DRAW THE FEELING: Cultural Somatics for Visual Storytellers
Can you distinguish where a feeling comes from? Do you know how to listen to your body when something doesn’t feel right? Do you know what justice feels like? Liberation?
We might think about our bodies as neural synapses in a cultural nervous system - the messages our bodies send always include information about the health of our social field and environment. In this workshop we’ll slow down and stick with the feelings we notice arising and what they can tell us about our cultural ecosystem.
Although using the body as a tool for divination may sound mystical, the process of listening for collective health outcomes via our own bodies is very ordinary mundane magic. It is a part of a wider decolonial project in unlearning the ways we’ve been taught to ignore the feelings in our bodies (or how to dissociate from them). It is a practice of re-conditioning our schooled minds to believe that we know the truth of things not only through rational thought, but also through feelings, sensation, intuition, epigenetics/ancestral memory, and more.
Visual storytelling for a social field can be both prophetic and diagnostic - the image reveals visionary imagination as well as the dis-ease of oppression that lives in the cultural soma. In this workshop we will use trauma-informed somatic practices (such as breath work, guided meditation/visualization, gentle movement, and sound) to tune in to our bodies and begin to play with the translation of body wisdom into visual images.
DATE & TIME
February 23, 2023
9–11a PST / 11a–1p CST / 12–2p EST
WORKSHOP FLOW
In this two hour workshop we will begin by tuning into the sensations in our bodies and sensing into the associative networks of those feelings. We will practice visualizing thoughts, feelings and sensations and close with some practical tools for identifying resources in the cultural soma to support group processes.
This workshop will be recorded. While a portion of the workshop will be devoted to group practice and reflection, it will be possible to have a meaningful experience by watching the recording at your own pace. No prior artistic or somatic experience is necessary.
RESOURCE FLOW
Contributing $100 for participation would cover our costs. We offer the following sliding scale for you to sit with and assess where you, your ancestors, and your current financial situation land:
$0 for Black, Indigenous and People of Color who consider this work to be reclaiming ancestral lifeways stolen by colonization, enslavement & genocide. This is not a scholarship. We believe descendants and survivors of these legacies should never have to pay to access what is rightfully theirs.
$50 - $100 for folks from the global South, people from historically disenfranchised communities, low income/working class folks, people with less access to wealth (savings, investments, inheritance).
$100 - $200 for folks from the global North, folks who identify as middle or upper class, people who have access to savings, investments, or inheritance.
$200 - 300 for people who have benefitted from wealth extraction and would like to participate in the cultural healing practice of wealth redistribution, you might consider contributing generously at this level to support us in hosting cohort members reclaiming ancestral lifeways.
