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Often when we think of social justice & liberation work we (often stereotypically) think of fiery activists putting their bodies on the line for change.
But what if embodiment itself was also activism?
And what if our activism was fueled by personally prioritizing joy?
For several years my journey with the embodied arts was a pretty selfish one. I wanted to deepen my own somatic skills, so I could operate with a better, richer guidance system in the world.
At some point, perhaps around 2019 my vision became more political. My analysis around embodiment grew. I began to link and research and learn more about the systemic factors creating our current epidemic of disembodiment.
I began to realize embodiment was not just a personal skill – it was a political act.
“Joy is its own form of liberation.
Joy is a necessity, not a luxury.
Joy is a political act.”
– India Pierce
Today we’re joined by India Pierce, an Educator and Consultant who helps others boldly chase joy and improve their equity practices & organizational culture.
India is a guest teacher on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Liberation for our Feminine Embodiment Coaching Certification – and a fellow entrepreneur who believes embodiment is freedom work.
I spoke with India as part of ‘The Future Is Embodied Conference’ late last year & our conversation was so rich, I though it best to open the enclosures & share this conversation more widely. So today it’s coming to you on the podcast.
In this conversation, we explore:
- How India found embodiment through religion & the three dimensions of her embodied living
- Extractive activism & divine activism – we speak about the different fuels for movements
- India’s journey back to her body through experiences of her emerging queer identity & pregnancy loss
- Why India sees Embodiment as liberation work
- JOY – Being guided by joy & why joy is freedom work
- Is it selfish to prioritize joy? The difference between self-care, joy, collective liberation
- 2 practices for coaches, practitioners & those working in the embodied arts to center DEI and liberation in their work
- Advice – This conversation discusses pregnancy loss
About India
India Pierce is an entrepreneur, educator, and consultant who helps others boldly chase joy. After over a decade of working with businesses to improve their equity practices and organizational culture, she realized that something was sorely missing from the organizations and daily lives of the business owners she worked with; you know what that thing was? Joy! That realization went on to drastically change her work and life. Dubbing herself a “joy ambassador,” India launched India Pierce Consulting to encourage people to put the joy back into their work. She supports organizations in creating joyful and equitable workplaces where employees thrive and find fulfillment. As well as, small business owners in building their businesses with their joy in mind so they can grow their business without sacrificing their greatest vision for their life. Outside of work, she is completing her doctorate, enjoys spending time with her family, binging RomComs, and eating pizza.
Resources
- The work of India Pierce & India on Instagram
- Feminine Embodiment Coaching – an emotional embodiment & vulnerability-based professional training for coaches
- Leave a podcast review on iTunes here
- Thought or reflection to share? Leave a comment on Instagram here
Transcript
(This transcript is generated by AI so might not be perfect)
Jenna Ward (00:00):
A very warm welcome to this conversation with our guest, India Pierce, exploring embodiment and joy as justice. So for many of us, when we think about social justice or liberation work, what stereotypically might come to mind are fiery activists and people putting their bodies on the line for what they believe in. And while this form of activism is important and valid and true, India invites us in today’s conversation to consider what if embodiment itself is a form of activism? And what if our activism was fueled by personally prioritizing joy? This is an incredibly rich and intimate conversation where we explore India’s journey home to her own body with all the various identities that she holds. We speak about extractive activism, divine activism. We speak about why India sees embodiment and joy as important work for activists. And we also chat about
whether it’s selfish to prioritize our own joy and how personal joy relates to collective liberation. India is somebody that I’ve known for a little while In a few capacities. India’s work centers around education and consulting to bring two organizations more joy as well as more equitable workplaces. And India is actually a guest facilitator in our feminine embodiment coaching certification. She offers a training within our program, which is around diversity, equity, inclusion, and liberation for coaches. Her work is wonderful. She is delightful, and I warmly welcome you to this conversation with India Pierce,
(01:53):
The warmest of welcomes to beautiful India. Let’s dive in and get started with the juicy bit. So you hold a PhD in ethics studies and critical gender studies, but I know you are also very passionate about embodiment. Could you share with us a little bit about your experience, your passion for embodiment and how it intersects with your work as a consultant and as an educator?
