Ailey Jolie, Speaker 2 (00:06.252)

Welcome to In This Body, podcast where we dive deep into the potent power of embodiment. I'm your host, Ailee Jolie, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life fully from the wisdom within your very own body.

The podcast in this body is a love letter to embodiment, podcast dedicated to asking important questions like how does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And how can collective embodiment alter the course of our shared world? Join me for consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own body.

This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailee Jolie.

Welcome back to another episode of In This Body. Today I'm honored to be joined by Dr. Roger Kuhn, a Port Creek, Two-Spirit, Indigi Queer, Therapist, Activist, Artist, and Somacultural Theorist. Dr. Kuhn brings a unique perspective to the conversation on body, identity, and culture. Raised on a farm in North Dakota, Dr. Kuhn grew up with an interracial background. His mother is Native American and his father is white.

Through his upbringing, he learned to navigate the complexities of both his biracial and bicultural identity and experience that would shape much of his work and personal philosophy. Dr. Kuhn is the author of Somal Cultural Liberation, a groundbreaking approach that explores the intersections of cultural identity and the body. As a two-spirited person, he draws on the personal experiences of both racism and homophobia to inform his therapeutic

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practice, believing in the deeply liberating power of embracing one's authentic sexual self. With a passion for healing, he is deeply committed to helping others reconnect with their bodies, break free from societal constraints, and find empowerment through self-expression. In addition to his clinical work, Dr. Kuhn is a board member and community organizer with the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits, Powwow, a board member of the Two Spirit Native LGBTQ Plus Center for Equity. Today, we're diving into the Somo-Cultural Lens of Liberation.

and the power of embodiment alongside creativity. Dr. Kuhn, I'm thrilled to have you on the podcast. Welcome to In This Body, the podcast with me, Ailee Jolie.

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So to begin our time together today, the first question I would love to hear your answer to is, what does being in your body mean to you?

To be in my body is more than just a sensation, though that is a big part of it. There's the actual feeling of being in my body, right? And then there's the understanding of my body in relation to space around me, and then also my body in relation to other things like people, my dog. And so all of those together incorporate not only like the sensation piece, but also the feeling piece and also the

the intellectual and or the curious piece as well. And to be embodied or to be in my body in that way means I'm in relationship with these parts of myself consciously.

How do you feel the relationship or being in your body consciously led you to what is now probably one of my like top five somatic books? I've been there. was like, there's so many juicy yummy pieces in there that I was like, yes. How do you feel like the relationship you have with your body or being in your body led you to write the book, Somaculture Liberation? Big question, I know.

Well, you know, I've had to come to understand my body that is different than other bodies. I've been told pretty much my entire life that my body was different in some way, whether that was how people identified me as from any different sort of category that you could put on someone. And then again, also noticing that, I look different than this person or how that person, that person's family looks different than my family.

Dr Roger Kuhn, Speaker 1 (04:24.662)

And so part of that is really understanding how I grew up, where I grew up, when I grew up really impacted the way that I felt in my body. And that to me was all cultural. That's a cultural thing. And because I also really love anthropology, I just started thinking about, well, the body, of course, is always

impacted by culture with everything that we do. And so if I grow up in a culture that I'm sure we're going to talk about this in a moment that I call like a dominant culture that necessarily isn't mine, the way I've learned how to navigate my way through it, that's a different way to be in relationship with my body versus if I was of that culture in what I would call normative way.

I may not feel the way that I feel and that could be anything from elation to constriction. And when I really began to understand the difference and be able to name it and say, this is the experience that I'm having, it gave me a sense of expansiveness in my own body. And when I started to talk to other clinicians or theorists about it and eventually started talking to clients about it and now writing a book about it,

It just makes the most sense to me about how I understand the world around me from that somatic or from that body perspective.

going to put you on the spot because I want to hear why you personally perceive the realm of culture when we talk about somatics has been neglected. I have my ideas, but I would love to hear from you what you've noticed in the field knowing you are an expert and in many ways one of few voices really talking about how culture lives in the body, impacts the body, will allow or disallow us to have a sense of embodiment.

