Movement Meditations

A social justice blog focused on healing justice, whiteness, and every day practices we can cultivate so our movements are transformative and rooted in love.

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Today’s movement meditation is on the soul work of challenging dominant beauty standards. I used to get made fun of when I was younger for having “man hands”... little did they know they were actually trans hands that were destined to make magic 🤷🏻‍♂️💜🕺🏼 magic thru fucking, through the words I type, through all that I create, through touch, through movement. But seriously though, remember all those messages that get put on you, about how your body is wrong or ugly or too much or not enough? Capitalism has turned every inch of our bodies into a playground for profiteers who feed us lies about our worthiness by creating an unobtainable white, cis, thin, straight, able-bodied beauty ideal that requires us to internalize that we are always too much and never enough ALL AT THE SAME DAMN TIME. And the thing is, even when we have privileges from this system based on our proximity to the dominant beauty standard, it is still fundamentally dehumanizing if my beauty and value is defined in relation to your not beauty, your not value. Can you ever really be more of a person when to be so requires someone else to be made less of a person? So, here’s to all of you, my loves, out there fighting to be seen & respected as FULLY human, as FULLY beautiful as you are. And sometimes that starts with cultivating a fierce love (or like, or care) for the parts of ourselves we’ve been taught to hate— this shit is soul work that we can extend toward ourselves and those we’re building with—it is the care work that will make dehumanizing systems irrelevant and unsatisfactory to the masses. #nails #beautystandards #movementmeditation

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Today’s movement meditation is on shame and ancestral healing work as a white person. I think over time, as I have become more immersed in movement culture, I have learned to emit shame toward people with privilege. This shapes my relationship to myself, to my family (both chosen and biological), to my ancestors, and to people I interact with on a daily basis. My relationship to my ancestors, in particular, involves a lot of distancing practices— meaning I often have a relationship of disgust toward them and I choose to differentiate myself from them by understanding myself as morally superior. This is especially true of my ancestors I never had the chance to know. What I’m realizing, though, is that if I never grapple with this shame and the coinciding distancing practices, I will always be limiting myself in terms of the fullness I can bring to my movement work. Most likely, I will also direct that shame toward myself—and toward others in my immediate vicinity. The sad thing is that I believe that the intimacy that my body has with shame has a direct connection to the generational toll that white supremacy has had on the specific white people who are my ancestors. In short, shame is a part of my inheritance. So, today’s practice looks like turning and facing my ancestors, asking to see and know their hearts, not wavering in bringing my own heart, bringing questions of redemption, bringing a genuine desire to understand, and asking them for support and guidance as I navigate showing up for racial justice and collective liberation with imperfections, privilege, and an incomplete tool belt. #movementmeditation #shamework #privilege #healingjustice #ancestralhealing

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Today’s movement meditation is on shame busters!! I believe we need to grapple with shame to lessen its power over us and our movements. Send me a message with your address if you’d like me to make you a copy of this!! And/or tell me what you do to bust through shame!

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Today’s Movement Meditation: Just a reminder to be your radiant self in the world, and to remember that when things get hard, it’s ok if basic things like cleaning your room or making a meal is difficult. You deserve love and care and space and joy and we can make that possible together and build the world we wanna live and love in. It’s ok if you feel like your falling apart, or if you feel groundless. Even if it’s hard, there will always be lessons to circle back to or to tuck away for later. I was reminded of this today in my martial arts class— the contact level I faced was more intense than ever before in a class and I could feel my fear creeping in. I think the same thing happens when I feel groundless— the creep of fear starts to take over my sense of self, my sense of value, my sense of agency. And, sometimes that fear is a totally grounded response. Even so, it doesn’t have to define us. And we can train ourselves to nod to the fear, acknowledge it, without letting it define us. #movementmeditation #fearisthemindkiller