India Pierce (02:21):
Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been really fascinated with the concept of embodiment for probably about the last several years, and I came to it through religion and so my research deals with religion and several years ago I was trying to really sit with how religion has manifested itself in my personal life and in my activism. And that is what got me to thinking about embodiment. And so how is this showing up? What are the practices that support this? How does this live outside of commonly thought of sacred spaces? How can I think about embodying the divine in my everyday life? And that’s kind of where it came from. What is divine embodiment? That question is what started my whole journey of embodiment. And in doing that, really just
realizing how central embodiment is to every aspect of my life and how I’m showing up for myself and for others.
(03:42):
And I kind of formalized that inquiry, that line of inquiry through my research. So my doctoral research is exploring the divine embodiment of queer women of color activists. I’m really interested in understanding what type of spiritual freedom is opened up when queer people create affirming pathways to the divine, especially because they often find themselves within religious spaces that are not affirming. And so to say that God or goddess or whatever that name is for you or the divine lives within me, and this is something that I can embody and pour into the world is such a powerful concept and it’s so significant in this moment when we think about all of the injustice happening all around the world. And so to show up in those spaces embodying the divine at a protest or at a rally or wherever you may be, what does that mean that we carry and bring with us the divine in those spaces? That those types of juicy questions are kind of where I am right now with embodiment, thinking very heavily around that. But then also just thinking about what does it mean to really embody the values that I have and to think about a richness of life that can’t exist without me being fully present in my body. And that not having always been true for me. I think I’ve sometimes navigated life very disconnected from my body and disembodied, I guess we could think about it in that way.
Jenna Ward (05:53):
There’s something deliciously radical about the idea of your pathway marrying the piece around justice and liberation. And then this question of what does the divine embodied look like and how do I bring that to this space because that’s not the typical avenue, that’s not the typical narrative. That’s not the typical pathway that I hear spoken about when I’m in spaces that are concerned with liberation, social justice, changing oppression. Yet it seems like such an obvious and natural and good fuel to use and to engage in your body in how you show up in those spaces. And I think it’s not news to you or I certainly, we have a lot of people who come to work with us in our coaching certification who have a background either as a formal activist or some degree of activism in their world. And often the fuel that has been used for their passions, for their activism has led to some kind of burnout, has led to some kind of depletion. So this to me just seems a little bit of a beautiful antithesis to maybe the common way that a lot of social justice work is commonly done. Did you have any reflections around that you wanted to share?
India Pierce (07:23):
Well, I completely agree with you and I think that the model does not work because as you’re saying, that model, that path is so extractive. It’s all about you giving and giving and so you’re constantly being depleted. And if we operate from that place, it does everyone a disservice. It does our communities a disservice and it does us a disservice. And for me, there’s so much power when we come from this embodied space than that kind of more typical path that you were talking about. There’s something that is grounding, that is grounding in that approach that sustains me and it acts as my barometer of right and wrong for me, right? This space is not, it helps me to keep a temperature check on what’s going on and how am I feeling and how am I caring for myself as well as other people because I can do a gentle holding of others while also caring for myself. I
don’t have to choose, but often it’s as if we have to choose, we have to give ourselves over to the movement. And when we do that, then as you were saying, we end up in these places of complete burnout, of exhaustion, of resentment, and that is not how I want to show up. I want to show up, up and be able to service in a joyful spirit.
