Finding Refuge

This is the final episode of Season 2. It features me talking about the reason why I decided to take a sabbatical and make space for REST. 

I recorded this prior to the supreme court's further attack on our civil rights and the planet, so there is no mention of the most recent traumas and horrors happening in our country and world. This episode focuses on rest as a practice and the reality that not everyone has the space to rest. 

In this episode, I discuss:

My decision to take a sabbatical
The importance of rest
The privilege of being able to rest
How we all deserve to rest 
White-bodied folks and reparations for Black people
Finding Refuge, the book
Honeybees
Gardening
Spiritual practice 

I do not include my bio here because, well, you know me; instead, I include a request for you to continue to support my work and Finding Refuge. 

Finding Refuge: Heart Work for Healing Collective Grief has a birthday on July 31st. It has been out in the world for a year now, and what a year it has been. Thank you for purchasing, sharing, and posting on social media about Finding Refuge. Thank you for showing up in Finding Refuge retreats and making space for yourself to grieve and heal. Thanks for hosting book clubs and using the book club guide as well as the guide for how to wade through the holidays that I created in November of 2021. So many of you have been touched by Finding Refuge, and I have a request. If you haven’t written a review on Amazon and Goodreads, please do. You do not have to have purchased the book on Amazon to write a review there, but if you do write a review on Amazon, it improves the visibility of the book. This past month has shown us that what I offer in Finding Refuge is timeless. There is so much grief to move through and so much healing for us to do. Please write a review and tell your friends about the book. The practices in it are meant to heal our hearts, and I want us all to be able to heal our hearts. 

In addition to writing a review for Finding Refuge, the book, you can write a review and rate The Finding Refuge Podcast on iTunes. Season 3 is going to be amazing, and I cannot wait to bring more interviews and healing balm your way. 

One more thing, I have several opportunities for online and in-person practice centered around Finding Refuge coming up. Visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to stay apprised of my upcoming offerings.

I did mention that I would link to a few here:

Finding Refuge Celebration and Ritual 

Level 1 Leadership Cohort

Detox and Refuge

Finding Refuge Retreat 

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Tristan Katz (they/them) is a writer, digital strategist, and equity-inclusion facilitator based on the ancestral land of the Cowlitz and Clackamas peoples and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and Siletz Indians, now known as Portland, OR. 

Tristan offers justice-focused marketing programs for yoga and wellness professionals, along with workshops and trainings centered around queer identity and transgender awareness with an anti-oppression and intersectional lens. 

Their podcast, ALL THE F*CK IN: Showing up for social justice in your work, is a collaboration with Lauren Roberts, featuring conversations about all things business and entrepreneurship—from a radical perspective that says we don’t have to choose between social justice values and being successful.

Tristan was named one of Yoga Journal’s 2021 Game Changers and they were awarded the Reclamation Ventures grant in Spring 2021 to expand their offerings and dedicate time to writing their first book, title forthcoming.

They are proud to sit on the Board of Directors at Accessible Yoga—a non-profit working, through education and advocacy, to share the teachings and benefits of yoga with those who have been marginalized, and to identify and remove barriers to access, build strong networks, and advocate for an accessible, equitable, and dynamic yoga culture.

In this powerful episode we discuss:

Grief and Loss
Ongoing grief
Cultural expectations about how one should grieve
Remembering those we have lost
Grief Rituals
Rituals of Remembrance
How to be our authentic selves amid traversing grief
Holding space with others
Allowing ourselves to be held, seen, and witnessed
The expansive nature of ancestors
Communication from the ancestral realm
Altars
Heartbreak
Spiritual practice

You can connect with Tristan on their website and on Instagram @tristankatzcreative

Follow their podcast with Lauren Roberts: @alltfinpodcast 

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Jenée Johnson, Program Innovation Leader, Mindfulness, Trauma and Racial Healing, pioneered and leads the unique effort to bring mindfulness into public health practices and programs though the Trauma Informed Systems of Care Initiative in the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Her goal is to improve the organization’s ability to manage change, stay resilient, inspire growth, and become a mindful culture that leads and serves with compassion.

