so we can hello everyone. Welcome to living in this queer body a podcast about barriers to embodiment and how our Collective body stories bring us back to ourselves. I'm a sharp interests and I appreciate you being here with me today. So I discovered the work of Princess have pill on Instagram through my connections to Adrienne Marie Brown and one thing that princess said the impact. Me so much that I built a workshop around the theme several months ago. Thanks to all who participated this is something simple, but really profound and here's the quote boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. And I think Prentice is work is is deeply informed by a kind of wisdom that exists in such an embodied way. and I think you'll find in our interview that this is truly a person who can speak about complex experience in a really brilliant way. They were truly an honor to speak with and I hope you enjoy this episode. I also hope that if you are listening to this before November 10th, you consider signing up for a workshop with me. The workshop description is available on my website and you can register on my website which is living in this queer body.com or on Instagram at living in this queer body. And I'm also available for one-on-one sessions and those can be Worked on my website at living in the square body.com. So on November 10th, I'm co-hosting part one of a two-part virtual workshop with Mario Berg who was a psychotherapist and podcaster trained in the health at every size modality. She's the host of a skillful podcast and the it's just a cookie podcast. She's a white queer cisgendered person who is in recovery from an eating disorder. She's the founder and director of Bay Area DBT a couples counseling center in San Francisco. She also supports people worldwide and healing disordered eating and body hatred through online coaching. So our Workshop is called Health ISM and nutritionism are not helping with your healing and it's open to all people including those in the health and healing professions as well as those like us or Mariela myself who have been impacted by health. Them and nutrition ISM and our own relationship to our bodies will Define these terms talk about how it is that they these discourses interfere with our troop healing and in particular we're going to talk a lot about what is considered to be the virtuousness of Health and Wellness, which is a very big topic. Topic that I think impacts pretty much all of us whether or not we have had experiences with disordered eating orthorexia or living disabled bodies. Whatever the case may be. We have challenges to figuring out how to nourish ourselves and feel as if there's a lot of judgment in our relationships or in the world around that this is definitely the workshop for you. It's pertinent for folks who can relate Some of these questions that we generated. Do you find yourself choosing Foods based on whether they are good bad or clean. Do you inhabit a disabled fat or chronically ill body that is judged for being bad week or lacking in discipline. Do you work with people in your professional life who negatively judge others who aren't healthy or themselves. Do you intellectually disagree that health is not entirely in our own hands, but find yourself. Making decisions in your life that are driven by an imperative to constantly improve your health and wellness. Do you develop health and wellness goals for yourself all the time? Okay, I could go on and on but I really want to go get to our interview. So I'll introduce Prentiss. And then we will we'll hear from them. So princess Hemphill is a movement facilitator. So Maddox teacher and practitioner and a writer living and working at the convergence of healing individual and Collective transformation and political organizing Prentice spent many years working with powerful movements and organizations. Most recently as the healing Justice director at black lives matter Global number in 2016. In practice was awarded the Buddhist peace Fellowship some award for Community work inspired by Buddhist thought currently practice is a teacher of cymatics with generative. So Maddox, which is focused on bringing a politicized cymatics practice to movement building organizations and with black organizing for leadership and dignity a training program for black organizers throughout the u.s. And works as a facilitator a consultant for organizations and groups looking to Center healing Justice and transformative Justice into the very core of the work that they do to build more. Well and self-determine communities parenthesis served as a board member for the national queer and trans therapist color Network a network for connecting communities with representative mental health practitioners and an effort at bringing Frameworks for healing Justice more. Probably into our current mental health provision models and on black emotional and mental health. an organization committed to removing the barriers for black people to receive mental and emotional care Prentiss is also a deeply committed practitioner and healer who utilizes so Maddox methodology intuitive and incest rural practice into their work to heal trauma and unlock the unique Brilliance and contribution of each person body and being that they work with you can find out more about Prentiss at their website, which is Prentice Hemphill.com. So that's P re NT is Hemphill hmph. I ll.com and they are on Instagram. They are Prentiss dot h, so it's Prentiss have pill.com or Apprentice dot h on Instagram and let's get on to the interview. Contest thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Yeah, so I'd love to start with just a reflection on how you at an early age came to know about. Being in a body like what messages or what environment did you find yourself in that helped you to understand that? Yeah, I've