Full Transcript:

[00:00:00] Emily Race: Welcome to the Founding Mothers podcast, where we're imagining new ways of living with one another and our planet. I'm your host, Emily Race. 

[00:00:21] Today we are speaking with Kelsey Blackwell. Kelsey is a cultural somatics practitioner, author, and facilitator committed to undermining the master's tools with contemplative, somatic and creative practices. Working exclusively with women and groups of color, whose truth she believes is uniquely essential in this time, Kelsey supports clients to confront internalized feelings of not-enoughness and reconnect with their inherent wisdom, dignity and worth.

[00:00:48] Kelsey Blackwell: My work centers liberation. What would it mean to be free? Not just what would it look like, but what would it feel like? And I think that's where really where I land. In the feeling of it. And I try to flash in my mind of moments, and I think I've tasted like glimmers of this moments of like, maybe this is it. Maybe this is it. 

[00:01:10] Emily Race: In addition to being impactful and powerful, Kelsey believes working towards personal and collective liberation must also bring joy. Kelsey is the certified somatic coach through the Strozzi Institute and a Certified InterPlay Leader. She holds a Masters Degree in Publishing from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Her upcoming book is called Decolonizing the Body: Healing, Body-Centered Practices for Women of Color to Reclaim Confidence, Dignity, and Self-Worth. 

[00:01:41] Hi Kelsey, welcome and thank you so much for being in conversation with me today. It's such a pleasure, as always, to connect with you and hear from you.

[00:01:49] Kelsey Blackwell: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. 

[00:01:52] Emily Race: Yay. I can't contain my excitement, clearly.

[00:01:56] Okay, so for listeners who do not yet know you, but they're about to have the pleasure of getting to meet you, can you just share a bit about who you are today in this moment? 

[00:02:05] Kelsey Blackwell: My name is Kelsey Blackwell and I am a cultural somatics practitioner and author. I have a book coming out. There's so many different ways I could say who I am, but I really like sharing a little bit about who my people are.

[00:02:21] I come from people of the great migration who traveled from the south but went northwest to actually settle in Utah to work on the railroad. My family was one of the first black families to settle the city of Ogden, where I grew up, not far from there. 

Because of that upbringing, my people are also people who find themselves in the in between, not quite this or not quite that. Could be racially or culturally or gender identity. But people who find themselves in that in between space are also my people.

That should give you a good sense of who I am. And definitely would add that my people are also people who have some curiosity or interest in connecting with our body.

[00:03:06] Emily Race: Yes. Wow, thank you so much for bringing that way of introducing yourself to this podcast. I recall actually going through an exercise like that with you in our past lives together, and it's such a unique, and yet it could be a normalized way, of introducing ourselves or thinking of who we are. I love that. 

[00:03:22] Kelsey Blackwell: Yes. 

[00:03:23] Emily Race: Yeah, and one of the conversations, you just touched on it, about working with folks who want to connect with their body. I'd love to spend some time today speaking to you about that line of your work and your beingness. Do you mind sharing a bit though about the journey of how you got to where you are today? 

[00:03:39] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah. Cultural somatics practitioner, it's like, what is that? What do you do and how did you get there?

Essentially what I mean by that is as a cultural somatics practitioner, I'm really working with people through the body. Reconnecting with the wisdom of the body. I believe all bodies hold wisdom and engaging in practices that support us to move with mind-body alignment, which is to say more resourcing. 'Cause when our mind and body are aligned, we're more resourced, we're more connected, to not just ourselves, but also to each other and the world. And that intelligence comes into the choices we make and what we dream of. 

That's what my work is. And how I got here was a journey of really feeling disconnected from my community.

I mentioned I grew up in Utah, so predominantly white community, not just white, but also Mormon. My family was not white and is not Mormon. I identify as biracial, black, and queer. And I use she/ her, they/ them pronouns. 

[00:04:48] I felt on the outside of the community that I grew up in, and I spent a lot of time feeling like there was something wrong with me because I was in my body looking out. I wasn't really walking around the world centering my blackness. Even though to the outside person looking in, I was clearly different from the other and I was thus treated so.

