As systems collapse around us, they are also collapsing within us.
And we have a responsibility—to tend those places with care and tenderness.
Not to escape the work. But to fortify the foundation of our interior architecture. So that it can support the visions we carry: of birthing worlds and realities that honor and fortify the spiritual and physical architecture of all beings and the relational web as a whole.
This is how we stay—how we remain—how we survive to help build what comes next. We are being invited to build new and more generative realities from the inside out.
If you’re feeling the collapse—inside or outside—you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. You’re being asked to turn toward yourself with the same tenderness you’d offer a beloved.
That’s what I’m practicing. On the mat. In my life. In the quiet moments between.
🕯️🌿
#practice #tenderness #care #community #human
spring preview countdown
Breathe. Rest. Stretch.
🌺
Three small acts. One quiet revolution.
🌺
Right now, slowing down might be the most radical thing you can do. Not because the world isn’t moving fast—it is. But because your nervous system is longing for a different rhythm.
💨
A deep breath. A gentle stretch. A moment of rest.
💨
These aren’t luxuries. They’re returns. To yourself. To the body that carries you. To the quiet wisdom beneath the noise.
—
🌸Complementary spring preview classes are filling up fast.
📆Monday, April 13
⏳11:00 AM & 12:00 PM
📍 Prevailing Pilates Mat Studio
Here’s what’s waiting for you:
🎧 A 🔥 playlist (curated with love)
🧘🏽♀️ A grounding, gentle stretch sequence
📖 A soul-filled reading from Black liberation texts
All you have to do is bring yourself. Your mat and a lavender towel will be waiting.
🔗 Link in bio to grab your spot before they’re gone.
—
I hope to see you on the mat. And even if I don’t, I hope you find ways to slow down. To tend to yourself. To remember that caring for your body and mind isn’t selfish—it’s survival. It’s love. It’s how we stay whole in a world that asks us to be fragmented.
This spring, let your reset be gentle.
🕯️🌿
—
#BreatheRestStretch #SpringReset #FreeYoga #GentleStretch #care
Spring Preview Classes
What wants to emerge in you this spring? 🌸
Spring is stirring. Your body knows.
🌸
Free Preview Class
📆 Sunday, April 13
⏳11 AM + 12 PM
📍 Prevailing Pilates
🎁 Raffle + supply drive for Liberation Station Bookstore. If you can, bring menstrual supplies for extra raffle entries.
🌱 Want to go deeper?
Spring series begins April 20 — 5 weeks of gentle, embodied practice. Details in bio.
🔗 Link in bio to save your spot.
Your mat is waiting. So is your renewal.
#durham #yoga #spring #community #care
Spring Has Sprung
As spring unfolds, I hope the seasonal energies of renewal and rebirth kindle hope in your heart like they do mine.
🌺
Greeting the light outside after I finish teaching my weekly 6am and 6pm yoga classes brings me so much joy.
🌺
Last week, under blue skies and the warm sun, I sat in a plant medicine circle hosted with such care by the @kongo.cafe exploring the gifts of hibiscus blood builder tea and sorrel. Both stirred something in me—memory and a return to beauty and embodied pleasure through taste and smell.
🌺
Feeling the warmth and weight of the teacup in my hands. Smelling notes of cinnamon and orange peels. Savoring the bright, sweet, tart, and spicy flavors of each sip.
🌺
It felt otherworldly. Outside of time.
🌺
For a couple of hours, life slowed down. And it was so delightful.
🌺
It reminded me: Spring is a slow blossoming of the senses. A return to what is tender. A remembering of what delights us.
🌺
With gratitude I’m holding that energy as I share our upcoming spring offerings below.
—
🌸 Free Preview Classes
Sunday, April 13
11:00 – 11:45 AM | 12:00 – 12:45 PM
📍 Prevailing Pilates Mat Studio
🔗 [SIGN-UP FOR FREE PREVIEW CLASSES IN LINK🌲
First-come, first-served. Space is limited.
