Episode 4: Woven into the Bone: Biology, Ancestry, and the Path to Grounding

Written By Lona Vena

What if the anxiety, the bracing, the exhaustion that won't shift — isn't yours alone? In this third episode of The Breath of Liberation, we descend from the surface of personal stress into something older and deeper. Joining Suks is Nicola Griffiths, a breathworker whose practice centres women of colour around rest, rootedness, and the radical act of returning to lineage.

Together, they trace the footprints that colonial history left not in the history books, but in the body itself. In the tight chest. In the armour that was never yours to carry, but was handed down because it had to be. This is a conversation about what it means to finally put it down.

We explore:

  • How intergenerational trauma announces itself in the body and how breath becomes the way through.

  • The decolonial lens: moving from pathologising our responses to honouring the wisdom encoded in them.

  • What it means to be a future ancestor and what new sensations we can choose to pass on.

  • The profound, political act of a Black woman choosing rest.

Whether you are here as a student of breathwork or a professional interested in the Decolonizing Breathwork Facilitator Training by Inspire Breathwork, come sit with us where we remember that healing isn't just personal. It is generational. And it starts with one breath.

Nicola Griffiths is a breathwork facilitator, creative practitioner and founder of Grown Ass Women Collective. In a world where spaces dedicated to the care of women of colour, particularly Black women remain far too rare - GAWC creates spaces where women of colour can pause, breathe and reconnect with themselves in the company of others who may understand the weight they carry.

Connect with Nicola:

Watch the powerful, Titilope Sonuga, perform her poem titled “From a Place”
She is a Nigerian-Canadian poet, writer, actor and performance artist who was born in Lagos. Her emergence as a globally renowned poet, playwright and performer is a testament to the transformative power of storytelling. She renders, both in verse and performance, a quality of rootedness and unflinching womanhood that extends beyond the bounds of a single poem or poetic performance.

Referenced in the episode - Christabel Mintah-Galloway and her fantastic work on relational skills as collective liberation.

Audio Transcript:

Sukriti (00:11.192)

Hello again to your sacred space. Let's start today by finding our anchor. Place your hands on the two centers of your power, your heart and your gut. Take a breath with me, not a performance breath, but a real one.

Sukriti (00:41.782)

Let this one reach all the way down to where your roots meet the earth. Don't try to change the breath, just feel it. The lift of the ribs, the settling of the spine. You are here. You are held. Now keeping your hands where they are,

I invite you to let your gaze soften. Your jaw and your shoulders relax. We are going to acknowledge the room that is holding our body right now.

Look around, not with the eyes of a critic or a decorator, but with the eyes of a guest. Observe the light around you. Is it sharp? Is it filtered? Notice where the shadows decide to rest on the corner of a table in the fold of a curtain.

These shadows are part of the architecture of your piece right now.

Listen to the room.

Sukriti (02:12.256)

Now, with your eyes gently closing, if that feels right, notice beyond the sound of my voice, what is the house saying?

the hum of a refrigerator, the distant muffled rhythm of traffic, the settling of floorboards perhaps. Recognize these sounds as the background noise of your survival. They are proof that life is continuing all around you while you pause.

You aren't practicing in a vacuum. You are practicing in a living, breathing environment that is agreed to be still for you.

Sukriti (03:12.546)

When you feel the edges of the room and the edges of your skin meet, you realize there is no gap. You belong in this space. You have a right to the air in this square footage.

Take one more breath into that realization as we transition into this beginning.

Sukriti (03:52.995)

Welcome to the Breath of Liberation. I am your host, Sooks. And today, we are looking at the nervous system as an archive. We often treat stress as a personal failure, a glitch in our individual wiring. But what if that glitch is actually a transmission? What if the tightness in your chest

or the way you brace for impact is a story passed down through our blood. As an extension of our last episode with KD, today, once again, we look at how the giants of colonization left their footprints in our biology. We're exploring how coloniality shows up in our bodies as a hardness we didn't ask for, but were forced to inherit.

I am joined today by my co-traveller, Nicola Griffiths, a breath worker whose practice centers women of color, specifically around rest, rootedness, and reconnecting to their lineage. We're here to talk about what it means to breathe through historical waste, not just manage the day to day. She is a black woman and a mother.

living and working in the UK. And she brings all of that, the motherhood, the body, the inheritance, into every room she walks in. Nicola, welcome to the Breath of Liberation. I am so glad you are here.

Nicola Griffiths (05:39.1)

Hi, Sooks. Thank you so much for having me. It's just an absolute pleasure to be here with you.

Sukriti (05:46.521)

Thank you for being here. Before the world starts asking things of you, before the history and the work, I'm wondering what is that first moment of the morning like for you? Is there a quiet window where you are just Nikola before you are a mother or a practitioner?

Nicola Griffiths (06:12.041)

Ooh, that's a good starting question. It varies, I think is the best answer to that. It varies a lot. And I'm trying to practice being more intentional about how I begin my day. But inevitably I have a 12 year old child, so we're up and out trying to get ready for school. But I think increasingly I've...

Sukriti (06:13.325)

Huh!

Nicola Griffiths (06:38.527)

began to start my day just even with a couple of breaths, even if it's just one, knowing that that's for me before I tend to whatever else is coming up for the day. And when there's more capacity and I can be even more intentional about it, then maybe there's a few more than one breath. Yeah.

Sukriti (07:04.482)

Thank you for that. Now, before we get into the work, I want to get to know you a little, a little more than we did get to know each other in the pre-talk. So tell me, tell us where you grew up, what the feeling of that place was, not the postcode perhaps, but the texture of it all. What did home feel like in your body when you were small, younger?

Nicola Griffiths (07:36.097)

You've got all the juicy questions today. Ooh, home was, home was warmth, I think. And...

fresh baking. My mum cooked a lot and we were really lucky with how we grew up and her being so present. So it's something that has been handed down to me. I like to try and be as present as I can for my son because that's something that I enjoyed and grew up on. So when I was small, what did it feel like? Yeah, it felt like

being nurtured, I think, from that regard. And where I grew up is interesting because that felt very different. were one of a few black families in a very white area in the Midlands. And my school, think it was predominant, primary school was predominantly white, secondary school again, predominantly white. So that...

tension has always been present, what I was experiencing externally to what was happening in the inside of my home and with family. And so it's interesting that now the work that I'm coming to do is kind of like an inverse of that and yeah, we can talk about that more.

Sukriti (09:10.797)

Hmm.

Yeah.

I'm imagining the landscape of all of that. The baking definitely got me excited. Even though we were talking about your morning and I'm sitting in my night at the moment in India, the baking definitely got me excited. So tell me, growing up, as a black girl in the UK, you already mentioned there were very few families there. Was there?

A version of yourself you felt you had to leave at the door in certain spaces, a quieter version, a smaller version. And today when you're looking back, where do you think the real one would go while she was waiting?

Nicola Griffiths (10:06.977)

I think it's kind of created a multifaceted version of me. I was you were asking the question I was trying to reflect and I don't think I felt at the time that I left a version of myself. I think at the time it's just what I knew.

That was my reality at the time. But reflecting as an adult back, I could definitely see that there was kind of like who I was with my friends and who I was.

with my family and extended family. And sometimes the two would overlap, but often there were different spaces. I always used to remember like thinking about having a boyfriend or a future husband or whatever. was like, how can this person operate in these two spheres in the way that I've had to operate? know, how will I ever meet a person who can straddle both of these worlds that I occupy? And, you know, fortunately,

I have found someone and we don't struggle as much as perhaps I used to when I was a younger person but I think there were definitely like two halves of my being and things like going to see my Nan.

my nan and granddad or going to see my other granddad. My nan passed when she was quite young, so my other granddad. And it was in a predominantly black area in Birmingham. You know, the shops were different. were sort of either Afro-Caribbean shops, African produce. There was lots of Indian shops with sara. It was so, the landscape visually was so different to this town that I grew up in, which was kind of much more

Nicola Griffiths (12:09.729)

British High Street. definitely having these two kind of, I don't know what to call them really, but these two modes if you like and having to sort of shift between the two things.