[00:05:08] I thought there must be something wrong with me. And if I could just crack the code, then I would fit in. If I could just speak the right way, if I could just like the right things, if I could just dress the right way, if I could just like the right music. 

There was this continual sort of observing of my external world and listening for, "okay, what is the cool thing or what's gonna allow me entrance into having a community" and then trying to get ahead of that. And if you could imagine, it's like chasing a carrot. You never actually arrive. 

[00:05:44] There was a lot of pain there and I would say that, I wasn't diagnosed, I feel like, I was depressed. Because I think all bodies actually need to feel a connection and a sense of belonging, and that eluded me.

And that impacted how I showed up in spaces. I didn't have a lot of self-confidence. I really didn't take up a lot of space. I'm a naturally expressive person, but I would be pretty contained. 

[00:06:12] Yeah, it is sort of like this erasure, making myself small, ' cause it's like, if I can't fit in, then at least I don't wanna stick out, you know?

[00:06:22] And that experience really led me to journey in this way to try to understand, "well, where do I fit in? Where do I belong? Where do I get to feel connected to others? Where do I get to feel that I'm enough?" But I don't think I would've articulated it that way, but that's essentially the journey that I was on.

When I went to college that I joined the Black Student Union because I thought," now's my chance to be with people who were like me, and that experience, I wish I could say that it went better than it did, but I was also ostracized within the black student union because having grown up in a predominantly white community, predominantly Mormon community, I didn't really fit in to the narrative of what blackness was supposed to be or was supposed to mean. 

Reflecting back on that, I can understand why, but at the time it was really painful for me.

[00:07:22] Emily Race: Of course. Yeah. 

[00:07:23] Kelsey Blackwell: So again, it was that feeling of feeling not this and not that, and somewhere in between and really hungering for to be seen and to be recognized as whole and complete and worthy as I am. 

Fast forward 10 years, I got introduced to mindfulness meditation practice through a friend who was a dancer. I should say that this entire time that I was looking for my home, the one place that I felt like I could be myself was dancing. Even in junior high, I would dance on the bleachers and I would dance and I would have all the best moves and I would be like, Everybody is gonna think I am the best because I am so good at this.

[00:08:08] And you know, it had the complete opposite effect. I was again, an oddity, "like, wow, look at her. She's really feeling it." 

Anyway, I continued to dance my whole life. That has been the place that I felt like, "ah, I can exhale." 

Through a dancer friend, I was introduced to the practice of meditation, and I sat down on the cushion for the first time and it was maybe a five or 10 minute sit, so not very long. I was flooded with anxiety. Overwhelmed. I couldn't even hold my hands in the mudra that they suggested for the sit because I felt too exposed, I felt too vulnerable.

[00:08:42] I realized from that moment that anxiety was always with me. It wasn't that I sat down and suddenly I was anxious. It was always humming in the background. And when I sat down, I could feel it. I got really curious about what that was. And that curiosity led me to the work that I do now, essentially. 

Spending more time on the cushion and more time in my body and then coming to be introduced to more body practices that helped me connect more with the intelligence or the wisdom of my body through birthright practices of movement, storytelling, and song.

[00:09:22] And so the more that I sat, the more that I engaged with these improvisational practices that were really rooted in play, the more myself I felt. And it was like, well, there's something to this. 

I studied somatics because I wanted to add not just the improvisational movement piece, but also, what does somatic transformation mean?

We store a lot of things in our bodies. We store our memories, we store our trauma, and so I wanted a skillset that could help me in my own journey of what was coming up for me, and also to be able to support others. 

[00:09:57] I started working as a coach in this process, so I was noticing these things coming up for others and I wanted more of a framework or methodology for supporting people in their own somatic transformation.

[00:10:08] Emily Race: It's such an honor, honestly, for you to share this part of you with us. There's a lot of vulnerability in that and like you mentioned pain pieces throughout this part of your story and my prayer is that people listening to this, there may be folks who really resonate with pieces of what you shared and may feel a bit of comfort and belonging, even in this story itself.

