***Trigger warning for this episode - we discuss sensitive topics including sexual assault and violence.
 
In this episode I had the pleasure of speaking with Molly Boeder Harris about her work and her journey with the Breathe Network and her own experiencing recovering from sexual assault. The Breathe Network connects survivors of sexual trauma with sliding-scale, trauma-informed, holistic healing practitioners across the United States and Canada. 

We talk about:

• How understanding our nervous systems is not just relevant for people living with acute or overt trauma histories and is a useful resource for navigating life.
• How we over protect certain area of the body in the somatic and movement world and then neglect to think about other areas of the body that are unique and specific to a survivor's story.
• How the body is a resource for pleasure and joy and goodness in the way we offer yoga and somatic practice to trauma survivors.
• How long it can take a survivor to come to terms with the fact they've experienced sexual assault.
• The ways that the Breathe Network focuses on anti-oppressive best practices for trauma education in addressing both personal and collective trauma.

...and much more.

More about Molly

Molly Boeder Harris is the Founder and Executive Director of The Breathe Network, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), and a trauma-informed yoga teacher and trainer. Her own experiences surviving sexual trauma catalyzed her to enter the trauma healing field in 2003, beginning with her work as a medical and legal advocate with children and adult survivors, a campus violence prevention educator and as a yoga teacher specializing in working with survivors. She earned her Master’s Degree in International Studies and her Master’s Certificate in Women’s & Gender Studies, which inform the way she holds both individual and collective forms of trauma and oppression close together in her work. Over the last 2 decades of her career and healing trajectory, she has found that the practices which recognize the whole person – body, mind and soul – and which also honour the ways in which trauma and resilience manifest physiologically, offer the greatest possibility for embodied justice and social change.

To learn more or reach out follow Molly on Instagram (@mollyboha) and (@thebreathenetwork)
Visit the Breathe Network's website: www.thebreathenetwork.org

If you're enjoying the podcast and would like to contribute, please visit the Patreon

Support the show

In this episode, I had the honour of speaking with Rebeckah Price about the powerful work she has been leading for many years to reshape and decolonize wellness. She discusses what it actually means to create real systematic change in the health and wellness community for BIPOC and other marginalized communities, given the inherit inequities that exist in the wellness industrial complex.  Rebeckah's deep commitment to liberation is truly inspiring and will move you, as it did me. 

Two stand out quotes that summarize the wisdom Rebeckah shared:

"Any people that come from a history of resistance, the idea of liberation is fundamental to who you are."

"Wellness is an industrial complex because it's inherently telling you there's something wrong with you, that you're broken, and that's coming from a colonial mentality."

More about Rebeckah:

Rebeckah Price is a wellness advocate and yoga instructor (RYT 200), that draws on her wealth of knowledge of working in underserved, marginalized, racialized, and immigrant communities in Canada, the United States and the Caribbean. In 2015, Rebeckah founded irise yoga + wellness- as a way to connect, promote, bring awareness to and foster the inclusion of people of colour and other historically marginalized groups in yoga and wellness spaces. 

Rebeckah's work is rooted in an intersectional understanding of power  and harnessing the tools and resources to facilitate community change. With over 20 years in the not-for-profit sector as a Community Development and Engagement Specialist, Rebeckah has worked on and developed strategies and policies related to diversity & inclusion, equity, conflict resolution, settlement and integration and creating safe, cohesive communities. Rebeckah uses her lived experience as a Woman of Colour and her unique expertise in community development and engagement to bridge and address the gap of diversity in the wellness industry through workshops, etc.

Support Rebeckah's work via her Patreon page or be sure to follow her on Instagram.
To learn more about her work, visit websites iRise Yoga and Wellness or at the Well Collective.

Support the show

In this episode, I had the honour to speak with Dr. Jamie Marich about ongoing and ever changing trauma and addiction recovery. Two of the things she said resonates so deeply for me:

"When I look at change, so much about it is in the healing power of consistency and I think that's fundamentally good for people who have survived complex trauma." 
AND
"We may have parts and aspects of self but we all represent a working wholeness. What you have is already inside you. It just may take some processing to fully embrace that as truth and live it fully."

Jamie is one of the bravest and most authentic trauma therapists and experts I know. She speaks openly about living in both addiction recovery and with dissociation, paving the way for our shame to fall away and transformation to emerge, bringing us back into our innate wholeness. 