heard you ask this question to other people on the podcast and it's always an interesting one for me. And I think every time I hear it, I have a different answer for myself the question to me. Well, the body and itself is a distinction that we make as human beings and I think the realization that you have a body or that you are a body. I think it happens in stages obviously. Yeah. Moments, I still discover my body often, but it is also a different question for me. And when did I first discover what my body could do or feel The Wonder of my body that would lead me down a different path and I think when did I first discover that I had a body probably puberty in a way. I mean, you know I think when you're a kid, it's like I'm a part of this whole thing. Yeah a part of this family. It's you don't you're not always thinking about what makes you distinct from the other people in your environment or in your family. Other than when you have moments of pain or you know moments of Joy like, okay, I'm experiencing something distinctly for the most part. I think I felt really a part of actually this is interesting. I think when I was about 11 or 12 I used to Growling my shirt off all the time. And I mean honestly, I still do so kind of but my mother said you need to put your shirt on because you have a little brother you need to make sure that you're covered up. So I think that's when I got the message that there was something about my body that needed to be covered. Hmm. Yeah, probably 11 or 12. I got that message. That's pretty defying against it. I still resisted it. I used to go to school and I was really proud that I didn't need a bra. And there were so many people wearing bras, you know for to belong I'm not doing that. I don't want to add something extra. So I used to be in the locker room basketball locker room. Like I don't need a bra and it's awesome. So that's when I started feeling some like anticipation and anxiety kind of the projection from others of Shame onto my body. I think previous to that, you know, just to kind of roll back a little bit. I felt a part of but I also you know, I've always been a dancer dance was a way that I really experienced my body not so much experiencing it as a body but as a way to Kind of authentic we express how I felt. I really use dance therapeutically help me process emotionally from when I was young a young kid, so I felt like my body was able to express my emotional life. Hey, so connected to it through that. Yeah. I keep discovering my body though. It's like it's a constant Discovery. Yeah. Absolutely. I like the way you kind of pointed out that and as a as a therapist, this is something that I am as a human but as a therapist that it's very poignant this idea that we kind of keep discovering our bodies and that it's such a I think there's so much discourse and in kind of the, you know, broad Wellness Community about this idea that you either are or aren't in your body, you know, you're kind of like meditate and you enter into your but, you know, like you're embodied or you're not or and and I think that's a real, you know, certainly you're breaking down this idea that you can just always be discovering different aspects of what it means to be in your body even making the distinction about you know, the way dance function for you possibly and I wonder if it functioned differently than like for instance. You mentioned basketball, you know, right like that basketball was maybe I don't know if it was a way for you to kind of Express aspects of your emotional life, but I imagine if it was then it was a dip. It was kind of a different aspect of your emotional. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I think dance has In addition to go into a little bit I think dance to me has a wider kind of range of language and it for me I can express a lot of things to dance and then I have other practices that feel more specific. I think like you're saying any basketball, I don't play basketball anymore. I was not a gifted basketball player, but I was I got best defensive player. I think in the eighth grade because I was so aggressively defending I didn't understand anything about plays. Or I should be standing or who my person was. I was always like this get the ball. Yeah, whatever. That was. I was expressing through basketball to happen. Yeah, and I think around the embodiment piece, you know, I was thinking about this earlier today and I was like, oh, I I also discover my body through you know analysis or what we call kind of political analysis or when I'm able to understand more about how the world shapes itself or how the world shapes my body and my experience of the world, you know, if I when I understand more about ableism is an example than I I'm actually something I get to understand about my own body. And the way the world has arranged itself around my body and therefore shaped my body when I understand things like colorism. There's a way that I can you know, then understand the way my body has been shaped by that my life and experiences in shape of colors and we're inside Blackness those those things that we point to is political analysis. You know, I think in this era were able to talk more about their actually embodied experiences and we get shaped by them really deeply so when when I'm in community and folks are Flex back to me a part of the world or the shaping that I haven't understood and discover parts of my body there too. I also think as I Age as my emotional life changes I discover more about my body to my body is it is a changing its changing all the time. It's always changing. So there's as many bodies discovered inside of this one body that we sent around. Hmm, right? Yeah, like the universal the body are born with is the Is the body right? It's nice like yeah, I've been many bodies. Hmm. Not even me. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you think you got? I don't know if that's it. If it feels like it's came from your own Discovery, but were there people around you or they're things that have helped you to understand that notion of being many bodies within a body, you know, I mean, like what do you what can you think of a point to that or practices? Or things that you've involved yourself in that kind of helped you to understand the multiplicity of possibilities or you know, just realities of who you what you contained within yourself. Hmm. I can think of a few different lineages. I think one it's hard to know what you came in with and 4.2 that it's really hard to know, but I think that one of the things that if I didn't come With it at it's been around for a while is just I feel really deeply committed to being myself. If nothing else. I feel very committed to being myself and and exploring what what life has to say to me and that's always kind of been a central practice of - to get to know myself to get to know life to be up close to it to be honest with myself the change so that may have been influenced by people around. And me I don't know that my parents would say the same thing about themselves or yeah, so it feels something like well that's just always been with me. But I do think you know, I grew up in the I grew up in a church, I grew up in the church and we were kind of like Polly around the denomination's we would go through my mom like to dabble. We were all we were we always are in kind of the Christian. See her but you know, we went to Pentecostal churches went to baptist churches went to Presbyterian churches. I got a lot of different flavors, but I think especially in the kind of Pentecostal frame the body is very much an actor in that lineage or tradition and transformation is very much a thing that happens and it's very very much a body transformation and even the whole kind of Christian concept of Which isn't only Christian but that concept of being born again or born Anew and that can happen. You know, you can look the same and you can become a new person. I think that that is probably deeply ingrained in me too. And then I think discovering, you know cymatics when I was probably Twenty Eight twenty seven twenty eight something like that having a space to learn about The body to integrate what I've known about the body through, you know, my culture my life growing up all of that to forward that knowing around the body as knowledge to understand the way black people inhabit our bodies in particular and what I've learned through that experience. I think somatics gave me a space too. I know what I know and a lot of ways can we talk a little bit more about kind of where you were in your life when you did discover some addicts? Like what was how you kind of came to be drawn to? That practice that that lineage and and as especially I mean as a queer person, you know, what what that has meant for you Mmm Yeah. It was all accidental couldn't agree that things are I was working at an organization in the Bay Area and generative cymatics the organization. I've been practicing semantics with since then been been almost 10 years since I was introduced to it. I was working at an organization who was trying to bring somatic practices into the organizational culture and partnered with generative somatics to do that. And the first training we had with generous and I was like what the hell is this? This is not what I signed up for. I don't understand but I remember being really struck by I think it was a prop to like feel the edge of your skin feel the edges of your skin or something like that. I realized that I had lived for a long time very small in the center of my chest and that was the kind of control room of my life was a very small me kinda hold they've been there when they asked me to fill out until the edges of my skin. I was like, whoa, I have not filled out in a long time and I think in terms of where I was and my life has time. I've been in therapy for a while have a long history with everything. I am a therapist also, but I had gone to therapy. I just thought it out and I always had a curiosity about yeah, our spiritual lives. We are expression. So, you know, I got a lot out of therapy. I was interested in becoming a therapist at the same time. I started somatic. I think I went back to grad school to become a therapist. So everything was just like Kind of unfolding and alive and questions were there with me. So it was all kind of happening at once really trauma. You know, I've been organizing for some years and especially around prisons and jails and incarceration and understanding the distinction around trauma what it is how it impacts us our relationship and then understanding that the trauma of Oppression and persecution and incarceration and Combat, those experiences showed up in people's lives and bodies communities families kind of shook me to my core and I wanted to figure out how to get help us heal the lack of a better way of saying that help us heal and therapy and cymatics or some of the ways, you know, the tools that I picked up at that moment. Hmm. Yeah. I mean I can really relate to in some ways that that feeling that therapy is very helpful or being a therapist and working with you know, your clients is very helpful in terms of the really understanding the breadth of and depth of traumatic experience and and witnessing the way it it moves through communities and families and bodies and yet I think what I'm so curious about in terms of your work and what you've you've done and been doing is is kind of how studying gender of cymatics and you know practicing along those lines has kind of opened up more. I mean just even hearing you talk about the Like where the control system was in your life and I understand that intellectually, but