So thank you again for sharing yourself in this way. 

I'd love to, on a practical side in terms of defining somatics so that everyone's on the same page as we head into the visioning piece, do you mind sharing your definition of what somatics are? 

[00:10:42] Kelsey Blackwell: Sure, sure. Soma is a Greek word, which means the living organism in its wholeness. It's the best word that we have right now, until something more sparkly shows up to point to what supports our aliveness. 

The soma includes the body, but it also includes our emotions, even our thoughts are part of our soma, our energetic signature is part of our soma, as well as our connection to the earth and our connection to spirit or universe or whatever you consider that which is beyond.

[00:11:20] Emily Race: Right.

[00:11:20] Kelsey Blackwell: So all of that is our soma. The practice of somatics is really a practice of what supports our aliveness, what supports us on all these layers to feel whole and complete, and that we can move forward with intention, within ourselves, and taking care of these connections. 

And what gets in the way of that.I find that incredibly compelling because really it's about what it means to be human and what supports our humanness. What supports our livingness, right? And what gets in the way and what stifles that, right? 

[00:12:01] Emily Race: Beautiful. Thank you for breaking that down 'cause even myself who I'm like, I know what somatics are, I actually just learned a lot there. It's so much beyond the body, it sounds like, it's this integrative wholeness. 

[00:12:13] Kelsey Blackwell: That's right. 

[00:12:14] Emily Race: Yeah. Beautiful.

From that place, I would love to give a lot of space right now for some dreaming with you to hear from you, what is your vision for the world?

[00:12:23] Kelsey Blackwell: That's such a beautiful question.

My work centers liberation. What would it mean to be free? Not just what would it look like, but what would it feel like? And I think that's where really where I land is in the feeling of it. 

And I try to flash in my mind of moments, and I think I've tasted glimmers of this.Moments of, "Maybe this is it. Maybe this is it". To me, the words that come to mind actually come from this book that I was reading that was talking about the colonization of the Micmac Native peoples in the Northeast. 

[00:13:00] The Micmac peoples really govern their lives so that all people would have access to ease, comfort, and time. I have ease. To be in this world, I'm comfortable. My needs are met. I'm warm. I have shelter, and I have time. I have time to dream. I have time to create. I have time to relate. I have time to take care of what's moving through me, right? 

And I think they're really onto something.

[00:13:32] Emily Race: Totally. Yes.

[00:13:37] Kelsey Blackwell: I think they're really onto something. And I love this story. This comes from this book, the The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. 

Mm. I think that's what it's called. I'll have to double check that. Okay. 

It's an incredible book. I think this was Jesuit priests who had come to proselytize and convert the Micmac and this Jesuit priest is writing about how frustrated he is because he can't believe that the Micmac think that they're richer than he is.

[00:14:03] He's like, "What's worse is they think that they're wiser and richer than we are because they have ease, comfort, and time. But we have gold and we have ships, and we have weapons and we", so anyway, I just love the story because he's trying to sell something to them. But they're like, "we don't want what you're selling. And in fact, we feel you could actually benefit from coming over here."

[00:14:30] Emily Race: It's so funny 'cause when you were describing those three things, I'm like, "that sounds like wealth to me. That sounds like the true definition of wealth." How ironic that that's where the story went. 

[00:14:39] Kelsey Blackwell: Totally. Yeah, totally. It's such a fantastic aspiration. And at the same time, there's a lot to do to get there.

I really hold my work as moving toward that vision and what are the things we can do in our lives, in the present moment, that support the cultivation of such a reality. 

Of course you're talking to me, so this is what I'm gonna say, but to me, the best way for us to taste that, glimmers of it, to sustain us in this journey toward a more realized society, are practices that put us back into our body. 

[00:15:23] Emily Race: Yep. 

[00:15:24] Kelsey Blackwell: Are practices that put us back into what it means to be human, to be relational, to be interconnected, to feel each other and to feel ourselves and to feel the planet.