Jenna Ward (09:23):
I’m all about the joy. More quota of that I think can only be good fuel for movements for whatever the movement that we’re passionate about. So you’ve already spoken a little bit about this spectrum of embodiment. You didn’t call it that, but you spoke about this kind of divine level of embodiment then embodying what your values are, then embodiment at the level of just richness of life, like everyday richness. So I like it how you described these different dimensions from the really spiritual to then the really practical day-to-day. Curious to hear a little bit for you as you’ve been on this journey and also doing this study and this work, what’s been your experience of coming home to your body, this body that is a certain body with certain experiences and identities? I’d love to know a little bit about that personally if you’re happy to share.
India Pierce (10:18):
I’m so happy to share because I love that question. It is loaded, but it’s also so beautiful and it’s simplicity and I’ve had such a, I guess, complicated relationship with my body over the years. And so I would say that my journey or my experience has been this one of constantly leaving and then coming back home to my body. I can think of some very kind of poignant moments in which I’ve gone through those cycles. And so I think I’m constantly cycling through this kind of disconnect and reconnect with my body. So the first thing that comes to mind for me is about how queerness and pleasure and shame has had such a profound impact on my relationship with my body, especially as a young person. I came out in high school and so trying to navigate that as a teenager and missed the messages that I was receiving from my family and from my religion because religion has been such a huge part of my life, it was a huge part of my upbringing.
(11:43):
I spent those years very disconnected, very disconnected from self and really trying to really questioning what was coming up in my body, the inklings of pleasure or the things that told me to do this thing. I think that I had such a complicated relationship with that because I was trying to reconcile these larger questions that I we’re having around my identity. But once I was able to fully own who I am and to stand in that power, that power of that certainty, I was really able to be present in my body in a way that has really transformed my life. And to be able to say in the most beautiful ways that this body is deserving of pleasure. It is deserving of touch, it is deserving of to be engaged with lovers in the ways that feel most nourishing to me and that in that is home and that is peace when I follow that path.
(13:02):
Because when I deny that for myself, that’s when I think that I start to have, that’s when so many issues come up for me because I’m not living within that truth. So that’s one cycle I can think of. That’s a big coming home to my body moment. But I also think about the disconnecting and reconnecting that has happened over the past year or so as it relates to pregnancy and loss and now being in postpartum. As you know, I gave birth earlier this summer and the entire pregnancy, which was this whole journey of coming home to my body. So a couple years prior to this moment, I had a devastating late pregnancy loss. And as you can imagine, that completely shook my entire sense of being and really complicated the relationship that I have with my body and brought up so many questions around just questions around the ability, can I do this? Was it something that I did? Did I not take care of my body?
(14:45):
All of these ways in which I really felt like I was beating up on myself and felt betrayed by my body. And that betrayal made me angry and I think really kept me from caring for my body in the ways that I should have. And so I feel I came into this pregnancy, not fully healed from that, but knowing that spirit, that energy was not really what I wanted to bring into this pregnancy. And so I ended up having to embark on this kind healing journey during the pregnancy that I wish I would have done way before because pregnancy is hard enough on its own.
(15:40):
But so to journey through that alongside the very real anxiety that was coming up for me during the pregnancy around the uncertainty of can my body do this? But I was so determined to be present and to not retreat because I think that’s sometimes what happens, those cycles disembodiment, that disconnect from my body. That’s what it looks like. It looks like not fully being present, retreating. And as I wade through those waters, I guess you could think about it in that way. There was just a sense of peace and comfort that I got in my body and it’s not making me emotional to think about because I don’t really have words, but the moment there was a shift and that coming home just gave, it was such a deep gratitude for what my body was doing, and I think that that has really changed my relationship to my body.
(17:00):
And so now I’m in this postpartum world, which is a whole other bag that I’m trying to figure out. It’s a whole new, whole new beast and it’s a different cycle for me again, of what does it mean to kind of be present, to not retreat, to be okay with the ways in which my body is going to carry me through this moment, the shedding of the hair, nobody prepared me for that or the rush of random hormones. So it’s like really, I love that question. I love that question so much because I think I’m constantly coming home.