Her work has been featured in various publications, including Mindful Magazine as the cover story in the October 2019, in the Fall 2020 issue as a leader in the mindfulness movement, and in 2021 Mindful Special Edition - The Gratitude Journal.

Jenée is the Founder and Curator of The Right Within Experience, a mindfulness immersion program that reclaims humanity, joy, and wellbeing for people of African ancestry through mindfulness practices. These are the human rights and exalted emotions that are eroded in Black lives through the consistent exposure to the trauma of racism. The Right Within Experience expands the scope of mindful practice to acknowledge its ancient African lineage and increase access and relevance to people of African ancestry. The program promotes healing and sovereignty for Black people and is curated for those on the front line of community service, social justice missions, and Black business leaders. 

For 15 years, Jenée served as the Director of the San Francisco Black Infant Health Program, a program which provides direct service to Black pregnant women and new mothers to address the health disparities in infant and maternal mortality. 

Jenée is a professional co-active coach and certified trainer and practitioner in mindfulness and emotional intelligence based on the latest neuroscience. She is a HeartMath certified trainer, Emotional Emancipation Circles Facilitator (Association of Black Psychologists) and certified to teach Femme! A meditative movement and wellness modality for women. She is a keynote speaker, work shop curator, coach, and consultant with Sankofa Holistic Counseling Services in Oakland, and on the advisory board of Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. 

Jenée is a native New Yorker with Caribbean and Southern roots. She resides in Oakland with her husband and young adult son.

In this interview we discuss:

Liberation
Flourishing
Joy as a Birthright
Blackness
Black culture
The Myth of Race
Mindfulness
Emotional Intelligence
Ancestors
The Human Experience
Finding Refuge
Grief
Resilience
A Stake in Love
Love

Connect with Jenée on her website or on Instagram @jeneegjohnson

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Tanisha Hubbard-Hood, or Tan (they/them/she), is a caregiver, solo-parent, movement instructor, Yoga student and aspiring activist. While the physical practice of yoga is what drew them to the mat, it was the calling of something deeper that led to the decision to complete a YTT. The introduction of the 8-limbed path during training was the starting point of their curiosity of the intersection of yoga and social justice. Forever a student of the practice, Tan is always eagerly seeking out spaces where crucial conversations around accessible wellness and movement are being held. This includes completing workshops/programs for Yoga For 12-Step Recovery, Accessible Yoga, and Skill in Action. Their deep practice of self-study is heavily inspired/influenced by other community members and teachers and in the ways that they bravely show up and share their stories. The current question(s) on Tan's mind: How can I acknowledge/heal all the trauma and dysfunction that I have inherited and in turn transform my lineage? Or, another way to frame that question - how do I alleviate my own suffering so the ones who come after me don't take that on as well? Given my current situation/social location, what is my role?

In this discussion we talk about:

Ancestors
Healing Our Bloodline
Parenting
Raising Liberated Beings
Harm and Repair
Holding Space
What it Means to be a Caregiver 
Boundaries
Spiritual Practice
Self-care
Humanity
Truth Telling 
Community 
Dreams

Connect with Tan here or on Instagram @tantheyogi

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Madison Page was the founder of Core to Coeur, a curated marketplace and community for taking and teaching movement, wellness, and fitness classes over live video. Birthed from a virtual Pilates business built on Squarespace in 2017, C2C grew into a larger movement to democratize wellness for all people. Madison's expertise is in building impact-driven businesses, community building, content marketing, and marketing strategy.  She is also the co-host of Stretched! a podcast about inclusive wellness powered by Core to Coeur with Liz Getman. She is a fully certified Pilates instructor, specializing in rehabilitation, functional movement, and post-partum exercise. Currently, she is creating a body of daily poetry writings called Ditties.

In a previous life, Madison worked as a choreographer and performance artist and has made/performed in work for The Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Film Center at Lincoln Center (New York), and in 2017 as an artist in residence at New Expressive Works (Portland)  where she performed an autobiographical duet she made for her and her mom.