I hope that, if we can engage in practices that help us to find moments of ease, to find moments of comfort, to find moments of time, we wanna live this way forever, but if we could just in this moment find moments where we can have a pocket of it, and then those pockets actually become the place that we are building and dreaming from.Rather than the capitalistic narrative.  which is like, something is broken, we gotta go out and fix it. 

[00:16:10] Emily Race: Yeah. 

[00:16:11] Kelsey Blackwell: I really hold the idea of, "oh, what if we started from what we're saying yes to? What if we started from what is working?" And that work really starts internally, because we can't create externally what we haven't cultivated internally.

So our movement work requires our own personal healing work. And the body is the next frontier. Because when we think about, or when I work with people, oftentimes when we connect with our body, the first thing we feel is what's not working about our body? 

Oh, this ache. Or I'm tired, or, oh, my knee, my joint, and I'm totally guilty of this, right?

[00:16:52] It's so easy to really myopically focus on what needs to be fixed, but that internal relationship with ourselves where we're in some ways problematizing ourselves and problematizing our bodies, then becomes the place that we try to initiate social change from. And we aren't actually going to get there from that foundation. 

So yes, coming back to the body of, okay, what is working? And from that connection to ease and, oh, there's my breath. 

Okay. And now I can feel my feet on the ground. Ah, okay. 

[00:17:31] And from these connections, a feeling more of reclaiming or bringing awareness to the, "yes, it's hard and things are difficult, but there's a little bit of ease in this moment." Or " it's really nice to see the sun." Right now it's super foggy, so I'm like, ah, I'm watching the fog roll in and it's wet. 

But it's nice to have my cup of tea and just, you know? Like these moments. Even this moment here, we've carved out some time. And we're relating, and how can, even as we're dreaming together, this come from a place of feeling ease, come from a place of feeling comfort in my own body. Like a recognition of that. 

[00:18:13] Emily Race: Mm-hmm. Oh my gosh. My mind just got blown. Cause I was like, whoa, that is a huge paradigm shift to shift away from, within us, this idea of what's wrong with my body, what needs to be fixed, whatever, to focus and then lean into and breathe into the things that feel good. It's like that pleasure activism. I believe we've talked about pleasure activism before.

[00:18:36] Kelsey Blackwell: Yes. 

[00:18:36] Emily Race: Yeah. On that point, one of the things about you that I know and love is that you are such a beautiful writer, you have a way with words that really opens up worlds, and I'm so excited that you have this book that's launching soon, because I have no doubt that it's going to have a profound impact on many, many people.

Share with us about that book and how it fits into this vision that you have.

[00:18:57] Kelsey Blackwell: Yes. Yes. So the book, Decolonizing the Body, first of all, I just wanna say it was such a pleasure to write the book. 

[00:19:05] Emily Race: Good!

[00:19:06] Kelsey Blackwell: We hear a lot of other stories, so I just wanna say for anyone who's listening, who's thinking about writing a book, I was super scared when I entered the process. I was like, do I have enough to say, am I gonna be pulling my hair out down the road? 

And no, actually. I enjoyed every minute of it because I felt so connected to myself, like I felt like, okay, I'm here. I was checking in every day. What do I need? So connection to myself. But also there was like, man, things that came to me through my dreams, walking on the beach and ideas, seeing someone and being like, oh, yes, being in conversations, reading things. So many things that just started to come to me that I felt really connected with the world and my ancestors and spirit.

I say that because I feel like how the book came to be is that it picked me.

It picked me to write it. And I heard the request and I said, yeah, okay, let's do it.

And there were so many moments when I was like, I dunno what this chapter is about. I'd go to bed. I dunno what this chapter is about. I wake up, that's what it's about. And I would know, that was my ancestors, that was spirit. And I would actually say, I heard you. Thank you. Yes. 