Jamie Marich, Ph.D., LPCC-S, LICDC-CS, REAT, RYT-500, RMT travels internationally speaking on topics related to EMDR therapy, trauma, addiction, expressive arts and mindfulness while maintaining a private practice and online education operations in her home base of Warren, OH. She is the developer of the Dancing Mindfulness approach to expressive arts therapy, the co-creator of the Yoga Unchained approach to trauma-informed yoga, and the developer of Yoga for Clinicians.  Jamie is the author of numerous books, including the popular EMDR Made Simple and EMDR Therapy and Mindfulness for Trauma Focused Care) written in collaboration with Dr. Stephen Dansiger. North Atlantic Books published a revised and expanded edition of Trauma and the 12 Steps in the Summer of 2020.

For more information on how to connect with her work, go to: www.jamiemarich.com
Find her on Instagram or Facebook 

Purchase one of her books

To contribute the podcast please visit our Patreon, where 10% of the proceeds will be donated to DOCTORS WUHOUT BORDERS and another 10% will go to a different organization fighting racism each month.

Support the show

I'm honoured to have shared in this conversation with Prentis Hemphill and to have listened to the wisdom they bring to embodiment and healing justice work. I trust you will feel both inspired and moved as well. They share about what inspired the creation of the Embodiment Institute and how evolving 'somatic practice' is a key to coming into collective healing and dismantling systems of oppression.

Prentis Hemphill (They/Them) is a Texas born, embodiment practitioner, therapist, writer and the founder of The Embodiment Institute and Black Embodiment Initiative. For the past 15 years, Prentis has been unearthing the connections between individual healing, community accountability and our most inspired visions for social transformation. 

Before founding The Embodiment Institute, Prentis was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network, co-founding partner of organizational consulting firm, Groundwork Project, and has been a teacher of somatics with generativesomatics and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) for nearly 10 years. In 2016, Prentis was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought. 

Prentis’ work has been featured in the New York Times and Huffington Post and is a contributor to The Politics of Trauma by Staci K. Haines as well as the upcoming Holding Change by adrienne maree brown. Prentis is the host and creator of the popular podcast, Finding Our Way entering its’ second season in Jan. 2021. 

Prentis currently lives on a small farm in Durham, NC with their partner, Kasha and their three dogs, on land first loved and stewarded by the Saponi people and near where Prentis’ ancestors were first brought to Turtle Island.

Instagram
Website
Finding Our Way Podcast on Spotify

Contribute to their work here:
Patreon
Venmo

Support the show

I just can't express enough gratitude to Kevin T. Hobbs for sharing this conversation with me. I have been left changed, moved and inspired by what he shared and I know you will too. We talk about how his participation in a specific theatre production saved his life and his work in bringing the same healing power to people through the D.O.S.E. Foundation. 
How he went from the throws of homelessness and depression to peace and hope, the focus of his new podcast, Kevin's Way Out as well as his upcoming feature film.

Here are just a few snippets of wisdom from Kevin:

“I love theatre because at its best it just allows us to be, be whoever who we are, be wherever we are in that journey in life, and to just be without any kind of excuses.”

 “Having the confidence to be confronted with the unknown is improv. Having the confidence to reach outside yourself can save your life.”

“Improv is a beautiful form of non-violent communication.”

“There’s space for all of us. One of the things that we fight against in society is this idea that there’s not. But there is, we just have to accept where we are, take what we have and keep going. "

More about Kevin:

Kevin T. Hobbs is a professional actor, Sundance trained filmmaker, writer, musician, and SEL certified teaching artist hailing from Central Illinois. Kevin has appeared on movie screens and stages across the country. He is also the host of the new podcast, Kevin’s Way Out.

Kevin is also the founder of the D.O.S.E. Foundation (a nonprofit whose mission it is to ensure that the theater community becomes a more accurate mirror of the world in which we live), where he functions as the executive director and serves as the artistic director of the upcoming National August Wilson Monologue Competition for Central Illinois (2021), for which the D.O.S.E. Foundation is the regional sponsor. 

Currently, Kevin is hard at work on his first feature film, 𝙈𝙖𝙧𝙧𝙤𝙬.