Sukriti (12:31.82)

Hmm. That's interesting. I'm reflecting on what you started with, how you said at that moment you didn't know you were doing it. And now when you reflect, these are the moments that came up. I'm really glad to hear that there have been people, your partner as well as

more people I imagine in life that you have found where it doesn't feel like you have to split those parts up. I can only wish for that for everyone who lives, honestly. It's...

People similar to us, community is a huge part of all of this work as well.

And I'm wondering how you found your way to breathwork. Because for most people, there's the first time they try it, and then there's the moment they realize it can be something completely different from what they thought. Were those the same moment for you, or did that understanding come later?

Nicola Griffiths (13:48.162)

So my story with breathwork is slightly convoluted but I'll try and keep it condensed. I found breathwork during the pandemic as I feel like a lot of people do. There was lots of free offerings and lots of things to keep people sane during that time and I did a couple of breathworks and one in particular that I did.

It just took me out of myself and into it.

into a zone that I didn't even know that's what was going to happen. So one, I didn't know that that was a potential. I just kind of was very gung-ho and just went into this kind of, and do breath work because, you know, it'd be really relaxing and, you know, we've been indoors. It'd be really good to do something for me in turn and for myself. And so I kind of just bobbed into it, not really knowing the power of breath work. And so I had an experience where it was very sort of

space, universe, galactic. And at one point it scared me. It kind of like, it felt like I was going to dive into something and I hadn't anticipated that that's what could happen with the breath. And that's what happened for me in that moment. And I sort of had to pull myself out of it. And I was kind of blown away.

by how powerful it was. Scared and blown away by how powerful that was just from breathing because all I was just breathing I just changed the pattern of my breath I was laying in my bedroom nothing else had changed and it kind of slightly freaked me out but slightly intrigued me at the same time so I kind of did it intermittently and then nothing like that happened again and then

Nicola Griffiths (15:48.29)

That was what 2020 so fast forward a little bit and I start going through perimenopause so I'm 51 yeah, so I start going through perimenopause and The shifts and questions that I'm asking of myself. There's there's things I'm looking to to Support how I'm feeling I wasn't feeling great and so I was looking into things and I was thinking about breath work I was also looking for

something that I could do to offer out to others because in that search I was realizing what I was looking for was so expensive. The things that looked amazing to me were not accessible financially and I felt overpriced and I felt also nobody looked like me who was offering.

what I could find, at least here. that bothered me. It kind of bothered me.

And so when I was looking for something for myself, but I also was looking for something that I could offer out because I wanted to move out of being the support role for my husband and I'd done homeschool with my child and I was looking for a shift, he'd gone back to school, I was looking for something. I remembered the power of that experience.

and the curiosity and the sort of feeling that it left me with. And so I started then to do more research into breathwork. And I was like, this is kind of awesome. This is kind of awesome and everybody can do this. There's not a restriction on.

Nicola Griffiths (17:40.192)

you know, something you see, you you might not have the flexibility or you might not have the strength or you might not have the acts, you know, everyone is breathing to some degree. So this can be done to some degree with most people. I...

started to look into things and then I came across Hannah and that's how you know the story begins I think it's when I found her because again when I was looking for training I was seeing people that didn't look like me and this this wasn't cool do you know I mean I was like I want to be in an environment where I'm not the only person of color I want to be

taught by somebody who gets where I'm at. And when I came across her and the first, when I opened her webpage,

my heart sang really I was like yes this is it this is it and I remember saying to my husband Roger look look look at this this woman look what she's offering decolonial breath but what and I was so excited so yeah and that's when I reached out and then as they say the rest is history so yeah and it's quite a quick turnaround between me finding her it was only a couple of maybe two months until I started I started training so yeah

Sukriti (19:06.601)

That sounded like a really sweet full circle almost because your experience started with just trying something new with just the small intention of I want to do something for myself. And it led you to discovering something that is so deeply profound and then to finding Hannah and all of her offerings. even

This is still a course we're doing, which is two years long. Even the Fireside Wednesdays that we do with her every month have been very intense for me a lot of times, I feel. In fact, those feel even more intense than my two-year course does sometimes because there's just this... There is something tying all of us together, and that is...

that we come from a land of colour and heritage and culture that is all tied into the same lineage, I feel.

Yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (20:15.809)

100 % I think and unfortunately because it comes the fireside happens when I'm doing the school run so I can never I can rarely make it which I'm really it's really sad but we I did attend it and when it was during the course course and because the timings were different and it's a very powerful space it's a very different space and the things that feel relevant and

welcome. I'm not saying they don't feel welcome in mixed spaces but it's how you feel sometimes about sharing some of the things.

that come up and that you might be processing in mixed spaces. And just knowing that there was that space for us every so often and that things that may have come up during the course or just in life in general could be discussed amongst people of colour was incredibly powerful and helpful actually and supportive.

very supportive and I think maybe I'm even just thinking about it now maybe that's sort of like seeped in to what I'm offering now actually the power of that space and how held I felt within that space is partly what could have you know created some kind of impetus to do what I'm doing.

Sukriti (21:53.945)

Would you like to take us a little bit through what you are doing? I feel like we did that in the pre-talk, but we haven't talked about it with anyone listening.

Nicola Griffiths (22:03.743)

Sure, so...

I'm going to speak quite a lot now. Yeah, so during the course, I think you're probably around that time where there's a lot of

reflection on your lineage, on ancestry. And it stirred up quite a few things for me. I've grown up here. My parents are from Jamaica and my husband's from Trinidad. He grew up in Trinidad as he was born here. And then he went to Trinidad when he was two, but his formative time and his whole persona is that of a Trinidadian man. And so there was a lot of things that were coming up during that time in the course where I felt really

unrooted and unsettled and when talking about lineage and ancestry I couldn't really grasp or get a hold on what that meant for me in that context. Yes I know my parents and grandparents they know they're great so my great-grandparents but beyond that it was you know

who knows where I'm from, West Africa somewhere, I don't know, you know? And so this, it came with this real feeling of being unsettled and a bit adrift. And I started to coin it as feeling untethered. But through...

Nicola Griffiths (23:44.022)

those regular breath works actually that we had to do as part of the course and the fireside, it started to occur to me that actually I am breathing the air that those before me have breathed. I am breathing the air that my grandmother breathed, that her grandmother and so on and so forth.

keep going back I'm breathing the breath of those who were wherever I hail from and so in that I'm connected in that there's breath and that breath is a

It's like the idea of a pre-colonial breath, right? Like that holds us all together. And that gave me such comfort knowing that I might be here, but, and I might be like under the systems, under the conditioning of colonial.

I don't even know what to call them, colonial. So many words are coming to mind right now. But just under this kind of colonial framework, and let's call it that. But I'm still so very much connected to this.

this lineage. And so I was able to use breath to tether me and it gave me such a sense of being anchored, whereas I felt before that I was just all over the place floating, floating. And that comfort and again with those fireside experiences and being held within

Nicola Griffiths (25:34.668)

groups that the group that was for women, sorry people of colour and it did end up being women of colour because we were mostly women in that group yeah and it did something different and it's probably the thing that I was looking for when I was looking for some support for myself when I mentioned about perimenopause and I was not feeling great but I think the thing I was looking for was the thing that I received through that breath and through that exploration.

