Shift Happens: Precedented Returning
The agency we can have with our own breath is the lifesource of our interpersonal and collective power, choice and voice.
Breath, as a reclamation of my full humanity.
Breath, as a vehicle to explore what I hide from myself.
Breath, as both shedding and becoming.
Breath, as the decoder between nuance and noise.
Breath, as the hearth of my electricity.
Breath, as the source of endlessly returning to unconditional love.
Shift happens, as they say, and this year has met me with more upheaval and off-script than I built for myself around my Winter Solstice rituals. But nothing has prepared me more for these unprecedented times and these Divine Assignments at the intersection of Somatics + Solidarity more than knowing how to return to my breath, return to myself & my values, return to life.
The agency we can have with our own breath is the lifesource of our interpersonal and collective power, choice and voice.
Without the vehicle of my breath to guide me back when violence, disconnection, coercion and extraction come knocking at my door, the upheaval in my professional life that has demanded I exercise tremendous discernment would have swept me under long ago. Me a decade ago would have bailed. Me a decade before that wouldn’t have even been in the room. Me now? Embodied, ready & fortified af.
I have wanted to share lots more writings, teachings, practices, classes and workshops this year about the medicine that Radical, Queer Dharma provides, politicized somatics provides, and community-relational embodiment provides… but the Divine Assignment has needed me to be, do and act in real time, in real relationship, and in steadfast solidarity. It has been an intentional choice to not perform liberation for the World Wide Web, or those that require me to prove my worth while also not heeding my wisdom.
I am finding that this Shift is about to switch into a higher gear, more revs, more stakes, more impact. I have been willing to forego the plans I made for myself 6 months ago in favor of the emergent strategies I’ve discerned as necessary. With that, is blossoming forth a whole lotta BTS work in the realm of systemic change and somatics, particularly with an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, place-based relevancy that is interdependent to the fabric & Shift our dear so-called city of St. Louis is also experiencing on unfortunately precedented scale.
The Tower Card in the tarot comes to mind…
(For the astro babes:) Uranus moving into Gemini (my 11th H of friends, groups & associates) now trine Pluto in Aquarius (my Sun & Mercury, 7th H of committed partnerships) + the fullness of today’s Capricorn Full Moon let’s me know the homework I’ve been doing over the last decade has been beyond worth it. Smarter not harder is paced practice, and change requires tremendous grounding, humility & grace… As a lifelong dancer & former professional performance artist, the body + sense up training I went through was such fertile somatic grounds to hone & master flow, flexibility and steadiness amidst imbalance and chaos. Fortunately, it is this Mercurial part of myself, that knows how to buck the system and innovate new ways of moving through the world that I am relying upon more presently to state the uncomfortable Truths, and challenge systems of status quo & domination openly.
Fear is only an emotion after all. It is never always the only Truth…
I wanted to share with y’all a few professional updates, because the realignments I’m making to my offerings to be more engaged, more reciprocal, more about hospicing old paradigms and midwifing the new are fed by the groundwork I’ve been laying BTS to work collaboratively with others to change the entire system. I am undoubtedly Aquarian after all…
In May, I completed my Certification in Embodied Conflict Resolution with Kai Cheng Thom.
In addition to the knowledge & skills I already possessed with NVC (Nonviolent Communication), Engaged (Radical Queer) Dharma, Policitized Somatics & Parts Work, I am opening my offerings up in conflict facilitation and education. Generative Conflict skills are fucking necessary in our world, and the vast majority of organizational, movement and healing spaces dedicated to anti-oppressive work are sorely missing a lot of key ingredients to truly ending cycles of non-generative rupture. Somatics is an often misunderstood & misapplied modality that when worked with properly, can cut through strangling interpersonal dynamics enmeshed with the institutionalized & oppressive systems structuring our work, communities & collaborative spaces smoothly like a spoon through soft butter. I am placing myself in this realm not because I enjoy sifting through folks’ demons and projections (I don’t, it takes tremendous fortitude, ethical conduct & energetic maintenance), but because I am so exhausted with seeing people hurt each other because we are all hurting from patriarchal, white supremacist systems of domination. We. Can. Do. Better.
Secondly, I have been under mentorship since last fall at the School Of Systems Change, one of the preeminent leaders in teaching *relatable & accessible* systems practice along with my project partner Ishmaiah Moore. We sought out a different kind of learning partnership with them because we are innovating something that hasn’t been done before - building out an entire queered, systems change learning curriculum that embeds somatics, relational skill building, and Transformative Justice at its core. No such thing exists already. There is no one to teach a class on it. Queer folks (especially working class + other marginalized identities) don’t yet exist in these spaces, the tools, jargon & price inaccessibility largely remains gate-kept from the change makers that need it most - margins to center.
I am honored & delighted to share that Ishy and I are collaborating with the School on August 7th, teaching The Somatics of Queering Systems Change, a primer on how we approaching decolonizing systems practice.
The class is open to all (particularly change makers, and those interested in being change makers), no experience required, and will be an exploration into decision making in context of body-up, lived experience, relationship, timeline and place.
Thirdly, leaving the fun part for last, I recently gave an interview with Voyage STL about my life, background and how I came to be a former performance artist turned somatic & systems guide. In it I share bits about my youth, coming into my baby queerness, the overwhelming journey of touring the country as a professional burlesque performer (ahem storyteller) + studio owner, my sobriety, my struggles, what I think about calculated risk taking, and the breakdowns that occurred in and through trauma healing that unfolded me onto the path that I am on now… guiding survivor-led support. It’s a fun read, if you want to get to know me, the person behind the words & ideas I express here on Substack, and connect the dots of my lived experience from A-to-B-to-C, give it a read. I have not a gotdang thing to hide… shame was built into me at the get-go of this life and now I build whole ass systems guiding others through putting those old scripts and paradigms to rest.
If you’ve read here to the bottom, thank you. I appreciate you being here, and taking some time to engage and connect with this medium - I very much prefer longer form writing and the culture at Substack way more than IG, FB and the like. Do me a favor and drop a like to let me know you came by, drop a comment about what resonated, what you dig, what you have questions on, and hang with me in the subscriber chat whenever I pop in. The Aquarian in me is feeling like a full fountain ready to pour forth the medicine of the Universe - Unconditional Love - as the precedented returning that is our birthright in this strange ass timeline of collapse and rebirth.
Till next time,
-Deanna Sophia Danger-