To learn more or to connect with Kevin, follow him on Instagram, listen to his podcast Kevin's Way Out (on most audio streaming platforms), or through his email at [email protected]

If you are enjoying to podcast and would like to contribute to it, please visit my Patreon page!

Support the show

In this multi-faceted episode, I am so grateful to speak with fellow Jungian Analyst in training and movement magician, Mackenzie Amara, AKA 'THE INKED SHRINK", about the role that culture plays in our minds and in our lives. We go into our mutual love of the intersection of the soma and psyche and how she always includes elements of analytical psychology, myth, alchemy, and shadow work in her teaching and how dance and depth psychology are part and parcel for her and cannot be separated. 

A few things we talk about:

• The place that Jungian theory holds in our modern world, and how Jung's wisdom can be used to understand how it's rapidly changing
• What happens when minds socialized by western culture try to absorb eastern philosophy and mysticism
• What it means to recognize our wholeness, and our complexity as individuals
• The mercurial nature of being in relationship with other humans
• The place and importance of irrationality, non-sense, and non-linear in our lives and minds

Golden nuggets of wisdom from Mackenzie...

"That next step is the only thing that you can do right now. So you have to start where you are or otherwise you’re nowhere."

"We’ve been culturally programmed and religiously programmed to avoid that recognition [of evil] in ourselves lest we give into too deeply."

"When the culture can’t hold the experiences of another culture’s religion or zeitgeist or tradition, you just sort of fall through."

"You can’t move beyond the next movement. Whether that’s the next breath,  or admission or confession, or the next twirl or the next partner, or the next eye gaze. "

About Mackenzie

By trade Mackenzie is a writer, coach, & 5Rhythms® teacher. By vocation she is a Jungian analyst-in-training & Clinical Psychology doctoral student. By design she is a collection of fractal, holographic cells dancing around some strange attractor for the sake of who knows what to live an insignificant, mythic life reflective of the mysterious vital spark within her. She identifies as a series of memories & unverifiable subjective experiences of self-hood to which she is rather fondly attached. She has a penchant for scholarship, the occult, pedantic erudition, morbid humor, grandiosity, nihilism, & semi-responsible hedonism. Born in the shadow of New Age culture into a fractured family system & the subjective experiencer of (arguably) extreme early childhood trauma, her life’s work is to heal psychic wounds—her’s & other’s—that she & others become strong enough to contend with the unconscious quicksands & transpersonal abysses which lap at the periphery of developing consciousness. She is an emergent property of Being playing at becoming sovereign. She really, really loves butter.

Connect with Mackenzie through @theinkedshrink or learn more by visiting her website!

Support the podcast with our Patreon!

Support the show

In this eye-opening episode I talk with a truly inspiring woman, Dee de Lara! We discuss her work with the paradigm shifting movement hub, What Time, co-creating BIPOC-centred online space and disrupting expectations of how and where to find movement.

Places to connect with Dee on Instagram:
Dee de Lara
What Time - Movement Class Hub

A few of things our conversation touched upon:

• Dee's experience coming into a nourishing relationship with her body in a studio environment and how that sparked her up to questions like: "Who's not in the room right now and why". 
• Why conflict is part of a healthy studio environment and can be the very thing that leads dismantling oppression in movement and wellness communities
• The complicated future for the studio wellness communities in Toronto (and beyond) as a result of the pandemic as well as the paradigm shifts that are disrupting systems of oppression in the community. What's going to be birthed out of this loss and struggle?
• How racism shows up in our lives as Canadians, and the lies we tell ourselves about the nature of white supremacy in the Canadian cultural context

Quotes from Dee to inspire you:

"To experience deep connection and intimacy, we have to do both. We need to be able speak with passion, assertiveness and confidence and also listen with openness compassion and humility. "

"This idea that wellness shouldn’t or isn’t up to one figure or authority to decide who deserves it or who gets access to it."

"As human beings, we want to feel like we’re a part of something, but there’s more than one way to feel that."

About Dee:

Dee de Lara's (she/her) life and passion is all about listening to and telling stories, her own and those of others. She aims to co-create spaces to weave a web to between humans to share their experiences and feel more connected by: teaching MOVEMENT that aims to inspire curiosity, facilitating CONVERSATIONS that spark more reflection and action with Dinner Confidential and Insights in Color, making JEWELRY that reframes context and expectations. Dee is also here to ask QUESTIONS to disrupt the status quo, to elevate and amplify the voices of BIPOC and to critically interrogate the systems that exist. And ultimately to learn widely and deeply from others.

