagers who are incredibly curious and ask so many questions. So I have never I wasn't raised religious. My great-g grandma, who was Irish, was Catholic, and so she would take me to uh church every Sunday.
(38:52) And it was very much a a thing to be done because it was what was to be done. And actually, she's hilarious because she told me so she didn't start going to church again until she was quite old. She had a really big gripe with nuns, which I think is fair given that she was in Dublin in Ireland.
(39:12) So, um, yeah, but she said she was going back to church to hedge her bets as she got older. And I thought that was quite an interesting. So, that's my kind of familiar relationship with uh with spirituality. But I think what I've through teaching and and researching and studying myself, there's an element of all paths lead all paths lead to this sense of unity, right? And within every faith, there's this the the golden rule that we must treat others as as we would wish to be treated.
(39:41) And it's named in different ways, worded in different ways, but it comes back to this fundamental. And particularly when cultivating spirituality with my daughter, it's recognizing that God exists within the other. And we don't practice a particular religion. And I feel like I've gone around and cherrypicked from all the faiths that I've that I've taught and studied and said this is something beautiful to live by.
(40:08) Um so for example during the month of Ramadan uh we didn't fast but we did good deeds and it was the concept of how do we within this month acknowledge what we can do for others. Um and it is very much back to that humanity aspect. I find it really frustrating as I know others do, but like it really it really boils my blood when I think Jesus would not cosign this.
(40:39) Like I'm not particularly religious, but I I've read the teachings about him and Jesus is not co-signing this. You know, Muhammad is not co-signing this. like no like anyone that we're gonna nobody's nobody's co-signing this because what they were all saying is at its core how we treat one another is what we will be judged by.
(40:58) If you want to go on a a religion that you know pinpoints that there's an afterlife that's very specific and we'll be judged and go somewhere from there. Same thing. If you want to look at the concept that we're on a wheel of reincarnation, it's how we treat one another, how we show up for one another, how we treat the planet, how do we show stewardship, right? Because we're so disconnected from it.
(41:20) And it's also seeing the awe. I think this is where having a child has really helped me. like awe and wonder in the everyday, you know, like we'll walk past something that I haven't even noticed and she's like, "What's that growing on the tree, mommy?" And it's like, "Oh, it's fungus.
(41:39) " And then it's like, "Oh, and it's actually like living symbiotically with the tree and like what you know, what does that mean?" and and and being allowing yourself, which breath work does incredibly to bring yourself into the present and notice because actually if you think about the fact that we live on a planet regardless of if you, you know, believe that it was created for us or it came out of nothing, we live on a planet that has exactly what we need to exist.
(42:08) That's a miracle, right? We have we we can walk down the road and we can see birds interacting with, you know, specific plants and and they have a relationship and insects have a relationship and we are part of this system, this web that when you zoom out and you see us in our buildings with our jobs, on our schedules, doing our travel, having our, you know, big important meetings and our ambitions and all of those things, you can get so far removed from just recognizing the very fact that I'm connected to you. We're on
(42:38) opposite sides of the world. Like we have a duty to each other, to those around us. That's wild. That's beautiful. How amazing. Like what I do in this life here now has a knock-on effect. It impacts people directly in this moment. It impacts people in in the future. And it's really difficult when we're living in the now and the pressure and everything is expensive and everything is feeling very bleak and everything is, you know, feeling like it's outside of our control.
(43:09) And sometimes it's just bringing it in to be like, wow, I'm I'm in a meat suit on a rock hurtling through space. Let's just recognize that the existence of us in itself without needing an answer is a miracle. Like I feel like I rambled there, but that's that's ultimately it for me.
(43:37) Like that you spirituality can show up when you see like four crows, when you see the magpies, when you you know see I saw I saw two pigeons like sharing food together. It was very cute. It was like they were on a It was like they were on a little date and I was like this is just what is the relationship between those two pigeons? Like how do they you know how do they communicate? I think it is bringing us back into our playfulness and our our childlike wonder that actually brings that spirituality into everything.
(44:07) >> I agree. I think nature does that very symbiotically and beautifully. So many examples came to my mind while you were talking about that and I know a few from the land I come from and there are honills which are a rare bird to find but I lived in Goa for a very long time and they are abundant on the west coast of India and they're known to travel in pairs.
(44:38) They're known to mate and travel in pairs. And you would see them on a branch. You would see them balancing weight for each other on a branch, which is just absolutely sweet. I also um I'm reminded of this concept where trees have a canopy, but and I forget what it's called. It's completely skipping my brain, but how trees leave space for each other in a canopy for the light to pass through which I remember the first time I read it many years ago and and as a child there was this quote I had read which said if you don't like where you are
(45:19) change it you're not a tree and at that time it was really impactful for me I was in my teens and I was like oh yeah you know I can I can change where I am. I I I have legs. I can move. And as I grew older, as I felt more spiritual, which in turn naturally for me meant closer to nature, not even closer to nature, but I felt as nature because there is no closer. We are it and it is us.
(45:49) So the older I grew and the more I read that quote for myself, it made me a little sad instead of happy. uh one that trees can't relocate themselves. That made me sad. But then very quickly that was replaced with almost this feeling of I am actually nothing because the amount they can do I possibly can't. The fact that they can grow roots into colonies.
(46:21) The fact that even while they're growing they know how to support each other's branches. that they know how much space to leave for the light to enter so the plants in the bottom don't not get sunlight. That's a community if there is a community. And for sure there have been really dark times for humanity as human as the human race. There have been really dark times.
(46:44) We're living through one of those dark times right now. And more than anything, I I too see my role as okay, you know, there isn't so much any one one person can do, but what I can do is add in my two drops that might help tip the balance on the good energy side because there are dark energies in play for sure and there has to be someone balancing it out. And so I'm going to be one of them.
(47:18) No matter what else I will be in this time, I will be one of them at least. And learning from the trees and birds actually is the sweetest way to do any of that. Talking about these things, I see collectivism and community show up hugely for you as well through your spirituality on this journey. How has that played out for you? in your recent life or even if you want to talk about an older time even if not recent but I know you've had stuff going on in your recent times and I I would love to hear how community has shown up
(47:59) how collectivism has helped you move through this time. >> Yeah, for sure. So I it's been a really interesting time and I think it's really interesting to that you mention you know this this darkness and this lightness and I think you see now more than ever people moving towards these practices and and ritual which is beautiful and I feel very much that the same thing has happened to me on um just on a whole life scale.
(48:40) So um at the beginning of this year I became homeless with my daughter. So we have been living in temporary accommodation. Um it's been like really rattling. It's been like a reckoning. I mean it's been the realization of sitting there and thinking well for four generations back actually every mother in my line has experienced displacement at some point.
