Lineages of Practice

I want to name those who inspire me to do this work and offer something about the training I’ve received. I think it’s both important and challenging to speak to lineage in a world that favors individualism and accomplishment. Lineage speaks to ancestry, something many of us live a far distance from. I am a white, queer, genderqueer woman who grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis, MN in the 70’s and 80’s. I have spent most of my adult years living in Wisconsin. My ancestors are from Scotland and England; I had no tangible connection to my ethnic heritage as a child. I am working to reclaim ancestral practices where it feels authentic. 

Lineage also speaks to formal training & education. I’ve earned three degrees, an AA in Broadcasting, a BA in Psychology, and an MS in Applied Psychology, none earned at a “traditional” time. I rarely name my academic lineage because I think many of the things and ways that I learned in Higher Ed are now things that I am actively trying to unlearn. 

Lineage can speak to generational & cultural formation. My political identity was formed in the early 90’s, in the later years of the AIDS Crisis, as an activist and organizer in the queer community. Queerness has been a frame for nearly every avenue of my life. It’s what gave me language for wanting something other than what our cultural norms were offering me. Being queer in the era of the fight for marriage equality put me at odds with the Christian church and led me to sever myself from any spirituality for many years. I reclaimed a spiritual practice in 2017 and it has been transformative for my understanding of myself as an interdependent being on this planet. 

And in some ways most importantly, lineage can speak to whose ideas have inspired me and whose work I lift up when I practice.  My approach is deeply informed by Emergent Strategy and the collected works of adrienne maree brown. Her work led me to Grace Lee Boggs, Audre Lorde, and bell hooks. I often turn to the Combahee River Collective Statement when I need to reground in my vision and politic. I believe Black Feminists and those who work in the Healing Justice lineage can show us the path to liberation if we are willing to listen and practice. 

The practices I offer weave together learnings from breathwork training, politicized somatics, and Circle. I first began practicing breathwork with Amy Kuretsky and later trained with the same teacher she did (David Elliot). This style of breathwork has a murky lineage, one that some of my peers have actively tried to unearth. I stay grounded in my own experience of the practice and the transformation I have witnessed in myself and others. Politicized somatics has offered me a more grounded framework from which to practice. I have trained with both generative somatics and Strozzi Institute teachers (Dara Silverman, Amanda Ream, B. Stepp). The work of Staci K. Haines, Prentis Hemphill, & Susan Raffo have actively informed my practice. I first came to Circle around 2016 and took my first training with Tenneson Woolf and Amanda Fenton. I later took part in a 16-month leadership journey with Tenneson and Quanita Roberson that was grounded in both the being and doing of Circle. Under Quanita Roberson’s guidance I co-led an online Essence of Circle workshop and a multi-day in-person Circle Immersion. I practice Circle in my work, in my relationships, and in my commitments.  

In centering practice we feel into the support at our back, where we’ve come from and how we arrived at who we are today. Our lineage is a constantly evolving shape.

Image, from top to bottom:

bell hooks, all about love

Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Undrowned

adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy

adrienne maree brown, Holding Change

Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity

Cara Page and Erica Woodland, Healing Justice Lineages

Staci K. Haines, The Politics of Trauma

Prentis Hemphill, What It Takes To Heal

Margaret J. Wheatley, Who Do We Choose To Be?

Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering

Susan Raffo, Liberated to the Bone