So the book, again, my work center's liberation. Through working with women of color, I started to see familiar patterns of the things that we're struggling with. We can look at our families, we can look at our communities, we can look at our institutions, but on a larger scale, I think these are the impacts of systemic oppression and the ways we've internalized the colonial narrative. 

From that foundation of what is working, I wanted to create a pathway for starting to feel for how the colonial narrative actually lives in our own bodies and how we can start to, with kindness and gentleness and curiosity and playfulness, start to take off those colonial overcoats. 

So this isn't so much a journey of becoming something you're not. It's more about taking off the things that you have been oppressed by, and reclaiming your wholeness and fullness and wisdom that lives within you.

[00:21:28] Emily Race: Wow. 

[00:21:28] Kelsey Blackwell: Which, I believe lives in everyone. 

I centered women of color because that's the lens that I am in this world from. And it's the audience I work with. These are the stories I know because they live in my own body. 

The book I break into four sections. The first section is remembering, reclaiming, releasing and relating. That's the idea that we can start with what's working. We can start with what feels good, and come back to that. And as we come back to that, it leads us down this path toward, "ah, this is what it feels like to be integrated within myself."

[00:22:07] Emily Race: There's one piece I do wanna pause on for a moment, this idea of decolonization of the body, I wanna dive into a bit more, through the senses, if we can?

What does a colonized body through the senses feel like, versus a decolonized body, if there is one way to look at that?

[00:22:24] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah. Great. Great question. Yes, yes, yes. I wanna answer that. And I also just wanna say one other thing is that part of the reason I center women and bodies of color in my work is because also when I'm thinking about connecting with the wisdom of the body and how doing so supports us to create that will transform the societal structures that we're living in. 

In partnership with our white allies, but, I really can't stress that enough because in my facilitation work and also working with people one-on-one, the creativity, the heart, the soul, the just completely out of the box ways in which we can show up around some of these complex issues is so inspiring.

And for some of these bodies, so natural. But really outside the norms of what we've been conditioned to think is acceptable or valued. 

[00:23:26] For example, I was in a circle once and we were introducing ourselves and one of my friends introduced himself with an on the spot poem, and it was like, okay. Like it just completely changed the whole dynamic. So everyone was like, "I'm so and so, I use these pronouns, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he is like, " whispering, wind."

And I'm like, yes! What if that what is innate within him, and this was a BIPOC space, what if that was validated through his schooling and what have you? So that it wasn't something that could only come out in BIPOC space, but it was just accepted on a larger level.

[00:24:06] That's what I love, that's what I wanna support and affirm in the bodies I work with. 

[00:24:11] Emily Race: Thank you for that. 

[00:24:12] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah. Yeah. So a colonized body, I mean, gosh, there's so many different shapes. When we talk about somatics, oftentimes when we're talking about a specific embodiment, we call that a somatic shape. And everyone has a somatic shape.

But I will say that because of capitalism and the patriarchy and white supremacy, all these forms of oppression, there are some shapes that I see most commonly.  

One of the things that you often see in women is a narrowing of the body. "I'm not taking up a lot of space." We could think about "man spreading", being the opposite of this. 

In women, it's literally things are contracted. You might be holding in your breath might be shallow. Your shoulders are narrow. Your anus and sphincter can be held, right? There's a complete holding in of the body and some of that is connected to not wanting to take up space, not wanting to be obtrusive. The other factor that I see really contributing to this is that European standard of beauty.

[00:25:17] Women are supposed to be tall and thin. Even if our bodies are not that shape, we contract and narrow them. 

The other thing that you see a lot is the head is over the shoulders. Some of this is connected to looking at screens all day. But one thing that's really fascinating is I was at a university and I was watching the professors walk around and they're lecturing, I imagine, and they really have this head coming out over the body. 

What that often conveys to me is really living from the head. And the head is leading. Right? 

So it's like the head is the most important. You can really see this shape, there's even a hump on the back. 

[00:26:01] When that is showing up in the body, oftentimes how that shape expresses itself is very cerebrally, and also very focused on what's ahead. So there isn't so much of a focus on what's behind, where we've come from, our ancestors, our roots, the people who have our back, our mentors, et cetera. There's more of a focus on. What do I have to do next? 

