Walking Each Other Home
Through mindfulness practices, focusing on antiracism, we increase our emotional resilience, recognize our biases, and make real our common humanity. "Walking Each Other Home" is a guided embodied meditation practice. Recorded - Dec 15, 2022
Transcript
Welcome to Walking Each Other Home,
The official embodied anti-racism mindfulness practice for Project Sanctus.
I am Reverend Kelly Isla,
Co-founder of Project Sanctus.
And on Thursday mornings,
What's morning for me,
I do these embodied mindfulness,
Anti-racism mindfulness practices.
And we also live stream to our Facebook page and a new thing,
We are now on Insight Timer.
So if you have the app,
Insight Meditation,
Insight Timer,
You can find us on there and listen to them.
Let's take a collective act of solidarity.
Let's do that,
A big inhale,
And then a big exhale.
Let's do that again.
Inhale,
Exhale.
And I call it a collective act of solidarity because sometimes there are moments in our world where I think the only thing we have in common is breathing,
Breathing the same air,
Which I know cognitively is not a true thing.
What I have experienced though,
And where I'm at right now is that our theologies,
Our ideologies really separate us.
They just do,
They separate us.
And I also know that our joys,
Our dreams,
Our hopes,
As well as our sufferings,
As well as the pain and the trauma we carry around are things that join us,
Things that can make our communities ever more powerful.
Not to necessarily change anyone's theology or ideology,
But for our own healing,
For the healing of my loved one,
My loved ones,
Whatever community I'm a part of.
So today I want to focus on actually the physical body,
Which we often do.
I mean,
That's why it's called embodied anti-racism mindfulness practice.
But I really want to focus on the body in large part.
This will,
You know,
Chuckling a little bit as I say this,
That it's really been up for me lately.
So I get to choose what I want to talk about.
And I also know that I am very much not alone in this journey of caring for the body,
In this journey of where do I neglect?
Where do I celebrate?
If you're listening to this and you've never seen me or met me,
I will tell you that I'm overweight.
And I have lived a life of being fat shamed.
And it's more and more got a little more voice out in the world,
But not enough.
And we live in a culture here in the United States of fat shaming.
That if you're overweight,
There's something wrong with you.
If you're overweight,
You're lazy.
If you're overweight,
It's your own fault.
If you're overweight,
You have poor hygiene.
If you're overweight,
You're eating all the wrong foods.
If you're overweight,
I mean,
Fill in the blank.
And we all carry biases around being overweight or being conventionally attractive or conventionally thin.
Most people I know fall on the side of being conventionally,
The term being normal.
Look at all the advertising,
Look at what goes on within marketing.
I just recently was in a class that was,
It was 10 sessions and periodically,
You know,
The person that was leading the whole thing,
I was just a faculty person for one of the 10 classes,
But the person that was leading it periodically would put up pictures of,
And this was for women,
But put up pictures of,
You know,
Of like queen or royalty or,
You know,
Kind of an empowered,
Because that's the purpose of the class was,
And it was good.
It was a good class,
Don't hear me wrong.
And yet every picture I saw in that was presented as,
You know,
Here's like an embodied,
You know,
In their,
In their power,
You know,
Their feminine and women power,
Which is necessary,
But they all looked the same.
Nobody looked like me.
And the same is true for a lot of people around their bodies,
Whether it's the shape,
You know,
Or the size,
The hair color,
The skin color,
You know,
If you're,
If you don't have a quote unquote perfect body,
Because you're missing a finger or a leg,
You wear glasses,
Maybe growing up you wore dentures,
And now you have a winning smile,
But you had to live through the body shaming years of wearing braces.
So I want us to focus today on the body.
And we're going to go into the places where we're not accepting of the body,
Where we may neglect it.
And it's important to go there and call it out and give it a voice.
Because then we know how to nurture,
Right,
Then we know how to just be with that part of ourselves,
Those unlived and unloved pieces of ourselves.