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why do you feel like this piece has been missing? Because to me it's so self-evident, but I know that that's not always the case.

Yeah, I think the field, the field of somatics for a very long time has been able to bypass culture. Because it comes from a similar field, like most healing modalities that we know in the West are developed from other modalities. And oftentimes those modalities come from people that were displaced or conquered or

there's an aspect of taking with that. The somatics field is really no different. They have taken different ideologies from different cultures around the world and repackaged them, given them a different name, and now they're doing this thing. And so part of that is like it's been able to be ignored because also there was a time when to speak of the body, maybe this is also still the case, to speak of the body was such a privilege. To be able to go off for a weekend and

and just think about your body when so many people, and this is true for today too, so many people are still surviving. To think of the body is such a privilege. So you've already got that as one privilege so you can bypass all this other stuff. And then when folks like myself come into the world and go, yeah, this is great. mean, y'all are definitely, definitely onto something that my ancestors have been talking about for quite some time or your ancestors, what have you, right? And it's also

this moment of, and this is also missing. And here's how I understand it's missing. And here's how, when this is bypassed, these, what could feel like very heavy subject matters that I oftentimes write about or have the privilege to speak about, when we bypass those, it makes bodies like mine have no choice but to constrict, if I'm going to share a space with you, because it says to me,

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you are either unwilling or so blissfully, ignorantly unaware of what could possibly cause me to constrict that I have no choice but to stay there. It's a different kind of assimilation that I find certain folks are a little too familiar with and in certain regards, know, with certain folks like have the privilege to like really not even think about, right? And, and my work,

Not only, I don't want to say challenges that, though it says to somatics like, hey, the body is also this. And there's a way in which many bodies at one time have experienced something. And that's why I think it's so important to talk about culture too. And my work specifically comes from the lens of who I am as a person, right? And so I also am someone that has gone through a somatic psychology program as a graduate student.

I'm also someone that used to teach somatic psychotherapy in a graduate level student program. So I have this sort of unique experience in the world of like what was missing. Part of that is like, you gotta get these students through a certain rigor to get them to pass some licensing exam if they wanna be therapists. And at the same time, we can also slow down and go, hey, there's this piece missing. I do think that there are folks in the field similar to myself who are

encouraging that we really change the dialogue and be more inclusive of culture. So I have a lot of hope for where the field has the potential to go.

I have that same hope and I would love to unpack a little bit more the statement that you made around embodiment being a privilege. That is of all the privileges I have of which are many. That is the one that I am most, I would say it's so foundational. Like that privilege is something that every day I'm grateful for.

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with

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and I notice the moments in which it's taken from me and the moments in which I have to sacrifice it to be safe or to move through certain spaces. But I often hear in the somatics field or just in my own office, I hear my clients say, like, I wish I could be more embodied or I don't know how to connect to myself. And there's like this self judgment and this blame. And yet it is such a privilege. And it's not one that's afforded to everyone.

Love to hear you speak more to that because that isn't something I often hear in the somatic realm, even though it's something that's really deep in my mind and something I think about on a daily basis.

What comes to mind when I think about this in a way is how embodiment as we know it from the Western United States lens has a look to it. It has an association with it, meaning it's supposed to look like a yoga studio. It's supposed to look like a meditation pose. It's supposed to look light and breezy and airy and all of these things.

And that is one way that embodiment can look. So if you grow up in a culture of comparison, you will compare yourself to what is the most common known way to be that thing. And so if you're not that, if you're not the yoga doer, meditator, you may think you're not embodied. And

So there is a lot of folks walking around who are just kind of up here because they themselves have limited their own perspective of what it means to be and to practice embodiment. And so I believe that we just have to first off welcome a changed narrative of what that looks like because embodiment is a feeling. It's not a look. You can spend a lot of money to look embodied.

