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EMBODY YOUR ALLYSHIP
Embody Your Allyship combines workshops, ongoing group support and coaching to strengthen and sustain racial and social justice allyship and community-building within LGBTQ and multiracial communities. This body-centered and compassionate approach to allyship supports participants to understand systemic oppression, unlearn internalized oppression/domination, heal from trauma and violence, step into their power, and begin to acknowledge and use their privilege for social justice.
Workshops
Introductory evening: The Body and Allyship
TBA
Launching Your Allyship (Allyship 101)TBA
Embody Your Allyship: An Experiential Workshop for White Anti-racist Allies
Once we know what we are responsible for as white anti-racist allies, why is it often so hard to follow through? Why, despite our best intentions, do we freeze up when it's time to speak up and educate other white folks, or hold back when it's time to challenge systemic racism, or get defensive when it's time to listen to people of color? In this experiential workshop, we will bring compassionate awareness and insight to individual and collective blocks to effective white anti-racist action and community-building. We will learn embodied practices that support creative, connected anti-racist responses when situations throw us off balance. Through discussion and practice, we will empower each other to challenge systemic racism and support the leadership of people of color.
Shame: White Allies Working for Racial Justice
Guilt and shame are common issues for white people seeking to acknowledge and address racism. White people’s shame about racism often shows up as behaviors that reinforce racist dynamics, including denial, defensiveness, passivity and self-absorption, the calling out of which often serves to deepen shame and limit white people’s receptivity. How can we respond compassionately to this shame without condoning the resulting racist dynamics?
This workshop brings theory and embodied practice together to explore white people’s automatic, shame-coping behaviors, and offers insights into why certain racist behaviors are so entrenched, even in well-intentioned white people.
Drawing on over a decade of Vanissar’s esearch into the psychology of how white people unlearn racism, this workshop will benefit white allies seeking to strengthen mutual support and compassion for everyone working to transform racism. People of color who would like to recognize when racial shame is motivating white behavior are also welcome to attend. This workshop will help everyone recognize when white racial shame is operating and offer options and antidotes to support white allyship and accountability.
Ongoing Group Support
Vanissar offers two forms of ongoing support for white racial justice allies: Embody Your Allyship drop-in coaching & Support Groups
Embody Your Allyship drop-in coaching
(ongoing monthly sessions)
At the drop in sessions we will:
In addition, Vanissar will bring in (as needed):
(ie. shame and anti-racism; collective white expressions of fight, flight, freeze etc. and how they impact authentic allyship, as well as community and movement building)
Embody Your Allyship support groups
(by request; please contact Vanissar for details)
Embody Your Allyship Coaching
Embodied coaching for educators, healers, activists and organizers, to identify and transform obstacles to being effective social justice allies
For questions or to schedule: vanissar@vanissar.com or call (510) 594-6812
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