So I started with myself and,
And,
You know,
What's called fat shaming.
And it's very much alive for me that,
You know,
This last week in particular,
I've had a,
Well,
It's been alive for a long time,
But let me say it's come to the surface kind of alive the last month and even a little bit more because of some medical issues I'm having and you know,
I go get help from whether it's allopathic medical help or homeopathic.
And it doesn't really matter where I go.
I generally run into a someone who is,
You know,
Medical practitioner and I don't necessarily mean MD,
Where I get a dose of fat shaming,
Telling me what I need to do,
Which means how I am is not okay for them.
And it's,
There's,
I've encountered quite a bit of it the last couple of weeks.
And I have to say,
I'm a little tired of it.
So today our embodied anti-racism mindfulness practice is about taking notice of the body in all of its glory,
In all of its so-called imperfections,
In all of its shapes and sizes.
Its strengths and its weaknesses,
Because we all have them.
We talk about the universe being made up of several basic elements,
Including earth,
Air,
Water and fire.
And I've talked about this year before in one of these walking each other home anti-racism mindfulness practices,
But I wanted to come back to it because it's always needing reminding.
So as the universe is made up of some basic elements,
So too are the bodies.
Our bones are calcium,
You know,
A huge chunk of our body is made up of water.
Air consistently flows inward and outward.
Let's pause on that one for a moment.
Inhale,
Feel the body fill up and then exhale and feel yourself empty out.
Do that.
Inhale,
Fill up.
Exhale,
Empty the body.
And so these elements make up our body,
Right?
Our bones are calcium.
Think of the earth,
The earth's crust.
We are not a creature separate from earth.
Our breath is the element of air,
Right?
That constant inflow and exflow.
The blood that courses through us is ongoing.
It's a very complex flow of water,
Lots of water.
And because we are humans,
We are warm-blooded creatures,
We're also a furnace,
Right?
We are the element of fire.
Our entire body is regulating heat and putting out heat.
And in fact,
When we're ill,
Our temperature goes up because that's the system,
You know,
Being lit on fire for healing.
Let's take another breath.
Inhale,
Exhale.
Do a little tap on the middle of your chest,
On the sternum.
Feel the bone,
Right?
Feel the bone.
And as you tap on that,
Imagine the earth's crust.
Right?
Imagine the earth's crust that we walk on.
The earth's crust through which all life grows up through,
Grew up out of,
Including humans.
Put your hand flat on your chest and feel the air coming in,
The lungs expanding,
And then exhaling,
Emptying out.
Now put your hand over your heart,
Which is just a little left of center,
And be still.
See if you can feel the heart beating.
Maybe put your fingers on the wrist and feel for your pulse.
That is the blood circulating.
That is the element of water moving through you.
And then finally,
Touch your skin somewhere.
Maybe your hands,
Maybe your face,
Maybe under your arm,
Finding a warm place.
Feel that furnace,
That heat that we generate.
That's the element of fire.
Let's take one more breath.
Inhale and exhale and bring your attention to your feet.
With your focus on your feet,
Now slowly scan up the feet,
The legs,
The knees,
The thighs,
The hips,
The buttocks,
Torso,
The arms,
Through the shoulders,
The neck,
And the head to the top of the head.
And now we're going to slowly move back down from the head and do this much more slowly.
And when you find a place in the body where you have a sense it's never been okay for people,
So I stop at my neck.
It's one of the first places.
Because I'm overweight,
I jokingly refer to my chins,
Although it's not really much of a joke.
But I pause there because I have disparaged them,
Because others have disparaged them.
For a sign of my weight,
Maybe it was your eyes where you paused,
Or your lips,
Or your ears.
But as you move through the head,
Is there a piece of your body that you've never thought very highly of?
And perhaps because someone told you not to.
Notice the thoughts you have about that part of your body.
Notice the emotions,
Maybe sad,
Maybe anger,
Maybe resentment.