And part of the reason that that head comes over the body is it's also a form of protection because we have our most sensitive bits in the front.

Our chest, our belly, our sex organs. There's an inherent vulnerability to the front body. We don't really live in a society that welcomes or celebrates or makes space for that vulnerability. 

[00:26:50] So one way we protect ourselves is try to shrink this part back and lead with the head, prepare for what's next and make sure that we're safe and make sure things are okay and make sure we have the right answer and we're doing things the right way and that we're on track, and our to-do lists are getting checked, right? 

[00:27:06] Emily Race: Yep. 

[00:27:06] Kelsey Blackwell: One of the adjustments we'll make is really practicing letting the head be over the shoulders and feeling for that vulnerability across the front body. 

That story that I was telling you about, that meditation posture I was feeling all of that anxiety, it was because I was in a posture where my head was over my shoulders. 

And I had to cross my hands over my belly because I felt too vulnerable. I didn't feel safe. That's a shape that I was embodying that I've since learned where that's come from, and now I'm like, oh, okay, maybe that's not always the most supportive for me. 

[00:27:44] Emily Race: But would you say there's validity in it too, right, given your lived experiences?

[00:27:49] Kelsey Blackwell: Yes. So that's the other really important factor with this work, which we call somatic awareness. Because we don't live in a realized society, some of these adaptations that we've learned are still needed.

And I think that's also an important factor to focus on when we're doing this body work, is that these ways of being aren't wrong. They're ways that we've contorted. There's some of those colonial overcoats that we put on to survive. 

As we start to feel the contortions in our own body, rather than being like, " That's wrong. That's bad. Ugh. I need to stop doing that." We're like, "oh, I see how you're taking care of me. Yep. I see why I've learned this. Because it wasn't safe to be vulnerable. 

Or it wasn't safe to take up space. Right. It wasn't safe to have my full breath. Then with the awareness of knowing what our embodied patterns are, we get to make choices.

[00:28:53] What happens is that, we end up in a somatic shape kind of habitually that may not actually be in alignment with where we are. We get to make choices based on our present environment. Oh, okay. What is the right shape for this moment?

This works in other ways too. I love this Thich Nhat Hanh quote, I might say it incorrectly, but you'll get the idea. Sometimes our smile follows our joy, and sometimes our joy follows our smile. 

Basically saying that we can sometimes take a shape in our body that actually does allow for our full width when we're in an environment where that's something that we want to have access to, even when in our mind, we might be feeling a little bit doubtful. Or lack of confidence. When we do this in our body enough times, the mind follows the body. 

So those are some of the shapes. The leaning forward, no connection to the legs. 

[00:29:52] Emily Race: Mm mm-hmm. Floating heads. 

[00:29:56] Kelsey Blackwell: Floating heads. A tightening of the jaw. 

[00:29:58] Emily Race: Yep. 

[00:29:59] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah. We feel this 'cause when we have a contraction over time it starts to show up as a pain in the body.

I've seen diaphragm contractions often will show up as digestive issues. Someone will come in and say, " I've got this going on." "What's going on?" And we start to see, ah, there's a contraction in the diaphragm. Then as we feel that contraction, it reveals itself to us. It reveals why it's shown up and how far back it goes. 

[00:30:28] Emily Race: Hmm. I'm brought back to that curiosity that actually led you to where you are today when you first got curious about what was —

[00:30:34] Kelsey Blackwell: Right. Yeah. 

[00:30:35] Emily Race: — that anxiety.

[00:30:36] Kelsey Blackwell: Absolutely. 

[00:30:37] Emily Race: This is fascinating. These shapes. I am really amazed, just looking at it through this lens, I wanna, I'm already aware of my own body differently, and I'm sure I'm gonna carry this with me into the day.

I almost wanna go beyond a decolonized body. The liberated body. What does that feel, taste, sound like? 