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You know, like there's a funny phrase that Dolly Parton says, you know, it costs a lot of money to look this cheap. You know, I've often thought of that an embodied way that it costs a lot of money to look this relaxed. And that's just because that's the narrative that we have been fed that embodied is this. Though, you know, I may not like understand the call to say,

be a farmer in my own life. That is my family's history. I come from that. Though I never felt that call myself, though I do remember times when I would be out on the field with either my dad or my grandfather or something, and they had this reverence to the land in a way that felt very like, okay. Now in hindsight, I'm like, they were very embodied in that moment. And we could say, well, they were meditating with the land, perhaps.

but it certainly didn't look like a yoga studio, you know, and there's something about that for me that it's necessary to then just challenge that idea of embodiment can be so many things, surfers, right? We can think about that moment they're on the wave or even to watch a gymnast, you know, to move their body in space in a particular way. I think I love watching musicians when they're

in a moment singing live and there's this embodiment to what they're doing. There's so many ways to look at that and to expand that, that that's my first offer of what I, when you shared that query that I was like, it has to do a lot with the look versus the feel. Yeah.

As you're speaking to that, actually, some words in your book run through my mind. And in your book, you talk about how capitalism teaches us to disconnect and how capitalism leads us to a sense of disembodiment. And what was going through my mind is I started this podcast because I saw so much of somatics being presented as this very relaxed, bougie thing. And I was like, you don't need to spend that much money to like...

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know how to feel and breathe in your body. Like it doesn't have to look like that. And I would love to just hear a little bit more from you around the relationship between capitalism, embodiment, capitalism and disconnection and how this is playing out in how people understand somatics or being in their body or what it feels like to be in their body. because I know in my own psyche and the psyche of my clients, some of somatics has been co-opted.

into this one presentation that is deeply rooted in capitalism, which I know disconnects me. And yet she looks really relaxed over there and I want to do those things too.

Yeah. Well, you know, I really love this book by Sonia Renee Taylor, The Body is Not an Apology. I love that book. And she talks in that book about the body prophet shame complex. And when you when you sort of apply that to the body and the things that we do to the body, then I might think, well, this morning, I before this call, I

I took a shower, though I did all these things. Like I may have used a particular kind of shampoo and conditioner and a body wash. I did shave this morning, that meant afterwards I put this on. So now I'm already at like 10 things that I could argue were used to make me feel more embodied if I'm more clean shaven, if I'm more presentable to you, am I more centered in my body in that particular way? I don't know.

if that's true or not, these products have really helped me not even really worry about it. And those products are linked to a story about if you present yourself to a human being in this format that you and I are doing right now, I perhaps will be more presentable, more likable to you if I show up in a particular way. And in order to do that, it requires me to do things that maybe aren't so natural, putting a product in my hair to slick it back a certain way or...

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you know, applying an aftershave conditioner so that my skin stays smooth or supple or whatever it may be. We could sort of have that conversation and sort of that's what I like about summer cultural liberation is it invites this invitation to kind of shake things up and say, well, yeah, capitalism impacts how we show up in this particular way. And if I want to look good, I'm told I have to do this thing. And it's the quickest way to get what I want out of a situation.

by following along with this thing. Some folks we could say take that to what we could look at and go like, that's sort of the spectrum that is very loud, know, folks that maybe do any kind of body modification as part of wanting to look a certain way so they can feel a certain way. That's what's interesting about like embodiment is that it's again, this look that leads to a feel. And I would

I would sort of love and maybe this is what I'm striving for in my life is to sort of feel first and then base it on and then go how I look is based on that. Though we live in a culture where it's like look at look this way first or if you had this thing or if your body did this or if your hair was not as silver as mine right then then you would feel different you would feel better.

And I think that's how capitalism is linked to all of this and how I put things on my body or you put things on your body or we dress in certain ways to appease kind of ourselves so it's easier to be out in public in some way.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but as I'm hearing you speak, one thing that's going through my mind is, and it comes from my own history, but this process of self-objectification as a way to change my state or change my frame of mind. And that's kind of, as you were speaking, I was like, yeah, like the role of objectification, which can lead us, I don't know. Do you think that is like similar to a sense of embodiment or do you kind of feel little different? I want to look back into my history and when I was modeling, I'm like,

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full self-objectification land. like, it felt good, but it does not necessarily feel how I feel after I come out of a yoga class. It's a little bit of a different, interceptive quality. Does that make sense to you? Does that land?