And so I want us to pause there and offer that place.
And I'm only at the neck,
At the shoulders.
So offer that place large doses of grace.
Offer it tenderness.
And then we continue to slowly move down the shoulders,
The arms,
The chest,
The stomach area,
Down to the hips.
Is there a place between the neck and the hips that has been neglected,
That has suffered shaming or maybe the talk in your head is disparaging of your stomach area?
I refer to mine as a Buddha belly.
Again,
Meant to be a little lighthearted.
And underneath it,
There is my own sense of shaming,
My own sense of saying it's not good enough.
So if you find a space between the neck and the hips that you just don't like or you think it's not okay or someone told you it was lacking in some way,
Pause there.
Take a breath and give large doses of grace,
Of tenderness.
Maybe you can touch that area and feel bones,
Right?
Feel the element of earth.
Take a breath and send the inhale to that part of the body,
The air.
In your mind's eye,
See the blood flowing through that part of your body,
Full of nutrients,
Oxygen,
Life.
And if you leave your hands there long enough,
Do you feel the heat,
The warmth,
Your furnace,
Your fire?
And then slowly move down the legs through the groin area,
The thighs,
The knees,
All the way down to the feet.
Is there a part of your body that has been deemed unacceptable,
That has been deemed not enough,
Not perfect,
Not fitting into this privileged society we live in?
Maybe you think your feet are too big or too small.
Maybe you don't have a feet.
Maybe you don't have one foot.
Maybe you're not able to walk.
One place for me is my feet.
They're very wide and I have very high arches.
So from the time of being a small child,
I was told how difficult it was to find shoes for me.
What I learned was that my feet were not okay.
My feet were not good enough.
They weren't normal.
So when you find a place that is,
Again,
Perhaps been neglected or numb or just forgotten or been told is not perfect or not able-bodied,
Give yourself large doses of grace and tenderness.
There is no such thing as perfect.
It is a myth.
It is a mirage.
It will always bring hurt.
It will always bring a sense of inadequacy,
Of not enoughness,
Or there is no such thing as perfect.
There's just you,
Just as you are in all your glory,
Just as you are welcome to the table of life.
Just as we found some places in our body that we may realize have been neglected,
That we continue to talk to with disparaging comments and put-downs and even ignoring,
I want us to bring our attention to those same places and now ask yourself,
Ask yourself in the quiet,
What is it that you're good for?
How do you support me?
How do you help me?
You make me whole.
All aspects of our being are our wholeness.
You're already loved.
You already belong.
There's nothing broken to be fixed.
Just welcome all the pieces of you into this space and let's take a moment in the quiet and just imagine for yourself,
Oh,
What are my feet good for?
My feet have high arches and they're really wide and I've been told they're tough to find shoes for and yet I've managed to walk on hikes.
I've managed to walk into the Red Sea.
I've managed to hike the Grand Canyon.
I've managed to stand still and watch a sunrise.
All the things that I have done that make my feet great,
I don't even have to go for great.
All the pieces of us are welcome into this space.
So what parts of you that have been neglected?
How are they more than enough and how do they serve you?
Let's just be still for a moment.
In closing,
I want to bring our attention back to that we are made up of all these elements just like earth,
Right?
Again,
Lightly tap your sternum or maybe your wrist.
Feel the bones.
Feel the bones.
That's the earth element.
Feel the air with each new breath as it moves into your nose,
Into the lungs and the belly and then empties out again.
Put your attention on your heart,
The element of water.
We're tracking the blood,
Feeling the heart as it squeezes and releases,
Sensing the flow of blood to the rest of your body.
That is the element of water.
And then finally put your attention somewhere on your skin.
Notice any heat,
Wherever that may be.
Notice as heat emerges from within you,
It's the element of fire.
So I celebrate and glorify all of you,
All of your body today and may you know just how amazing it is and it is here to serve you.