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Today’s movement meditation is on being unafraid to try something new. We live in a culture that invites domination through mastery and perfection. I wonder: how does this shrink the size and availability of spaces for learning and growing? Do we miss out on things that will bring us joy and transformation for fear of failure or looking bad? What if we said NOT TODAY to this fear a little more often and opened ourselves to trying new things? For my birthday this year, I did my first ever draglesque performance—under the name of Loosifur (tagline: hairy, slutty and blasphemous). I was joined by many friends who also performed for their first time!! I’ve been wanting to do something like this for years and it was so fucking fun & hilarious & I’m so grateful for all the people who joined me either to watch or to perform. I definitely plan to do this again and am already dreaming up my next performance. So, I’m wondering, what’s that thing you’ve wanted to do for years but your fears keep getting the best of you? How can your friends and community be a part of you facing that fear? #letloose #nottodaysatan #loosifur #drag #burlesque #draglesque #movementmeditation

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#grief #dontletitswallowyou #selfportrait

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Today’s movement meditation is on stress and trauma responses and how knowing and even sharing our own stress and trauma responses is so vital for transformative movement work. One of my stress responses is a form of frozenness— where I’m riddled with indecision, bent out of shape, yet also reactive like a loose spark plug. AA talks about doing the next indicated thing as one strategy for coping in moments like this. Most often for me, going to sleep or doing something unrelated to whatever the stressor is is the best next indicated thing, otherwise I get caught in a frenetic spiral toward what feels like infinite dead ends. Once I wake up in the morning, the external stressor is still there, but my body has had time to collect itself and move out of an initial stress reaction. Do you know what your stress and trauma responses are? Are you in movement spaces where trust exists & you feel comfortable sharing and learning with others about your stress & trauma responses? If so, how has that changed you and the work you engage? If not, what would need to change for that to be different? #movementmeditation #stressmonster #socialjustice #queer #transformationtuesday

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Today’s movement meditation is on conditioned, bodily responses to fear. Part of mine is to retreat into my head and out of my body. Yet, my body has so much wisdom to offer, and it is a primary source of groundedness. It’s a lot of work to recondition this automatic response, and, there’s nothing wrong with it (most often these contractions have done a lot of work to protect us). And, I believe awareness of these embodied responses can open up new opportunities for how we show up in the world. What’s your primary fear response? #movementmeditation #somatics #newshape #fear #freedom

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Today’s movement meditation is on #metoo and #itwasme and #itstillisme. #movementmeditation

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Today’s movement meditation is a reminder that pleasure belongs in our movements!! I remember when I was first on my journey toward politicization— I took everything so damn seriously. Some of this was probably driven by guilt, trying to make up for lost time. Some of it was probably an expression of wanting to be perfect, too, to act like I’ve had my shit together since coming out the womb. And, some of it is an expression of my earnestness, which I wanna hold on to cuz that’s not wrong or bad. And, what I’ve realized since then is that pleasure and joy are so fundamental for keeping urself grounded, for bringing people into the movement, for expressing the kinda love that builds unwavering resistance & the creative solutions that are already inside us. So, here’s to pleasure, laughter, all the jokes and more. Here’s to taking time to sing bad 90’s songs with ur friends & to dance til ur legs are shaking. Here’s to showing up imperfectly, taking ourselves less seriously, and always being on our growing edges. #movementmeditation #pleasure #activism #socialjustice #loveeachother

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Today’s movement meditation is about what I call the Diaper of Compassion. I’ve maybe wrote about this before, & I think it is worth sharing about again. Also, I realize this has nothing to do with cats, but Jack is just so pretty & ppl like cat photos. When I was first driving my bus, I was working on generating more compassion, and trying to recondition many of the automatic cat hiss responses that happen in my brain. One day, for some reason, I decided to imagine every person I saw while driving my bus as toddlers in diapers. This may not work for you— depending on how you feel about babies... for me, I have a similar response to babies as I do to puppies, kittens, etc. It’s basically “ooooo 😍🤗😍🤗 squeal squeal squeal.” So, I’m watching men in suits walk self importantly across the street, and I’m like, “boop” and then I’m remembering they were a baby once! And all of a sudden I have more kindness, less judgment, more patience, less assumptions. Through this practice, I’ve come to realize how disconnecting my particular brand of social justice warrior-ism can be, how holier-than-thou it can be, how righteous it can be, how reductive it can be, and how exhausting it can be. I’ve honestly fallen away from this practice the past few months, but I’m bringing it back one bus ride at a time!! Maybe today you can try on the Diaper if Compassion? #movementmeditation #diaperofcompassion #compassion #praxis #catsofinstagram #socialjustice

