On June 12 2023, the generative somatics (gs) community gathered for a webinar conversation about gs methodology in practice in social and climate justice movements. Three years of a global pandemic and many intersecting crises have fundamentally changed how people work and live and therefore the needs of movement leaders and communities. We dug into how gs practitioners/teachers are creatively evolving the practice of politicized somatics to meet those changing needs. This webinar was facilitated by Che Johnson-Long with fellow gs teachers/practitioners, B. Stepp, Erika Lyla, and Eliana Rubin.
Check out: www.generativesomatics.org
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If everyone who RSVP'd for this webinar donated $35, gs could raise over $20,000. If $35 is not easeful for you to give away, no amount is too small, and also your participation is enough. But if $35 is easeful for you to contribute, please consider giving that amount or more. Please also consider matching your donation to gs movement partners: Asian Pacific Environmental Network (apen4ej.org) and Women on the Rise (womenontherisega.org).
Webinar speaker BIOS:
Che Johnson-Long (Facilitator): Che is a Queer Community Organizer, Security Practitioner, and Somatics Teacher working to build a world without prisons or police. She is the Community Safety Education Coordinator at Vision Change Win. She also serves as a Board member of Sur Legal Collaborative, Third Wave's Accountable Futures Fund Advisory Council, and Generative Somatics’ Advisory Council. Before this Che was the Director of Decarceration Strategies at the Racial Justice Action Center, co-created the Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative in Atlanta, and was the Program Coordinator of the Safe OUTside the System Collective of the Audre Lorde Project. She holds a Juris Doctorate from Georgia State University, comes from a long line of Blues music lovers, and calls Atlanta, Ga home.
B. Stepp (they/them): B is a somatic practitioner, facilitator, teacher, and community organizer living on unceded Duwamish/Coast Salish land/so-called Seattle, WA. B’s healing lineage includes 13 years of ongoing practice with generative somatics, an active vipassana meditation practice, participation in Black liberation movements in the U.S. and around the world, movements committed to abolition and transformative justice, tenant organizing, anti-imperialist struggle, western psychotherapy and nutrition, and their many lived experiences (and those of their working class ancestors) as a Black and white mixed race, queer, nonbinary person.
Erika Lyla: Erika is an activist, clinical social worker, somatics practitioner, and bodyworker. She is living out her purpose in this life by guiding people and communities along a path of self-exploration and healing. She has been teaching and facilitating for over 15 years with a focus on emotional growth, radical self-love, healing intergenerational trauma, and collective liberation. Erika holds a Master's degree in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. She is a teacher at generative somatics and Strozzi Institute, as well as a member of the Black Practitioner program with The Embodiment Institute.
Eliana Rubin: Eliana is a queer ashkenazi anti-zionist jewish femme living on Yesah land in Durham, North Carolina. They facilitate multi-racial, cross-class healing groups which have become core to their movement philosophy of creating scalable change and transformation across communities. They also work with couples, friends, and other relationships looking for support in conflict, connection, and transitions. Eliana is committed to transgressive beauty and pleasure through embodied connections to land and lineage. Learn more at www.sanctuaryembodied.org or @Sanctuary_Embodied on IG.