I think it's a really profound thing to experience that that sense of constriction that exists in in one place in our body are like how we're operating from one place. And I don't know I guess I mean that that feels very consistent with like a, you know, a kind of a history of traumatic experience. I guess what I'm asking is like sort of what do you think has opened up for you and the people you work? Work with in studying cymatics and generous mathematics specifically, I'll start on what I think is the most fundamental level. I think that we can't underestimate the power and reclaiming our our bodies and that our psychobiology all of that to me. That is the Fundamental building block of self-determination and self-determined Community. Hmm. And you know I said four years at one of the things I'm very committed to is especially for black people that felt sensitive Liberation and our bodies now and I think it's very important for folks who are committed to movement or to Shifting the world in ways that film or just that we have moments of being able to feel well ourselves or feel something liberatory and our bodies as an indicator of where we're trying to go and if we haven't felt that or you know, folks who are leading not from the place of having experienced that that concerns me. I wonder where we're going if we haven't experienced that so I think you know cymatics work for me has been I think important not just for me but for many people an important place of practice and Experience of you know healing trauma. Yes and also experiencing, you know, embodied resilient feeling themselves as creative beings again and resilient beings and rediscovering intimacy and connection with others. So I think that's what it has really offered and I'm coming off of week of teaching with black organizing for leadership and dignity. Or bold which is a black leadership development space but that feels so limiting in terms of what we do and what is offered in that space But it's embodied practice embodied learning and body political education and body principles of transformative organizing and rebuilding intimacy connection amongst black organizers. And I think that we just can't underestimate the The power the Rippling power of syncing up with one another of feeling into our authentic selves. I just think it offers so much for kind of unlocking what Justice can look like and also unlocking the parts of our creativity parts of our dinner tivity that get you know, snatched up inside of trauma and oppression and I think having said to settle and ReDiscover ourselves and that way you know, the Potential is just it's really Limitless and really exciting when I think about it that I think it offers that you know, I just said one of the things I've been thinking about lately. This isn't a semantics context and also outside of just thinking about what Does our sense of emotional? Expression. How does that relate to the creation of a just world? I think so much of what trauma has us do is suppress how we feel or try to shape our selves and to aligning with things that you know may make us have to make all kinds of internal or you know compromises in ourselves and I just think there's something about letting ourselves be and feel process and understand and this Alive emotionally live in our embodiment that I think will has a lot to say about what it means to be in right relationship just relationship creating just world. I don't think there's really this connect their yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean you kind of I just I just had a dream Mary Brown on the podcast and I think that he was so much of what you two are. and many many other people but you know articulating is sort of a it really is I think for many people especially people who've experienced, you know, cumulative trauma is is really reorienting around how we begin to How we begin to heal? I mean that's a really basic way of saying it but it's like how we begin to heal the starting point. And as therapist is both of us trained as therapist. That's not necessarily, you know, kind of how at least I was training right, you know is we don't we don't start with kind of the body necessarily we start with those sort of the impact on the body, but you know, we don't really start we start with body and pain, you know and all that but I think what you're talking about is like is a really so important that there's literally something generative about yeah starting with an experience in the body and have that lead and direct us in making decisions aligning with certain communities. And you know, it's it just is it is really different. I do think that there's something about at least my own relationship to Broad queer community that feels like there's something that has been Kind of articulated in some queer spaces along those lines where there is a kind of a focus on Pleasure or desire that is rooted in the body that directs or some of our movements or our kind of community building that's not always the case, but I think that there's something there. I don't know if you have experienced that for yourself or yeah, that's really interesting. I mean just the backup I listen to the episode of aging and to and I my dreams the home and I love her so much and especially around this point that you're making how do we let our experiences of pleasure or Joy or whatever guide our actions? I think is a very important point to make and I just appreciate that because it the center so much in the body and this this these experiences like validating our own experiences of our lives like that's actual. You know, it's hard to you can't know what my experience is that there's something to you know, this this experience for having of these lives and watching our energy goes my father said, you know, go the way your blood beat