I have spent the last few years at Hampshire developing the Embodied Leadership Project<\/a>. My intention with the project has been to facilitate experiential learning around the topics of empathy and emotional intelligence. I understand both of these things to be embodied and relational skills. Advocating within academia for a learning style that centers embodiment and relationship is a challenging and creative process. I have found a deep resource of support for this process at Hampshire.<\/p>\n I have been privileged to get to work with, and be supported by, the Ethics and the Common Good Project for the past three years. Their relational leadership model has greatly influenced my work and my research. I am specifically interested in the storytelling method that they offer through their partnership with Relational Uprising<\/a>. This method crafts stories around supports, values, and challenges in a way that brings marginalized aspects of our narrative to the forefront. Each story is then told within a present-moment practice of resonant empathic response. My experience with this has been deeply transformational, especially in centering voices within my narrative that are usually silenced.<\/p>\n My collaborator Narieka Masla and I are currently launching The Young Women’s Embodied Leadership Program<\/a> to support undergraduate women of color in STEM+Arts & Design in developing their leadership and empathy skills. This upcoming year I will also begin the two year process of getting my Masters of Fine Arts degree. In both of these endeavors, I am looking forward to continuing the process of building curriculum that supports cultivating containers for feeling and emotion.<\/p>\n Many of the themes found in the following lyric essay come from the intersection of my artistic research in authentic movement (a contemplative movement practice rooted in Car Jung’s active imagination work) and storytelling. In this piece I am exploring the idea of the commons as the collective unconscious and ethics as body-inclusive communication.<\/p>\n Silence, Breath, and<\/strong>\u00a0Empathy\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n I am interested in an ethics, but curates and remembers a language that includes and relates to these allowing for their expression and unfoldment Silence & Language<\/strong><\/p>\n 1.<\/strong> And it is the body who communicates.<\/p>\n Through our bodies we feel and rhythm is life, Polyrhythm 2.<\/strong> are feeling bodies.<\/p>\n Their relationship is their resource.<\/p>\n Their relations are: We.<\/p>\n 3. and vice versa.<\/p>\n To stop feeling interrupts relationships capacity to be a resource.<\/p>\n This is the breeding ground for Culture without Breath<\/strong><\/p>\n 4. born with an inherent This is a lineage of extreme cognitive dissonance:<\/p>\n a perception and way of being that is in direct contradiction with our breath, The trauma is breathtaking. Our breath is taken, We becomes I. Connection becomes dissonant, relationships become sites of harm, 5.<\/strong> A cognition The body: gateway to the rhythmic The unconscious:<\/p>\n The locations of The web of nature. A vault of living stories.<\/p>\n Empathy<\/strong><\/p>\n 6.<\/strong> “To call attention to the body is to betray the legacy of repression and denial that has been 7.<\/strong> It will probably burn like fire, to remember how to feel, like the thawing of a frozen limb. We\u00a0will probably do anything and everything to avoid it.<\/p>\n So how do we touch these places like a midwife? Skilled and powerful? Standing at the gateway, supported by the medicine of the earth, how do we be with feeling as it moves through the body?<\/p>\n In relationship to one another and to our planet, our ability to tune in and connect Cultivating this ability is the community research I engage in through my work and artistic practice.<\/p>\n Jamila Jackson <\/b>is an artist, facilitator, and scholar who uses embodiment, storytelling, and contemplative practices to build community and cultivate leadership development and empathy skills. Originally from the Bay Area, California, she attended Howard University for two years and received her B.A. from Hampshire College. Her background in dance, cultural & community expressive arts, and emotional and trauma release work has helped to shape the leadership model she offers through her work. You can learn more at https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/elp<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A lyric essay by Jamila Jackson I have spent the last few years at Hampshire developing the Embodied Leadership Project. My intention with the project has been to facilitate experiential learning around the topics of empathy and emotional intelligence. I understand both of these things to be embodied and relational skills. Advocating within academia for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1439,"featured_media":1265,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,51892],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-voices-from-the-field"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/files\/2018\/05\/IMG_9099.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1439"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1257"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1262,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1257\/revisions\/1262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.hampshire.edu\/ecg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nand a perspective of the commons,
\nthat not only takes into account those narratives, bodies, and relationships
\nthat have been silenced and made invisible,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>phenomena,\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
\n<\/em>as a sacred occurrence
\nwithin a listening
\nwhole<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIn western culture, the primary site of silence and invisibility is the body.<\/p>\n
\nrhythm,<\/em><\/p>\n
\nis
\nvibration, is matter, is thought-wave
\nis
\nlight, is heartbeat, and the tide.
\nRhythm is
\nthe manifest and unmanifest universe.<\/p>\n
\nis a word that honors the patterned\/
\nrelational\/
\nfelt\/
\nembodied
\nlanguage of earth.<\/p>\n
\nThe transforming and ever unfolding earth,
\nher children, her allies,
\nand her ancestors<\/p>\n
\nthe
\ncommons.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>A fear and hatred of\u00a0feeling perpetuates the shaming and erasure of, and direct violence
\ntoward,
\nthe body:
\nthe site of feeling,<\/p>\n
\na culture of white supremacy, patriarchy, colonization.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Out of this culture,
\nour language, our analytical processes, our cognitive practices, our learning, our
\nrelationships, and our meaning making
\nare born,<\/p>\n
\ndesign to suppress feeling and deny the body at all costs.<\/p>\n
\nour body.<\/p>\n
\nwe literally forget our connection to self, community & earth.<\/p>\n
\nI becomes sick.<\/p>\n
\ndomination becomes automatic.<\/p>\n
\nSo I believe that an inclusive ethics requires a cognition
\nthat honors support for the breath.<\/p>\n
\nthat is rooted within the body and its many forgotten realms.<\/p>\n
\nthe unknown, yet living, Real,
\nan interconnected fabric of unexpressed feeling, encoded like coiled ferns,
\nwithin<\/p>\n
\nunconscious.<\/p>\n
\nthe emotional and sensory shadows cast
\nby the phenomenon of
\nrelationship.<\/p>\n
\nbell hooks says,<\/p>\n
\n<\/em>handed down to us by our professorial elders, who have been usually white and male.”<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWhen we remember the body, we will come up against a resource of feeling that may at first\u00a0feel too overwhelming to tolerate because we have been conditioned into numbness,
\ndesensitized.<\/p>\n
\nis a sweet and nothing nectar for the burning flames of remembering sensation: empathy.<\/p>\n
\n