Jenna Ward (17:56):
I love it how you describe this in such intimate terms. Thank you so much for sharing, but also such relatable and human terms in terms of the cycle of finding your way home and then this next challenge, this next season, this next event, and what is required in that to come home. I really think it’s so healthy for us to view embodiment as something that’s not binary, but instead is just this spectrum of dancing into the deep wading, back to the shallows, finding ways to dance back into the deep. And that’s really a skill that as you’re speaking, I really hear the skill of commitment and recommitment and finding and navigating your way back. I think it’s a skill that is just lacking so widely in the world that it’s just so beautiful to hear someone speak about this skill in action even when it is so heartbreaking and exquisite and beautiful and catastrophic all at the same time.
India Pierce (19:07):
Absolutely. It’s not something that we are taught. And so it’s really hard because I think people come into the picking up of that skill often later in life.
Jenna Ward (19:21):
Certainly that was the case for me. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties that I realized there’s this whole area of being an emotionally intelligent and rich human that I just never got taught. And it’s really hard to do life without that.
(19:43):
Yeah. So underneath what you were sharing and the beauty and the intensity of it all, I felt like there was this sense of this optimism and this desire to return home. And I just, perhaps it’s because I know you a little that I also felt this thread of returning to where there is joy, and I know that’s such a big part of your work, the discovery, the infusing the question of how can this be done with more joy. So I’m really curious if you would share with us a little bit around how you see this work around embodiment and joy as interfacing really necessarily with your work in social justice and in liberation, especially for marginalized communities. I’m wondering if you could share a little bit about that core ethos that you hold in the realm of your work.
India Pierce (20:42):
Yes, absolutely. I feel like we’re all led by something. And for me, there’s this period of time where I will constantly say, I want the questions that keep waking me up at night, that keep gnawing at me to lead me. How can I live a life that is led by the questions? And I still believe that to be true. That is such a core value of mine. And over the years it’s really evolved to how do I let joy lead me and what are the questions that arise for me? If I let joy lead me, what are the things that I need to say no to? Who do I say yes to enthusiastically? Who do I need to become in service of joy? And when I really started to sit with those questions for myself, I think I started to see a transformation that led me to feel more aligned.
(22:03):
It led me to feel more connected. It forced me to quiet myself enough to hear the answers. And that answer for me was really to shift my life in such a way that I let my joy lead me instead of all of these other things that we can be led by. And that felt really radical for me because we often are called to do lots of things that are not joyous because we need to survive, we need to pay our bills, we need to do whatever. But it’s like, what if we could figure out a way to find joy in the midst of that? What do we need to do to shift in order for joy to not be something that we’re constantly waiting on? And I think that’s what I was realizing for me is that joy had become this thing that I was waiting on after this semester, after this client project in the summer on Friday.
(23:13):
And I don’t want that. Life is way too short for us to constantly be putting that off. And so I tell my clients that joy is not the reward that we get only after hard work. Joy is something that we deserve and we deserve it right now and we deserve it here in this moment no matter what we do. And so to make time for intentional joy feels like freedom work for me because it’s challenging our society’s obsession with al culture and with constantly being productive, this need to produce something to be of value, this extracting of our labor at every turn, and really the pressure to be on, to always be on, to always be available, to always show up, especially when we think about social media and how important that is, and especially in business for business owners, I do a lot of work with business owners and that is a huge drain to let joy lead us to center our professional work with our joy to align in that way acknowledges, at least in my opinion, that first our work and our workplaces greatly contribute to the sense of joy we feel in our lives.
(25:02):
It’s either really helping us or it is not helping us at all. And there’s a responsibility there. There’s a responsibility on our part to do what we can, but there’s also a responsibility for businesses. And so when I go in and I’m talking to and I’m working with organizations, the big thing that has shifted in my work is I’m not starting with diversity, equity, inclusion. I don’t think that sustains us. I’m starting with joy. How can we create joyful workplaces? How do we create workplaces where folks can thrive, where they want to be here? What does it look like to center people? And that’s kind of how that works for me. And I think that is, it’s significant. I don’t think we’re talking it enough. And so most people are like, oh, joy, what do you mean by that? Because that’s not a topic that we’re dealing with that often.
