Embodying Racial Justice Intro Course - Multiracial

Asheville, North Carolina
One-Day In-person Somatics Introduction

Applications are due on or before April 25, 2025
May 17, 2024
10am-6pm

Teacher:
Dara Silverman is an embodiment teacher and social change consultant whose work is based on their 25 plus years of community experience in environmental, social, and racial justice movements, 35 years of facilitation practice, and embodiment training at the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics. She may be joined by others from the ERJ teaching team.

This in-person, interactive course will build participants’ capacity, embodiment and understanding of our role inside of liberation movements in the US at this time. Participants will explore the role our bodies, the land, and our lineage(s) play in building a different future and world. Courses typically infuse a combination of neuroscience, physical movement, song, connection to nature as well as practical and theoretical grounding materials into a unique curriculum customized for changemakers.

One-day courses are typically designed as a preview of a longer forthcoming course that will take place in the same geographic area. The focus on building foundational practices and concepts as well developing as relationship building between participants.

No prior somatics experience is needed. The course may include up to 50 people.

"Being part of this cohort has felt like finally coming home, as I've discovered a missing piece in my journeys of racial justice and undoing white supremacy: the body! MY body! Our bodies, together! I feel more hopeful, feeling the palpable change that becomes more possible as we work with our literal cells and tissues, making room for new and more liberatory ways of being. And, what a tremendous gift to get to do this work in community, helping me to break through the lies white supremacy has told me about being all alone, getting to feel instead my belonging in this collectivity."                                                                                  –nicole bauman, Facilitator

Cost

This course is offered on a sliding scale. The true cost per participant is $150.

Sustainer Rate - $250+: for those who have generational or inherited wealth.

Supporter Rate - $200: for those comfortably paying their rent or mortgage and those being sponsored by an organization with sufficient budget.

Grounded Rate - $150: for those who have a regular income and are paying their mortgage or rent.

Equity Rate - $100: for those who are challenged to make ends meet.

This infographic includes more about the sliding scale tiers for consideration. 

All of this only works if everyone pays at the level they are able - not at a level lower than what they can pay. Together we can create financial balance when we each pay in alignment with our abilities. 

The registration fee pays facilitators a living wage, supports the redistribute a minimum of 20% of funds to local Black and Indigenous groups as well as Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and includes paying for the organizing and administrative support associated with the course. This also includes meals, snacks and drinks. 

Donations and sponsorships to offset the course cost for other registrants are always welcome.

This course is for you if:

✓ You want to deepen in your embodied awareness, practice and learnings from the body up 

✓ You are interested in bringing your body/Somatics into action in your work and life

✓ You are an organizer, consultant, trainer, coach, activist or changemaker -this is a place for you to be deepening and building your commitment to racial justice

Course Promises:

• More access to aliveness

• Moving towards more choice under pressure and through the contradictions of this current moment

• Deeper understanding of embodied anti-racist frameworks

Structure of the Program:

• One day of in-person practice

• Pre-work and curated reading list

• Embodied daily and weekly practices to take home

• Mid-day lunch break, and breaks in the morning and afternoon with snacks

COVID Protocols

“I found it nourishing to be physically present with a group of white people committed to anti-racism and to examining and lovingly transforming our own conditioned responses in the world. Practicing grounding exercises with others and exploring my own responses with partners, often with physical connection, opened my full body awareness more deeply than was possible through online training or individual practice. I appreciated the exercises around assessments and will be bringing learnings from that practice to my work within teams. I experienced a sense of collective commitment and community support with our workshop group. In particular, taking the workshop with two colleagues deepened my sense of connection and support with them in our anti-racist and generative conflict work.”

–Teresa McHugh, Sierra Club, Central Region Organizing Director