—
🎁 Raffle + Supply Drive
Attend a preview class and be entered to win gift cards & goodies from local businesses— including @randrhydration —one of my fav places to recharge.
Bring menstrual supplies (pads, tampons, liners) to support @liberationstationbookstore pantry for folks in need of hygiene supplies—each item earns you an extra raffle entry (max 5).
—
🌱 Spring Series Enrollment Opens April 14
Mondays, April 20 – May 18 | 12 PM
#yoga #spring #community #durham #local
stay connected to Beauty
Happy Spring. Happy New Year.
🌷
Spring has always felt like the true start of the year to me—a time to stretch, groan, shake off the sleep of winter, and greet the sun-filled days ahead.
🌷
There is something so tender about this time of year. The light shifts. Life stirs beneath the soil. Stems and stalks crown the earth, reaching toward the light. The sight of red bud and peach tree blossoms makes me giddy. Feeling the softness of tender leaves sprouting beneath my fingertips feels otherworldly.
🌷
Spring is my reminder that vast amounts of beauty and magic are alive and flowing through the world. We need these reminders as we navigate the human-made polycrises of our times. Spring reminds us: nature is in charge.
🌷
This season invites us to fortify our inner architecture. To remember that embracing and making beauty is an emergent strategy—one that moves us closer to the worlds we wish to build and the liberated realities we hunger to embody.
🌷
I hope you too are finding ways to be delighted and inspired by the beauty and magic of spring.
🌸 What seeds are you sowing?
🌸 What beauty is in bloom in the garden of your life?
🌸 What beauty are you bringing into the world?
If you’re looking for ways to fortify your inner architecture:
Move. Breathe. Cry. Listen to good music. Read a good book. Touch grass. Feel the sun on your skin. Hug someone. Connect with kinfolk and community. Reach out and offer a helping hand. Ask for support if you need it. The list goes on…..
🌷
If movement is your jam, I warmly invite you to move with me on the mat @prevailingpilates and @bloom.yoga.co - details are in my bio.
🎵If music is your jam🎵
🌿 Equinox Playlist — a sonic companion for the season. Link here.
—
Intro the song “Mag!c” Ariel J, features an excerpt from beloved ancestor Toni Morrison.
🕯️🌿
#SpringEquinox #InnerArchitecture #Beauty #yoga #magic
Sankalpa Side Notes: Silence
This week's sankalpa arrived softly.
Practice silence. Even if just for a breath.
Then we landed in Savasana in one of my classes. And a stampede of kids came tearing down the hall—laughing, giggling, thundering past the studio door like life itself was knocking.
"You wanted silence? Here's your classroom."
And that's when I felt it. Not irritation. But a smile spread across my lips.
Some part of me knew: life heard me. We were in conversation. It was confirming my intention in the most alive, messy, can't-plan-for-this kind of way.
Not the quiet confirmation.
The giggling kind.
The stampeding kind.
The life-is-going-to-test-you-and-also-bless-you kind.
I thought about my Ancestors—
the ones who cultivated silence in the unstill.
Who built wellsprings in places designed to dry them up.
Who carved paths to new futures
with each return to silence.
And now it's my turn.
To keep carving.
To keep returning.
To let every breath, every pause,
become a path back home.
---
What's your sankalpa this week? Drop it below or just sit with the question. No pressure. Just presence.
🕯️🌿
#SankalpaSideNotes #SilencePractice #Wellspring #AncestralLineage #GentleYoga #EmbodiedPresence #MatToLife #PracticeNotPerfect #RTPYoga #DurhamYoga #MondaysAtNoon #BlackLiberation #RestAsPractice #TendYourself #BodyIsHome #ancestors #remembering #intention #silence
Embodied presence is a survival strategy
being present in your body
isn’t just a practice—
it’s a survival strategy
🕯️
it’s a way back to yourself.
a way through.
a way home.
🕯️
i hope you are finding ways to come home to yourself in these times and in the times to come.