(26:09):
But the second thing that I acknowledge is, is that joy is its own form of liberation to do something purely for joy’s sake and nothing else, whether it’s to take a break or if it’s to rest or whatever the case might be, that is its own form of liberation. And we right now are constantly getting messages around self-care. There is a multi industry all built around self-care that will have us to believe that caring for ourselves needs to happen in a very specific way. We need to do something glamorous or take this trip that’s like a worthy of Instagram or whatever the case is, this expensive staycation or this day at the spa. And those are all valid. I love the day at the spa, but I don’t think that those are the only ways that we can care for ourselves. I think joy can be found in the simplest of endeavors in our small gestures of the every day, just like they can be found in those big luxurious treats to cultivate though healthy boundaries with our work in the wake of being underpaid and overworked and often underappreciated. And when everything around us is pointing to the contrary, to me that feels bold. That is a freedom seeking practice that says, I’m more than my work. I am more than my labor. I deserve rest and I deserve joy. And it’s that simple,
Jenna Ward (28:27):
Taking a big breath with that because at the surface it seems like a simple practice to be so guided by a question, how do I let joy lead me? At the surface, it seems like such a sweet, simple, relatively benign question to ask yourself. But as you begin to speak about it, we see, oh, it’s actually really countercultural counter hustle. There’s so many countercultural ways that is a really radical question if we actually commit to it, if we commit to actually asking it and actually answering it and then doing the inconvenient thing that it’s suggesting that we do, which is maybe less productive, which is maybe going against the grain of what conventional success or productivity might look like. So just really acknowledging I myself have had these questions, different questions. One of the versions that I’ve lived with for a while was What would pleasure have me do? So different but similar. And it’s so difficult to feel the answer and to act on the answer because it’s often just so inconvenient, so inconvenient. So I just want to really acknowledge it’s so simple and in practice it’s absolutely not. It’s absolutely revolutionary.
India Pierce (30:06):
And it’s so hard to explain to people because people don’t get it, especially in personal relationships where they just expect you to show up, expect you to give, expect you to do X, Y, and Z. And so that question of what would pleasure have me do sometimes pleasure has me staying at home in my pajamas and saying, no, sometimes pleasure is me not showing up for you when you need or want me to in that moment because I need to care for myself at this time. That is so hard. It’s so hard to do.
Jenna Ward (30:47):
It’s really challenging to forego the assumed obligations, particularly in those intimate relationships. That’s a lot of adulting too. It’s a lot of adulting to really question what’s obligation, what’s genuine desire, where do I really want to be? And I am interested in exploring. So you’ve described for us how joy is this navigating facet, which infuses your work, your consulting work. It’s actually the center of on the periphery, there’s DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion. And you have done a guest facilitation in our coach certification around that as well. But at the heart of it is this real joy. I’m just curious. Some people might be listening to our conversation and the question might arise for them, because I hear this question a lot. The question might arise for them. Isn’t it just selfish for me to center what my joy is? Now, whoever’s thinking this question might be in a body that holds privilege or holds marginalized identities could be the spectrum we don’t know. But I’m curious how you might respond for somebody who’s saying, well, to send to joy, that’s nice for you and that’s nice for your body. But isn’t that in some way an inherently individualist or selfish practice? And how does that really create some type of, how does that really couple with some type of biggest systemic change? I’m curious your thoughts around surround that the individual to the collective and how that relates to what you’ve described with joy.