A question that I almost have before that is, what permissions have we sort of given ourselves to feel and how, right? So sometimes we privilege certain kinds of movements or certain kinds of ways of being over others so that I'm going to privilege going to a yoga class as opposed to going to have a fast food dinner or something like that. I'm going to privilege these sort of ways or behaving.

that maybe I feel more alive and or I feel more embodied when I do this versus when I do this. And that very well may be true, though, I think part of what happens to any of us then is that if I've, if I've only sort of allowed myself the space in a yoga class to have that full deepened experience, I forget that it's also possible in a conversation with a friend or, you know, on a walk by myself or listening to my favorite song.

Because we've, we've, we've in our minds would have had this hierarchy of where and how these things are accessible to us. And again, that that I think is also part of this larger cultural narrative that we've been fed around. Well, if you seek in if you seek embodiment, or you seek enlightenment, follow these steps. Sometimes it's a course you can buy, right? And sometimes it's, you know, and so my cultural liberation is a book that people can buy. And so there's

There's a part that I'm recognizing, well, I'm also part of the system, right? And it's the system I live in. So if I never wanted to, or how else am I gonna share this idea? I could just do it on Instagram, though that means that I'm expecting you to have access to Instagram through many things, technology, Wi-Fi, all the things. There's always these systems.

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how we use the system is what I'm really curious about even for my own self and how do I take this work that I've, I'm so investigated in, invested in because I've investigated so much of my own self into it. How do I take that and use it in a way that is going to be for positive while also still being in a system.

For someone who is new to the idea of systems living inside their body, where would you invite them to first start being curious? Or what systems do you feel like their awareness needs to be most aware of so that they can start to ask themselves these types of questions around embodiment and I'm in this system and the system is impacting me this way. Is this coming from inside? Is this coming from outside?

Are there some ones that really pop to your mind?

two sort of ways I think about it, like micro and macro, right? So like my microclimate is my family of origin, which can be primary caregivers or however you may have been raised in the world. And that includes like these larger sort of circles as we grow from our school friends to our current friends, our chosen, our creative families today, what have you. And then we have that larger macro.

that we also belong to. And that encompasses a lot of things from, if we take the United States as an example, you know, what state are you from? What part of the state are you from? Are you rural? Are you a big city? Are you, you tribal? Do you live on a reservation? There are all of these sort of ways that, that can sometimes be the more macro perspective of where someone lives. So I usually say to folks like, start with what's, what feels easiest to you. Does it feel easier for you to talk about

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kind of the world outside of you as opposed to starting with yourself. Starting with the self can be very, very evocative for some folks. So we start in a larger sort of way, like, where did you grow up? Tell me about that. What was your experience like growing up there? Everyone was exactly like you, right? And so sometimes you can learn a lot about someone's experience by where they grew up, what part of the world they grew up.

you know, the regional aspects of things that starts to give folks a nuanced understanding of like, that's culture right there. And so if you say grew up in, like I did in rural North Dakota, and then suddenly find yourself on the streets of Manhattan and New York City, well, this is, this is very different in my body, had very different reactions to this expansive.

kind of way I grew up around a lot of fields in my periphery to suddenly moving someplace that at an early age and then and then feeling this sensation of wow this there's a whole new opening here and that that that's part of like I think really understanding my own self in that way is it like well I have these experiences so others must also have similar experiences a sort of trace

Because it's also very interesting to me. I recently was back in North Dakota over the summer and I met up with some friends from high school. It was one of our reunions and some of them hadn't really left the region. And I thought, I wonder how I would be different if I hadn't left North Dakota when I did and moved to New York City and then eventually moved to California.

How would I be different if I didn't have these other exposures to other ways of being in the world? That what if the body never discovers I can be that open or I can be that liberated or I don't know what that's like because I've just been seeking that really ever since I can remember as a child I've been seeking how can I feel more free in this body? Yeah.