[00:30:54] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah. Well, those moments, those pockets that I've tasted it myself. And we all have these moments. That's where I go to when I imagine what a liberated body would feel like. I have this kind of memory folder in my mind of moments that I store where I'm like, mm, maybe this is it.

[00:31:15] One of those moments is riding my bike in Oakland. It was this beautiful sunset. The orange and pink clouds, and it was a warm summer day and I was wearing a little tank top and some jeans and I felt so free and really, really present. There wasn't anything spectacular happening other than just being under that sky. 

[00:31:38] But it's something that I remember. I think I even flashed in that moment of like, is this what liberation would feel like? {Laughing} 

[00:31:46] Emily Race: Wow. Yeah. 

[00:31:48] Kelsey Blackwell: You know? 

I was just in Madison, Wisconsin. The YWCA does a racial justice summit, and I was hosting space for around 60 women of color. It was incredible. Women and, gender non-binary folks and also some men in there. A lot of them came in never having done anything like this. I didn't know that. A lot of them, this was completely new work. 

[00:32:09] We spent a lot of time in somatic awareness. Feeling the body, feeling our length, width, depth and centering ourselves. And then we went into practices of connecting to each other from center. 

 Actually making contact, hand to hand contact with each other. We started with doing that with just one person, and then we opened it up where you could start with one person and then open your connection to make contact with others in the group.

When we completed, we were all moving bodies making hand to hand contact with each other. Mm-hmm. 

And there's an intimacy there. 

And there's a sweetness there that's hard to explain in words, but maybe you can envision it, where you have the ability to make choices that feel right for your body.

 And there's also recognition and support and acknowledgement of your wholeness available to you. You get to weave in and out of that, of your own accord. There's no particular way to do it other than the way you are doing it. And that is in of itself enough. 

 Being in that moment with each other for maybe five minutes, it was really a powerful, space that we created. Afterward, one of the participants told me that there's been some sense that she wants to be more in her body, but she hasn't known how. She's been doing dance classes and then she was doing some drawing classes, but that moment, she actually had, she said for the first time. But I imagine there's other times, but she said, where she really felt like she could be herself mm-hmm. and be in her body. 

[00:33:51] It's moments like that that really, that's what I live for. That's what I do this work for. There's something about being in our own agency, but also being intimately connected and supported to others. It's like this sense of an individual body, and a group body. 

 I think it really speaks to the body's inherent knowing of interconnection that is denied in the society that we live in. And there's a pain in that. There's a loneliness, there's something missing. 

And the reason that there's something missing, there's a loneliness, is because the body knows that we are interconnected 

The body knows that we need each other to support each other and to build together and to celebrate together and to receive and give love, right?

The body knows all of this, and yet we haven't structured our communities where that's readily available for most of us.   When we can be in spaces where that is not just named, but also experienced on a felt level. 

[00:34:58] It can give our bodies a lot of ease. It can give our nervous systems a lot of ease. Feeling that web actually really helps us to recognize, ah, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not lacking this because I don't deserve it. I'm not lacking this because there's something faulty within me. It's because of the society that we live in. 

But now that I know how important it is to feel others in this kind of way, I can make choices and try to cultivate spaces where that's possible for me, because it's as essential for my wellbeing and nourishment to feel resourced in whatever I'm moving toward.

[00:35:41] That's a really important aspect to highlight when we think about a liberated body is yes, it's our own body, but there's also a liberated body within a group body that's centralizing our interconnection. 

[00:35:54] Emily Race: Mm-hmm. I'm glad that you're touching on a communal piece and the interconnectedness, 'cause that was one of these areas I wanted to talk with you was, if we think about the role that these systems of oppression have played in creating a diminished state, I think to use words that I've heard you use before for women of color, if we were to look at the system level, I'm curious what your vision is for that, and in that same question, what's the role of community, pleasure, play, all of these things. 

[00:36:18] Kelsey Blackwell: It's interesting, I spend a lot of time thinking about what the realization of a more embodied society might look like, how would that show up in a systemic way? I think about the spaces I've occupied that that wasn't available, like our school system.Like corporate spaces. There's just so many different places.