And so when we got to the point in the course where we had to begin case studies, I was very curious about the idea of looking into how it might be for others who, if I provide a space for women of colour, would they have the same experience as me? Or not the same, but would they receive the intention of the space?

as I did, or would it be very, very different? So that was part of the thing that I was looking into for my case studies. And so I did an in-person group and I did an online group and it was resoundingly positive and people's experience of the space and being held in a space of colour.

meant that they could experience the breath work in a totally different way. There were different things that came up for the women. I did women as well, it was a woman only space. There were different things that came up for the women and many of them hadn't realised the impact that a space for women of colour specifically would give them.

and I'm just going to keep talking. So one of the things that became resoundingly clear is again I use that word because it was so apparent was the need for rest, the deep, deep, deep, deep, deep need for rest. mean, people were falling asleep, which can happen with breath work when you first start, but it wasn't about fatigue. wasn't about

Nicola Griffiths (27:45.174)

I'm tired because I didn't sleep. It was about this deep seated exhaustion that is present for many people of colour as they navigate systems that are not made for them. And I don't think many of the women had really had time to reflect on the weight that that bears and how heavy it is and

when you give space to that

what can happen. So I created a course framework to hold certain conversations that allowed the participants to explore different aspects of what that might look like. So I called it the Mother Series because as you said in the introduction, I was a mum so was bringing myself into it and this idea, like we spoke about this feeling of being nurtured, we spoke about that, about my childhood and

you know, how I like to, what I'd like to think that my son thinks in years to come that there was a sense of nurturing. But I think in a space where you can feel nurtured, where that is encouraged or you're very...

presence is welcomed in that way, I think it does something, it shifts something. And the women that participated, many of them said they didn't realize how much rest they needed. They didn't realize, I think in one session I said something like, can you invite or can you give yourself permission to rest in this breath or something like that.

Nicola Griffiths (29:40.404)

And they were saying how that was quite impactful because they hadn't even thought about the idea that they don't give themselves permission to rest. And that life has us so busy that the idea of resting for resting sake is so removed from the kind of urgency culture that we're part of.

And that really sits with the work of Trisha Hersey and Nat Ministries and rest is a kind of act of resistance. And so all of that was tied up in the work that I've sort of...

for myself, looking at my lineage, finding that breath, finding the way to tether myself and then in me feeling more tethered, being able to open that up to others, to offer a space of nurture, to offer a space of rest as it became and to explore what it meant to be in your own body in these different ways. So each week we went through a different part of the body. For example, it might be the mother tongue.

as a concept, not necessarily as language, but as a concept. What does that mean to you? Where does it sit? And so we would look at a part of the body as well. So the throat, what's sitting in there, what's there? And in the breath work that we did, it would invite the participants to really take the breath into the throat and to explore and to become curious about what's there. And so again, a lot of the women in the group were like, I realize how much I've had to swallow, how much I've had

to hold what I've got to say and whether that's cultural through family dynamics, whether that's in the workplace, whether that's under this kind of colonial framework and not being able to be present as a person of color, for me as a black woman. It just opened up lots of different conversations and...

Nicola Griffiths (31:49.664)

Yeah so to get to your point of the question that is why now I feel it's so important to open a space where this work can sit at the intersection of...

embodiment exploration, as an ex- using the breath as a resource and an exploration, thinking about breath as a tool for us to connect with our lineage and ancestry because some of us don't know what that looks like and the

piece that it gave me, perhaps it can do something for somebody in a similar way or they find a different route with their own breath and their own past histories and stuff.

Sukriti (32:44.334)

Well done. Take a sip of water. Oh, that was beautiful. I'm so glad you went on because, I mean, any question that comes up here is just space for a conversation. I want to get to know you. I want to get to know your journey of breath work. that's what we're here to do, to talk about that. So yeah, please take all the time you need for any of the questions that come up.

ahead as well. Yeah, that was such a beautiful journey that you do these sessions that something that you felt lost about kind of led you to it. And I hear you about the fireside sessions. I think that's exactly what I was trying to say that time about how that space is just different from how the course runs.

The course takes you through so much through the two years, of course, it's a long time as well. The training to be a breathwork facilitator course, but the fireside, feels like a space to decompress. It also feels like a space Hannah's experimenting a lot with to allow genuine emotion to just flow through how it's showing up in that day. And honestly, with

the condition of the world we're in right now. And we're here many times in the history of humanity. We've been here many times. We're really in the thick of it right now, though. It is one of those times. And at such a time to have groups like these where you can meet as a person of color, then as a woman, because each of those comes with its own layers, I think that's beautiful. So I'm

Really glad that you're doing this. And I also hope to attend one sometime actually. That would be really exciting. Now.

Nicola Griffiths (34:51.605)

I would love that. I would very much love that. And that's part of the me getting into an organized framework for myself is to be able to offer things with consistency online. So I've done some bits online, but I want to set something up where people that are not in my locality can also attend. So I think it was in the pre-talk I mentioned that I have a small group that I run here where I

Sukriti (34:53.005)

Yeah.

Sukriti (35:00.974)

Mm-hmm.

Sukriti (35:06.275)

Yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (35:21.539)

where I live for women of colour. And again, it really reaffirmed a lot of what I was thinking as the case studies did. Because sometimes you can feel like, this just me? Is this my experience of it? Would other people have a similar experience or would it resonate with them in a similar way?

And so the case studies was a bit of a test really to see if it did and it did. That was such a rich experience. I could do a whole other podcast on that experience itself. It was such a rich experience and out of that I've set up something locally. And again, every time that I might be feeling a bit like,

you know, is this the right thing? And I go and I do a session with these women of colour that have taken this time out of their, you know, everyone's busy, everyone's got their stuff, everyone's carrying things, but they've chosen to come to this session and I get the opportunity to be with them in this container, if you like, and support them.

It blows my mind, it really blows my mind and it just speaks again to how much of this we need. How much, and each session, even though I am in a supporting role, I am benefiting from it also. It's not just because I'm...

it's not a giving, it's more like I am also benefiting from it, you know. And the last session we had in particular, I think everybody came in a bit gloomy and a bit, you know, holding, holding a lot. Everybody left lighter. And that was testament to the collective energy, the collective breath, the collective holding, the support that was there and that.

Nicola Griffiths (37:35.798)

foundational understanding of what was there because it's a group of women of colour in a space for women of colour. And there's just so much there that's already present without saying a word. And then when somebody has something to say, it resonates because perhaps you're experiencing something or have experienced something like that similarly yourself.

So these are the things that I think for me hold such importance in where I want to take the breath. It's really giving people different roots in and this is one of the ones that I've found that really helped me and I want to offer back. the kind of...

breath as a resource, as language of bringing us back to pre-colonial times, breath as access to...

that deeper exploration but the deeper exploration into the body but what the body is holding so therefore the body and its archive the body as an archive what what's what is living in us that we don't have the opportunity to access on the day to day when we're doing the school run for me or whizzing around for others you know it's like what is there that

that can support us, that might tell us more about ourselves, that might connect us, that might help us be informed as to who we are now and what we might need and how we can move forward and move through things. So yeah.

Sukriti (39:34.563)

Yeah, that's exactly it. The body as an archive because we are already holding all of it. It's just about who is sitting and uncovering it and who isn't. And that's pretty much everything we will be talking about today. So that's a great introduction from you to what we'll be doing. I also found it very interesting that you called it the mother.

It was one of the few things I knew about you through our interaction before we sat down for this conversation. And it's something that has been coming up for me a lot as a conversational topic at large. I think the more I've dived into healing spaces, the more I've realized.

how much the current structures of patriarchy had turned me away from the idea of motherhood and not wanting a child. And so much of that comes from patriarchy instead of an actual disdain of that role, is what I've been realizing. And I'm a 32-year-old woman who is still out there.

and has grown up in this patriarchal world to come to a spot saying, no, I don't want a child because, but those because's so many of them are societal. They're not actually what I imagine the world needs or how it could be a kind of place. None of that comes in the lieu of that. So my, I think curiosity right now is towards

that part of the journey. I would love to know your journey of becoming a mother. I think that changes everything in any way, it changes everything in the world. The world wouldn't exist without it, but it changes everything within your body, within your being, including how we understand what we have inherited. So I'm...

Sukriti (41:57.337)

to jog your memory, to take you back to some sweet moments, the moment you held your child, did that shift, did anything shift in you around your own history in that moment?

Nicola Griffiths (42:13.825)

That's a big journey. hmm.

