“Follow your heart. You know what’s right. Become human with me again.”
– Ernesto Spotted Wolf Burbank (indigenous water protector at Standing Rock)
Whole Heart Connection is a set of body-based awareness practices designed to help us shift our internal state and increase our ability to access our own grounded, centered integrity and clarity. Click here to access the practices.
A note from our director
December 12, 2016
As we live through this moment of #WhiteLash in America, I am struck by the extent to which “becoming human again” is precisely what is needed in White America. There is goodness, there is health, there are strong family and community relationships among white people … but there is also a collective sickness and a psychopathic narcissism at work. This sickness is rooted within the birth of our nation amid genocide, human trafficking, and human enslavement. This sickness perpetuates itself through a culture of white supremacy that leaves its mark on generation after generation of Americans of European descent.
What can we do to break this cycle? One thing we can do is accept the invitation to become human again.
For me, this is what Thea Elijah’s Whole Heart Connection practices are about. Thea originally created them as a practitioner of Chinese Medicine and Sufi healing modalities who wanted to prepare her child to grow up and thrive in a complex world. After formalizing Whole Heart Connection as a healing practice for adults, Thea began to see the benefit this work could have for white people in particular.
I believe that Whole Heart Connection practices can help white people inhabit our own bodies in a way that our membership in a dominant group has suppressed – not just because it feels good, or contributes to our personal healing, but because inhabiting our own bodies, and interacting with others from this place, is essential to the work of social change. Specific practices can even be applied to interrupt and clear unconscious patterns of social dominance, and help us establish “mutual ground” across social divisions. You can read about how Thea is applying the work in our profile piece here, and watch out for more specific applications as we expand the Whole Heart Connection material offered on our site.
My experience with Thea Elijah’s work has helped me gently unwind disconnected ways of being and step more fully into my own body and heart. I believe this kind of unwinding and heart-centering is essential to the work of White Awake, and hope you find great benefit in Thea’s offering to our community.
Eleanor Hancock / Director, White Awake
Click here to access the Whole Heart Connection practices
You can read more about Thea Elijah, and how she came to this work, here.