Today, one of Dee’s core values is disruption: not about interfering, but about trusting natural processes and interrupting patterns and behaviour to foster abundance and growth. At the beginning of August, with Bea Palanca, she launched @WHAT_TIME___, an Instagram hub to aggregate and connect independent, emerging and BIPOC movement teachers' offerings. WHAT_TIME is committed to disrupting the expectations of where to find movement, how it is organized and from whom you can find it. The ultimate aim is to centre BIPOC voices and experiences. Connect with her @deedelara. 

Support the show

In this episode I speak with the luminous Elke Schroeder about her powerful work inspired by Fighting Monkey and how it dove tails with creating a more robust and adaptable nervous system and to bring us into deeper relationship with self and our environment. 

• Dive in into the philosophy of Fighting Monkey, a movement practice revolutionizing the way we think about our place in space and  in connection to fellow humans. 
• Hear about the importance of moving beyond our predictable movements habits as well as the intersection between FM and the dismantling of systems of oppression in and outside of the movement world. 
• Start asking questions about how the fitness industry keeps our bodies stuck in limiting beliefs about ourselves and our bodies' ability to navigate external pressures to find what FM refers to as 'earthquake architecture'. 

"Fighting Monkey is not an easy thing to do, not only for coordinations, but in general ... because you are confronting a lot of your patterns and blocks."

"It's not a fight practice, It can seem like fighting, but actually it's about fighting your monkey mind."

"It's a reclaiming of your physicality to harness those tools of resilience."

Elke is a Mover.
A dancer, performer and Fighting Monkey student and instructor. Her diverse movement background includes dance of many styles, floor-work, acrobatics, yoga and martial arts. She is an archer, a poetry maker, a forest-dweller, a chocolate-eater - full of wanderlust, tornado-winds and boundless energy.

Elke leads a practice that is fluid, strong, and creative. She encourages Play, rough-housing and curiosity, tempered with an attunement to self-awareness. In to go Out, out to go In.

A graduate of the School of Toronto Dance Theatre, the Octopus Garden Yoga Teachers Training and Mentorship programs, the University of Toronto Drama Program and the University of Waterloo Independent Studies program, Elke teaches at myriad organizations such as Spirit Loft, L’Artère Danse, (Québec), the University of Calgary, Ryerson University, The School of Toronto Dance Theatre, GMD Toronto, T.O. Love-in,, Jane Clapp/Movement for Trauma, Mosaic Yoga, and YYoga (Brussels). 

She is an active creator and performer of contemporary dance (20+ years) and travels for her work throughout Canada and abroad).

Find Elke on Instagram @elkebschroeder or Facebook: Inspire by Fighting Monkey with Elke

Support the show

In this enthralling episode, I spoke with Anita Bhardwaj and Raggi Kotak about their work and upcoming six week program, Race Resilience. I was honoured to speak with them about their decades long social justice and somatic healing expertise and the powerful work they do in the UK and beyond. 

Race Resilience is a professional collaboration that combines their forty years experience of activism, exploring ground-breaking tools and resources to understand and move forward on the issue of racial justice.

Anita Bhardwaj

For twenty years Anita has worked as a senior manager, trainer consultant and coach in organisations, with a specialism in developing services on the issues of gender violence, race and mental health. This has offered her the opportunity to develop a deep understanding of the impact of issues of power and abuse, based on one’s social identity, as well as the variety of layers and aspects that are required to heal and recover from such experiences.

Her training includes Psychology, Life and executive coaching, Thai Yoga Massage, Reiki Practitioner, Chi Kung Teacher, TRE (Tension Stress and Trauma Release) Provider. Anita works in organisations (individuals/teams) and in clinical practise. She has a keen interest in working with both those that are impacted by racism and other forms of abuse; and professionals to support them to recover and expand their own resilience to the stress and vicarious trauma, they experience. Her work is embedded within a framework that acknowledges personal and social histories of trauma whilst challenging the, structural inequalities, social injustices and oppression as the root context from which stress and trauma manifest for individuals and communities.