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I love what you said there. And I was like, oh, I noticed a small little tear because you really touched on the essence of embodiment being inspired by the presence of being around other bodies that have that type of liberation in their own system. And therefore it's showing our system in an unconscious way, our body, all of that stuff inside that there's another possibility of being. And for me, that's like,

everything that I do, that I aspire to do. And I really heard it in your book in like subtle ways and explicit ways too, but this idea about liberation always being about the body and liberation only existing because bodies have been oppressed. And I would love to spend some time getting into what exactly you mean to that about in that statement, because there's so many different pieces there. You can start wherever you'd like. I know it's a big question.

Well, I know that liberation is dangerous. That is very important that we mention that liberation exists because oppression exists. So to free ourselves from oppression is dangerous because it means that I have to confront someone or something who is in power and say to them, no more will you treat me and or others like this.

And we have seen time and time again how that becomes a threat to those in power and they try to take that person or that group down. So we've got to start sort of there to say like, it ain't easy. And that may be the collective. That may be, it's, you know, can an individual human being find liberation? I'm not sure about that. That's a

That is sort of like an existential question one would need to believe. For me personally, I sort of hold that ideology that I'm not free unless everyone's free. That's kind of my own personal perspective. Though I can get pretty damn close in my own personal life, or as close as I can, as I continue to help others who may not have the same access. So there's also that. And that to me just feels very, very important to sort of

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to recognize that like, that's why partially embodiment has been a privilege for some of us who can even study this, who can study somatic psychotherapy or who can study somatic work or modalities or go to take all these trainings that are really nice and lovely and

Where I think it's also sort of necessary to talk about is that, you know, my book also comes from this two-spirit, indigiqueer, muscogee perspective. So that's also for a native writer like myself, it's also, it feels like there's a certain exposure that I'm inviting you into with my culture.

that also feels, I guess the word that describes it is there's a heaviness to me, a heaviness to it, because likely, I imagine that perhaps you haven't read many Muskogee authors, or folks may not know a lot about Muskogee people. So suddenly it's like I become the one book of a Muskogee writer they've ever read before. And that takes on a different kind of weight, you when I'm doing the work that I'm doing, because of who I am.

And that's important for me to also name. And that's why I write from that perspective and I talk about Two-Spirit and I talk about these truths of my own background because that's how I understand this work. That's how I know from my own cultural experience that these things are challenging because I've had folks like yourself who really interested in my work.

And then I've had other folks who say, that makes no sense at all. So, you know, it's also that. Liberation also requires you to find like-minded folks who may not hold the exact same ideology, though it may be very close to say, our ideas are close enough to a mind that we can work together. And then we build from there. And that's really my hope is that as a reader, you're going to take my book and go, all right,

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I may have some of the same identities that Raj does, though for the most part we're very different in a lot of these sort of categories of our understanding. So what does it mean to me as someone who's had these lived experiences and apply it to my life? I think my work is applicable to everyone and I've just used myself as a, everyone, here's an example of what this potentially could look like.

There is a beautiful quote that is escaping my mind in this moment, but if I distill the essence of it, it goes into how when we get more specific and really honest and really intimate, we actually tap into the universal. And I felt threads of that as I was reading your book, like in these really intimate moments, you write about the experience of sexual violence and just kind of this moment of like, had this felt sense that this person was going to harm me and yet, and I was like,

so intimate, so vulnerable, so raw, and also so universal. We've all had that feeling. We all know what that is like in whatever varying experience that is. And I found that to be so beautifully written and so well done, especially when you are talking about culture, which is so highly unique and specific and personal and deserves its own attention and separateness so that it has the clarity that it should be.

held with ideally, you did this kind of really wonderful threading of both. So I was just celebrating you again. And I love to hear what that process was for you as a writer holding both. If that was something you did consciously and maybe you do hold that consciously in the work that you do or maybe it just comes from the relationship you have with your body and your own inner world.

