The introductory episode for Long Body Prayers, a podcast exploring animist ritual and embodiment practice. Long Body Prayers is a flexible jam space to play with the themes I’m exploring in my practice of animist somatics and also a container within which I can invite conversation with other practitioners doing resonant work.
TRANSCRIPT FOR "INVOCATION":
So just take a minute to feel where you are—if you know the place name of where you are—just to greet the land, and to greet your body here. And this is a really tangible way to just invite in any support, the support of the land, the support of the ancestors or other beings that are with you. Just ask them to hold you, to accompany right now.
I've spent a lot of time feeling into this, this animal body that I inhabit, and feeling into the earth that supports me. And the ancestral lineages that I come from. I've spent a lot of time sitting in a sit spot on some land near a marsh and watching turtles. And that became a place for me to feel into the different threads of relationship moving through my body, like feeling for: "Is there anybody else here? Am I alone? " You know, this cultural story that we're all isolated individuals and we're alone.
Within dominance, culture, within colonizer, whiteness, industrial framing, the self is an acorn. And there really aren't many possibilities for relationship or connection, or history or lineage or support when you're an acorn. Whereas within indigenous cultures, traditional cultures, there are perceptions of the self, that include this idea of the long body. That the self is actually this tiny little sprout that connects to ancestors, the land you're on, the microbiome of your gut, all of the people you know, all of the history that you've lived through, that this whole root system of self exists underneath the surface. And that, even wider than that is the way that root systems connect with each other. One thing about old growth forests that always just blows my mind is that they create a microclimate. They actually become—through the root system—they become this larger body, and they actually change the temperature around them. They're that powerful as a body.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
I want to name that I am speaking from an entangled root system of animist somatics that will have aspects of my teachers and collaborators voices in my own words. What I speak is a transmutation of many voices, including Kris Nourse, Azul Valerie Thome, Francis Weller, Annemiek van Helsdingen, Susan Raffo, Liz Koch, Tada Hozumi, Dare Sohei, Larissa Kaul, Deb Dana, Suzanne Simard, and Sarah Peyton. Other influential beings in my unfolding have been the moon, a birch tree in Vermont, an oak tree in California, and the turtles of Bass Lake marsh on Dakota land in Mni Sota Makoce.