(49:03) So there's this spiral that you recognize within the personal, but also I mean I know you mentioned earlier like our social locations um and moving through this system. It's something that I've always been incredibly proud of the UK. I've had this kind of um recognition that or this belief that you know this country is not great but if anything goes wrong you know healthwise we've got the NHS incredible we have social housing we have temporary accommodation like street homelessness does not have to be the first thing that happens if
(49:43) you're in in find yourself in this position and I've always felt incredibly proud of that um and then when I found myself within the system and I could see how dehumanizing it is to exist within this system. And in the first place we stayed, you know, there there were families with several children in one room who were constantly trying to advocate for themselves and getting nowhere.
(50:11) And it could have been a place that was incredibly bleak, right? Um, but yet, you know, you could go into the shared dining room and you could bring some toys in and the children would all sit collectively and play and the adults could talk to each other and you would hear about somebody's story as to why they were there or what struggle they were going through in that moment.
(50:33) And even though each of us were fighting a very different battle, there's that element of of it's transient. Someone might not be here tomorrow. someone, you know, because you're getting moved around a lot, but that the minute that you connect in with each other's stories, there's resonance. Um, and I feel incredibly blessed to have been part of the Inspire Breath work community whilst I've been part of this, right? Being able to I know being able to reach out to people in all different locations and be like, "Hey, I'm at
(51:08) capacity and we've only known each other like four months. I'm at capacity and I can't work this out. Does anyone have any space? And I think as somebody who has hyper independence just because of how I grew up, that's been a revelation to me. Um that you know communities within struggles and while while I was in the hotel there was an element of wanting us to unite, right? wanting us to to unite and speak to the council as a collective if we could.
(51:46) And I think there is a real sadness that comes from from knowing the way that we approach things actually not we're not necessarily ready to approach things as a collective, right? because of fear, because of particularly in the UK like you know neoliberal ideology that is like I am the individual and I need to look out for the needs of me and my family and so if I join myself with this and you know with this collective cause will that harm me and when you're thinking about people who are at risk of street homelessness if things don't go
(52:24) well or to plan or how you hoped they You can think about collective movements but sometimes the people who are within the space can't choose collective action which I found to be quite um unsettling cuz I come from a privileged background in terms of like the you know oh I I've been educated to this level or you know and I've had these jobs and I've interacted with these systems and I have grown up in this area and you know I've worked in a way that has given me a certain amount of proximity to wealth and so I feel like we should go and do
(53:03) this and it's like but actually you don't feel you have those things you don't feel like you can fight for it you feel like if you speak up too much then you're going to be punished for it if we zoom out I think that that's something you can look at in a lot of struggles right a lot of struggles that we're looking at on a global scale um and also for me is systemic cuz I think these systems that hold things up they hold this in place right this I spoke earlier about dissociating from our own experiences if you're fighting
(53:41) for if you're fighting to prove that you deserve to have somewhere to stay that you can afford um and lots of the people I met were simply homeless because their rent had increased and their wages hadn't And so, you know, you're you're within this system. The system has to change, but also the people within it, they're dissociating because actually it's really difficult to be dehumanized every day and constantly try and justify to someone that you are a person and you just want to be listened to and you know, can somebody treat your case on an
(54:19) individual level? the people within the systems, there is no way they are not also dissociating because you cannot be doing a job where you are telling like a mother of three children that she's going to have to move, you know, 100 miles away from her support network. You can't be doing that job and being connected to yourself, right? because the the weight you will carry for that when you're being told that in your job I have a friend who works um within the benefit system, right? And they essentially get pulled up if they're too
(54:53) helpful. There's an element of like if you Yeah. So it's like you have a quot of how much help you're allowed to give and if you go over there then you get pulled into your manager's office. So straight away if you're considering, well, I need this job to feed my family. How do I? And that's what we're working with.
(55:14) We're working with people who are accessing systems. They're dehumanized, dissociating to cope. We have people that are within the systems that have to disconnect themselves from their own humanity in order to cope with the job that they're doing and the consequences of the decisions that they're making. And I think that's been the starkkest realization for me that I exist within.
(55:40) I'm consciousness experiencing itself in a small community with wonderful people where I see beautiful things happening all of the time and I see love blossoming and I see us all trying to work out the human experience. And then above that is a layer of systems that don't recognize that at all.
(56:03) And so when I think about collective action and like our there needs to be a calling in of everybody and there needs to be a willingness to sit with ourselves and to sit with ourselves and acknowledge the things that we've done that maybe we are not proud of or the burdens of responsibility that we carry for our actions alongside having like forgiveness and grace for ourselves.
(56:27) We need to do that horrible messy part. Um, yeah. And that's that's where I sit within like community and because I'm at the whim of systems right now and it's uh it's a really difficult place to be in when you feel you have sovereignity but a system feels that you are a number. It's a it's a funny place to sit.
(56:53) >> Yeah, it firstly it definitely adds up why we are sitting in the episode called the messy middle. That was Yeah, that's some of that was very heavy to hold >> to hear. I could imagine myself in the shoes of those people who had to limit how much they would help because you also need a job. And this is kind of some of the stuff that we've touched on in the um previous episode where we talk about how we're being kept disembodied so that >> we can keep functioning.
(57:42) In fact, all of all of therapy, all of neurotherapy today mostly functions around the poly polyagal theory which is very white in its nature and essentially >> um brings back the conversation to deciphering how your responses are so that you can socially engage again. But what we're trying to do with decolonizing is trying to talk about how your goal does not need to be to socially engage again.
(58:12) That's not the first goal anyway. To show up in community and collectivism is a larger goal, >> but it's not going to happen at the expense of yourself. >> Mhm. talking about disembodiment where we were just now. While we speak about this messy middle, it would be remiss for me to not talk about how our bodies respond when we're being kicked out of them, how disembodiment shows up.
(58:48) And I would love to hear from you how that shows up for you. What are the ways you mitigate through some of that? Maybe even reflecting on how it showed up in your recent past. These are also things I imagine people around you, your daughter, everyone is observing in you as well and learns as as they observe and share space with you.
(59:22) >> And it's something I have actually valued a lot in our cohort. every time I have seen you during one of our sessions working through a feeling and then staying with it. And I I would love for everyone else to hear how you move through some of that. Do you have objects with you that help you do that? The breath of course, but also how you work with the breath that gets you there.
(59:50) >> Yeah, absolutely. Um, I I try not to um I try not to think of myself in I I guess I I consider everybody to have kind of this unique fingerprint element. And so when I describe how it shows up for me, I think I'm quite cautious that that is how it shows up for me. But it, you know, anybody else or people that I work with, it can show up in entirely different ways.
(1:00:28) Um, for me with my own personal trauma history, I have been disembodied for like my entire life. I think it's been a really interesting journey coming back to my body and recognizing just how little time of the last 35 years has been spent experiencing the world through my body. Um and so even acknowledging I think is the first place to start.
(1:01:02) Um, and I suppose for anybody who has extensive um, like childhood trauma, this is something that's really common. Um, and it doesn't necessarily have to be that your trauma comes from, you know, the most heinous things. It it can be simply growing up in a home where you felt ignored and acknowledged your needs, your emotional needs were not met.