🕯️
you can never be lost
when you remember:
your body is home.
🕯️
connection to each other,
our Ancestors,
the earth—
the whole relational web lives inside us.
🕯️
come practice with me.
your mat is waiting.
your body knows the way.
📍Monday, February 23 at 12 PM
Prevailing Pilates Mat Studio
🪷gentle stretch. heated room. lavender towels. you.
💫all are welcome. link in bio to save your spot.
#embodiedpresence #survivalstrategy #body #home #homecoming #bodywisdom #ancestors #relationalweb #mindfulmovement #GentleStretch #HeatedYoga #YogaForAll #YogaCommunity #RTPYoga #DurhamYoga #RaleighYoga #MondaysAtNoon #PracticeWithMe #Liberation #ancestralwisdom wisdom #LineageWork #RestAsResistance #Agency #Dignity
Sankalpa Side Notes
Sankalpa Side Notes
Sankalpa: Sanskrit term for a heartfelt vow, intention, desire, or dedication.
🪷
My sankalpa emerged quietly this week. There was no grand declaration, just a simple noticing, a subtle shift in my awareness.
🪷
I am working with boundaries. Specifically, I’m learning to honor the “no” as it arises— on the mat, in my body, in real time.
🪷
On the mat, that “no” emerges in the invitation to honor a pause rather than push through to the next asana, to take a different shape than what is offered, or to back out of a shape that no longer feels good in my body.
🪷
And here’s what I’m learning: This aspect of my practice feels like building muscle memory, deep listening, and an invitation to re-pattern my tissue and nervous system responses to honor the “no” rather than slip into patterns of compromise, collapse, compliance, or avoidance. It feels low-stakes—just me and my mat.
🪷
When I notice the “no”, I’m learning/remembering that I can make a different choice. I can rest. I can pause. I can tend to myself.
🪷
The more I work with noticing the “no” on the mat, the more I am recognizing that same “no” off the mat—in conversations, in commitments, in places where I’ve historically said yes when my body was already whispering no. I’m tapping back into my work on the mat to make different choices off the mat, and it feels like another layer of liberation work.
🪷
I am reclaiming a deeper sense of Agency in the world through this practice. Breath by breath. Boundary by boundary. Just like my Ancestors did through their practices, rituals, and ceremonies while navigating an empire attempting to strip them of their Agency and personhood at every turn.
🪷
This practice isn’t loud. It’s steady. And I am so grateful.
🪷
What’s your sankalpa this week? Drop it below or just sit with it. No pressure. Just noticing.
🪷
I hope some form of embodied practice and connection with breath serves as your refuge practice too.
🌿
#refuge #sankalpasidenotes #boundaries #practice #remember #learning #yoga #happyblackhistorymonth #ancestors #agency #ritual #ceremony #ramadanmubarak #intention #embodied #liberation
keep dreaming
The dreams we carry connect us to our ancestors across space and time.
Our dreams are rooted in our lineages.
Many hands and many hearts hold them.
We are dreaming on behalf of our lineages.
[image shows quote above in white font. There is a black woman in a grayscale photo sleeping in her bed. ]
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #life #trust #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #desire #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #ancestralveneration #curiosity #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #embodiedpresence #intuition #dreaming
rituals
Our most potent rituals emerge in the ebb and flow of daily life. They carry the ase of a slow drip, like drops of water carving stone. They are easily dismissed and hard to interrupt when we fail to pay attention.
[image shows quote above in brown font. The background of the image has 4 squares in earth tone pink and brown colors]
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #life #trust #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #desire #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #ancestralveneration #curiosity #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #embodiedpresence #intuition #prayer
choreographies of ancestral connection and desire
may our practices of embodied presence become choreographies of ancestral connection and desire.
🪩
[image on cream background shows the quote above with terra cotta colored ribbons across the top and bottom. The foreground shows a beautiful dark-skinned man with symbols and art painted on the side of his chest, neck, and face in white paint.]