India Pierce (32:37):
And that’s hard just because of what we were talking about. It’s hard to sometimes prioritize joy because there is this idea that it’s naughty in some way and that we are somehow being selfish. But I guess I just don’t see, I don’t separate things in that way. To me, joy and the collective go hand in hand. I think about the same. I am weak. And so there’s always interconnectedness in how I navigate the world and how we navigate the world. And so when I’m caring for myself, because that’s the other thing, I want us to think about joy as a necessity, not as a luxury. And often I think that we think about joy as a luxury, as a privilege. No, we all deserve joy. That’s it. That’s period for me. And when I am taking part in these joy practices and I use, that could be anything, a joy practice could be binge watching something on television and those things are caring for myself.
(34:06):
When I am doing that, when I allow myself to rest, to experience joy and pleasure, I am preserving my body and my spirit that is necessary work because I can’t pour from an empty cup. And so when I’m at my best, I can show up for other people. I can show up for my community and those desires, that desire for rest, the desire for laughter to dance or watch a movie or spend time with our loved ones, this desire for the unproductive joy to me, me, it’s not inherently selfish. I don’t see it as inherently selfish. And that’s not to say that there are not indeed selfish people in the world. There are absolutely selfish people in the world who prioritize themselves over everyone. I think about how covid played out in the US as a prime example of that. But Audrey has this quote that I really love, and she says that caring for myself is not often. I think that’s what people think. That’s key. For me, it’s not.
(35:43):
And that is an act of political warfare, I think especially for women, for non-binary people, for people of color, for disabled people, for folks whose existence, whose bodies have been seen as being there for the pleasure of others to pour into ourselves is necessary. And it is as much of a political act as it is one of necessity for us to care for ourselves. And I think that systemic injustice has very real material impact on people’s lives. And I think it’s important that we remember that because when we remember that, it helps us to recognize that there must be just as many moments for us to be showing up for others, showing for us to be in the streets, for us to be lobbed us to be doing whatever that work is that we’ve been called to do as there are moments where we are just chasing joy,
Jenna Ward (37:20):
What you’ve just described in that last little piece, I get this image of almost balancing the scales. So it’s like there’s all of these cultural and systemic inputs which will vary. The weight on our scales will vary depending on the identities that we hold. Most people listening to this conversation may hold one or more identities that are historically marginalized. And then I see you with your pot of joy being balance the scales for each insult for each moment where you have to rally for a change and affect it from the personal to the systemic level. Like balance the scales to make sure that joy is there as a necessity for your wellbeing, not as a luxury. And as I get that image, something in my brain kind of really clicks of like, ah, yes, I do see it as how it relates to the greater political stage when it’s just literally personally helping you to be in a place of greater balance
and personal liberation in this world in this time. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not. That’s my interpretation of what you’ve said, but that’s just the image that came to mind and it really clicked inside of me. So thank you for sharing that.
(38:50):
As we move, there’s two more questions that I wanted to, and I think we just have a little bit of time. So one of the last questions, I know that a large member, a large percentage of people who are joining us for this conversation today are coaches, wellness professionals, people who work as solo entrepreneurs, people who work in the healing and transformational arts. That’s a lot of people who are joining us for this conversation today. And for those people, I wanted to ask on their behalf, if we think about embodiment as a flourishing industry and a flourishing way of operating in the world, and we want to maintain really high standards and really high integrity within this industry if we don’t want this industry to become corrupted and hyper capitalized, I’m really curious on the front of liberation work, if there’s any internal standards or if there’s any internal kind of call to action or remembering that you would offer to this particular group, to this particular
demographic in terms of how we might maintain really high standards in our work that are genuinely entered on liberation and freedom for all. Any thoughts on that?
India Pierce (40:17):
That’s good. And I love your use of the word remembering because to me that evokes deep reflection and the need for pause in our work periodically. And that seems very important to me. I think at the heart of this work is a move towards justice and liberation. That’s the heart of it. We’re moving towards that. And if you all in your work move in such a way that keeps that central, then I think that you’re going to always end up on the right track. I think it is important to remember that equity justice and liberation, like that path towards that is a lifelong journey. And as long as we keep remembering that, then I think that we’ll shift accordingly. Right? There will always be more to learn and unlearn, and we will resist the urge to see ourselves as experts because we’re going to surrender to the fact that this is a lifelong journey and I have to be a lifelong student.
