A Volunteer’s Open Letter to The Embodiment Conference

Mark Walsh, leadership and community of The Embodiment Conference (TEC),

My name is Gabbie de Lara (she/her/they/them/siya). I volunteered as a host at this year’s conference; you may have seen me on TEC Facebook groups under the alias Pepper Pompadour.

Before I begin, I wish to acknowledge the land I am on. I currently reside in New York City on occupied Lenape land. The Lenape people have lived on and cared for this land for thousands of years and I am grateful for the opportunity to be here.

I also wish to identify myself as a fair-skinned, first generation Filipinx-American, cis, queer, able-bodied womxn with an education and financial access; I acknowledge my privilege. I am an embodiment coach and emerging movement teacher. I believe in true embodiment, its ability to heal and empower, and its power to connect one to self and others. I share this so you might better understand the lived experience and place from which I speak.

First and foremost, I want to name the gratitude and joy that was in my space because of TEC. It was meaningful and fun to meet folks, learn together, and connect on some very important topics.

As I began to host sessions, I looked around the room and did not see many or any people who looked like me, and this stirred up some very charged feelings within me. It was a source of comfort and relief when Tada Hozumi published their open letter to Mark Walsh and TEC a few days into the conference on the very things I had been observing. While I wasn’t a part of this community for all that long, I hosted 15+ sessions over 10 days, and I developed a clear sense of who’s in the room and more importantly, who’s not. So hear me out.

TEC’s response or lack of an open one thereof to Tada’s letter, simply referring to it as “bad press” in an internal email, left me sitting with some uncomfortable feelings of sadness and frustration. TEC’s directive “not to engage with [the letter or author]” made me feel that my own reactions similar to Tada’s were not valid, simply labeled as “bad,” and swept under the rug. I look forward to hearing your update on how TEC resolves the matter with Tada, as was promised.

This modern idea of “embodiment” is predicated on white-body supremacy and it is inspired and/or replicated from ancient indigenous practices that are often neglected and unacknowledged, if those origins are recognized at all. This has been part of my unlearning and learning in my ongoing journey as a student of embodiment and somatic abolitionism, and I will share that once upon a time I did not identify as a person of color. Of course this goes beyond race and also impacts gender, sexuality, physical ability, mental health, class, education, citizenship, language, wealth, housing, and many other factors. Identities that are on the periphery then become disadvantaged, while those in the center benefit from unearned advantages simply because of circumstances people are born into or are beyond one’s control, such as the amount of melanin in a person’s skin as it relates to the social construct of race.

This equally difficult and urgent work, the movement for social change, and the fight for justice begins with the individual so that we can return to a collective “we” mentality of true community. I know this is possible; I have seen it. But there is no way to fully espouse and teach embodiment without recognizing oppression.

Prentis Hemphill spoke at TEC this year and defined oppression as the organization and distribution of trauma, especially by those who have concentrated power. Those who have concentrated power right now in the “wellness” space are white bodies, including TEC. This oppression increases the likelihood that people will experience trauma, including in this very space of embodiment, as trauma dysregulates and takes away our potential for power. Prentis offered a critical provocation:

How do we continue to build space and strategy to undo the disparate impacts of trauma?

So, folks at TEC, I challenge you to start, continue and never stop learning on an individual level. When folks say harm has been done, be active about what you can do to repair it. Invite curiosity and humility into your experience, and ask yourselves some difficult questions. Perhaps even challenge your worldview.

Are you perpetuating or interrupting systems of power?

I would be open to sharing resources.

Lastly, I believe TEC is a team of human beings with compassion and the capacity to listen. Listening lessens suffering. I ask you to hold yourselves accountable in creating true change in the world by dismantling this “wellness” space that currently centers white-body supremacy and the other norms I mentioned above. I ask you to hold yourselves accountable in creating true change in the world by shifting the focus to the periphery as a return to the ancestral roots of embodiment.

Respectfully,
Gabbie