(1:01:24) I think sometimes when we talk about uh childhood trauma that we sometimes feel that we have to distance ourselves from it because it wasn't the most traumatic and we'll play into this kind of trauma Olympics. Um whereas actually yeah if you have from a young age learned that you cannot interpret well the the research I'm currently looking at is if you feel a wave of messages coming from your body which is intraception and it's what we all experience.
(1:01:57) It's how we know we're hungry, how we know we're thirsty, how we know we need to go to the bathroom. Um but if you have been experiencing signals within your body that tell you for example that you are not safe um that you are feeling fear that you are but you grow up in a position where you have nothing to address that you do not have the ability to leave the fearful situation you do not have the ability to advocate for yourself then those intraceptive signals that you receive you will simply leave your body right it's the dissociation and then What
(1:02:30) quite often happens is that you then start picking up those signals again when they are increased and then you become emotionally disregulated because you cannot interact with those signals because you cannot pick them up until they are at their most heightened point. Um, which is definitely how I have experienced moving through the world in this body for the last 30 years.
(1:02:57) Um, and I would say becoming a mom or being pregnant was the first time that I actually felt embodied. Um, yeah, it was it was wild. I mean, especially growing up as a woman, uh, you know, a millennial woman who's been like, you know, heroin chic was all the rage and like nothing tastes as good as skinny feels and like all of this stuff like having a body where I went through puberty really early and like I was just like, yeah, no, I'm not up for having a body.
(1:03:24) And so I was never part of it and was very like critical of it. Um like most of us have been. And then I became pregnant. I was like, "Oh my goodness, this is incredible." Like I want to feel into my body, right? I want to know what these sensations mean. I want to to have a relationship with my body. Um and that was where it was cultivated.
(1:03:44) But even within that, I was not tapping into my body as such. I was tapping into the needs of my baby that my body was telling me about. Um, and motherhood has been a reckoning in that sense of um, coming into my body when I'm not a vessel and it's well, I'm a vessel only for me is really uncomfortable. um my body does not actually feel like home and I think that has been something that when I first came to breath work you know that's a lot of the rhetoric right that your body come home to your body you know this is your first home and
(1:04:29) your and and that's very romanticized and I definitely felt like yeah that's what I want to do and it's like yes but my body is also a battle zone Right. And it's also carrying like scars and wounds and experiences that I have not had capacity to make sense of. So to go into it is a meeting of of the body and mind that I think for people who are disembodied and spend a lot of time outside of their body is incredibly overwhelming.
(1:05:04) Like even only recently did I contemplate where my body where I actually go right when I'm not inside my body cuz I know that I'm dissociated from it all the time. I know that I'm kind of using it to see to touch to taste to to experience the world around me but I'm not actually listening to it. I push it past its limits.
(1:05:24) I don't acknowledge the cues that it gives me. Not consistently anyway. Um, and actually just thinking well where is it that I go? Is it that you know for some people it will be I'm lost in thought and so I just stay in my ideas. For some people it will be that they get lost in spiritual practices and they they simply stay in this in this spiritual space.
(1:05:48) And I think with people I have worked with who have a um a tendency to say well you know everything is one and so if I just focus my positive energy on this element then I'm going to and I think that is so beautiful to have that outlook. There also needs to be a recognition that we're mind body and spirit and so we can't lean too heavily into one.
(1:06:18) Um, I have a tendency when I'm disembodied to be completely in the spiritual. Like I'll just be like, "Yeah, I don't want to engage with my brain or my body and I'm just gonna exist in a space where I'm acknowledging the beauty of things and I'm and it's a very wonderful place to be disembodied in.
(1:06:36) " But it also disconnects me from action. It disconnects me from um engaging sometimes because it you know you just it's safer to stay in this kind of bubble. Um and coming into my body feels it's a practice that I'm you know building every day but it feels really uncomfortable. It doesn't feel nice. Um, you know, as we experienced in my onetoone not that long ago, it you know, it's literally like I'm crossing into an electric storm as I come into my body and the acknowledgement that that's my nervous system saying, "No, we're too full in here." Like, we're full and this
(1:07:14) is, you know, like this is the sensation I feel when I think about that electric fence. It's like we're guarded. We're full. We don't, you know, there's no room for anything else in here. And as I settle into it, it comes with heat and actually a lot of the sensations that we have dissociated from, right? Like I feel um when I go into it, I can feel that same childlike heat of you know when you're being told off and you feel like you haven't actually done anything wrong and it comes with this shame and this guilt
(1:07:45) or you know all of this this wave of emotions that are buried within us. you know, when you when you cross into that, if you've been dissociating for a long time, it's going to meet you. It's going to come up and meet you. And um I am making a home out of my body by checking in with the archive and saying, "Well, what story is this? What have I neglected? What do I need to attend to? What do I need to meet to know myself?" And it's um it's a lot of work.
(1:08:18) like it's it's recognizing that if you live in a traumed body, um I've been in therapy for years and years and I love therapy and talking is amazing, but talking has only got me so far because I will still have flashbacks in my body, right? I will still be doing an absolutely normal activity and suddenly I feel overwhelmed by sensations from memories long ago.
(1:08:43) That can happen to anybody if they've experienced it. it can hijack them at any time. Um, and it is just the awareness that you you have to have the willingness to listen. And it's not just listening. It's like being able to hold yourself with compassion because when you have been disembodied for a long time, you have to acknowledge that your actions will also have been coming from that place.
(1:09:17) And as we speak about those people who are working in roles where they have to be disembodied, it's like when you become embodied, there's a certain amount of accountability. there's a certain amount of painfulness that lives within um your the role that you have played in terms of you know when we discuss consent and it's like the things that I have consented to but not really consented to right but it's like what is my role within that and developing agency and I suppose that's where they come hand in hand it's like only when you cross into your body and
(1:09:50) you listen to those things and you can look at yourself in the entirety I think are you then able to start moving forward and clearing it out? And that's what it feels like to me. It's like I have to sit here and I have to say, okay, I'm ashamed that I responded in this way. Where does that shame come from? Where does it where do I feel it? Where am I feeling this in my body and sitting with that sensation? And we're you dissociated.
(1:10:17) You're used to running away from sensation in your body. So, can you sit with it? Even if it feels awful, can you sit there and say this burning sensation and I feel ashamed and allow yourself to cry the tears that you weren't able to cry. Allow yourself to feel nausea. That's like my big one. Like I constantly if I go into my body straight away, I'm like, "Oh, I want to vomit.
(1:10:39) " Like because of all of the nervousness that I do carry within my my nervous system. But you gain agency when you can look at those things. And I do find I I genuinely breathe them out. So whilst it's painful when I come into it, what I meet there, as I sit with the painful sensations and I name them and I acknowledge them, they will shift and they will change.