Thanks for that question because that's a question about my writing style, which is I appreciate. I also want to name that I never really envisioned that I would write a book. know, Soma Cultural Liberation was something that I don't want to say I aspire to because I was writing other things. And so the way that I had written, probably for the past decade, it was very academic. I was going through graduate school and then from graduate school, I went almost right into my doctoral studies.

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So I'm always writing and it was writing sort of based on a prompt followed by a response to an article or any number of pages of research or something like that. So I became very, very good at that kind of writing. When I got this opportunity to write this book, I knew that I didn't want it to be academic. I didn't want it to be just for clinicians or those kinds of folks. I wanted pretty much anyone to get a chance to read it.

And so I had remembered something that a former professor of mine had said when I was an undergraduate around that most folks read at a certain level. And so if we can try to write in that way, which to me just meant that I'm just writing like I'm talking to someone. And that's what I had hoped. And because I do know, you know, fancy words like positionality and epistemology and

I know terms like somatic and what have you. Of course I included them because that's also how I talk and it's how I express myself and that's what I've liked about learning is that I've learned new ways to describe myself. So my writing became a little bit of all of it was it was a really great opportunity opportunity for me to say here's everything that I've learned about myself and about

this work, well, maybe not everything I've learned. Here's a lot of what I've learned, I should say. Here's a lot of what I've learned. And I'm to put it together in a way that I hope is approachable to folks who are curious about doing some kind of work with themselves. And I say this in the book too, that my work and my writing was just, or is just an additional way that you could be in the world and that you could deepen this inquiry with yourself. And I would say I'm still trying to figure out my writing style.

I like to think it's approachable and I've read my book and I liked it. So I guess there's that. I read it and I was like, no, it's not so bad. Sometimes I would read things and go, damn, Raj, okay. Like, you know, like I caught myself sometimes because I would get in a flow and I would get into a space where I would really feel connected to what I was writing about. And that...

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I write about that and it actually kind of opens the book about how when I would start to write from a disembodied place, I would kind of freeze up. And when I've really allowed myself to center and to ground, to include some sort of somatic practice and then go into my writing, I have so much more resonance between this thinking brain and the feeling body.

Why I wanted to ask you that question is because in my mind and in my body and in my lived experience, there's such a link between the written word and the truths that come from my fingertips and my sense of embodiment. And right at the start of the book, you did actually speak to that. And I am always just curious to hear from other authors, how they see the link between their embodiment and their

writer's voice or just their voice in general. If you feel open to sharing maybe some of the trajectory or what that has looked like or if you see a connection or feel a connection or not.

I will always call myself a songwriter first. And what I've known about songwriting is that usually I can sit down with my guitar or with a different instrument or sometimes even in the shower and I can write something that feels pretty complete. Sometimes with little as 10 minutes, I can write a song and it feels really good.

And there's something about that because I'm strumming a guitar, there's an actual physical embodiment that's happening. For me, like writing in a book way or writing a paper sort of requires a different part of me that I like, though it's maybe not as sort of natural for me. I'm much more, me the guitar and I will tell you the story that way. Though to write this way,

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requires me to, yeah, connect with myself and get a little bit of my, I like one of those folks, I get up super early in the morning and I'm ready to go. Like I'm like, what are we doing today? So I usually like exercise in the morning to kind of get this burst of energy out. If I don't do that, and I try to sit down, I will go all over the place. I really need to find a way to sort of ritualize my practice, whether that's

put on a little music, I dance a little bit or I work out beforehand. I usually light a candle before I start to write and then I set a clock timer. And I will sort of, I do that kind of writing where I do like the 20, 20, Where I'll write for 20 minutes, take a break for 20 minutes and come back for 20 minutes. And I might do that cycle for, over the course of two hours when I'm really working on something and it works wonders for me because it allows me that break to get up and stretch and move my body.

and also to honor that part of me that, yeah, this isn't so natural, this sitting still and typing in that particular way. So yeah, I always say like, songwriting comes very, very easily. And now I've written a dissertation, I've written a book, I've published several chapters, and I still haven't fully given myself that permission to really say, and you know how to write in a new way as well now. It's just a way that I get, I don't really look at myself.

like that.