And I hold questions around the way that our societies are structured in general.

The fact that we're sort of organized around these really large collectives where we don't actually know those within the collective, but it's, I'm a member of this county, or I live in this neighborhood. 

But, do we actually know each other?

What my body longs for is more connection and more sense of community with people that I'm actually in relationship with. I don't know how that would organize itself on a city planning level or I'm not quite sure, but something around there being more knowingness in a smaller group body that we can connect with. 

[00:37:21] The kind of wisdom that groups can connect with being woven into our learning containers and if it were in our academic settings, I think it would naturally, hopefully wind its way into other spaces as well. That would be my hope. 

[00:37:36] Emily Race: Yes. 

[00:37:37] Kelsey Blackwell: But really all spaces need to have more space for the body. And so what does that actually mean? 

Our bodies require that the sensations that we're feeling and the emotions that often get associated with those sensations, that there's a place for that to be recognized and respected 

That's not just this sort of ancillary information that we just threw away, but that it's inherently woven into how we're learning, how we're relating and how we're creating together. And I think the thing that makes that a little bit difficult is that the body is a non-linear entity. 

[00:38:20] Emily Race: Yeah. 

[00:38:21] Kelsey Blackwell: Meaning that oftentimes when we come together in schools or what have you, there's a syllabi, there's an expected agenda of how things are going to go. But any facilitator will tell you, you can have that agenda, but if the group body says something else is actually what needs to be explored, then there's hopefully space where that can happen. 

What I envision is that, yeah, more of our knowingness that lives below our head comes into these spaces. 

[00:38:51] Emily Race: Mm. Beautiful. Yeah. I think that's a great question to maybe just sit with, because even as you put with the example of a school, in a school system to bring more of the body into that space, what's possible, I just think that opens up a lot to discover. 

So with that, what's an inquiry, an invitation you'd like to leave listeners with today?

[00:39:12] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah, I think the inquiry is, what is one less thing you can do?

[00:39:23] Emily Race: Yes. Good. Done. 

[00:39:29] Kelsey Blackwell: Yeah. What is one less thing? 

[00:39:32] Emily Race: Yep, in that theme of taking off the overcoat, take it off. 

[00:39:36] Kelsey Blackwell: In that theme of taking off and in that theme of creating space to just be. 

[00:39:42] Emily Race: Yes. Thank you so much. 

[00:39:43] Kelsey Blackwell: We won't get there by me putting on our agenda, "just be", but maybe we just take one thing off. Just take one thing off. 

[00:39:52] Emily Race: Such a needed invitation.

And then lastly, aside from buying your book, maybe leaving a review for your book, what are ways we can support you and or work with you, partner with you, have more of you in our lives?

[00:40:03] Kelsey Blackwell: Yes, please by the book and if you like it, please leave a positive review. That is very helpful. 

People can check out my website, kelseyblackwell.com. Get my newsletter. That's the best way to stay up to date on what I'm offering. I am doing more speaking, if you wanna bring me into your office or into your nonprofit to offer some somatic tools to your colleagues. That is a welcome invitation. 

I think those are the things. Book, newsletter, consider hiring me to come be at your place of employment. 

[00:40:47] Emily Race: Beautiful. Well, I will say again, I'm so hungry for more of the wisdom you shared here, and I think the book is such a great way to direct people who are feeling the same.

I'm grateful that you are sharing that with the world, and again, grateful for your time with us today. 

[00:41:03] Kelsey Blackwell: Thank you so much, Emily. It's been such a pleasure to be with you. 

[00:41:09] Emily Race: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Founding Mothers podcast. This podcast is produced and hosted by me, Emily Race, and edited by Eric Weisberg.

If you wanna support the show, please leave us a rating, or share this episode with the important people in your life. We'd also love to hear from you if you or someone you know would be a great guest to share about their vision for the world. You can email emily@founding-mothers.com or visit www.founding-mothers.com/podcast.