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #life #trust #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #desire #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #ancestralveneration #curiosity #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #embodiedpresence #intuition #prayer
co-create maps of healing
trust yourself
trust your ancestors
trust your kinfolk
trust your ecology
[image shows medium brown hands holding cowrie shells over a large blue and white bowl filled with dried leaves and herbs. quote reads we can co-create authentic maps of healing with our ancestors & beloved kin.]
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #life #castingseeds #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #harvset #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #descendants #ancestralveneration #curiosity #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #spring #intuition #seeds
Elder Wisdom Spring Equinox Divination
🪶In our Elder Wisdom ritual, I always draw a card that offers medicine to orient us toward liberation in our field of practice. This time, I pulled to the "Harvest" card; it was much-needed Earth medicine in Pisces season.
🪶This is the ancestral wisdom that came through: Although it may seem hard to believe, we are living in a season of harvest. As we face empires of domination, harm, and oppressive systems, we are harvesting the fruits of generational movements toward collective liberation. Our tools of resistance and the fractals of healed realities we exist within are part of the harvest, as are the new tools blooming in the imaginations and hearts of those inspired to root themselves within lineages of love and liberation.
🪶Pulsing rhythms and echoes of call and response between grief and grace, joy and heartbreak, and life and death punctuate the harvest season. Our participation in this harvest enables our collective survival in what ancestor Lorde calls "the mouth of the dragon." To that end, each of us is responsible for giving back every drop of nourishment we receive from the harvest and then some to ensure future kin will be nourished.
🪶Tend the soil by engaging the world and one another with love, especially when you have every reason not to.
🪶May your words be cool water for the seeds of liberation. May the garden spade of your actions uproot what is invasive to your soul's soil. May old thought patterns become compost, and may the light of your spirit shine like the sun coaxing emergent and generative realities out of their protective seed coats of dreaming and into the mystery of being. May your life be the most prolific seed of liberation you cast.
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #life #castingseeds #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #harvset #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #descendants #ancestralveneration #curiosity #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #spring #intuition #seeds
Seeding Dreams: An Equinox Ritual
On the heels of the Spring Equinox, Nora and I invite you to join us for our ancestral and ecological self-study circle. This month, we will explore dreaming as liberatory praxis. We will gather at Jubilee Healing Farm, press our bodies against the Earth, and dream and vision alongside her. We will close our time together with a seed-casting ritual, offering up our visions and dreams of liberated realities and futures directly to the body of the Earth.
We hope you will join us.
liberation requires us to choose ourselves and one another
What the ancestors keep saying
🫶🏽
Collective liberation requires us to choose one another on this side of the veil and beyond.
🫶🏽
In liberated realities, the care, love, and belonging we extend to ourselves and one another cannot be conditional.
🫶🏽
On our best days and our worst days, the work of liberation is the practice of choosing to love ourselves and one another.
🫶🏽
[image of a black and white photo of a beautiful dark-skinned black woman with full lips and a short afro. Her eyes are closed, and water droplets pool across her face. A semi-transparent gold leaf is over her left eye. A patterned background with diagonal lines is behind her in black and white. quotes read [1]Collective liberation requires us to choose one another. [2] In liberated realities, the care, love, and belonging we extend to ourselves and one another cannot be conditional.[3]On our best days and our worst days, the work of liberation is the practice of choosing to love ourselves and one another.
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #hope #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #descendants #ancestralveneration #curiosity #kinship #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #connection #unlearning #reality
you have the tools
You were born with everything you need to be in connection with your ancestral ecosystems and unseen kin.
🐚Our bodies are portals and altars of connection.
🐚Our breath supports us with grounding in our bodies.
🐚Presence supports us with connecting to our agency.
🐚Cultivating a practice of engaging the breath, body, and presence supports us with honing our intuitive pathways of perception.
Tap in and practice.