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Today’s movement meditation is on the trappings of capitalism, depression and practices for building connection to resist isolation. I am someone who has struggled for many years with depression and its twin sibling, isolation. The hard part about these twins is that they create a cycle: you feel isolated so you become depressed, you become depressed and so you isolate more. There are various interventions people may use (many of which have classed and racialized implications)— none of which I’m judging since people get to self-determine what works for them and I don’t believe there’s a one size fits all approach (partially because the conditions of peoples lives and identities are always specific and unique to them). For me— this looks like exercising, sleeping, eating, distracting myself to dial down the intensity of my emotions, showing up for things that give me a sense of purpose, being easy on myself, talking to people I love and spending quality time together with friends (which sometimes is best if it is a distraction rather than a deep dive into all that feels wrong). And, sometimes the feeling of depression can be immobilizing so all of the things I know to do are So. Difficult. To. Do. The challenge is the feedback loop between isolation and depression— and how once you’re there it’s so difficult to move out of that feedback loop. My reflection, then, is about what I’ve been doing in the times between depression so I’m more prepared in the event it hits me again. In relationships, when times are good, people don’t want to deal with what is hard because times are good. Newsflash: the longest relationship you’ll ever have is with yourself so taking time to do the hard work when times feel better could be worth it for having more access to resiliency practices and the connections that can carry you through a bout of depression. One practice for me looks like expanding my network of friendships where the foundation is love, joy, and connection— which I think breeds more love, joy, and connection. What are your resiliency building practices? #movementmeditation #resiliency #depression #antidotes #resist #capitalism #selfcare #collectivecare

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Today’s movement meditation is on strategies for negotiating emotional turmoil. I am an enneagram type 4 and I have four signs in Scorpio, and I grew up with a social worker mom who grew up in a family that didn’t talk about their feelings and so we did the opposite and talked about them all the time. So, basically feelings feelings feelings feelings! On the one hand, this can be a deep source of strength: I’m highly attuned to the presence of injustice, I have a high degree of empathy, my passion and fire and anger are resources I can use to drive my work, and my sadness and heartbreak about the world combine with a growing capacity for joy and love— which make powerful combinations for staying committed to and resourced for change making. And, my deep feelings can be a trap, a distraction, a form of naval gazing, and the source of microaggressions. When a feeling spiral is happening, it’s so easy for all the billions of people in the world to disappear— not to mention the galaxies you can find in the sky or in the eyes of a lover or in the growth of a forest (if you’re paying attention). So, a practice I’ve identified for myself when a feeling spiral is happening: reminding myself that (to quote Kimya Dawson), “If you ever hear someone say you are huge, look at the moon, look at the stars, look at the sun. Look at the oceans and the desert and the mountains and the sky, say I am just a speck of dust inside a giant’s eye.” I’m aware that feeling trapped by your feelings is not quite what she was writing about here, and, the practice is still helpful to go and look at something that reminds you of all the vastness outside of yourself that exists. Still. Despite all the feelings. This is such an important practice in movement work, too, because it can allow us the space to dial down our emotions so we can get back to a place of responding rather than reacting. This doesn’t diminish the importance or usefulness of emotions, it just allows us more agency and a broader perspective in how we harness them. #movementmeditation #kimyadawson #iamjustaspeckofdust #perspective

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Today’s movement meditation is on slowness. Urgency and the need to always be doing run deep in my bones. This is a partial inheritance from my mom and my grandfather who could never sit still. Worth was in part defined by busy-ness, and slowing down sometimes reveals the dissatisfaction and suffering of life. There is a particular emptiness and disconnection that I think accompanies the individualism of white middle classness so it becomes a self-reproducing cycle. Stay busy to avoid thinking about disconnection, become more disconnected because you’re staying busy. I can also see how being socialized as a smart / honors kid contributes to the pace at which I move. Worth, in this case, being defined by outshining others and perceiving oneself as being many steps ahead of the game. The downsides of this are a loss of connection (due to valuing oneself by devaluing others) and an internalized superiority that is rooted in white supremacy and the class structures produced by capitalism. And finally, staying ahead was also a tactic for fighting off particular consequences of white heteropatriarchal forces on me— my worth was constantly being defined by my objectified body, and to counter that I constantly tried to prove my smartness, to show I was more than a vessel to fuck or fantasize about. White feminist discourse would often invite me to focus only on the latter, as if I’m not a racialized being in the world, and as if my experiences of targetship somehow remove me from the particular types of complicity with upholding racism that many white women and female-assigned at birth people have. In practice, this urgency and sense of intellectual superiority manifest as moving ahead on plans without leadership of communities of color, or tokenizing people to check a box without slowing down to create the time and space needed to build trust and consensus. There are more examples of this, and, for now, I’m working on slowness as part of my commitment to changing the substance of how whiteness defines my ways of being in the world. #movementmeditations #whiteness #slowness #praxis #slowyourroll #slowlife