(41:53):
So constantly remembering that and then we start to pick up practices that support that belief. We start to listen more than we talk. We start to be aware of the questions as I say, and we let those guide us to guide us towards resources, towards spaces, towards teachers that will help us to find the answers that we need. And I talked about this in the training that we did for your community. I think that widening the scope, that’s something I always say to myself, is my scope wide enough that feels important to me? And so widening the scope is really just this idea that we need to move beyond our own lived realities, otherwise we will miss people. We will miss other lived experiences. So it’s constantly remembering that widen the scope, widen the scope. Who do I need to talk to? Who do I need to learn?
(43:07):
What spaces do I need to be in that help me to widen the scope? And I think doing all of those things again in service of this lifelong journey that we’re on towards justice and liberation, what keeps us working towards those high standards? That’s what allows us, I think, to really operate from that type of space no matter what happens with this particular industry. Because what the industry looks like five years, 10 years from now, especially as technology continues to advance might look different. But if we keep those core values and we let that shape our work, I think we’ll always be kind of where we need to be. And it just doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. And I think sometimes it feels much more complicated, especially when we have so many questions and so few answers, and we are in this weird space of cancer culture. So everyone has all this anxiety about being wrong and not knowing. And so I think we have to surrender to the fact that we will
always not know something. And that’s just our constant state. I fully expect to be a student for the rest of my life. And if I just embrace that, then I think that’s going to do wonders for me personally and for my business.
Jenna Ward (45:05):
Thank you so much. I’m nodding along as you share because two of the key points you just mentioned were around really centering our values around liberation and around freedom and around justice. And that’s definitely true for our school. It’s actually the reason that we are here at this conference altogether right now. So we are really interested in how we do actually create a more embodied future for all of us. And the second piece that you mentioned around widening the scope, holy duly personally working with over 600 different bodies in our coaching C over the last 60 years, I’ve been such a student of how little I know about others’ lived experience. And as an embodiment coach, part of that is how can I ask questions in trauma sensitive ways that I don’t know the answer for their body, and I don’t know what’s right for them, and I don’t have to know, but I can appreciate that their body is going to have so much rich knowing.
(46:15):
So when you speak about this idea of widening the scope, I’m just so in agreeance and in awe of that principle which is inherently laced with uncertainty to not know and to not have the answers is not seen culturally as a very desirable state of expertise to hold. And yet in this kind of embodiment space, it’s actually where we want to aim to get to that. I don’t know what’s right for your body, but I can appreciate that your body, your sum of lived experience, your ancestral imprint, your deep knowing it’s going to know. So I just love what you’ve shared because I’m just nodding along like, yes, that’s beautiful. So thank you for that.
India Pierce (47:04):
And I wish that everyone approached people in that manner. Yeah,
Jenna Ward (47:17):
I wished my mother approached me in that manner, but that’s another conversation for another day. So in summary, my final question you is if we are to create a more embodied future, what remembering or wisdom or question or little morsel of deliciousness might you leave us all with today?
India Pierce (47:53):
I’m coming back to joy is not the reward. Joy is the journey, and I think we just need to boldly chase it.
Jenna Ward (48:12):
I’m going to put that on some instagramer book thing and put it on my desktop because it’s potent and it’s simple and it’s challenging and it’s beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing this morsel with us. Thank you so much for your time today. It’s been so beautiful to intimately journey with you, your body, your experience, your joy, and I’ve just so loved our conversation. So on behalf of everyone joining us for this convo today, thank you for sharing so much of yourself, India. It’s been beautiful.
India Pierce (48:45):
Thank you