🌊
@sacredgriefshaunajanz and I welcome you to join our field of practice. Learn more bit.ly/elderwisdom
[image of a tan background with coral fossil in the center. Aqua and gold watercolor circles are in each corner and gold circles are in the foreground. A gray text box in the center of the image lists body, breath, presence and practice under a heading that reads ancestral connection tools.
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #breath #body #presence #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #ancestralassignment #lineage #kin #descendants #ancestralveneration #curiosity #kinship #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #connection #intuition
we will not grieve in isolation
Allowing ourselves to be companioned in our grief by our ancestors and unseen kin is a practice of vulnerability and deep intimacy.
🦦🦦
May we all feel safe enough to practice sharing our grief with our ancestors and our unseen elders.
🦦🦦
May we be led by the collective choreographies of our grieving toward generative lifeways and rituals that articulate our love of life and the insistence that our grieving be held in deep ecology.
🦦🦦
On March 12th, Elder Wisdom, a two-hour ritual container intended to support us in connecting with our ancestral ecosystems, unseen kin, and elder wisdom fields, opens. This ritual of connecting with our ancestors and unseen elders in times of deep suffering and grief is a love offering to our nervous systems, our hearts, the earth, and all of our kin-folk displaced and suffering at the hands of oppressive systems.
🦦🦦
In these times, we choose community and connection. In these times, we refuse to allow ourselves to grieve in isolation.
🦦🦦
Register at https://bit.ly/elderwisdom
🦦🦦
[quotes on tan and brown background with striated white lines reads: Allowing ourselves to be companioned in our grief by our ancestors and unseen kin is a practice of vulnerability and deep intimacy. May we all feel safe enough to practice sharing our grief with our ancestors and our unseen elders.
May we be led by the collective choreographies of our grieving toward generative lifeways and rituals that articulate our love of life and the insistence that our grieving be held in deep ecology.]
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #hope #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #descendants #ancestralveneration #curiosity #kinship #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #connection #unlearning #grief
all praises
All Praises
Praise impossible things
Praise to hot ice
Praise to flying fish
Whole numbers
Praise impossible things.
Praise all creation
Praise the presence among us
Of the unfenced Is.
-Lucille Clifton
🕊️
Praise for the gift of your life.
Praise to the signs you continue to send us one year later that you are still deeply connected to us as you settle into the ancestral realm.
We miss you 🕊️
#love
seed, soil and collective memory
🌱
Thank you @sistahseeds for these beautiful seeds and their stories. I feel so blessed to archive these seeds and their stories in the land we steward.
🌱
Archiving culture and stories through seeds and land is part of our collective liberation work.
🌱
@millionexperiments season 2 episode 18 shares the work of @vivien.sansour, the founder of the Palestinian Heirloom Seed Library, which seeks to preserve and promote heritage and threatened seed varieties, traditional Palestinian farming practices, and the cultural stories and the identities associated with them.
🌱
Listen to this episode and add the podcast to your rotation. I believe the podcast is sun-setting, but there are 2 seasons of wisdom for you to engage.
#seeds #soil #liberation #ancestralwisdom #relationshipgoals #love #memory #culture #earth #abolition #1mexperiments #podcast #gratitude #collectiveliberation #ceasefirenow🇵🇸 #freepalestine🇵🇸
co-create authentic maps of healing
I hope your healing journey brings you into deeper relationship with yourself, your ancestors, and every layer of ecology that supports your life.
🪱
Remember, we don’t have to do any of this alone.
🪱
[image on brown background with white font reads: we can follow idealized maps of healing others create for us or we can co-create authentic maps of healing with our ancestors & beloved kin]
#elderwisdom #ase #ancestralwisdom #community #practice #ancestors #healing #liberation #love #relationshipgoals #hope #ancestralconnections #generativelifeways #ancestralassignment #ecologicalbeing #lineage #kin #descendants #ancestralveneration #curiosity #kinship #ritual #radicalimagination #remember #belonging #interdependence #ecosystems #connection #unlearning #authentic