I'm going to try again, try and make it short. But it took me a long time to have a child, to get pregnant. I was think I was 30 when I decided that, you know, when we decided like, yes, now's the time. And I was 39 when I had my child. So there was a whole process that we went through. And so it wasn't easy for us to have a child.

and he came very early so he was very premature and there was a lot of

Nicola Griffiths (43:09.845)

I mean, we were scared that we wouldn't be able to bring him home. You know, that was the fear. He came like three months early, he was like six months old. And he was super, super, super, super tiny. He's tinier than a normal baby of that size, of that gestation, sorry. So he, he was really a gift. And we were extremely lucky to be able to

become his parents because it wasn't a given that we would. And so I didn't get to hold him when I had him. I didn't get to hold him. I will never forget the nurse that let me hold him a day or so afterwards because they were supposed to keep him in the incubator. And she was like, well, you are the incubator. So let's do that.

And so it was a very...

I don't really have the words. I don't really have the words. As you know, I have a lot of words. But I don't really have the words for that feeling holding this child who was almost like, he was like trying to hold a butterfly because he was so tiny, he was so light that you could barely feel him. But every time he'd move his hands, it was just this tiny little flutter.

Nicola Griffiths (44:43.657)

And so I felt really...

blessed that I was able to.

create a space where he had a degree of comfort in a situation, like my body was his comfort, like my actual body on my skin was his comfort in this time where everything was so, so difficult for him, so challenged and I think I've always wanted to be a mother.

And so that moment just felt very like the becoming, the becoming of something that's always been there for me. But it wasn't the way I had thought it might go. You you sort of think you're going to have a baby or get pregnant more quickly. You will take the baby to term, the baby will be born. And nobody really speaks to the challenges that can come up with that. And

maybe a little bit more now, but you know, people are quite guarded and that's why I speak on it because I think that it's really important to be quite open about these things because perhaps my words might support somebody else who's going through something similar. so you asked me how it was when I howled him.

Nicola Griffiths (46:07.713)

And you asked me if it connected me to my lineage and memory of that and thoughts of that.

Sukriti (46:18.352)

Yeah, a little around if it made you feel the having him in that moment and then I guess moving into life with him, did it make you feel the weight of what you were passing on or the urgency of what you wanted to stop passing on perhaps?

Nicola Griffiths (46:41.525)

I think that's come with time. I think that's come as he's grown and got older. I think having a child is almost like having a held up to you.

you start to see yourself in a way that you don't see. It's like when you, if you have a partner, you see yourself in a way that they see. It's different, right? There's things that you have to sort of contend with, different to if you were by yourself. And I think a child does that to a larger extent. And because they're a child, there's consideration that you give them because they're not a fully-flown adult who should be like able to deal with.

their own stuff right? They're a child so yeah I have had a lot of mirroring from my child and reflecting on my behaviour and how it is as a result of what I've grown up with so there are things that I most definitely have challenged in myself and continue to challenge. I don't get it right, I try but you know I think

We are really lucky to have a child who's quite articulate and will tell us in knowing certain terms when we're getting it wrong. And so, and we've made it so that he has space to do that. We've created an atmosphere where he feels that he can say that and we will listen and we will try our best to take into consideration what he's saying. I don't know that I had that same latitude when I was younger. And so that's definitely

one of the things I wanted to shift with him is to give him his voice to allow him to be heard, to allow him to speak so he's not swallowing, so he's not holding and that he can be fully expressive in who he is.

Nicola Griffiths (48:44.283)

And yeah, there's definitely things that I want to give to him that I received as well. So that sense of nurture and care was very present. And, you know, it's something when you have a child to be able to pour that into somebody has felt really, really amazing. And

something that I feel people need more of no matter what their age and I think one of the things that I noticed about myself when I joined the course we had quite a mixed bag of people's professional

what they were doing in their professional life and I sort of rocked up with I'm a mum, I do a bit of admin with my husband I felt like I don't have the same kind of... for a moment I felt like that didn't have the same weight and I was like what are you talking about? know, why are you saying these things yourself? again it talks to the kind of patriarchy the things that you were just saying previously that there's no value in that

You know, it's like why am I questioning the value of motherhood? This is everything. Do you know what I mean? It's like, the fact that I can...

Nicola Griffiths (50:13.717)

give of myself to this child and then in this other context I could give of myself to others then being a mum has allowed me to understand how I can do that and how to sort of like, as I said, pour into him and pour into other people. I'm gonna stop there.

Sukriti (50:40.27)

Thank you so much for being so vulnerable about that. That all of... Yeah, I'm recapping everything in my mind and that seems like definitely a heavy journey you took on. And I'm so glad that it reached where it has today. 12 years old from what I'm gathering. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's...

That's beautiful. One thing you said about a child being your mirror. I'm curious if you've seen him do something and like a moment, it doesn't have to be a big dramatic one, just a quiet one. If you've seen your child do something and felt it in your own body, like a recognition, grief, joy, anything at the same time.

Nicola Griffiths (51:42.094)

I think one of the biggest things is this idea of being shut down and noticing if there is a moment that I do that to him without intention. So he might be saying something but I will be like no you've got you know listen to what I'm saying because blah blah blah blah blah but actually

Why should he? Do you know what mean? He has as much right. He's of equal weight in the conversation. So why would my, what I have to say, supersede what he has to say? And I think that's a thing that I've...

inherited but it's something I don't want to pass on but it's mirrored back to me you know in these moments where we return to our defaults when the trying version of ourselves slips away because maybe we're tired or stressed or whatever and we return to our defaults then in those moments we can or I can I should speak about myself I can slip into this mode and I you know I don't like it.

I don't like it, it's not who I want to be, it's not how I want to show up for him. But he mirrors it. I will see either in his face or he will tell me. And then I will see that thing and I'll just be like, my God.

this is exact thing that I just do not want to do, this is not what I want to give him. And so that's just, you know, it's like a mirror ball. There's lots of tiny mirrors, there's lots of tiny mirrors that he's showing me all the time. That's one of them, but it's one of the ones that weighs heavy with me because I think it's what I've felt in my body, that feeling of being shut down or that feeling where you can't say your truth.

Nicola Griffiths (53:51.252)

in certain circumstances and that might be in the home but it's also about being in school it's also about being in you know the workplace or in interactions or being in the doctor's office and you know the doctor's trying to shut you down especially as a person or a woman of color you know it happened to me even the other day and the worst thing was she was a doctor of color as well do you know what I mean I'm just like what are you doing why is this happening

Nicola Griffiths (54:20.225)

crazy. So voice is really important and it's one that I am trying to do better with.

Sukriti (54:31.288)

Thanks for that.

Nicola Griffiths (54:32.256)

Oops.

Sukriti (54:37.454)

Thanks for that.

Yeah, hang in there. I hear they're really tough in their teenage, but hang in there. One thing you just said about that she also was a doctor who was a woman of color. And I hear you. This happens many times. I have found myself to try to find a little more grace for those moments because as

A woman I know I have been more impacted many times by patriarchy than the man next to me sometimes has.

not to say that he's doing smarter things than me. I don't think that's a rational reality, but...

There was an instance some months ago where a friend of mine was talking to me and telling me about something that happened at work. And he said, you know, this is what this woman said to another woman and imagine she being a woman made this comment. And I think my first feeling about that was, hey, why is she being measured on a pedestal, sorry, a different scale?

Sukriti (55:55.619)

than you're measuring anyone else on. She's just as impacted by the same system of power that you're impacted by. That doesn't make her more wrong than you in any scenario. So I feel like the one thing this work is also doing for me is helping me find a little bit compassion for that moment when we don't, we really, really want to connect with this person because there's so much common between us.