and that's how I feel. Wow, you know queer and I think I'm gonna awkwardly move through this conversation if it feels right. Complicated to me. Hmm. I think it's complicated. I think it's it has been a complicated Journey for me not in my own kind of identity or the the formation of that are who I know myself to be but more and you know when you move into certain communities Longing for his face you that maybe you didn't feel like you had and then you feel like it's actually not there either. I don't always know how to talk about the struggle of that experience you can give a black queer person and the way the desire plays into that in particular and and the way that glass bodies are black masculine bodies or black, you know masculine perceived bodies are often a kind of repository for Others desire but you know aren't fully kind of seeing for the complexity in the internal mess of themselves. I think eat that even lived in the queer Community to and that's in some of my experience there from very honest. I feel shy about saying anything. I think it's the truth for me if you feel shy in part because it does it feel like some kind of like betrayal or you know that we're supposed to be you have some kind of allegiance to you know, like the queer Community whatever that means or yeah, I don't know like there's not that being critical of you know, these kind of broadly marginalized communities is it's maybe difficult but I think it actually I mean in my experience and I'm I my experiences as you know as a white person so it's different but it it it is so important I think because there is such a there is such a like depth of longing I think for more genuine connection and more and deeper knowing that so many people queerly body people are you know kind of wrestling with in a solitary way because of a difficulty in Inter speaking two ways in which queer communities leave certain people or feeling alienated or certain parts of your experience. Alien. I mean, I wonder if that's part of like how we could enter into this is like if you have a sense of what aspects of your, you know, broadly yourself have experienced some alienation in your in the broadly speaking. King Lear Community, I mean we don't have to talk about your whatever that means to you and your specific communities, but you know, just what parts of yourself feel like not able to kind of come forward as easily. Yeah, I think what first came to me when you said that one. I mean, I think I see this out myself in this way and that I am not good at belonging to anything. So everything should be listened to with that. no frame around Blackness has always felt different to me, but I think otherwise I kind of I just Resist a lot of things but you know, I think for me when I think about queerness in my life, I'm just going to back out all the way up. I don't remember where I was I was talking about this recently, but queerness before it manifested in my sexuality or in my what we call gender expression. Whatever that is. It was just a way of looking at the world. Slightly sideways and being able to like identify what felt aligned with me and what didn't what felt like an authentic expression of me and what did not and like I said earlier it's all very committed to authentically expressing myself and committed to the process of change and not resisting that and I struggle with that. So I'm trying to be clear about that I struggle with that but it's a commitment that I have. So I think that is actually the roots of my queerness or what we call queerness is that and I related to that is that I sometimes feel like I don't want to impose this on others, but I feel like is actually a spiritual task for queer folks or what I call spiritual. I'm not like like I said, I'm not good at belonging to any set of things but I think there's just a something we have to offer this moment and all of us are very different. Like I said, it's like such a broad. Swath of human beings that relate in this particular way and sometimes end up relating around our gender expression or how our sexuality has moved in and out of our Lives. I actually relate to a lot of people if the people I relate most to inside of queer Community are people that relate to that kind of before aspect of their queerness the way that it has some relate to life and existence. And yeah, so That's who I find and queer community that are my people are the folks that still feel that. that questioning or that move towards authenticity that are rooted in them. Okay? Yeah. Okay. Those are my people but I just feel like this there are things for us to do as great people and ways to and I think we have done that over the years. I mean, I you know this there's so many organizations. I think especially historically so many groupings of queer people, especially historically that have done that actually him risen to their kind of Actual task and made shifts and changes in this moment, you know this Pride here. I was like What I live in Hawaii so cry doesn't happen the same way or at the same time as it does everywhere else, but how you know seeing T-Mobile have the rainbow colors. I was just like what what where are we? Where are we going? What is important to us? Are we? Yeah - club or not, or do I want to be I want to be and if I do want to be like, who do I need to talk to you about like It's not raining it right especially in this moment. I'm like What what and I know that that's like more Vivid difference between the more mainstream LGBT and the saying and and I think what queerness is always troubled and there's a lot of overlap too and I yeah, yeah, I think you're talking about it. Actually. It's interesting because I think you know in some ways now queerness that that used to or has in the past been a kind. An expression of troubling the you know, literally troubling the