(video produced by :zenju earthlyn manuel, music by Choying Drolma & Steve Tibbetts)
Through intensive trainings, Still Breathing assists African American women who have experienced trauma in bringing forth a new whole self, allowing the long awaited opportunity for true nature to come through. We will be using imagery (the Black Angel Cards), culturally relevant meditation and mindfulness practices, applying food as medicine, and establishing a walking the earth practice.
Historically, African Americans in the United States have been subject to trauma through systemic oppression stemming from slavery. Today, the impact of such history (as recently researched) can be linked to the overwhelmingly representation of African Americans in the categories of life-threatening diseases and catastrophic deaths in this country. In addition, African Americans continue to suffer trauma in great percentages due to violence and poverty. The Still Breathing Project views trauma as a human condition that arises from seeing one’s life as shattered by one or more uncontrollable events or the result of major shifts in foundations of survival. Specifically, to African Americans trauma can be accumulated, generational and ancestral. In the context of Buddhist teachings a life may be experienced as “shattered” but that life is still intact. Despite the validity of the traumatic experience, it is the mind and body, which holds the memories of the events that is at the root of a person’s “great” suffering.
In trauma survivors, they often feel inadequate or not capable of handling life. For African Americans there may be a pre-existing mindset of inadequacy derived from oppression. When trauma occurs this inadequacy is exponentially increased. In this inadequate place the capacity for healing is diminished. In Still Breathing a participant is taught that despite the trauma we have the breath, our bodies, our lives to awaken our own healing wisdom. We are born adequate, well equipped. This is our true nature but we cannot see obstructions to that nature. Through distilling the pure essence of the mind, using the trauma, participants are led closer to the true nature of their lives. There may also be a sense among African Americans that the trauma is permanent sense it pervades the urban community in which most black people live. Still Breathing provides an experiential training that can reveal the fallacy of that view of life and re-instate the possibilities of change and transformation.
Still Breathing creates a sanctuary for African American women in order to provide the safety needed to embark upon practices that may be new and different. The sanctuary can then be instilled within and used as they walk in the world. The sanctuary is also used to assist in re-establishing trust. This sanctuary will also be part of the website in which trainees, past and present, can share and support each other.
Symbolic wellness ceremonies will be created by the women and used to release or manifest what they need in their lives. Ritual and ceremony are critical to wellness among African Americans.
In the Still Breathing Project participants will spend three weekends spread over three months (one group of 20 in Winter and another group of 20 in Spring 2013). They are then taught how to train others in the same modalities so that the training is spread into the participants’ families and communities and the participants do not become dependent on the project or the project staff.
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