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Today’s movement meditation is on slowness. Urgency and the need to always be doing run deep in my bones. This is a partial inheritance from my mom and my grandfather who could never sit still. Worth was in part defined by busy-ness, and slowing down sometimes reveals the dissatisfaction and suffering of life. There is a particular emptiness and disconnection that I think accompanies the individualism of white middle classness so it becomes a self-reproducing cycle. Stay busy to avoid thinking about disconnection, become more disconnected because you’re staying busy. I can also see how being socialized as a smart / honors kid contributes to the pace at which I move. Worth, in this case, being defined by outshining others and perceiving oneself as being many steps ahead of the game. The downsides of this are a loss of connection (due to valuing oneself by devaluing others) and an internalized superiority that is rooted in white supremacy and the class structures produced by capitalism. And finally, staying ahead was also a tactic for fighting off particular consequences of white heteropatriarchal forces on me— my worth was constantly being defined by my objectified body, and to counter that I constantly tried to prove my smartness, to show I was more than a vessel to fuck or fantasize about. White feminist discourse would often invite me to focus only on the latter, as if I’m not a racialized being in the world, and as if my experiences of targetship somehow remove me from the particular types of complicity with upholding racism that many white women and female-assigned at birth people have. In practice, this urgency and sense of intellectual superiority manifest as moving ahead on plans without leadership of communities of color, or tokenizing people to check a box without slowing down to create the time and space needed to build trust and consensus. There are more examples of this, and, for now, I’m working on slowness as part of my commitment to changing the substance of how whiteness defines my ways of being in the world. #movementmeditations #whiteness #slowness #praxis #slowyourroll #slowlife

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Today’s movement meditation is on appreciation & gratitude. Capitalism teaches us the value of individualism. It divides us with competition, and encourages climbing on top of and over people to elevate one’s own value and status. Having a practice of gratitude and appreciation is one antidote to individualism— and is also more grounded in the actual reality of extraordinarily interdependent lives. Extending gratitude also reminds us of the importance of loving relationships—which I believe are the substance of what makes life worth living. So, today I’m appreciating my cats for their persistent lessons to be present. I’m appreciating my friends for consistency and bringing joy to my life. I’m appreciating my mom for always showing up. I’m appreciating my mentors for extending patience to me and for demonstrating what it is like to listen deeply to another. I’m appreciating my partner for her deep commitment to strategic and non-reactive movement work. I’m appreciating my dad for showing how a person can transform themselves. And, I’m appreciating people who are working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Also, on a side note, I’m making a tumblr for these posts, mainly so my mom can read them. Feel free to follow: movementmeditations.tumblr.com #movementmeditations #gratitude #appreciation #catsofinstagram

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Today’s movement meditation: This might not be your jam, but, I’m a fan of finding creatures and humans with whom to share consensual physical, platonic touches. I think this is something I crave deeply, and heterosexist & capitalist norms make it so so many ppl rely solely on one person for meeting all physical needs. I say, SPREAD THE LOVE! And, as someone with kind of a lot of distrust built into my body, animals can sometimes feel safer to me for physical touches than humans. I want to have more platonic cuddle relationships with humans and I’m not good at initiating and years of deep objectification, WASPy socialization, & various traumas later leave me solidly in the desiring a thing but not always pursuing it cuz of my sharp edges. The way I’m seeing this as connected to our movements is: how do we bring more pleasure and intimacy into our movements? What foundation and space needs to exist for intimacy to grow? How do we expand how we love each other and foster intimacy that is unshaken by the oppressive systems around us? #catladdy #catsofinstagram #kittencuddles #movementmeditation