kind of troubling time troubling desire troubling all these these things so has become merged in many ways with the kind of more mainstream lgbtq, you know Community, right? And so I think that is a really I think maybe that's part of what you're talking about is part of what I also am reacting I also Act two and I don't I don't know my it's funny that you mentioned like troubling things. I my daughter was reading a really, you know book from like the 1920s the other day and it every other word was queer, you know is like what a queer, you know kind of party she was having or what a queer world and and my daughter as a child of me, you know is kind of like are they? Do they used to say like lesbian time or lesbian? You know, like she just doesn't understand but it was a cool in some ways. It was a cool reminder for me to just return to that what I've always identified with you know, which is is this kind of idea of queerness as something that is disruptive but is also generative and I like the way you know, No, you're talking about and I'd love to hear a little bit more maybe about you know, kind of this idea that we as queer people, you know have work to do like we have there's kind of a spiritual imperative in some ways or we you know, the at least that resonates for you around what what are the possibilities that within that kind of disruption hmm. Yeah, actually the that way Possibility when I talk about Spirit of spirituality. I think I said something recently spirit is just the place of big questions for me. I don't have any answers in the realm of spirit where I keep all my questions and it's a place of possibility to me and I don't have any I don't have much more information about it. So I'm holding it that way but I do I can't say or maybe I don't I wouldn't venture to say In This Moment. What I feel like our task is I feel like I've had a test as a queer person and I think in many indigenous Frameworks across the world, I think there's been ways of understanding queerness and the offering there I have felt I think this is a specific is I can probably get but in my role or my work of doing kind of healing Justice work or yeah, that work. I felt that healing work has been very tied to queerness in me what we might call queerness and me and there's actually a deep relationship between That ability to what I talk about is the roots of my queerness to kind of. I'm looking for the feeling into or the authenticity the yeah, the kind of sideways looking but being able to see very broad feeling. I feel very connected to people in my queerness. I feel connected to all kinds of people in my queerness. My point is doesn't feel hmm. I don't know how to say it. It doesn't feel kind of like a protected experience or isolated experience. My corn is feels very connected to other people when I am with other. I feel connected. I feel like there's there's an affinity or something to discover about our connection. That's also my queerness and I think that has really supported my healing work and how I work with people is hard for me to ever be in a space of somebody doing healing work where I can ever completely other them and I think that's an important skill for people who are doing healing work. It's got to be hard for you to other people. And people come in. I mean you probably had this experience people have done all kinds of things and thinking all kinds of things and as a therapist you have to be or as a Healer broadly or yeah someone who steps into that space. You have to I think and I don't have to but I think it really helpful. If you find it hard to other if you find it hard to feel a part or unrelated. If you can't see the ways that we are in one another I just feel like that's the great gift in that realm and awareness and awareness is a way of experience really helps you along that way. Maybe it's my time. It reminds me. I was reading your blog at some point in you're talking about. I think it was on your bug you were talking about, you know, something that happens with your leg when you are working with people's bodies. And it for some reason it makes me think about that like that the actual connectivity that you experienced both sort of spiritually are broadly but also the The physicality of it, you know that when you are a maybe you could speak to that I like that specific instant. But yeah that's having some every time when I'm doing body work with somebody. I'm doing good counseling kind of things, you know, every time I don't know how it is with you. But every time I go in to do body work, I have anxiety. I'm like you are not good at this. This is not going to work out. What are you about to do this to be real I go through that my head starts to my brain says to do its thing and I know that I'm really starting to trust my body and connect to someone. When I feel my leg, it'll like stiffen it'll just stiff and I can't bend it at all and I have to kind of walk with it if if I'm moving around someone on the table and then I have to root down and usually let it run or shape. I think it means I don't really know what it means. Maybe someone could help me but I it's like life and connection and presents really is flowing through. Me on my leg is the one thing that is hanging on the ground it so that it can like move and so that I can be impacted by what's happening. I can be released but it all kind of gets stored in my leg. It's a honey. Thanks for singing. I was like what is going on with my leg they happens now every time we actually get into something fun leg thing and it's kind of like a blessing. Thing when it happens, I can't force it obviously, but when it happens, I'm like, oh, here we go. All right, we're in. Wow, that's cool. Yeah, it's really I just appreciate you speaking to that because it I think that it speaks so much too kind of the way in which