Today I'm bringing you a conversation that I got to have with Marika Heinrichs all about embodiment and whiteness, rediscovering ancestors and doing what we don’t know how to do.

I’m so pleased that I can finally share this conversation with you. Marika and I wandered through our birthright to being in connection with the world and the cultural disconnection we have to clear to return to that. We spoke about having consent and finding lineages that are ours (especially as two white practitioners), learning to listen through more than just our cognitive capacities, and the inherent queerness of embodiment.

ABOUT MARIKA

Marika Heinrichs (she/her) is a cis queer femme of (Soviet) German, British, and Irish ancestry who believes that reconnecting with the wisdom of our bodies is vital to ending systems of domination and supremacy.

She has practiced as a somatic therapist and educator within social movement spaces for over a decade. Marika has trained in the lineages of generative somatics, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy (BCST), Focusing, and NeuroAffective Touch and is currently a PhD candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Marika holds a commitment to pushing back against the appropriation of BIPOC cultural wisdom that happens so often in mainstream somatics, as well as to cultivate spaces for people of European ancestry to connect with something in ourselves older than whiteness, through embodied practice.

She lives in Guelph, Canada on the lands of the Attawandaron/Chonnonton/Neutral Peoples, also the treaty land of the Mississaugas of the New Credit and part of the Dish with One Spoon Covenant.

Find more of her work:

wildbody.ca

@wildbodysomatics

WORK WITH ME

Download the Radical Rest Studio

One-to-One Embodiment Guidance

In Practice, letters on embodiment magic in the real world

LINKS & CREDITS

Drop me an email - waywardbodies@protonmail.com

Find more of my work at ellebowerjohnston.com

Join the mailing list, my other favourite way to communicate

This episode is edited by the radiant Joeli Kelly, with eternal thanks and praises.