And it's also that moment where I realized, hey, we're all on our journeys and I don't know if this person's ever going to be on the same plane as me. But in that moment, the fact that you spoke up changes things. It changes everything. There is a chance now that she could be on that plane with you in the future sometime. So I'm really happy.

that that's how that interaction went. And if we're not going to meet people who also need that space for healing, can be brought into that healing with us, then this work wouldn't even be needed. So I feel like it's great that you came across someone who could be impacted. Yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (57:11.305)

And I think, I think like in that scenario and you talk about grace and compassion for others, I don't know what her experiences are. I don't know what she's had to contend with. She's in a medic, she's a doctor, she's in a medical profession. She is going to be impacted by all of these systems like constantly. And she has to function within that and she's got her quota to get through. I just happen to be one person that's just gone into her office.

for whatever. And so I think what you said about having more grace and compassion is so key here and it's a really good reminder, it's a reminder for me to not only, you know, having grace and compassion for others but also for myself or, you know.

my son or you know the things that we kind of the edges that we meet in in these various exchanges and can we meet them with that compassion and that kind of grace not always I have found because I'm just me but just more times than not is a good start you know so yeah

Sukriti (58:30.722)

Yeah, no, for sure there are going to be moments of anger, of irritation, of even uproar from that anger. And I imagine we have to welcome them because they have to move through us, all of those emotions. None of them is lesser than the other or more than the other.

Now that we're getting closer to start talking about healing, I would love to first talk about the weight in our actual bodies.

I feel that a lot of these concepts and frameworks when they get talked about outside of decolonial healing, they get spoken in terms of words and analyzing feelings and intellectualizing feelings. But at the end of it, it's all being felt here first. So from the best of your memory, I'm curious, how did

colonial history first show up and announce itself in your physical body. If you can recall a moment and please take your time with it. There's no hurry.

Nicola Griffiths (59:49.537)

This is such an excellent question.

Nicola Griffiths (59:57.461)

And the thing...

Nicola Griffiths (01:00:02.05)

comes to me is not a specific moment, but yeah, a definite feeling of that feeling of...

that dropping out feeling, where like if you go over a hill or if you're on a rollercoaster, that bit where you go down and your stomach drops. That's a feeling that...

Nicola Griffiths (01:00:29.249)

comes when I think of moments or interactions where that kind of framework has been speaking really loudly, you know? That kind of nervous energy ball. And then again, back to that voice thing, that suppression and that holding of what you want to say versus what you say or what you...

wish you would have said after the fact and that gets trapped so there's definitely like around the throat area a tension and an ache almost

Nicola Griffiths (01:01:16.433)

that I would associate with that. Those are the two areas in my body that I would say.

Sukriti (01:01:27.456)

Right, so the throat is what I'm understanding in the dropping out at large of just presence.

Yeah, it's

I've thought about this often, how our voice actually is such a huge part of the puzzle. And because we're talking all the time, really, no one really remembers that it's actually not your true essence talking. It's just language speaking, and it's not really you. It's an interesting journey. It's been interesting so far in the six months of the course, for sure.

Nicola Griffiths (01:02:11.765)

It's a lot on the course and I think it gets you to really dig deep. And so I guess what I was thinking, I'm curious to know when you experience that. Yeah, I'm just going to put it right back on you. Put you on the spot.

Sukriti (01:02:23.15)

Mmm fitting me. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I think why I got onto the voice is because that's kind of where I have felt it show up the most as well.

not tracking to the first moment, but there were multiple moments along the way where I kept questioning why, when I spoke in this moment to somebody, why did I forget myself? Why did I forget caring for myself? I offered so much in that space, but none of it was for me. None of that offering was for myself.

And I think those were moments that kind of built up things for me to get me to a place where I was like, empathy, being present, all of that is essentially baseless if it's not coming for myself first.

Sukriti (01:03:39.267)

Yeah, I think it made me want to question my journey because I hadn't for a very long time. I had a generically comfortable childhood and then when that happens, you grow up and there's all this pain inside you and you don't know where it's coming from because you had a generically happy childhood. And even when you go to therapy, that's what they tell you. And like, therapy, whenever I did that.

That is all that came up. And then I was like, hey, but why is there pain then? And a lot of that for me then showed up in these spaces of intergenerational trauma and lineage, which has been getting addressed now over the last six months. And sometime before that, while I kept trying to figure it out on my own. But my voice definitely.

I had been a public speaker all my life growing up and suddenly as an adult I had seemed to stop wanting to express my opinion loudly because I had been told too many times that I'm loud. So I think that constriction in the throat is very real for me as well. And this is not just because I'm trying to take on from your answer. I think it really is where it was sitting for me and all the context should help with.

yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (01:05:07.745)

But I think even in the groups that I've worked with, that is a really... We're not alone in this, you know? It's an area that is... So many of us are silenced in different ways. So many of us are holding back our true essence, our true selves. We are sometimes...

catering to the needs of others before ourselves in order to fit in or to adjust to make the situation a bit more easeful for somebody else. Because it's never easy for us when we do this, right? It's hard. It's hard to confront these things. And I think the course for me as well has helped me.

meet some of those things that have been quite confronting in a way that I have intentionally or unintentionally avoided in the past, you know.

And it starts with letting the voice out, to let yourself out rather than this version that presents itself. You know, it would be easy to continue with that version but it's not true to who we are and what we are.

what makes us us, you know, what the history and everything, the lineage, the depth of who we are is condensed when we, or I should say speak to myself, but like when I don't speak, you know, it doesn't allow the fullness of who I am to be present.

Sukriti (01:07:09.538)

Yeah, carrying fullness as a woman is, it's been such a challenge. wouldn't, yeah, I can't deny that at all. And even when I was interviewing for the course with Hannah, I remember how my race and color were not such a big highlight for me at that moment. I'm a brown person who's lived.

in my country, in my city, not in my city, but in my country my whole life. So except those moments when I'm traveling or of course the impact of the political world and how these powers show up in my day to day when I'm facing people, a lot of that didn't show up. But my identity of a woman showed up every second, every day. And also coming from the country I come from, showed up.

even more hugely because there's gross disrespect to the gender. I know everywhere in the world, but it's extremely heavy in some of the places I've lived in. Some of the cities I've lived in are the highest, highest violence against women numbers in the world. We're neighbors with some of the countries where these regimes and systems are still in place.

That identity showed up very hugely for me.

So that expression of facing your fullness as a woman, I think that's something I'm still struggling with, even moments where I feel like I'm being my most full self. I look around and there are a few women, thankfully, especially, this is the one thing I think we were bitching on Instagram earlier, but I feel like this is the one thing I genuinely do enjoy about it. The amount of...

Sukriti (01:09:07.32)

Freedom I have seen women express on that platform helps me get through a lot of my days. It really, really inspires me. helps me, even if I'm not, inspires me to do nothing sometimes. I'm doing nothing with it sometimes, but it gives me joy that I am not as open as this, but I see fullness in her at least, which means some of us are getting there now.

Then of course Instagram has its own things around censorship, but I'm not gonna get into the politics of that just yet. Yeah, that's a huge point. And I imagine expressing our fullness as gender and then as a person of color, each of those structures and then moving into so many realms of the power and privilege circle that we've studied in the course as well.

our social location mapping. Each of those would come up pretty much in the same way, right? It reduces our voice. It makes us be a smaller version of ourselves.

Yeah, that's a big one. So I'm, it does feel nice to hear right now when you said that it has come up a lot in a lot of the sessions you've also hosted. And it's interesting to see how it's all of us, most of us, and it's not just me or just you. I did kind of feel a little encouraging right now, honestly. Thank you so much.

Nicola Griffiths (01:10:49.631)

You are so welcome and I think that's part of it though, isn't it? It was like so much of our lives as they stand right now for a lot of people, I can't speak to everyone, but we're so living in these kind of pockets, quite isolated. So when we were able to like see things like on Instagram where...

we can see some resonance with perhaps the experience of somebody else and we can be in spaces where we can feel the resonance of others in that space and that collectivity and those shared kind of...

shared or mirrored histories and experiences. I think that does something really...

really quite unique and special, you know, because...

It kind of is making me think, sorry, I'm just little stuttering a little bit because it's making me think about the breath again as that resource, but that collectivity as that resource as well. And even if that connection to that collectivity is albeit online through Instagram or what have you, but you can see yourself in somebody else or you can see a version of yourself or you can see a strand or a thread of this kind of where you're at now and where you'd like it to point to.

