Living Cities staff reflect on how body and breathe work has impacted their healing justice journey as part of our racial equity work.

1. “I dance as an act of resistance, pushing against the ideas that this black body is
not beautiful.
I dance as an act of remembrance, moving as my ancestors moved embodying
their joy, their sorrow, their wisdom.
I dance as an act of surrender, moving to the drum beat of justice as we push
forward as a movement to a more equitable future.
I dance as an act of joy, in wonder of all the things this vessel can do and know and
learn.
I dance as an act of understanding to perceive challenges from new perspectives.
I dance so I can breathe.”
Marlon Williams

2. “Meditation and the body scans we often begin our CORE workshops with have
helped me pay a lot more attention to the ways in which my body reacts to my
external environment. While we’re engaging in difficult conversations, this practice
has helped me better understand my body’s natural reactions like faster heart
beats or sweaty palms. It helps me better understand how to connect back to
myself and calm my nerves as I’m working through these difficult, but necessary
conversations.”
Joanna Carrasco

3. “Meditation reminds me of the connection that my thoughts and emotions have on
my physical body and provides an opportunity to actively center and align all three
prior to diving into heavy work. It reminds me to lay off compartmentalization and
allow my emotions to flow and guide me. It reminds me to lead with my center, in
balance and not just with my head. And it reminds me to take note of this
additional burden I bear as a Black woman doing anti-racist work – to pay attention
to the tightness in my shoulders, and the exhaustion in my soul – let it be, get right,
and if it can fuel me, let it.”
Shammara Wright

4. “Meditation and connecting to my body has been an essential part of my REI [racial equity
and inclusion] journey. When I began reading, listening and learning about the history and
ongoing legacy of slavery in this country and the roots of racism, it was initially an intellectual
exercise. Learning a history I was never taught. Putting names to concepts that I had always
observed (e.g. white supremacy, anti-Blackness, intersectionality) but couldn’t fully diagnose.
However, at some point, my body began to have physical reactions to the content I was
taking in. I experienced panic attacks for the first time in my life and anxiety that I had never
before known. It was then that I realized what white supremacy had done to me. It had forced
me to disconnect and disassociate from my body in order to maintain a system of oppression
that I was actively perpetuating. I was feeling the effects of being dehumanized by racism. As
I began to pay attention to the signals that my body sent, I was able to reconnect my head
with my heart/soul. I was able to begin healing and restoring my own humanity. For me,
connecting to my body and my humanity is part of my daily anti-racist practice because the
more disconnected/disassociated I am, the more harm I do.”
Ellen Ward

5. “Yoga and meditation have enabled me to get out of my head and into my body,
where I can tap the wisdom and courage needed to live every moment of every
day as an anti-racist white person. These practices have also helped me listen to
the wisdom of my ancestors, who experienced oppression in Italy and then
became white in this country for my benefit. As they express themselves through
me, my wells of empathy and solidarity with Black and brown people open. I can
feel into my work; I can be brave enough to take great risks; I can imagine and
build more liberated futures with my comrades. Without breath and body work, I
could not show up to anti-racism work with integrity.”
Alyssa Smaldino

6. “Body work is important because we exist in this universe as whole beings. As a
facilitator, I often incorporate movement of some sort in my sessions. Breathing,
stretching, dancing, and sitting in silence allow us to focus, rest, recover, release,
and activate.”
JaNay Queen Nazaire

7. “As someone who’s been open about their mental health struggles, meditation has
helped me begin working through the guilt that surfaces when my eyes are
opened to some of the blind spots I’ve had or to my lack of awareness. It’s helped
me gain better control over some associated anxieties within this work, and overall
be kinder to myself as I continue to learn and stumble along my REI journey.”
Tiffany Eng

8. “The work that we’ve done to get in touch with our bodies has helped me
recognize the physical reactions that occur when I’m feeling fear, frustration,
shame, and other emotions that are an inevitable part of encountering and
challenging racism within myself and in the world around me. The bodily ‘fight or
flight’ response has led me to stay silent and complicit to racist remarks or
actions—muscles tense and heart pounding in my chest—and caused me to
freeze up in the face of necessary conflict or feedback, in ways that are harmful to
people of color. But breathwork and meditation have been tools for helping me to
stay engaged in challenging conversations, keeping myself open to listening and
learning, and overcoming my fear to speak up.”
Megan McGlinchey

9. “From the few meetings I have joined where we did make it a point to take time to
meditate it has helped to recenter my focus and to calm my mind down. Even
when I WANT to be present there are a million other things flitting past. So it has
been something that I’ve also tried to do more of in my home life. It’s also been a
good way to wind down at the end of my day with the kid.”
Alexis Ching

10. “For me, at times I’m not in the spirit to breathe or access my pain in the work
setting because it’s a lot, or it’s hard to access all the pain and then shift to the next
item on the agenda...but knowing that our organization is becoming more
comfortable with that practice (which connects more closely with the people of
color-led spaces I occupy) makes me feel like we are shifting away from white
institutional culture – and that’s a step in the right direction.”
Lethy Liriano