(1:11:07) And then underneath that I will have the recognition that actually this sensation is coming from a mirroring between this situation and this situation and it's making me feel that this is happening even though it's really this. And then I can say oh right so when this sensation comes up this is what my body's telling me.
(1:11:32) I don't have to continue on the same pattern of behavior that I would have. I can shift myself because I am in charge of me. I'm not just, you know, you talk about free will and determinism, but it's like I'm not just running on deterministic like there is an element of agency. Um, and the breath definitely brings me into that.
(1:11:54) I think decolonial directions is the one. It's like what I always come back to. Yeah, it's definitely one we should get Hannah to do on one of these um podcast recordings >> so that the world can see how helpful it is. But honestly, >> it's also creating space within your body. I know I've just yeah spoken a lot there, but there is an element of like can you breathe into your side? Can you breathe into your length? Can you breathe into actually creating capacity, right? Cuz we constrict ourselves.
(1:12:29) We when we're fearful like as animals that's what we do. We bring ourselves inwards. We we hold ourselves right and it's like well can you expand so that those sensations that come up in your body they're not threatening to overrun you. There's space for it to be there and for you to be within the body as well.
(1:12:50) And I think again it's such a underresarched um area and I know Hannah speaks about this a lot as well because a lot of research is on um white cis male bodies on how they react to things but it is just creating capacity. you need to build that capacity in. Um, and so when people I keep seeing adverts for it and I'm like I want to reach out to people and have genuine conversations around promising people that they'll regulate their nervous systems in 50 minutes.
(1:13:22) And it's like it's taken Hannah 4 months of working with me for me to be like, "Oh, that's where my nervous system is." like you know 50 minutes is not going to cut it for a lot of people and especially when you speak about women uh just any woman really I think we carry so much like we carry so much all of the time and we don't want to be in our objectified bodies most of the time anyone who's grown up you know like yeah I digress Yeah.
(1:14:09) And to think that we're not even the gender farthest from the power and privilege center, that there is queer folk, that there are trans folk >> for whom it must be even tougher. It's beyond me sometimes because I I'm sitting with what as a sis woman >> I'm facing and then to think that there is more beyond this feels terrifying to think of. Yeah.
(1:14:38) Like I cannot imagine what it is like to navigate this as a as a trans woman, right? Like I can't and I think there's a certain amount of honesty we need to have there as well. like we we only experience the world through this. And I think, you know, it goes back to what I was saying before about like, oh yeah, well, I've always believed in we have a system that operates like this and that's a wonderful thing.
(1:15:03) And this is my perspective of those experiences from outside. We're limited. There's only so much we can step inside of the experience. So, it needs to be that that recognition of listening to other people's experiences to know what they're navigating. And also, I guess a humility in knowing that you can't ever really know, right? And you're going to say the wrong things and do the wrong things from the right place, right? And it's a and that's a dance that I think we're in in humanity, right? It's a it's a space, especially
(1:15:37) as somebody who, you know, aligns myself politically with humanity as a whole. I don't think there's a political spectrum that I would sit on, but you know, that would be categorized as being on the left. And then sometimes I look at how we treat each other within the left, and I think we're not we're not meeting each other where we're at, right? We're not meeting each other with a willingness to learn together.
(1:16:05) And we certainly don't have enough humility to accept where we where we get it wrong and to to ask for the opportunity to try it again or to judge that somebody else should know because the perspective that I hold whereas actually why would you know that you live in this sphere and I need to bring you to my sphere to know. I think one of the quotes Hannah said quite in the beginning of our work comes back to me with this which said we cannot find the cure or we cannot find the medicine until we can acknowledge that we are the poison.
(1:16:42) >> Yeah. >> And that's each one of us. That's all of humanity altogether. Yeah. That >> Yeah. That resonates with me a lot. >> Yeah. I also feel you brought up topics around disembodiment and you spoke about how it shows up in traumat bodies and alongside I feel that there are no bodies that aren't traumat >> possible because as we're rightly talking about intergenerational trauma in this moment >> and even from some of the reading that I've been doing on these topics um how my grandmother's hands speaks about
(1:17:26) some things. It speaks about how when we came into the phase of white bodies holding violence over black and brown bodies. Before that there was a whole time where white bodies were holding violence against white bodies and it was just done on a different >> um set of parameters and factors. But everybody in effect since then has been traum.
(1:17:56) And even the people sitting and maybe feeling or thinking maybe thinking I think the thinking brain does this more and I know this for myself because for a long long part of my life I when I thought of therapy for the first time was when I faced I met my depression for the first time. Mhm. >> But even during that first phase of therapy, I remember talking to my therapist about how I've had no big traumas really if I think about it.
(1:18:35) So why what is happening? What is showing up right now? But today I can positively affirm that there are no bodies that have not been through trauma. And whatever we're holding, could be our present today, could be what we have unintentionally put ourselves through. And it could be intergenerational. It's all of those >> put together.
(1:19:00) >> So even for people who possibly think that life is great right now, which it can be, it can be while >> you're working through some of this discomfort as well. There definitely is trauma there and trauma to be put into this heavy big word isn't really the goal here, right? It's just the book also describes small tea trauma and big tree traumas which we know as the um colloquial lingo for trauma as well.
(1:19:33) And so those small tea traumas can be as simple as not just something bad happening in your childhood but something good not happening. And even that double negative turns into trauma in a sense. >> So that's interesting to me how how a body that thinks it does not have any trauma will still have trauma responses but still be holding their jaw tight will still be breathing in a way that's shallow and not aiding their >> cells to get enough air.
(1:20:05) >> Mhm. >> All of that shows up. One more thing that came up for me while you were talking um and while I had asked you that question actually are there things that you turn to when you feel disembodied >> and somatic practices go very deep into our bodies as well. And then there is the surface level of them where we're just learning how to at all relate with touch and feel and physical presence.
(1:20:36) M >> and one of the first things I picked up with that um some years ago was through this small workshop where someone spoke about finding an object that helps you ground yourself. >> And then many years from then to say last month, I actually found this rock >> which became my grounding rock. >> Yeah.
(1:21:04) And I found it in like the sweetest little farm here in Oruroville. Um, and it's been very And I I don't know what it holds. Yeah. Like I have no idea why it called out to me. And I've come across thousands of rocks. We've all come across thousands of rocks. I have a whole altar full of rocks and shells in my house, but this one called out in a very different way.
(1:21:28) >> Um, >> I love that. And I feel like even starting at this smaller point with that journey can be really helpful sometimes. >> Mhm. >> It was helpful for me at a time I didn't know I needed help which was interesting to then realize this is helping me which does that mean that >> I could have used help even if I didn't need it.
(1:21:52) >> I mean isn't that a great question for just the human experience in general? >> Doesn't mean I needed help but I didn't there um Um yeah, I mean I think that's beautiful and I think sometimes things call to us. Um and there will be no rhyme or reason, right? There's no there's no logic to it.
