Embodying Racial Justice One-Day Introductory Course
The course will take place in NW Washington, DC (details shared after registration)
For white organizers, trainers, facilitators, coaches, activists and changemakers
Applications are due on or before June 6th
Sunday, June 22, 2025
10am-4pm
Teacher:
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.
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.
This course is designed as a preview of a longer forthcoming course that will take place in Washington, DC September 11-14, 2025. We focus on foundational practices and concepts as well as relationship building between participants.
One-day courses are a great opportunity to gauge your interest in going deeper into more intensive courses.
One-day courses may include introductions to some of the following:
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
No prior somatics experience is needed. Typical course size is 20-50 people. This course is for white people.
As a part of an ongoing commitment to resourcing Black embodiment and organizing, we've re-distributed $50,000 to Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) each year for the past four years and are now also supporting local Black and Indigenous organizing anywhere we hold trainings.
"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, FacilitatorCost
This course is offered on a sliding scale. The true cost per participant is $150.
Sustainer Rate - $250+: for those who have generational or inherited wealth.
Supporter Rate - $200: for those comfortably paying their rent or mortgage and those being sponsored by an organization with sufficient budget.
Grounded Rate - $150: for those who have a regular income and are paying their mortgage or rent.
Equity Rate - $100: for those who are challenged to make ends meet.
This infographic includes more about the sliding scale tiers for consideration.
All of this only works if everyone pays at the level they are able - not at a level lower than what they can pay. Together we can create financial balance when we each pay in alignment with our abilities.
Your registration fee pays a team of four to five facilitators a living wage, allows us to redistribute a minimum of 20% of funds to local Black and Indigenous groups as well as Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and includes paying the ERJ Practice Manager for organizing and administrative fees associated with the course.
Donations and sponsorships to offset the course cost for other registrants are always welcome.
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
“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