In this conversation we discuss:

Dissolving a Business
Grief
Transition
What it means to end something in an honorable way
Astrology-Aquarius and Leo
Laboring
Birthing
Entrepreneurship
Recuperating
Rest
Remembering Old Practices
The Nervous system unwinding 
Technology
Reframing how we think of failure
Reorientating
Celebrating what we create 

Connect with Madison Page on her website and on Instagram @madisonpagemoves

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Octavia Raheem has received national attention for her work training yoga teachers and diversifying the yoga and wellness industry. Trained and mentored by exemplary teachers, Dr.Gail Parker, Tracee Stanley, Chanti Tacoronte- Perez, Octavia’s work as a yoga professional focuses on practical tools to teach individuals how to manage stress, anxiety, and fatigue through restorative yoga, Yoga Nidra, and meditation in a way that is accessible to all levels/abilities, and restorative to the nervous system. Her work has been featured on Yoga Journal, Mantra Magazine, Well+ Good CNN, WXIA, and Atlanta Magazine.

Octavia is a yoga teacher with 14 years of experience and nearly 10,000 hours of leading yoga classes, immersions, and trainings in various settings and online. In September 2019, she was named one of four Yoga and Wellness luminaries who have transformed yoga in Atlanta by Natural Awakening Magazine. A legacy lululemon ambassador and current KiraGrace Warrior, she has led life-changing restorative yoga experiences at national and local festivals: Wanderlust, Love. Play. Shine (formally Asheville Yoga), Essence Wellness House {Atlanta}, and Dirty South.

She has an academic background in English Literature and creative writing, 10+ years of professional experience teaching writing and language arts in K-12 settings, and developing curricula for innovative learning. Additionally, she spent two years working in the nonprofit sector designing and implementing college preparatory programming.

With 10+ years of teaching in the public and nonprofit sector and 14+ years teaching yoga Octavia brings unparalleled professionalism, mindfulness, and depth to the study and practice of yoga whether she is leading classes, retreats, or training teachers.

In this special interview we discuss:

Pause, Rest, Be: Stillness Practices for Courage During Times of Change, Octavia’s new book 
The gift of reclamation
The beauty of resting
Endings, the Liminal Space, and Beginnings
Coming back to our humanness 
Simple rest practices
How pausing and resting can help us heal
Grief
Claiming roles such as author, writer, lover, etc. 
How grind culture buries parts of who we are
The practice of remembering
What we can remember when we rest
Humanity
Wholeness

You can connect with Octavia visit her website or on Instagram @octaviaraheem.

Purchase the audiobook or print version of Pause, Rest, Be: Stillness Practices for Courage During Times of Change. You can also purchase Octavia’s first book, Gather.

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator and yoga teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah. He leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a yoga teacher with 20 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and runs the Resonance mentorship program for certified yoga teachers to find their niche and calling.  In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience and received Yoga Journal's Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016. Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, non-profit and business offices, a maximum-security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. He lives with his three best teachers, his partner, his toddler, and his wily dog. Jacoby just released his first book, A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation. 

In this special interview we discuss:

A Queer Dharma
The Four Brahma Viharas
Loving-kindness 
Compassion 
Equanimity 
Joy
Anger
Discharging anger
Acceptance
What it means to be trans at this time.
Dharma
Devotion
Black Feminism
Accountability
Combatting white supremacy and the right role for white folks 
Anti-racism
Transphobia
Liberation
Grace
Engaging in a practice for the long haul

You can connect with Jacoby on his website or Instagram @jacobyballard

Order Jacoby’s book here: A Queer Dharma

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Reggie's yoga and meditation journey was born of curiosity; forged in adversity and has become a lesson in surrender to the miracles that exist in commitment to personal peace and wellbeing.   Adopting yogic discipline has saved his life and he is committed to sharing these practices far and wide to help others - regardless of their race, identity, orientation or economic status.  He has studied extensively with many amazing teachers along the way - ever mindful that the best teacher is the eternal student.