(1:22:16) It's just like an affinity or a resonance that you feel with something. Um and I think that that is beautiful and really um spiritual. And I think sometimes things don't need an explanation. And it's just like, yep, that's that's sex is rock. And it, you know, like um I think I use uh I use scent a lot. I think in being um like being displaced temporarily, it kind of removed from me a lot of the a lot of the tools that I would have because we've we've had to move frequently.
(1:22:48) You have to have very limited uh very limited things with you. And so whereas before I would have like bring the internet into it, but actually losing or being fearful of losing objects actually when you're moving around has meant that I've really reduced what I have. But one thing I have kept with me is um scent and I think we've spoken before like scent and and scent like taste, smells, which is scent.
(1:23:17) Um, but those those can be a really wonderful anchor because they're of the body, right? Like scent requires me to be interacting with my body, but they're not in the body. So, it brings me into a space of acknowledging I'm here, but it's okay. I can bring myself in and out. Like scent is a really good one to use for titration as well.
(1:23:46) So, with people I work with, I'll have like various essential oils and stuff and offer if they would like it on a roller so they can use it as an anchor to bring themselves in and out of the sensation. Um, but I think everything is personal to us. Like every everything, you know, I've got loads of crystals, but my favorite rock is this like smooth black stone that I picked up on a beach on Micah's first beach holiday, you know, and it's that one holds a meaning and and it's special.
(1:24:22) Um, and I think sometimes we look outwardly a lot and I suppose this is part of the the miss the the messy middle as well, right? We are so conditioned to look outwardly to like what meaning do I apply to this based on the group meaning of this and learning to say what meaning does this hold to me and is it valid simply because it's meaningful to me without validation externally.
(1:24:46) Um I think that's a really important thing for people with those pasts to work with. Right. And as I say, talking about people with ancestry who they don't necessarily have a connection to land, they might not know their lineage. I mean, if you think about people who have been adopted, for example, just, you know, you've got if it feels like it means something to you, then you can lean into that, right? You don't have to have it as a a verified stamped thing to say this is this should mean this.
(1:25:16) It's like, no, it does mean this, so I can sit with it. Yeah. Another thing that came up very strongly for me um was when you spoke about dissociating and how it shows up as a lack of capacity. >> I think pendulating out of our states is one of the most valuable practices I have picked up from the course so far. And all work that we're doing, why why we need to do any of this work is for that capacity, right? Why grief work needs to exist. Grief exists already.
(1:26:04) >> Why grief work exists is so that we can have that capacity so that we can learn how to hold capacity to process grief as a collective, as an individual and then move through it. And this showed up for me very recently. I've had some emotional things happening in my life and I had a friend show up at home who I welcomed into my home and then didn't show up with capacity for things they were going through which were larger things which had things to do with the trans laws being overthrown in our country and worldwide. honesty,
(1:26:47) the US is almost always leading these things and then they're kind of trickling down. >> Um, and I failed at holding space for that because I and and when we spoke about it, I realized it happened because I had dissociated. And even though I welcomed someone into my space, I forgot that welcoming someone means presence from me.
(1:27:18) >> And that pendulation kind of failed because I wasn't rooted enough, I imagine, and I'm learning and I'm I'm going to get there. I I believe that. I truly believe that. But it was a good moment for me to reflect on that. and um learn the value of this technique cuz I think it's really really helpful when you mess up.
(1:27:44) Um it mostly tells you where you need more work. >> Mhm. >> And I definitely want that bit to be worked on. That said, there is another thing I think I fare pretty well at >> um which for me has been feminine intuition. And I feel like there was a point in my growing years where uh you know when you're you're you're in your 20ies and your friends and you are dating a little bit and then suddenly there's a certain friend who is choosing all the wrong people.
(1:28:25) >> Mhm. >> And then there's a discussion about why this is happening. And then beyond the fact that these are all actually very very hardcoded gender and societal stereotypes that are conditioned into us and a lot of it will just have to be seen for what it is and we're not always at fault. >> Beyond that there was also this moment where I was like did your intuition not tell you this was wrong? I just had a general question because usually that's how I have always operated with like okay this is I'm feeling this inside and
(1:29:00) those were not times where I had questioned what feeling inside means >> today I understand how to read into those feelings at that moment I didn't and so my question was just a general like does your intuition not tell you this >> and I think that was also the first time where someone told me no I think my intuition is mostly led me to the wrong side of things.
(1:29:25) >> And so for me, it's interesting to learn how to tap into feminine intuition because I truly believe it is the oldest magic in in existence. >> Agreed. >> I'm so glad. I feel like the moment everyone can agree to that as a collective, that would be the first powerful collectivism thing we can do. >> Um But it gets stolen from us somewhere.
(1:29:54) I feel >> it's about internal volume versus external volume though, right? >> Explain that to me. >> So I don't think anyone's intuition leads them astray. >> Right. I think your intuition >> is your like your true north, right? It's like the the echo that comes through like the noise when you're and it's like and you know the clear cutness that you get.
(1:30:27) But I think anyone who Well, I mean it's it's literally everyone. So it's quite interesting because I think a parallel could probably be found within men as well. How much have you been conditioned to prioritize the expectations that are put on you because of your social location any aspect of it right how much have you been how much through your childhood was your voice and your exploration given space right because if in your early years what you learned was I should be looking outwardly for the approval then That's what you do. And so
(1:31:08) what we might call intuition, if we've spent our lifetimes, and I point at myself when I say this as well, trying to mold to what we perceive we need to do to be acceptic, is that intuition or is that like survival? Is that how we perceive we will thrive within an environment? And I think thinking about people in their 20ies when they're dating is amazing.
(1:31:30) If I look back, don't don't look back because those choices were horrendous and I had no there was no intuition at play there. I thought there was I thought I knew what I was doing but actually I was playing into the same the same relationship pattern that I had grown up with. uh my internal working model for attachment my you know and so >> intuition is a really powerful thing I think it's what we all need to get in touch with we literally live in a posttruth environment where videos and images and voices and everything can be replicated
(1:32:13) so in terms of verification of the external world we're in this weird space where we're starting to trust our senses less intuition is the internal guidance system. So tuning into that is genuinely how I feel like we're going to save humanity. No pressure. Like yeah, how much of it is intuition? How much of it is like you performing what you think you need to do based on the rule book that you've been given in the society that you live in and the gender or the you know sexuality or the anything that you hold that is a
(1:32:52) characteristic and it's quite scary >> for sure. There's a huge part of there's a huge process of work that goes into deciphering intuition from your conditioning from what's from your patterns of why you're responding to things how you're responding compared to how your soul and body needs you to respond. >> Definitely a lot of work there.
