on being self-responsive…

How we do something is not separate from what we’re doing. In fact, I’d argue that it’s the larger part of what we’re doing. For those of us who have experienced compulsory education in the global north, we have been deeply trained from a young age to sit still + be quiet, + to be obedient + compliant workers + consumers. This training requires us to override our needs + limits: physically, emotionally, mentally, relationally + spiritually. This training is so deep that many of us become up desensitized to the signals that let us know we have encountered a need or limit.

To that end, I invite you into a process that encourages you to decondition from that training. When you encounter a prompt, question or practice that feels like a no—or even that just doesn’t feel like a yes—I urge you to honor that. After all: one person’s skillful invitation to an insight is another person’s trigger. Not everything is for everyone. We all have different experiences + relationships to prompts + practices that involve the body, the breath, physical activity, intensity, creativity + sexuality.

Let your engagement with my work be a portal into noticing, honoring, toning, refining + deepening your relationship to your sacred, specific + idiosyncratic intuition. Let it be a sloughing off of others’ expectations, of perfection + everything else that gets in the way of you sitting in your own seat. Let it be a balm on the wound of all the maladaptive + genius ways we have learned to survive within a violent, death-making culture.

This is not a time to be obedient, to outsource your intuition, or defer to authorities outside of your own experience + the communities you are connected + accountable to. I invite you to use your engagement with my classes, spaces + cohorts to plant seeds for the next world, one micro-moment at a time...+ to discover ever more deeply what that means for you.

—this text was generated in The Symbolic Lab with my friend + conspirator shea in the catskills