you are as you said you're kind of in working with people you're allowing or opening up to their experience flowing through you or you know, kind of irregardless of what you perceive as difference or you know something you can't And it's it opening yourself up in that way is really vulnerable and complicated and it's interesting to hear that about your awareness of the part of yourself that is kind of like hanging on to your own groundedness. And we all have to do that as practitioners are healers or whatever, you know, we have to hang on in some way to our own sense of self or our ground. But yeah, it's it's yeah, it's very interesting to hear that. So we're approaching our time, but I want to I want you just if you can to reflect back on, you know, beginning of the conversation and think about that younger version of you, maybe like the one that was always walking around with your shirt off and you know, and if there's anything you would want to convey to that younger version of yourself now knowing kind of what you know about your body your lived experience. Ends. Um, yeah, I think fundamentally what you know is real what you know is real what your Grandma knows is real what the people before your grandmother knew is real. There's a Brilliance in these bodies as a brilliant and how we communicate is a brilliant in how we've sustained and and remain creative. There's there's a lot of knowing in that felt nice and that felt - that you were taught from the start. Yes. I think I think I just wasted some time in the middle. They're not realizing all that was transmitted to me because the broader world doesn't understand the knowledge of those folks in my lineage. I wasted a little bit of time, but I think I got back on track there. I think that would be my message. Yeah, thank you. So how can people find out about the work you're doing and kind of follow along with what you're doing? Well, I'm a lot of places these days. I think the best ways to follow along or to go on my website Prentiss until.com. Also, I'm a little bit on Instagram. I'm not great at social media. You can find me there. I'm doing work with an organization. Ation called resilience strategies the ones Morgan's a shocking cell from work and I also teach a generative cymatics and black organizing for leadership and dignity and I might by the time this podcast comes out have my own podcast called finding our way. Oh my goodness. So now that I've said it it has to happen. I cannot wait to listen. That's that's an amazing amazing idea and I love that. Thank you for taking the time. I really appreciate it's a beautiful conversation fun. Thank you. Maybe not. Maybe not maybe not.
In this episode we discuss generative somatics as an activist and healing practice, the power of reclaiming our bodies, complicating queer belonging, the spiritual and disruptive possibilities of queerness and Prentis's particular focus on being authentically oneself. Prentis Hemphill is movement facilitator, Somatics teacher and practitioner, and writer living and working at the convergence of healing, individual and collective transformation, and political organizing. Prentis spent many years working with powerful movements and organizations, most recently as the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network. In 2016, Prentis was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought. Currently, Prentis is a teacher of Somatics with Generative Somatics, which is focused on bringing a politicized Somatics practice to movement building organizations, and with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, a training program for Black organizers throughout the US, and works as a facilitator and consultant for organizations and groups looking to center healing justice and transformative justice into the very core of their work to build more well and self-determined communities. Prentis has served as a board member for National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN), a network for connecting communities with representative mental health practitioners and an effort at bringing frameworks of healing justice more soundly into current mental health provision models; and on Black Emotional and Mental Health (BEAM), an organization committed to removing the barriers for Black people to receive mental and emotional care. Prentis is also a deeply committed practitioner and healer who utilizes Somatics methodology, intuitive and ancestral practice into their work to heal trauma, and unlock the unique brilliance and contribution of each person, body and being they work with. https://prentishemphill.com/ @prentis.h   LITQB Podcast:  This is a podcast about the barriers to embodiment and how our collective body stories can bring us back to ourselves. This is a podcast for people who identify as queer or for people who might think of their relationship between their body and confining social narratives as queer. This can feel like an isolating experience. Our wounded bodies need spaces to talk about struggles with nourishment/disordered eating, body image issues, dysphoria, racism, heterosexism, transphobia, xenophobia, substance use/abuse, chronic pain/disability, body changes in parenthood, intergenerational trauma, the medical/wellness/therapy industrial complex and its lack of inclusion of queer bodies and much more. Hopefully this podcast can illustrate the connections, and resonant pain points, that we have with one another. The Host:  Asher Pandjiris Psychotherapist/ Podcaster/ Group Facilitator   Queering the Holidays Virtual Workshop December 8th:  https://www.livinginthisqueerbody.com/virtual-group-workshop  SUPPORT https://www.patreon.com/livinginthisqueerbody   Music: Ethan Philbrick and Helen Messineo-Pandjiris  ---   Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/asher-pandjiris/support 