(1:33:24) It's uh yeah, I think it's a huge field of study. It's a huge field of work that all of us are already doing on a daily basis and tapping more and more into it for sure has to bring us to a brighter side of things. I'm curious how um how motherhood brings it back though. there there are uh midwives and doulas here where I live and they talk they've been having a lot of these interviews with new mothers who've just given natural birth or hospital births and and there is some conversation there about how there's also actually sorry to not
(1:34:10) digress but like go back into it there's so much research on what a woman's body releases while she's giving birth, which are chemicals like DMT. And I hope no one's holding me to this because this is very surface level research and I've not gone maybe you can go deeply into it since research is your field, but there are so there's a range of chemicals that a woman's body is releasing while she's giving birth.
(1:34:42) And so many of these um invite parts of our instincts of our soul which are not so alive on a day-to-day basis in a human body. And while that work is happening, a lot of these women have spoken about the biggest the biggest um roadblock they see just after giving birth is people or even during their pregnancy is people not trusting in their intuition >> because medicine or scientific research has already spoken about what these processes are and they're defined in these steps.
(1:35:20) Whereas that's not how it is, right? None of this is defined to every woman's body or every body at large even. But that intuition I feel like is a sense that becomes more heightened during that phase which happens at a few other phases in a human's life. Near-death experiences, losing a very loved a close loved one. Some of these experiences bring about those chemical reactions as well.
(1:35:48) Since you have experienced one of them, I'm curious if motherhood did change your relationship with your intuition in any way and how it was earlier actually. >> Yeah, massively. I mean, motherhood re uh readjusted my entire relationship with myself. Um there's a you know, it's a word that's used much more now.
(1:36:17) Um and it's always kind of reduced. So matresence is this idea of you know you're going through physical emotional uh spiritual changes uh akin to the same things you go through when you enter ad adolescence. Like it's seen as being this this huge period of time where actually it is in itself an existential crisis. like you are suddenly you are you and somebody else and you no longer exist in the world as the person you were before having a baby and nothing can actually prepare you for that shift like you can read the books you can speak with mothers you can have
(1:36:55) as much insight as you want I always compare it to like you can there's a very big difference between reading like firthand accounts of soldiers in the trenches of war and being in the trenches of war And so you can empathize and whatever as much as you like until you're in it and you have your identity stripped away and you exist only for this person.
(1:37:23) But for me the meaning of existing for this person was like oh my god I have to live authentically. What does that even mean? What does that even look like to me? What even are my values? cuz I've spent the last however long thinking these are the things that I think are important and this is the way that I want to live my life.
(1:37:43) This person is going to look to me and my actions over my words are going to tell her right and I want her to trust herself. Do I trust myself? Do I am I making decisions and and you know having my own back with that? Am I showing up authentically in my relationships that she's witnessing? How do I show her what it means to do? I know what it means because I can only show her if I'm sure that I know what that means for me.
(1:38:12) And so when I say existential crisis, like often we use that term and it's like, you know, like a panic thing. We'll be like, oh, and it's like, but actually a moment of existential crisis is a moment of creation. Like I went I went to a job interview for a promotion six days after giving birth because prior to becoming a mother, I was like career, I'm going to be, you know, I want to be a head teacher by this time and like I'm going to do every single course and I'm going to do, you know, all I could see was following this
(1:38:44) path that to me was like, yeah, make money, beautiful, have these lovely holidays, be in a position of power, influence policy, fantastic. And then I had her and I was like, I I don't even care. I don't even I didn't even know why that would be something that would interest me. Like it literally it switched and stripped back everything that I thought.
(1:39:11) And it was beautiful to say, but I get to create I get to create who I am and what comes next. And there is nothing like, and I never thought I would have explained it this way, but there is nothing like being the bridge between heaven and earth and bringing someone into the world to make you really be like what in the material world actually matters? What what is it that actually matters beyond beyond the human experience and love and connection and the world that is left behind, right? for others and the legacy that we leave um what we give and what we share
(1:39:54) and I think that that's where our intuition lives right when we when we are within those questions of like aligning our purpose and the values that we hold that's when we can hear our intuition the loudest I think >> I did not expect such a beautiful weave through um circularity to that. I loved hearing that. Thank you so much.
(1:40:21) Thanks for listening. >> Always I will always listen to you so happily. >> I'm so verbose. That's I always think to myself and like I always I just meander. M it's a very beautiful meandering um to come a little bit towards the close of this um really curious conversation is what I would call this.
(1:40:56) I have um a a question that can you know leave us behind with some more important thoughts from your mind. If your breath, if we see breath as a form of time travel, which I know we do, um, and if our breath carries the trauma of the past, it also carries the liberation of the future. When you take a deep sovereign breath today, what are you sending back to your ancestors? And what are you sending forward to those who haven't arrived yet? What a beautiful question.
(1:41:36) A large part of what I send back is um is forgiveness. Um the the work that I've been doing predominantly is around um like a generational mother wound um that I can trace back at least four generations in terms of uh teenage motherhood issues around safety and childhood um issues around uh men being placed before children, right? And it's a it's a really curious place to be to sit with knowing that I have ancestors who have caused this pain, right? You you know like my great grandmother caused this pain to my grandmother who caused this
(1:42:34) pain to my mother who caused this pain to me. So it's very curious to sit with that and say I forgive you. That's the main thing that I always want to pass back is uh yeah like forgiveness and recognition that you were doing the best that you could with the tools that you had in the context and grace. Right.
(1:43:08) Each of them carries their own story and their own experiences and their own reasoning that to live one human life is so complex right and we make decisions as we've said we make decisions every day that have a knock-on effect and we don't even necessarily know what those decisions are right I'm going to say the worst thing ever it's really bad to say this out loud and I'm really sorry I remember I was teaching and I would teach like I had I would teach like 20 22 hours a week and it would be like 30 different children.
(1:43:43) So 22 * 30 there were lots of children. I did not know all of their names. And I remember at the end of term when it was closing this class, this girl came up to me and I did not know her name at all, but I got away with it by calling people like lovely and sweetheart. And and she came up to me and she gave me a card and inside she had written something that I'd said is just like some random throwaway comment that she had felt so moved by that she felt had like transformed something for her. That's life. That's a comment that
(1:44:16) even now like it was profound to her. It hasn't remained with me. So of course the impact of things that my ancestors did that maybe were not even a conscious choice that led to the harm within the lineage. So I offer them forgiveness and recognition of humanity and like you might be my ancestors that came before but now that I am a mother and I see how flawed I am.
(1:44:41) I am such a flawed human and she looks to me as like, you know, this font of knowledge and wisdom and the the one that gets everything done and I'm like, I don't even know what I'm doing. And so there has to be this grace and forgiveness and love and gratitude and like mistakes have been made, but there's also been a lot of love and a lot of growth.
(1:45:03) And um you know there are also incremental things like all of my grandmother's siblings all but one died from drug and alcoholrelated deaths. My grandmother did not my grandmother did not carry that pattern that that choice even though other harms were done actually made an incredible difference to the way that I then lived my life.
