Radical Self-Care for a Just World: Building Heart-Based Alliances Week One: Understanding Identities, Communication Styles, and Bodily Responses ● Intersectionality 101: Overview ● Ayurvedic Doshas: Understanding Our Elemental Makeup ● Fear Responses: Understanding How We Show Up in Conflict Self-Study Practices: ● Intersectionality & Positionality Prompt ● Identifying Fear Responses ● Breathwork & Centering Tools Readings: ● “Race and the Body: Why Somatic Practices Are Essential for Racial Justice,” Kelsey Blackwell ● “When White Women Cry,” Mamta Motwani Accapadi ● “Healing From Within: A Life of Somatics,” excerpt from adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism ● “Practicing New Social Relations, Even in Conflict,” Dean Spade excerpt from Toward an Ethics of Activism, ed. Frances S. Lee Week Two: Unlearning Who We Thought We Were: Investigating Belief Systems ● Discuss Readings: How does the body fit in to heart-based community building? How have we weaponized social justice rhetorics and perpetuated harm? When/how have social justice rhetorics been weaponized against us? ● Identifying Unconscious Blockages: Implicit Bias, Microaggressions, and Limiting Belief Systems ● Finding Your Sweet Spot: Aligning Inner Gifts with Outer Resources & Intentions ● Establishing a Destination Vibration Self-Study Practices: ● Life Purpose Wheel ● Identifying Unconscious Blockages ● Setting a Destination Vibration Readings: ● “The Pain Body,” excerpt from Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth ● “Grief, Trauma, and Intimacy,” excerpt from Sheri Mitchell’s Sacred Instructions
● Excerpt from Ta-Nehesi Coates’s Between the World and Me Week Three: Getting Neutral: Negotiating Space, Bodies, and Communication ● Discuss Readings: Understanding Individual and Collective Pain Bodies ● Feel and Process: Unpacking Triggers, Pain Bodies, and Assumptions ● Understanding Reactivity Chains to Stay in Difficult Conversations Self-Study Practices: ● Identifying Pain Bodies ● Feel and Process ● Reactivity Chain Readings: ● “Conflict Transformation,” excerpt from Sheri Mitchell’s Sacred Instructions ● Excerpt from Radical Dharma ● Excerpt from Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Week Four: Compassionate Communication and Care ● Discuss Readings: What does compassionate care look like? What is one’s personal responsibility in an ethics of care? ● Feel and Process: Forgiveness ● Practice: Empathic Listening Self-Study Practices: ● Innocent Perception ● Empathic Listening ● Ho’oponopono Mantra Readings: ● Excerpt from Radical Dharma ● “Core Cultural Values,” excerpt from Sheri Mitchell’s Sacred Instructions ● Comics by E.T. Russian in Toward an Ethics of Activism,ed. Frances S. Leem Week Five: Forging Community, Decentering, and Building Heart-Centered Alliances ● Discuss Readings: How do we forge meaningful alliances across planes of power and social identities? ● Feel and Process: Building Empathetic Channels Across Differences ● Collective Destination Vibration Building Self-Study Practices: ● Radical Acceptance ● Sacred Heart Cave ● Tonglen Practice
Readings: ● “Playfulness, ‘World’ Traveling, and Loving Perception, María Lugones ● “Right and Responsibilities: Embracing the Balance” and “Decolonizing,” excerpts from Sheri Mitchell’s Sacred Instructions ● “Radical Change, The Quiet Way,” Debra E. Myerson ● “The Pain of Belonging,” by Frances S. Lee, Toward an Ethics of Activism, ed. Frances S. Lee Week Six: Releasing People Pleasing, Finding Our People, Forming Coalitions ● Discuss Readings: How can you reclaim your self-sovereignty and find your people? Readings: ● The Invitational Framework for Social Transformation with Layli Maparyan ● “Now Let us Shift,” This Bridge Called My Back, Gloria Anzaldúa ● “The Beloved Community: A Conversation Between bell hooks and George Brosi” ● “Who are Our Own People? Challenges for a Theory of Social Identity,” Michael R. Hames-Garcia