Can you speak to, because you've named being a songwriter and I felt threads of it throughout your book, the role of, or the relationship between embodiment and creativity.

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Probably my favorite thing is embodiment and creativity because I feel the most embodied when I'm creative. And that can be sometimes anything from writing a song to even right now I'm working on a creative project. And so there are all these elements to it. And one of them was I had to paint something this weekend that I just felt so into and connected with when I was doing it.

Because creativity requires a sense of wonder. And wonder is a natural way to be an expansion. Whatever it is, because we can wonder in our depression, we can wonder in our grief, we can wonder in our joy, we can wonder in our sexuality. That is just the sort of act of being really, really curious.

And if I am that curious, that's a natural state for me that feels like liberation, that sense of, there's so much here, there's so much I could do. It almost feels limitless. That allows me to really get in and feel into what it is that I might want to say or create in some particular way. And then thankfully I have other people in my life who sometimes remind me that like,

this is great, you are floating so high right now. just let's talk about this thing right here, right? Because sometimes we can get, we can get so full of the expansiveness that it becomes disembodied pretty quickly too. Right? So it's like, where is that balance of allowing the creativity to be there and to take us to a really good place and then also stay connected to ourself enough to, to sort of really

that becomes a question of how badly maybe we want to implement this into the world or do something about this in the world. Like most things, it requires a balance of some kind.

Speaker 2 (40:40.162)

love that you spoke about how creativity can lead to a disassociative experience because it kind of touches on this disassociative expansive, which oftentimes just gets missed. And I would love to hear a little bit, if we bring two topics together that you wrote about, about the role of culture and creativity and how culture stops or limits certain expressions of creativity and how that leads.

perpetuates disembodiment because in my mind there's such a link like if I don't feel safe and I go back in times where I lived in places where I felt inherently unsafe there was no creativity but then as soon as I found safety again it was like just associated expensive totally ungrounded all the things and you know and then learning how to hold both and actually find what that feeling is inside so if you could

play with those topics together. I'd love to hear more from you because you write about all of them or share about all of them in different platforms and ways.

What's come to mind right now is theater kids and how I was a theater kid in high school. And there was this community of creative kids that were kind of the rejects of school. You know, we weren't the popular ones, but we were so creative. And there was something very liberating about being in that experience. Because when you were with those kids,

you were creating something usually a play or something like that you were doing with them though you were creating another world and you were creating characters and you were

Speaker 1 (42:24.206)

creating a community that for me gave me that sense of I can kind of be myself here because what's going on at home in my life wasn't good. It was bad. was rough. Though I could come here and be a part of this creative world where that didn't matter to those kids. They just wanted to participate with me in a way. And I've heard that so often about theater kids from other

friends of mine who maybe I didn't grow up with, though they were also theater kids. And there's that sense of how creativity is supported by community. And this comes from, you know, not just the creative arts. So how does a community come together creatively during a tragedy? Or when something

Challenging this has happened or is happening Creatively we do these things And when when we say to some people That the way that you want to be in your life is not good enough or doesn't look right We say to them shut that part of yourself in your body down or hide that part of your body and that of course leads to all kinds of

ways that were constricted then. And we start to learn that there's a supposed to be in the world. And that's really, you know, what I what I want to challenge for myself is like my own supposed to be. And the more that I can be embracing of my body and my identity and who I am, the more I can love those parts of my body.

creatively and you know through the eyes of a community as well.

Speaker 2 (44:25.006)

Can you speak more to the role or the importance of community in creating a connection and relationship to your body?

The way I like to talk about this is through a Muskogee concept called an Okuchiko. And in our language, that means community love. And I'm part of an organization here in San Francisco in the Bay Area called the Bay Area American Indian Two Spirits. And I'm thankful that I get to be a part of this really great event that happens every year. It happened two weeks ago, which is our annual Two Spirit Pow Wow. And I remember one time I've been on the crew for

for that powwow for a very long time. And one year I was watching the grand entry, that's when all the dancers come into the arena. I was watching it from a loft space from above and I was struck by like this, almost like this wave of what felt like warmth and love and tenderness. And it was almost like I wanted to scream, Anoka Chico, this is what it is. I've waited my whole life to sort of really fully understand this word.