(1:45:28) So, you have to acknowledge the small things. I feel that's I say you have to. I say it because I have to um to find peace because otherwise it would just be anger. It would just be like how could you not? Or if I'm making the effort to make changes, why could you not, right? I could sit in that space very easily and feel anger and frustration and disappointment.
(1:45:50) But then when I think about looking forward, all I think is, you know, I hope I hope with everything I have that my ancestors, whether I'm here or not, feel protected, feel that they have someone they can turn to, right? That they feel accepted. I think this is a massive thing that's missing in my lineage. Acceptance of the self.
(1:46:16) like everyone has smothered themselves in order to to fit where they need to fit. And I think for my descendants, I hope you are wild and free and uncontainable and give yourself grace and allow yourself to yeah move through the world and experience everything that it is to be human, which is messy.
(1:46:45) It's so messy to be a human. Like it's so messy to be a human interacting with other humans, interacting in the world, shaping the world. Like there's so much individual responsibility on all of us that I just pray that for them there is self-acceptance, ease, a willingness to experience and try new things and not follow a path that has been set for you by others, but to to do what feels right to you.
(1:47:14) And yeah, and I think when I think about my daughter and my nieces, I mean, there's so much messiness within it. But like one day I will have the conversation with my daughter where we talk about the separation of me and her father being because I wanted to be authentic and I wanted to model authenticity to her and I was in a relationship where that authenticity didn't exist.
(1:47:39) And you know, she'll be angry with me. I'm sure there'll be emotion there, I'm sure. But also potentially the recognition of that and what that means. Um, yeah. I just want them to give themselves grace for the mess of being human. Oh, you're so far away. But you know, >> sorry. Oo, >> we've traveled such a long way today. Yes, please.
(1:48:17) You were going to say something. >> I was just I was just reflecting on um yeah, what we were saying about um this kind of becoming in motherhood. And I think because this is the messy middle, I think >> something that has come to me is this clinging to what we know of ourselves and who we are and what makes us feel comfortable and leaning into what we learn about ourselves.
(1:48:44) And I think it's really interesting cuz I know I've spoken about it um in our group, but it's also this thing of learning to traverse the middle way. And like as somebody I feel like I'm in a very messy middle right now as somebody who's you know openly spoken about like yeah I will do that but I would like to read a peer-reviewed paper first or like I would like you know I need it all to be like this and that's how I've always been.
(1:49:12) Um it's just even as a child like feeling very regimented and always wanting and now I'm like but also my ancestors speak to me through song and that's not peer reviewed. There's no peer review for that. Right. And there's an element I think that we're all being called into now, this moment of like listening to your intuition and how the external world is.
(1:49:33) And it's like where is everybody's messy middle? Like where is the what you will hold on to from the old, right? the the old structures, the old world, the things that work that are true to you, where you lean into that feels uncomfortable and new and strange. And I think we kind of within the messy middle is where we we find ourselves a little bit more in in terms of Yeah.
(1:50:00) like what is true for us. Yeah, that was it. That's spot on. Yeah. the messiness and the mistakes. It's exactly where we find ourselves >> or at least learn what to look for. >> Yeah. And I think that's why we mess up forever. Like I just genuinely think the the the more I reflect on it, I'm like, "Yep.
(1:50:32) " And then we're going to learn this and then something's going to shift or something's going to change or we're going to have a new perspective offered to us and then we're going to have to go and relearn that and then we'll do that and we'll have to be and I think that that is the human experience that we kind of unless you are like an ascended master or you know the Buddha you that's it like you know some of us >> I'm sure >> I'm sure there were processes there as well I I feel as though many times in fact these symbols uh symbols meaning
(1:51:04) these people these human beings we start calling deities and >> um look up to and pedestalize are more often than not the same ones who have spoken about how they wish not to to be ped pedestalized because they're only having the human experience and this is their human experience and that's all it really is and I live in a place like that actually in Oruroville the mother and Shri Orurubindo both spoke of this exact same ideology that we don't want to be prayed to we don't want to be reverred in these ways >> yet everywhere you go their pictures are
(1:51:43) up there are flowers around it there isn't a single >> physical space where their photographs are not there. >> Mhm. >> Same with the Buddha. I I know these are things we've read about these same people and to call yes divine beings. I am not questioning that on any account because I believe in the existence of divinity in such a high order in certain souls that it shines really bright. Mhm.
(1:52:12) >> But to u think that their journey was anything but human would be a disservice to their existence. In fact, if anything. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I was speaking with a a seek woman recently. Um >> and we're talking about Guranak and she she was just like, I just find it very frustrating because he literally said like, "No fuss, please.
(1:52:41) Like religion has become about you know idolization and actually all religions are the path to god and oneness and that's what we all exist when we might use different names so let's focus on the oneness and you know she was expressing her own frustration with the fact that how you know it is in practice is so far from what guru nanak taught and that's what I love about having taught religion actually if if you actually go into the teachings and look at what religious leaders have said and what they've actually taught without the preconceived
(1:53:13) notion of how people live the practices. You just listen to their teachings. They're all saying the same thing. And it's literally let's focus on how we help each other. Let's let's focus that's the that's my summary of the six major world faiths is just let's focus on how we help each other and then you know later on in another life at some point that will be reflected and I think like if you don't believe in another life I'm like well it happens later on in your lived experience now doesn't it the more that we feed into
(1:53:49) each other. >> Yeah. Yeah. And you brought up sikism which I from what little I know about different religions sikism is one of the big ones that promotes community service and sava sava is what it's called in Hindi and Punjabi Punjabi I'm not sure but Hindi it's called sava >> and that is service to the other that is what that whole religion revolves around as its >> base authenticity so it is funny to see how many religions have that as the core and then we continue to pedestalize and turn it into something so different from
(1:54:28) service to the other. >> 100%. I mean like Jesus was friends with sex workers and people who were being like like pushed away cuz they had leprosy. Like he was friends with everyone that people were like don't talk to them. >> Jesus has nothing to say about exclusivity. Jesus is everybody's friend. Like You know, and it is that same thing of we um we need intuition.
(1:54:58) We need intuition to tap into religion because once you are aligned with that and you read scripture and then you hear how scripture is misused, you're going to be like absolutely not. It's actually so interesting for me in every one of these uh sessions, religion does tend to come up and I understand why it comes up and then I end up learning something new about some religion and um it genuinely baffles me sometimes because I've seen I I don't know the scriptures of each of them but I know something about the spread of them and how they exist in me around me today,
(1:55:40) not in me, but around me today. And the missionaries definitely were not doing what Jesus was doing then, you know. >> No, I mean um I know we we digress now, but I think it's really um when I first trained as an RE teacher, I mean, I love going into religious buildings anyway. I think the architecture I think they tend to have a very uh different feel actually to being inside any other building.
(1:56:09) And I think if there's iconography, gorgeous, wonderful spaces, but I'll always be baffled by like the crusades being depicted in churches because I'm like FYI, Jesus was not down with raping and pillaging. It just wasn't just was really like not his MMO. Was not his mo. But we've got like paintings of the crusades. Like he did not tell you to do that.