Nicola Griffiths (01:12:21.831)

you move through your own self-exploration, I mean what a time right? Like what an amazing thing that is so that we're not all just sitting in these silos and...

everybody individually having all this kind of, all these feelings, holding all this weight and these sensations, these feelings in the body without knowing that actually somebody else is probably sharing the same experience or something akin to what I'm going through. So yeah.

Sukriti (01:13:00.242)

While we're on this topic, I would love to bring up this question that has been a life for me. I feel as though spirituality is often sold in the wellness structure as an individual pursuit. But in BIPOC traditions, healing is a community frequency. So

I'm curious, how do you feel the nervous system of the community when you're in a room of people breathing together? And you've said this before, of course, that you all felt lighter when you left that room at the end of it.

But I suppose I'm trying to understand how that nervous system of the community feels. How do you distinguish between that nervous system regulation and a spiritual visitation? Has it ever happened that you felt your ancestors breathing with you or through you?

Nicola Griffiths (01:14:10.529)

So yes and yes and yes. So if I think to the group session that I have been facilitating locally, there's something about coherence like when everyone starts to breathe and that breath starts to become in sync, I don't know how that stuff happens, it just does. And in that...

Sometimes.

it attunes you too. So it becomes like a web. I don't know. I don't know if this is, I don't know if like old time breath workers are going to be listening to what she's talking about. But for me, this is how I experience it, right? Like we have eight women, I'm the ninth person in the room and it all starts off feeling very individual. People come in with their own energies and their own...

whatever they're holding. And then all of a sudden when we get into it and we start the dialogue and we start to begin the breath, those individual energies start to melt away a little bit actually. And it becomes something that's more coherent, something that becomes like a whole energetic presence.

and I'm also part of that and I think that's something very unique

Nicola Griffiths (01:15:50.822)

And again, that blows me away every time because like, how does that even happen? But it happens because it's meant to happen. That's how we're meant to exist. Right. And so you asked me about the idea. Have I ever experienced spirit in a session? I think one of the biggest experiences that I had with that was actually in our immersion. I had created this

Off the back of being feeling unrooted and wanting to find a way back to myself, I started doing some kind of a little bit of history searching, photographs, looking through old family bits and bobs and in a former life I used to

be like a creative practitioner slash artist. And I wanted to create a situation where the breath work could be in an immersive experience beyond, so not just the breath work, but there was an experience that was holding it all together. So I created this little video. And so I asked everybody to watch the video. So we watched it together.

We had our anchors, we had some anchors to hold, some rocks and...

a bay leaf actually and those were chosen because the bay leaf was something that many cultures used and so it could bring us together in that and you could smell it and it was very reminiscent for people of grandma's cooking or you know there's something very kind of nostalgic in that smell and I collected rocks on the beach and one of the things that was interesting about that is that they were witness to things over over hundreds of thousands

Nicola Griffiths (01:17:49.018)

of years right so you've got something that's holding you that's seen everything that you've everything we've been through this pebble this stone this rock has seen it before so the people that were breathing had these two anchors and then they watched the video which was a lot of my family photos and there was quite early evocative

soundtrack to it and then we went into the breath work and the first time I did it was with my cohort and Hannah and I was just I was just crying I was crying through it I was just crying and if you know me and I don't cry that much

I don't, it's part of, that's another conversation about why I don't cry that much, but I don't cry that much. But that, just, everything was coming out and...

I remember one of the guys in our cohort at one point, he kind of, I think he stood up and after the session he said, I felt like there were so many people in the room that I had to move myself to make space for everybody that was here. And I felt that too, it felt thick, felt thick. It felt like...

All of the people that were behind me were there. All of the people were holding that space. wasn't me. Everything was coming through me. And there was definitely a feeling for me of connection and very much a full circle because the...

Nicola Griffiths (01:19:33.41)

called it the Untethered Breath because I had felt untethered but in that moment when I was feeling that presence I re-tethered to them as well and that was very special is something I'll never forget and yeah it stays with me it stays with me so yeah and whenever I hear that song that's on that

the track that's on that video it takes me back there as well.

Sukriti (01:20:08.972)

I felt like I was a little bit there in that experience. I mean, I wanted to be anyway, because I have a sense of how those experiences can feel, not at all what that exact experience was for you and everybody in the room. But yeah, I think I look forward to those transcendent experiences that come with a lot of these healing practices.

I'm so happy that so many people could receive that through you, that you could receive it through your ancestors. It's a beautiful space to hold. And thanks for sharing it.

Nicola Griffiths (01:20:51.265)

Again, you're so welcome. It was incredibly powerful. And again, it reaffirmed to me the power of breath because we were just breathing. And I say just, like that's a small thing, but it...

blows my mind, it blows my mind every time, it's like how, how, how, how is this possible? How is this possible and how is everybody feeling what I'm feeling? How is, but it's that interconnectedness and I believe that it's...

because that's how we're supposed to interact as humans, as people, as kin, as a species, and that everything that we're doing currently is kind of like counter that. So when we have these opportunities to get back to ways of being that is innate, then...

are almost primed and ready to go with it, you know, because it's what is in the DNA.

Sukriti (01:22:04.342)

I hear you and I agree. We transitioning into another space, we talk about softness in the wellness world, the wellness world as we've known it so far, as if it's a choice everyone has access to. But for many of our ancestors, softness was actually a liability.

It was a luxury they couldn't afford because they were busy surviving. So I'm curious, Nikola, when you look at your own lineage, where do you see that hardness that was necessary for survival, the armor that kept them alive? And today, how does it feel in your ribs when through breathwork and other healing practices, you try to let that armor go? Where does that

Resistance live inside you.

Nicola Griffiths (01:23:05.951)

I think I see it in myself. I think I still carry that. And like I said, just, you know, I don't really, I mean, I cry, but I don't cry. There's a lot of holding again and that suppression and that feeling of pushing things down. So just keep carrying on and to show a kind of strong.

exterior and so it's very much my reality now also and I think that that is definitely a retention of that lineage and ancestry and and how people and my family have survived through the generations and it's something that I'm trying hard to stop with me.

again, you don't always get these things right but I, my son is so expressive in a way that I never have been and that's part of his personality but also because we are trying to make space for him to be so.

What was the second? I've lost the second part of your question. So sorry.

Sukriti (01:24:27.711)

The second part was how it feels in your ribs today through breath work and all of these healing practices when you try to let it go and where does that resistance still live inside you.

Nicola Griffiths (01:24:41.825)

So yeah, through breath work, it's little by little, little by little. And I think what it has given me is the opportunity to see that about myself through the different explorations and also to explore it a little bit.

and the curiosity of why it's there, how it's there, when it shows up and where does it live in my ribs? Or does it still live in my... It does, it very much lives in me but I feel with each practice, with each little bit, each kind of reminder, with each interaction, with each session that I attend or I facilitate, there is an opportunity to just chip away at that a little bit more.

And so hopefully with each breath, moving towards that softness. And it's interesting that you've raised this as a, I was having a conversation with friends yesterday.

the sister of a friend, a very dear friend of mine, who I met for the first time yesterday and she was talking, she's 60, and she was talking about moving into her softness now. And so it takes time, know, it takes time. First of all, we have to recognise where we're at and then it takes time to chip away and also to find the resources that can support us to get there. And for me, breathwork has been...

fundamental in my journey to even recognising where softness could exist. You know I have it for my son, have it but I don't have it for myself. I have it for... yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (01:26:36.031)

I have it in certain pockets, but it's not extended everywhere. so that knowing and that recognition has come through these practices. And also these practices have opened me up to what other things might be able to support that. yeah, looking into other areas that might be able to, and different practices that might be able to expand on that further.

Sukriti (01:27:09.89)

Yeah.

Sukriti (01:27:15.2)

I love that there were...

Sukriti (01:27:20.354)

you know, reflections about how it is a slow process and it happens little by little.

Yeah, there was in, I think in the last recording, in the last episode I did with someone from my cohort called Katie. Katie and I also spent some time talking about exactly this, how, you know, a lot of this is going to feel shitty. It is going to bother and hurt and disturb so much inside us. But at least we know

what's on the other side of this. So it's better we do it for this process instead of the systems that we know don't work for us already.

