Embodying Racial Justice Level I for White Organizers, Activists and Coaches

Oakland, California
Four-Day In-person Somatics Intensive

Applications are due on or before October 17, 2025
Course runs from November 6-9, 2025
Daily from 10am-6pm (last day ends at 3:30 pm)

Teachers:
Dara Silverman is an embodiment teacher and social change consultant whose work is based on their 25 plus years of community experience in environmental, social, and racial justice movements, 35 years of facilitation practice, and embodiment training at the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics. She will be joined by others from the ERJ teaching team.

This in-person, interactive course will build your capacity, embodiment and understanding of yourself inside of liberation movements in the US at this time. Participants will explore the role our bodies, the land, and our lineage(s) play in building a different future and world. Courses typically infuse a combination of neuroscience, physical movement, song, connection to nature as well as practical and theoretical grounding materials into a unique curriculum customized for changemakers.

Four-day courses typically focus on: 

• Deepening your embodied awareness, practice, and learnings from the body up 

• Bringing your body into action in your work and life

• Creating communities of practice that will support you to keep exploring, letting your body reveal more depth, and unearthing your longings

• Deepening and building your commitment to racial justice and understanding and confronting racial capitalism

Four-day courses are typically taught by a four-person teaching team and often include a song leader. The teachers are experienced in teaching politicized somatics, in social justice movement work and in ending racial capitalism.

No prior somatics experience is needed. However, participants do need to be ready to deepen their connection to their body and the collective body, into their feeling selves and to move toward their longings and visions for the future. The typical course size is 20-30 people. 

"Being part of this cohort has felt like finally coming home, as I've discovered a missing piece in my journeys of racial justice and undoing white supremacy: the body! MY body! Our bodies, together! I feel more hopeful, feeling the palpable change that becomes more possible as we work with our literal cells and tissues, making room for new and more liberatory ways of being. And, what a tremendous gift to get to do this work in community, helping me to break through the lies white supremacy has told me about being all alone, getting to feel instead my belonging in this collectivity."                                                                                  –nicole bauman, Facilitator

Cost

We will gather at Canticle Farm in Oakland, which operates on the gift economy.

For transparency, the total cost of running this course is $41,000. Hypothetically, if 20 people were to contribute $2,000 each, ERJ can almost cover the projected expenses.

We anticipate some people may be able to pay more, which helps cover program costs for some people who may need to pay less. 

• If everyone pays at the level they are able, we can create financial balance. 

• Your contribution allows us to redistribute a minimum of 20% of funds to Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity.

• Additionally, your contribution pays a team of five facilitators a living wage, pays the ERJ Practice Manager for organizing and administrative fees and includes meals throughout the course as well as snacks and drinks.

• Donations and sponsorships to offset the course cost for other registrants are always welcome.

The sliding scale is an optional guide to help you select the amount you will contribute. The sliding scale represents the rates that participants typically pay in other locations.

Organizational: $2,500-$4,000: For those who have an organization paying for their registration, we invite you to choose a registration tier based on your organization’s annual budget. 

• $4,000 per registrant if the budget is above $20 million 

• $3,500 per registrant if the budget is between $10 - $20 million

• $3,000 per registrant if the budget is between $5 - $10 million

• $2,500 per registrant if the budget is below $5 million

Individual $3,000-$750: For those who are registering as an individual, we invite you to base your registration on your income and wealth.

• Sustainer $3,000-$4,000+: for those who have generational or inherited wealth

• Supporter $2,000-$2,999: for those who have a regular income and are comfortably paying their rent or mortgage

• Grounded $1,000-$1,999: for those who are paying their mortgage or rent

• Equity $750-$999: for those who are challenged to make ends meet

This infographic includes more about the sliding scale tiers for consideration. 

This course is for you if:

✓ You want to deepen in your embodied awareness, practice and learnings from the body up 

✓ You are interested in bringing your body/Somatics into action in your work and life

✓ You want a community of practice which will support you to keep exploring, letting your body reveal more depth, and unearthing your longings

✓ You are an organizer, consultant, trainer, coach, activist or changemaker - this is a place for you to be deepening and building your commitment to racial justice

Course Promises:

• More access to aliveness

• Moving towards more choice under pressure and through the contradictions of this current moment

• Deeper understanding of embodied anti-racist frameworks

• Moving from old shape to new shape in current political conditions

• Becoming more congruent - aligning embodiment, words and actions with our longings

Structure of the Program:

• Four-days of in-person practice

• Pre-work and curated reading list

• Embodied daily and weekly practices to take home

• A community of practice to support your learning

COVID Protocols

“I found it nourishing to be physically present with a group of white people committed to anti-racism and to examining and lovingly transforming our own conditioned responses in the world. Practicing grounding exercises with others and exploring my own responses with partners, often with physical connection, opened my full body awareness more deeply than was possible through online training or individual practice. I appreciated the exercises around assessments and will be bringing learnings from that practice to my work within teams. I experienced a sense of collective commitment and community support with our workshop group. In particular, taking the workshop with two colleagues deepened my sense of connection and support with them in our anti-racist and generative conflict work.”

–Teresa McHugh, Sierra Club, Central Region Organizing Director