(1:56:36) It also goes against like the concept of holy and just war. But aside from that, you know, the things that are justified in somebody else's name, Islam is another one like Muhammad was like like his the within Islam, the concept of holy war. It's like no one is actually able to call a holy war now, right? If you actually look at what the teachings of it are.
(1:57:02) So shall we shall we look into that and think about what that actually means? Like there's a yeah there's such a taking cherryicking that exists within uh organized religion and I don't think that that's reflective of uh people who practice religion in any way. I think it's reflective of who we let teach us religion >> and is is religion something that should be taught or is it something that we you know have as that inner voice.
(1:57:38) I don't have a religion but I believe there's a individual connection to divinity in the same way that I can have an individual connection to my ancestry and that voice also >> resides within us. Um I think it's very much in tune with our intuition. I think that's what makes me sad about religion in the world that we live in today.
(1:58:04) like it's so far removed from understanding that we are each connected to that source of divinity and power and yeah like how do we get back there because I think that's where the healing actually lives for all of us like how do we get back to recognizing that within ourselves and by extension the other like if I have divinity within me of course you have divinity within you >> and how do I treat you as such Yeah, I had loved your take on this right in the beginning of the session when you said you take the good deeds
(1:58:40) from all of it. uh the deeds that you think show authentic show up authentically for you. And that's a really great way of, you know, receiving what's out there already and then turning it into something that can be passed on to your descendants as your authenticity. We went from the marrow to the stars and back again.
(1:59:07) >> Yeah, it's been a wide ranging. I find it really interesting that we've >> touched on so much in this. >> It's um Thank you though. It's it's been it's been lovely to just as you say chat and get into the mess of it all in the vast ranging experiences of what it is to be human, right? What it is to be here now in this time with everybody else who's here along with you and Yeah, it's beautiful. Thank you.
(1:59:42) Before we step back from this archive, I also want to extend a really deep bone level thank you to you Katie um for the vulnerability it took to sit in this to sit in your own history today or the lack of and for the radical generosity you showed in sharing so much of your life and the map of your healing and the tools that people can work with.
(2:00:14) I feel like your voice has added a new layer of light to this lineage and I'm really really really grateful for the space that you've held for me and for everyone listening today. >> Thank you. And yeah, just thank you for cultivating a space to have those conversations. Um, it is quite interesting because as we touched on things that were quite uh sensitive or close to me, I could feel the, you know, the familiarity of wanting to close up, but actually for myself, but a huge part of the work I do is acknowledging that we have to share our
(2:00:56) stories, right? And so thank you for holding space to listen and not just to my story but many stories that are coming through through this podcast. Um yeah and creating a space of vulnerability, safe vulnerability. And just thank you to the people that have listened. I'm now doing the very uh classic thing of running through my brain everything I said.
(2:01:21) I'm going to leave that. So if people have listened, thank you for listening and yeah, just being on this journey, being on this human experience journey with us. And as always, like thanks for all the decisions that led you to this path. Now, and to you listening, if you feel a sudden weight in your limbs, don't rush to lift it. That isn't just tiredness.
(2:01:50) It's the archive opening. You are finally becoming heavy enough to hold the truth of where you come from without being blown away by the world's noise. Before we leave this space, I want to offer a voice that speaks to the deep cosmic connection between our breath and the stars we come from. This is a poem titled I was not raised by soft women by an incredible poet named Scar.
(2:02:28) She is a young black contemporary performance poet, cultural storyteller and writer. It is an honest reckoning with the women who sharpened themselves into weapons so that their daughters might finally have the luxury of laying the armor down. I was not raised by soft women. I'm learning how to be soft. I was not raised by relaxed women.
(2:03:00) Worry is something I recognize. Well, I've always had room for it in my life. I was raised by strong women. Women who moved this world as though they were men, hard and tough. Women who sharpened their soft sides into sharp edges that would poke and probe and stab anyone as they walked this earth, making room for themselves.
(2:03:29) I was raised by women with hard lives. Women who carry the world on their shoulders, their backs always heavy, their brows always creased. I was not raised by soft women. They did not have that luxury. I was raised by women with hush tongues and loud mouths. Women who walked this world as though they were men.
(2:03:57) Women who weren't afraid to shout in the middle of the street and pick a fight. Even with someone twice their size, even if they knew they'd lose that fight, they'd always, always fight. I was raised by women with hard lives. Women who entered dingy bars and changed and confidence. Women who owned DNI bars and know how to make chunga from scratch.
(2:04:27) Cuss at the police, smile at the men groping them. I was raised with women who had lines on their faces. Women who never had husbands, women without fathers. Can you see it? Can't you see it in the way I walk? I was raised in a home where women change the bulbs, fetch the firewood, chase the bag, or that bread. Is it evident? Isn't it evident in the way I talk? I was never taught how to be small to speak in the soprano.
(2:05:02) I was raised by the daughters of Mumbai. You couldn't be heard in that house unless you were loud. I was not raised by soft women. I was raised by business women who knew when to bribe the chief or flirt with him. Spot a cop in civilian clothing. Close the bar at a moment's notice. I was raised by women who knew how to nurse bullet wounds.
(2:05:29) Women whose husbands were armed robbers whose brothers were in prison. And I was raised by hard women with calloused hands. Smiles that never reach their eyes. Worry lines that have become permanent in their faces. I am the product of these women. I am the legacy of these women.
(2:05:56) The work of their hands, product of their toil and labor. the only part of themselves they're allowed to be softer. Baby girl raised by gangsters, visionaries. The people who raised me have had such a different life from me. This is their legacy. This is their pride. They gave me what no one gave them. They gave me softness and it shows in the way I feel.
(2:06:36) H I am doubtful. I have done even 50% justice to this piece of art written and recited by Scar. To everyone listening, I urge you, I request you to check out the link which we're posting along with this podcast where you can find Scar's performance of her own poem, I was not raised by soft women. H there's a lion ringing in my head.
(2:07:32) They gave me what no one gave them. They gave me softness. If you are breathing deeply with me today, you are fulfilling the wildest dreams of your ancestors. You are using the safety they've fought for. We have grounded ourselves in the roots today, listening to the different ways our histories and stories hum within us.
(2:08:06) But fortunately, the unearthing doesn't end here. As we continue this exploration of the archive and of our bodies of history and trauma, in the next episode, I'll be joined by another practitioner to further trace the echoes of our lineage through the breath. Until then, remember that your softness is a hard one inheritance.
(2:08:36) Honor it. You can find the breath of liberation wherever you get your podcasts. If this conversation helped you unear the story held in your bones today, stay connected. Subscribe. Share this lineage of healing and keep breathing into the spaces that are ready to soften. I'm Suks and this is the breath of liberation.
(2:09:08) See you very soon for another step in this sacred pilgrimage.
