The following is a rePost from Ash’s Medium platform, originally published on 29 July 2024
It’s cinematic, the rebellions and war cries of underdogs, demanding justice, going up against all odds and armies twice the size. The David and Goliath like stories of history from William Wallace to Nat Turner’s uprising to the French Revolution. We’re obsessed with them, we make every movie under the sun about them.
Fast forward, peaceful protestors showed up to march as an act of resistance, Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter, anti-Vietnam to University BDS Protests against Genocide. They bring their bodies and signs, a list of demands for change.
Instead of being met with diplomacy, they’re met with government paid orderlies, that is, police who drag the protesters, while wearing militarized gear, and open fire with deadly weapons.
Is it any wonder the revolutionary movements enact fight mode when they have not been heard?
Bodies suffer the wrath of those in power because the mind games against our bodies …didn’t work.
Controlling the collective comes through body shame.
The system of “kings” and elevated authorities will use any method necessary to maintain power.
Binary is a powerful weapon. White elevated above Black, surely “darkness” was “lower” than lightness, they told us. Men and Women are “too different” they said, ah, but only together in the “right kind” of union could experience pleasure or love.
Color, Gender, Sexual Expression. These are innate to the Body, unchangeable aspects of who we are, how we feel, experience and know our greatest selves.
How convenient, then, Western Empires, more than any other, with corrupted religion and science at the helm, castrated our unity by using our diversity against us.
It might sound simplistic, but I promise you, that’s it. They could not find another way to control the masses. Even economic injustice is closely connected to our body: how much more does it cost to nourish ourselves with food. Or seek medical care? How much are we spending on addictive prescriptions wreaking havoc on our bodies? Those oil rigs and fossil fuels? Damaging the Earth, where food and natural medicine are grown.
The weaker our bodies, the less energy we have to revolt.
What they don’t know is our hunger can be a powerful weapon right back.
Darlings, we are an inseparable body, mind and soul, and we must engage with all of it to overcome the lies we’ve been told. Our bodies are holy vessels.
The powers “who think they are” — will and do — effort to keep us in a mindless daze. Our confusion and blindspot for comfort is their energy source.
It’s personal, it’s political.
Aligning with social justice movements means, then, we must consistently step into an embodied state.
Embodiment is an engagement with the senses and with presence.
It’s a conversation with our our Body, with our nervous system, in particular, to connect to our deeper more intimate emotional world.
In a powerful moment, when protests swept Louisiana (2016), amid the heat of Black Lives Matter, (after Alton Sterling’s murder), Leshia Evans faced off with police.
Seemingly calm, poised (& in a fashionably flowy dress of course). Police were trying to disperse the crowd. But she stood and waited. No matter how nervous her insides might have been, Evans later told a reporter,
“I just — I needed to see them. I needed to see the officers. I’m human. I’m a woman. I’m a mom. I’m a nurse. I could be your nurse. I could be taking care of you. You know? Our children could be friends. We all matter. We don’t have to beg to matter. We do matter.”
She felt the confidence of her protest, affirmed her pain, and wouldn’t let police shame her stance. She engaged with her humanity in order to see if theirs was intact.
From the outside, we marvel and say, she’s so brave! Yes, her courage matters. What matters more was she knew who she was and so her capacity gave her a sense of Presence to hold the line, to wait, and see what she needed to see.
Likewise, our work is to press through the shame, the torment and face off with the threat. Pain is not our enemy.
Pain is the body’s way of saying, “hey, something isn’t aligned here, I don’t want to die, please align me.”
Pain is the body’s warning system, pointing us to a threat. I’m not suggesting we seek it, I’m suggesting it’s a natural alarm already hard-wired in us.
With that in mind, to be embodied is to tap into the outcry, an ache and shift toward radical change. It begins inside of us. It’s the freedom we break into, so we can be part of a collective rebel rouse.
Free your mind, Morpheus said, yes, but not without your body, gotta red pill and unplug first. The un-televised shoot down the sewer, recovery and change is an inside job. We’ve got to remember dejavú is reveals a glitch, they (governing systems) are trying to change something while getting away with the same outcome: our submission to abuse.
Freedom will not come trying to force an existential change first. Audre Lorde told us, using the master’s tools won’t overturn the master’s house. Image change isn’t systemic change. Remember, authorities will try any method possible to elevate power.
So, Embodiment work is hard work, because
It’s radical acceptance work, a personal confrontation to the daze we’ve been in.
It cannot be done in isolation, it must be done in community and often with community we’ve been separated from, fortifying relationships with unlikely characters, and the ones most effected by systemic hell-scapes.
Embodiment takes into consideration the somatic (body) experience of our limiting beliefs, which began before we knew we had choice and offers us a way into presence with both the grief and a new practice-forward.
When we break into that, we become deeply reconnected to our bodies. We learn to love our bodies, to love other bodies, and receive the expression of every — body.
The diverse colors of skin are beautiful. Gender expression, which may or may not align with ‘assigned’ anatomy is beautiful. Expressions of love and sex, yes, wildly gorgeous.
And, so, it should be said,
Eroticism is the aesthetic of Liberation.
The word has long been associated with romance and sex and while it’s certainly part of the story, there’s more.
Eroticism is applied as an “Aliveness” we experience, a stimulant of what makes us tick.
“Eroticism is the poetry of the body, as Poetry is the Eroticism of Language.” (Octavia Paz)
“Eroticism is an antidote to death.” (E. Perel)
There’s a rhythm in feeling the electricity which moves through our nervous system. Aliveness itself is a “flow-state,” especially when we are hyperaware of what is being expressed or released. Poetry isn’t all flowers, sometimes, it’s the rage in our hearts.
Erotic Expressionism revives us from the mental grave we’ve been kept under. So as we are healing our personal wounds, taking part in a collective, there’s a little chaos, and a lot beauty. And together, we become diverse bodies with a unified mind against being controlled, thereby, taking our autonomy back.
Mm, yeh, Resistance is Erotic. Owning our Eroticism is an empowerment unmatched.
So then, the question I leave with you is this:
What body shame do you carry right now? What do you need to set free inside of you?
How can you, then, connect to the collective, and be part of resistance work with this understanding?
It’s always been about bodies.
We’ve been so dis-embodied and dis-membered for so long. What if we could tap in?
Take our personal re’bearth’ in the darkness to the dim lit streets and get loud, let ’em know: They can’t take our bodies from us any more than our minds.
It’s time to tear down a few temples, don’t you think?
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