So as a practitioner, when you lead a breathwork session, how do you distinguish between, say, personal stress, which could be a deadline, a traffic jam, or a historical burden? For anyone listening, I want to explore basically how the breath can act as a shovel, helping us dig down to metabolize what our grandmothers had to swallow.

just to keep their family safe. But now how does that breadth become a way of getting underneath the personal story and into the historical?

Nicola Griffiths (01:28:54.581)

going to try to answer that but I might come back to you for a bit more clarity on that one. How do I distinguish between personal and historical thing in when I'm leading Breathwork for the participants? I think having a space where

Nicola Griffiths (01:29:19.105)

there is time and...

where that sense of urgency is removed, there is no, you know, when I, when I, and as you know, this is learned, this is in my learning from Hannah and during this, is about this reassurance that there's no judgment here, there's no, there's no expectation here. There's, when you can actually just voice that and give people,

permission to just let go of these things in this moment and that they can do with them what they will when the session is done but just for this moment can you give yourself permission to let go of this expectation of this judgment can you accept this rest can you accept this breath can you can you allow yourself to be present

And I think when you put all of these things into the mixing bowl, if you like, it creates a situation where for a moment somebody's able to begin to look.

beneath the layer of the everyday and to sort of slip. It's almost like, I just got this, I'm a very visual person, but this idea of like oil on water, right? So the oil is the everyday and the water is the depths of who we are. So it's just like when we can just put our finger in the oil and just dip and see that actually there's something that's not oil beneath this and it's still just floating on the top. And actually I feel like the breath is the water.

Nicola Griffiths (01:31:15.203)

and it allows us access into the waters and so we're not just floating in our busyness of the everyday, busyness of the mind and we can begin to listen and we can begin to hear ourselves and we can begin to let

our own voice. I liked that you said earlier about we talk words and language but it's not who we are it's not necessarily what we have to say so it's about like using the breath as a vehicle or a route to hear ourselves. I mean how amazing is that that you get to hear yourself?

you know, really tap into who and where you are and what you are and what you might need actually and what you might need to remind yourself of because I think sometimes we know who we are but it gets buried under everything and we just exist in the oil and it's hard to get past that so I think, I think

Nicola Griffiths (01:32:40.277)

Yeah, think that.

Sukriti (01:32:45.282)

Yeah, that was a beautiful analogy. I was fully taken aback by that. Yeah, because that's so beautiful. We all so many times talk about how, you know, I am the sea and I want to be like the sea. And there are so many parallels we can draw with nature where we can be different forms of ourselves through one element of nature. And the sea is such a huge one that we all relate to as human beings.

And then for you to have put it that way, that our daily pieces are just the oil on top and then underneath all of that is just a sea of water, which is us. That was really beautiful. Genuinely made me understand everything you were saying within a second. That was lovely. And definitely have a thing for succinct.

sentences and analogies and that super did it for me. On the succinctness of words, there's something in the word remember that I keep coming back to, which we've discussed even in our course with Hannah. I imagine it came up in your cohort as well and it does often in these practices.

breaking down the word as re-member, to put the body back together. Because coloniality works by dismembering, cutting us off from our land, from lineage, from language, sometimes from sensations in our own skin. I'm curious, in your practice, what does it look like to breathe into the numb places?

to find a part of a woman's body that has been quiet for generations and then give it permission to speak. What does it look like for the participants? Something that they might have shared, something you've experienced through them.

Nicola Griffiths (01:34:56.755)

I think I spent most of my course in a state of numbness and the breathing. I think when we started breathing together and Hannah was breathing us, there were lots of things that were coming in and coming and going. And then I reached this point and I called it the void. That's how I used to reference it, the void. Because for me, when I breathe, I get to this space of darkness and

It's quite beautiful in there. I quite enjoy being in that space. It's quite quiet. I quite like that. But within that sometimes there was numbness. There was nothing. I was feeling nothing. There was nothing. I was just like, what is it? But I remember Hannah saying to me, know, numbness is also a sensation. And it's a feeling.

and it's something to acknowledge and it's something to be aware of.

When somebody might express they feel numbness, then they are still feeling. Because it's not the absence of feeling, it's just a different type of feeling, right? And so...

Yeah, I think I've lost thread a little bit of what you were saying, but I think this idea of numbness is also a feeling, it's also a sensation, it's also an emotion and that's relevant. And I think for so many women of colour, is an overarching.

Nicola Griffiths (01:36:44.647)

sensation because they've had to shut so much down we come back to this idea of the voice we come back to this idea of suppression and fitting ourselves in and shutting ourselves off in different ways and whilst the dismemberment was perhaps for generations previously we do it to ourselves in these different ways to survive in the systems in which we're living in and so

I think again it's a slow process to breathe into that and to understand that it's there because it was protecting, was protecting us and it was protecting so many different aspects of who we are, vulnerability and that softness that we haven't been able to show and...

fear and just all the things, right? So this numbness is actually a protector and can we look at it from that angle rather than, it's negative because I can't feel it. I can't experience this or I can't experience that because of this numbness. But actually this numbness is actually doing its own work and it's been doing it to keep you safe and to keep you in.

the best way it can to keep you surviving however you can. Yeah, I hope that answered what you were saying.

Sukriti (01:38:19.02)

Yeah, it's the bit about having no sensation is also a sensation. Yeah, I always come back to that actually, because I do realize what you're saying. There is so many points in our life where no sensation is just how we're operating for long periods of time. And it might not even look like dissociating because it's still you. You are here.

You're just not feeling so much and those can be skill sets many times because...

There is just so much to hold that you... I do, I need to just take a beat sometimes.

And we get to a little bit because...

Anyone doing the work of resistance must also do the work of pausing. And allowing no sensation to be the only sensation is my understanding of how, I suppose, a lot of these practices become political for me.

Sukriti (01:39:38.775)

On that note, am curious how, I mean, this is something I was thinking about while I was trying to figure out this conversation that will happen between us with whatever little context, again, I had. We have focused, just as a people, we focus so much on the hard work of activism. But then,

My understanding is that sometimes the most radical act of systemic change, especially in this case, is a woman in a state of deep unregulated rest.

to add to that, in our case, women of color. So I'm curious how you feel your breath work practice shifts sometimes from self-care to a political disruption. It could be the smallest ways that you think of that in, but I'm just curious to know your take on it.

Nicola Griffiths (01:40:41.569)

you

Nicola Griffiths (01:40:45.555)

I think that...

Nicola Griffiths (01:40:53.631)

I think it's all an act of, it's all political. I think that this kind of the idea of the mother as a concept, right, is about radical care. This idea of creating pause through, excuse me, through breath work is about radical rest, know, like deep rest.

like into the bones rest, opposed to just not being tired and

Nicola Griffiths (01:41:31.873)

For me, creating a space where that can happen.

I'm giving women the opportunity to even get a small sense of what that might be like for them.

Nicola Griffiths (01:41:50.259)

is incredibly powerful, an incredible political act and it cuts through the...

Nicola Griffiths (01:42:05.761)

understanding of what we've been living under. It cuts through the kind of, I don't know, again, a visual, it's just like a knife through butter, right? It's just, even if it's just a hot knife through butter, I should say, it's just, even if it's for a moment that somebody can take pause. I think one of my ladies that was breathing here, she said, know,

This session is the place that I get to rest. I can't even rest like this in my own house because there's always a demand, there's always something to do. And this sense of urgency isn't just about the workplace, it's this continuation, it's all the time, it's unending. I do it too, do know what I mean? So when you can create a container that allows someone to come into a state of deep rest and care,

care of the holding of the group, the care of the... just consideration of what they're stepping into. That is like a tiny cut into the... into this...