And when I started to ask other Two-Spirit people, like, how do you understand love? Like, what is that like for you? Every one of them said it was all community-based. And my research with Two-Spirit people showed that, that the way in which folks felt the most connected to love was through community. And for me, like, that is how I want to be embodied in love. And I know that I cannot do that alone.

To be embodied in love requires, yes, it requires me to love myself, which is part of what my work is, unpacking all of these parts of myself so I can love them all. And then also being with others, being with other like-minded folks, whether that's like-minded in a very specific cultural way or that's like-minded because we have the same idea about the body and how it can heal and how it grants us pleasure.

Speaker 1 (46:31.126)

To me, that's the importance of creating community because when my sort of like this idea of like entrainment or like when we're on the same wavelength with each other, there's just a way that, you know, you vibe off of someone when you're either with them online like this, or when you're in person with them, it's just like, you know, we get each other and I feel safe with you and I feel like I can just be myself with you and therefore.

I feel like almost anything could be possible. That's the beauty of community that I cherish in myself, the capacity to see that and to feel that and to believe that and to also center it as necessary.

Thank you so much for that. That was, I mean, I felt that in my own body as you were talking about it. And one of, I think it was the first time where I really created that link of actually community does create a completely different sense of embodiment than any other thing that I do. Let that be holding a warm cup of tea, showing myself, self-compassion, meditating. There is that kind of inter-corporeal sense that you get when you are with.

other bodies in that way, can open something up. And I love that you brought in love into that because clinicians can sometimes be a little hesitant to talk about love. But I'm very much like, we're not showing love or doing this for love, like I don't know why we're doing it. And we decided the feeling I want to have inside myself and inspire others to have more and give more to the world. Because I know that we are ending our time together today. I would

love to ask you just one final question. If someone is new to the realm of embodiment or new to thinking of the body as something that doesn't just keep the score, that there's more going on here, what would you kind of offer them as this could be a resource, any departing wisdom for the listener who's maybe new to some of the things we spoke about today?

Speaker 1 (48:34.648)

Breath is so powerful to start with the breath, to start to feel into your breath because whenever you're in those moments of uncertainty, the breath can be there for you. And the breath is the easiest way that I can tell anyone how to get into their body. It reminds you that you're alive. And so if you're new to this work,

to just be with the breath in a way that you maybe haven't before, take some time with it, enjoy it. There's a reason we say stop and smell the roses, right? That there's something about the breath that is the easiest thing, I think, of all is just to, the moment we consciously link our breath, we are guiding ourselves toward embodiment, toward liberation. I say start with the breath.

Thank you so much for spending time with me today and sharing all of your wisdom with the listener, but just with the world. I deeply enjoyed reading your book. I felt like it was a really fresh and necessary invitation to really go deeper into how we perceive semantics and what that actually means and what we haven't been including in the conversation. So I deeply appreciate.

all of the things that you had to do and go through to be able to write a book like that because that is a process that is more than just writing. Is there anything that you have upcoming for the listener? We'll have the notes about your book and where they can find you and all those pieces, but if you're offering something, this is your chance to share about it.

Yeah, well this is sort of an exciting time for me. My book has now been out in the world for one year, just one year now, and I just got back from a really lovely workshop that I led at a place called Esalen, which is nestled here along the coast in California. So I will start offering more workshops like that. I've been in contact with a couple of other places. I was just contacted by another place to bring this work to more people.

Speaker 1 (50:47.252)

So keep an eye on my website. I will update all of my plans. I also have some music stuff going on this year. So if you're into that too, you can check them out on my website and all that information is listed there.

Thank you so much. put it all in the show notes too as well. Again, thank you so much for your time.

Speaker 2 (51:10.038)

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