 Reggie is a 500 hour certified yoga teacher and the founder/Chief Serving Officer of Active Peace Yoga.  Through Active Peace Yoga, he offers asana and meditation classes to help others nurture peace of mind, creativity, equanimity in spirit and physical health - helping people nurture well-being as foundational, rather than an afterthought.   His practice combines mindfulness, yogic philosophy, somatic awareness, refined concentration and discipline to help his students approach life with more ease and balance.  

As part of his studies, he has authored a thesis entitled, "Yoga and Spiritual Activism:  Serving Humanity from a Sense of Devotion and Love and has also been a featured speaker on new consciousness, racial justice and civic engagement for leading wellness publications, podcasts and platforms (CTZNWell, Wanderlust, the Be Here Now Network, the Hanuman Academy, Yoga Alliance, Upaya Zen Center among others).  

In this very special episode we talk about: 

Personal Peace and Well-being
Activism 
White Supremacist Norms
Speaking Truth to Power
The Power of Practice
Dharma
The Political Landscape
Truth-telling
Finding Refuge Through the Practice of Yoga
Grief and Loss
Uplifting the Things People Would Rather Keep Hidden 
Sangha
The Times are Asking us to be Engaged
Transformation
Resonance
Ancestors 
Dancing with Swords
Peace
Discipline
Devotion 
The journey into Teaching the Dharma

You can connect with Reggie on his website or on Instagram @oreggieglobal

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Wambui Njuguna-Räisänen is a Kenyan-American based in Finland, passionate about making wellness through yoga and meditation seamlessly engaged in equity and justice so that more people of the global majority can live well and thrive. Wambui is deeply inspired by spiritual teachers and communities that seek ways to apply the insights from our various practices and teachings to situations of social, racial, political, environmental and economic suffering and injustice. She would like to see wellness spaces engage more in social justice + collective change and activist spaces learn to breathe deeply and practice sustainable self-care in the midst of dismantling systemic oppression. This is her definition of community care.

In this interview we discuss:

Dedication to a Yoga Practice
Ancestors
Listening to the Ancestors
Medicine
Tending the Heart
How Spiritual Practice Changes Over Time
Black and Brown Solidarity in the Wellness Community
Healing the Past Present and Future
Letting go of the Need to be Productive
Slowing Down
Resting
Healing Trauma
Resilience
Collective Healing
Collective Care

To learn more about Wambui and her offerings, visit her website, Patreon and Instagram @wellnesswithwambui.

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement. Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.

Alexis is the founder of Brilliance Remastered, an online network and series of retreats and online intensives serving community accountable intellectuals and artists in the legacies of Audre Lorde’s profound statement in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” that the preceding statement is “only threatening to those…who still think of the master’s house as their only source of support.”  Through retreats on ancestor accountable intellectual practice, and online courses on topics from anger as a resource to transnational intellectual solidarity Alexis and her Brilliance Remastered collaborators have nurtured a community of thinkers and artists grounded in the resources that normative institutions ignore.  

All of Alexis’s work is grounded in a community building ethic and would not be possible without her communities of accountability in Durham, NC the broader US Southeast and the global south.  As a co-founder member of UBUNTU A Women of Color Survivor-Led Coalition to End Gendered Violence, Warrior Healers Organizing Trust and Earthseed Land Collective in Durham, NC,  a member of the first visioning council of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Network and a participant in Southerners on New Ground, Allied Media Projects, Black Women’s Blueprint and the International Black Youth Summit for more than a decade she brings a passion for the issues that impact oppressed communities and an intimate knowledge of the resilience of movements led by Black, indigenous, working class women and queer people of color. Her writings in key movement periodicals such as Make/Shift, Left Turn, The Abolitionist, Ms. Magazine, and the collections Abolition Now, The Revolution Starts at Home, Dear Sister and the Transformative Justice Reader have offered clarity and inspiration to generations of activists.