Nicola Griffiths (01:43:19.777)

crazy, crazy system that we are living under. And if each time someone did that is another tiny cut, you know, I kind of feel like we get to the point of death by a thousand cuts, right? It's like tiny cuts, tiny cuts, tiny cuts. And,

The inverse of that is that the person receiving that little bit of rest starts to build a little bit more capacity, starts to build a little bit, and not capacity to hold more stuff, but capacity to be with themselves. for me, that's radical. That is really radical and so necessary and so important, actually. So yeah.

Sukriti (01:44:09.262)

I think one of the biggest things I've learned about you today is that you make really kick-ass analogies of things. The hot knife with the butter. And yes, I know some of them are things we've heard before, but they're still, you know, to have them with you in the moment is true embodiment. And I love that. Yeah. I also really, really love this part you said about it allows you to build more capacity.

and then the dichotomy of not to hold more stuff. Because truly, I think a lot of people in these spaces, even people in spaces of activism struggle because of this reality where a lot of us believe, hey, I'm building more capacity, which means I can hold more. And that in itself is a capitalist mindset almost.

I guess it also goes to show how deeply it's ingrained that we're doing it even while we're trying to run away from it. But that was a nice moment for me. Thank you so much.

Nicola Griffiths (01:45:22.721)

Absolutely and the kind of insidious nature of how deep it goes is like beyond sometimes and yes you catch yourself doing it whilst you're trying to not do it and

the frustration that's there as well when you recognise what you're doing with it, that completely goes against the thing that you're not supposed to be doing, right? But I think again, it's that acknowledgement for me, it's that acknowledgement of everything, to change something that is so deep, it takes time. And...

little by little. It's the tiny things, it's the tiny things. was speaking to you in the pre-talk about my frustration with my seeds in my garden, but part of the garden and part of the allotment, that's my radical act to...

have food that I've grown that I can give to my family, you know, like we can sit and have a meal and some of that food is food that I've grown. I know exactly what's gone into it. know, well, as much as I can, I know what's there. know what, how it's grown. I've watched it develop. I've seen how long it takes to get from that tiny seed to this plate. And I think that's kind of another analogy for you is the same with this journey.

it's like you know I feel like I'm at the tiny seed stage and I want to get to the full mature plant but it's it's gonna take a lot of different iterations to get there and it's all

Nicola Griffiths (01:47:05.343)

dependent on the circumstances, the environment that we're in and, you know, did it rain? Did it not? Did the sun come out? Did it not? You know, if we sort of move that into our life experiences and what that means, it's understandable that it's going to take time. It's understandable that we're going to get it wrong and that some things will fail and some things will succeed. So, deep stuff. it's deep stuff.

Sukriti (01:47:32.91)

There's, I love that you brought the garden in. I was hoping that it comes up in some way. There is.

A relational work specialist called Christabel, who I, she works towards relational repair and community. And she's a black woman who's also has spent the last, I think, 20, 25 years being a nurse. And now she teaches a lot of relational work and decolonial work. I think I will end up linking her down to, down in the podcast notes as well.

Yeah, she speaks about this thing actually about how if you want to learn community, how to hold space in community, how to move into community if that's not where you are today. Build a garden for yourself, start building a garden, start working in the garden and that will teach you everything there is to know about how to be in community and how to show up for it and how to feel connected to your roots again, how to feel the...

how to let go of some of that coloniality actually, because the more power you can have over providing for yourself, over your resources, is the farthest you will go in that process. Yeah, so I love that you brought that up and that your garden is doing well and that you're eating things from it.

Nicola Griffiths (01:49:05.951)

Not quite yet, but hopefully soon. whatever it is, even if it's just a small thing, it's the act of doing it. And it keeps you, it keeps me connected to that growing process in a very specific way. And actually I found it a really therapeutic space for me, like a real sort of, when I'm feeling...

stress or any overwhelm or any kind of just having a really rough you know crappy time when I go there

it just shifts something. One, because I'm probably taking time for myself that's needed. I guess it's the pause again, right? It's just in a different way. And I used to take headphones to listen to stuff, to try and listen to some of the reading lists I was supposed to be reading for the course. But I had to stop because it didn't lend itself to that. It lent itself to pause and quiet. And you can hear the birds and you can hear insects. You can hear so much.

Just being with yourself in that space I think is kind of hinting at the space that I want to offer to others as well. It's just being with yourself in those quiet spaces. so yeah, so my breathwork practice is very quiet, I guess. It's not very...

It's not really dramatic or fast moving, but I feel like that's where I've observed women of colour need to be held in order to be able to get beneath the oil. I can't imagine getting beneath the oil in a way that would feel sustainable.

Nicola Griffiths (01:51:04.913)

very high, fast moving, fast paced breath practice. I think that serves a purpose for something else and it doesn't serve the purpose for where I'm trying to meet.

Sukriti (01:51:22.028)

Yeah, thanks so much for that. We are nearing one of my last inquiries. And then, of course, there's space to share whatever else is coming up.

As it would be, we are all someone's future ancestor. And so as we sit here processing all of these old weights, what our new breath is, what we're trying to encode for those who come after us, what is it that you are trying to encode for who come after you? If you could leave one sensation, one feeling of safety or spaciousness or whatever it is, of dissent.

in the marrow of your descendants, what would it be?

Nicola Griffiths (01:52:23.455)

One thing, I think I would connect it to the conversation that we've been having and just to express, to be able to express, fully express, to fully voice who you are to the world.

to

Show your fullness. I think if that was the legacy of me, I'd be happy with that.

think I'd be happy with that because I think that that has been an ongoing thing for my generations anyway, like especially the women just shut some silencing and shut down-ness so to be able to...

Nicola Griffiths (01:53:23.361)

open, to be full, to be true to your essence and who you are.

Sukriti (01:53:36.664)

to be in your complete fullness. I love that. Yeah, I think that would be my biggest take from our session as well to be full and have your voice and use it as much as you can when you can. And before we close this chapter first, I just want to give you some space to express anything that might be coming up for you right now.

Nicola Griffiths (01:54:10.497)

I'm just really grateful to actually have had this conversation with you. It's really brought me back into some of the thinking that I was having during the course and also really

invigorated like or reinvigorated the direction which I want to go with the practice and so yeah I'm really super grateful for that I'm super like

yeah this is radical shit we gotta do this we gotta do this and even though yeah even like the idea that it's just like a tiny nick but actually you know you keep doing something and it it hurts after a while and so

Sukriti (01:54:51.438)

Yeah.

Sukriti (01:55:03.01)

Yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (01:55:06.835)

And so...

Yeah, thank you for having me here and for having this conversation. Your questions were amazing and really got me thinking deeply about where I'm at and what I'm doing and what has led me to this point and how I want to move forward. So thank you so much.

Sukriti (01:55:34.199)

Nikhula, thank you so much for the depth of this, for trusting the space with something, with so many things, so alive and so personal. And for all the radical vulnerability, for helping everyone who will be listening to this trace the lines between the personal pulse and the historical heart. And to have that map that doesn't just show us where our wounds are, but

also where the strength has always lived. Yeah, I love that. Thank you so much for bringing it back to the soft center, to the fullness. Yeah, it's been so great to know you, to get to know you through this conversation. And thank you for coming back at me with the tough questions. That felt extremely vulnerable. And I was not expecting it, but I loved it. And I enjoyed the exchange so much.

Yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (01:56:35.423)

It's my absolute pleasure and yeah, sometimes it's interesting to give it back and see what comes back. We're learning, I'm learning. And it was so wonderful to speak with you because I've learned a lot during our conversation. And I'm really excited to see how you shape this. And I know I spoke quite a lot, I'm wondering.

Sukriti (01:56:54.04)

Mmm.

Sukriti (01:57:04.864)

It was much needed. It was much needed. Yeah.

Nicola Griffiths (01:57:05.347)

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to how you shape this and you know, hopefully it's helpful to someone somehow.

Sukriti (01:57:18.252)

That's definitely, yeah, I hope that as well and I'm sure it will be. Yeah. Thank you.

Nicola Griffiths (01:57:25.25)

Thank you so much.

Lona Vena
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Episode 3: Bodies of History: Trauma, Nervous Systems, & Ancestry (The Grounding)