Raggi Kotak

Raggi is a south Asian queer woman living in London. She is a human rights barrister, who has worked with asylum seekers for twenty years. She has a long history of anti-oppression work and has been involved in the setup and running of numerous ground-breaking and award winning projects. 

Raggi trains in Process Work - a widely respected facilitation method for conflict and change, which informs her work. She specialises in issues of power and oppression.  She provides consultancy, facilitation, training, coaching and mentoring, working with individuals, groups and organisations. 

Raggi is the founder and main facilitator of an active online discussion forum called Race Talk, which aims to bring different racial groups together to find ways through their racial conditioning and trauma. She is also a facilitator for the Racial Justice Collaborative, an international project challenging racism through dialogue. Raggi’s work is informed by psychology, trauma awareness and movement work, in which she has extensively trained.

Visit their website learn more about their upcoming Race Resilience course starting October 21st.

Support the show

We dedicate this podcast to Michael Young. Without his courageous battle with addiction and his passing, Anie and I might never have crossed paths.

Join me for a conversation with my dear friend, Anie Boudreau, Addiction Recovery and Chronic Pain Coach and Yoga Therapist.

In this conversation we talk about how she supports her clients by:

Helping her clients see possibilities and getting back to their spirit and believing that they should be here.

Harnessing the container of playfulness, wonderment and an open heart to help people who have shut down on themselves and to help them connect with wonderment again.

Harnessing nervous system health during addiction recovery and that those who are looking for a point A to point B through the nervous system will find there’s no such thing.

Sharing her own discoveries that when it feels like her whole life is a storm, she repeats the mantra, "it is impossible for 100% of the things in your life to be going wrong … it may be my nervous system giving me false information."

Embodying the teaching: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, the opposite of addiction is connection”- Johann Hari

Anie Boudreau has been on her own healing journey for over 20 years.  She has lived with a brain injury after suffering from nearly 30 concussions as a downhill mountain bike racer and snowboarder.  It’s been a journey, to say the least, learning how to maneuver through pain every day while living a joyful life.  Anie has learned the capacity to meet discomfort with kindness and curiosity.  Meeting pain with awe and wonder instead of fear, anger and shame allows for a greater sense of connection to body, to self, and to environment. This genuine connection is the antidote to suffering.  

As a Certified Yoga Therapist, an Advanced-level Addiction Recovery Coach & Trainer, and Life Mentor, Anie’s intention is to empower you with practical tools that can be used in the ups and downs of your daily life. Anie uses advanced embodied & mindfulness techniques and is a specialist in pain science, nervous system regulation, movement for trauma, psychedelic treatment for addiction recovery and contemplative psychology .  She works one-on-one with individuals, teaches classes, and facilitates groups, programs and workshops specializing in topics such as living with chronic pain, addictions and emotional distress.

Anie has realized that the healing power of sharing her story and having it heard, seen and acknowledged significantly eases her symptoms. This is the practice of speaking from the heart, and it's a huge part of the work she does at School of Reverence. It's potent and powerful.

Through all the pain, trauma and training, Anie is immensely grateful for the way her life has unfolded because she is able to help others in a really skillful way that brings her so much joy.

Instagram: @schoolofreverence
Website: anieboudreau.com

Support the show

Tune into my conversation available last week with Afeef Nessouli, a journalist, activist and videographer. We discuss his experiences participating in Black Lives Matter protests in New York and his own journey living with a history of trauma and health challenges.

Two of my favourite quotes:

"I feel so connected to the point of getting on the streets and making change because of my acute pain towards systems. I'm not happy that I have that pain. I'm just not resisting it anymore."

"You get to be the kind of person that trusts themselves so thoroughly that you are going to make a mistake and you are going to fail. You're going to get something wrong and then you're going to correct yourself along the way because that's the process."

Afeef's experience as a journalist ranges from freelancing for CNN to being a news producer for The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. After two years reporting in Lebanon and documenting the lives of those displaced, he returned to New York at the start of the COVID-19 crisis. He's been playing an active role in the protests in New York by videotaping and providing a different perspective than what's shown in mainstream news sources. Afeef's mission as a journalist is to give his audience a real and human look at the experiences of those who are oppressed.

Instagram: @afeefness
Website

Support the show