Alexis work with her primary collaborator Sangodare has shown the world a Queer Black Feminist Love Ethic in practice.  Over the past 11 years they have nurtured the Mobile Homecoming Project, an experiential archive amplifying generations of Black LGBTQ Brilliance which has consisted of listening tour of the United States (in a 1988 Winnebago!) 7 intergenerational retreats and pilgrimages in the Southeast US, a media and audio archive of many Black Feminist LGBTQ elders and is now in the land stewardship phase of building a living library and archive that serves as an all ages independent and assisted living community of intergenerational learning and love.   Sangodare and Alexis are also the co-founders of Black Feminist Film School, an initiative to screen, study and produce films with a Black feminist ethic.  Sangodare and Alexis have also collaborated on the exhibition Breathing Back at the Carrack Gallery in Durham, NC and more than 50 visits to campuses, organizations and conferences in the United States.  

Alexis was honored by the Anguilla Literary Festival as “The Pride of Anguilla,” a small country where her grandparents Jeremiah and Lydia Gumbs played key roles in the 1967 revolution.   She identifies proudly as a queer Caribbean author and scholar in the tradition of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, M. Jacqui Alexander, Dionne Brand and many more. She was the first scholar to research in the papers of Audre Lorde at Spelman College, June Jordan, M. Jacqui Alexander, Dionne Brand and many more. She was the first scholar to research in the papers of Audre Lorde at Spelman College, June Jordan at Harvard University and Lucille Clifton at Emory University during her research for her PhD in English, African and African American Studies and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University.  She is published in dozens of edited collections and academic journals on topics ranging from black coding practices to queer caribbean poetics, to mothering in hip hop culture.  She speaks as a Black feminist expert in a number of films including Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth by Pratibha Parmar.

Alexis’s poetry and fiction appears in many creative journals and has been honored with inclusion in Best American Experimental Writing, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and honors from the Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize and the Firefly Ridge Women of Color Award.  She has been poet-in-residence at Make/Shift Magazine and is currently Creative Writing Editor at Feminist Studies. 

Alexis’s work as a media maker and her curricula for participatory digital education have been activated in 143 countries.  Her digital distribution initiative BrokenBeautiful Press, her work as co-founder of Quirky Black Girls and her loving participation in the Women of Color Bloggers Network in the early 2000’s established her as one of the forerunners of the social media life of feminist critical and creative practice.   Alexis has been honored with many awards from her communities of practice including being lifted up on lists such as UTNE Readers 50 Visionaries Transforming the World, The Advocate’s 40 under 40, Go Magazines 100 Women We Love, the Bitch 50 List, ColorLines 10 LGBTQ Leaders Transforming the South, Reproductive Justice Reality Check’s Sheroes and more.  She is a proud recipient of the Too Sexy for 501C-3 trophy, a Black Women’s Blueprint Visionary Award and the Barnard College Outstanding Young Alumna Award. 

From 2017-2019, Alexis served as visiting Winton Chair at University of Minnesota where she collaborated with Black feminist artists in the legacy of Laurie Carlos to create collaborative performances based on her books Spill and M Archive.  During that time she served as dramaturg for the award winning world premiere of Sharon Bridgforth’s Dat Black Mermaid Man Lady directed by Ebony Noelle Golden. 

Alexis is currently in residence as a National Humanities Center Fellow, funded by the Founders Award.   During her residency she is writing The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: Biography as Ceremony (forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Her book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals is a series of from Marine Mammals is a series of meditations based on the increasingly relevant lessons of marine mammals in a world with a rising ocean levels and part of adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy Series at AK Press.

In this interview we discuss:

Collective Care
Love
Interconnectedness
Audre Lorde
Marine Mammals
The Breath
Lessons we are Learning about Love
Distance and Love
Intergenerational Medicine
Love and Care Across Distance
Ancestors
Miracles 
Ritual
Practice
Devotion
Reverence

Connect with Alexis Pauline Gumbs on her website or on Instagram @alexispauline

Podcast music by Charles Kurtz

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