Healing means putting the heart, the courage and the energy back in our bodies with our own culture.
ALICE WALKER, ANYTHING WE LOVE CAN BE SAVED
HERITAGE & HEALING EXPERIENCES
FOR BLACK PEOPLE
Half-day retreats that integrate SOUL (culture) and contemplative practices, including restorative yoga, journaling, affirmation|mantra, storytelling, bearing witness, communing in nature and ritual.
Cincinnati, Ohio.
Dates & Locations Coming Soon Registration Opening Soon
With the generous support of a United Way Black Empowerment Works (BEW) Grant Partners: Cincinnati Recreation Commission (CRC) the Artist Gee Horton|The Baobab Project
We Got Soul; We Can Heal encourages us to explore the ways in which integrating soul with contemplative practices can foster healing and restoration on both individual and collective levels. The text calls on us to expand our understanding of leadership and community interaction and impact. With years of experience in higher education and as an elder, mentor, and teacher living in Senegal, Jeffers-Coly surveys race-based stress and trauma, community-building, the importance of ancestry, and the elder-mentor role.
’Cause the thing is, I think people come here [to Senegal, West Africa] because they don’t feel at home in their Black bod[ies] in the United States. And I hope that by the time they leave here, they begin to have a sense that that’s the goal is, is to get to a place where I feel at home in my Black body. That’s the goal, to feel at home in your Black body, wherever that Black body is. That’s the goal.
Jocelyn Robinson explores the meaning of “Home” on the Goethe Institute’s The Big Ponder Podcast series with three American expats, including Phyllis Jeffers-Coly, a Diasporic Soul living between Senegal and the United States.
Gee Horton with Phyllis Jeffers-Coly and LaDe Richardson’s The Baobab Project is part of the Cincinnati ArtsWave Truth and Reconciliation Visual Art Exhibition at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on display July 19 through October 31, 2021.
Drawing from traditional African rites of passage, The Baobab Project explores ways in which Black men come of age. Conceptually, this work is rooted in the understanding of the majestic baobab tree and the barbershop as sacred communal spaces. Informed by Horton’s own coming of age journey, the project invites men to look inward and reflect on their internal and external identities through barbershop conversations. To date, over 50 Black men from diverse ages and backgrounds have participated in this project and have united to create a beautiful collection of intimate personal portraits.
What We Do
We offer Heritage & Healing experiences that integrate culture (SOUL) and contemplative practices.
Healing-Centered Leadership Development for Black Students
Under the Baobab Tree: Centering Heritage & Healing in Black Student Leadership Development
Signifying on the tree of contemplative practices as a frame of reference, this CMIND webinar explores the specific ways that we integrate contemplative practices into our healing-centered approach to Black Student Leadership Development.
Healing-Centered Heritage Travel
Experience heritage and healing as you enjoy Senegal’s rich, thriving and vibrant culture and natural beauty.
“You all create a space to receive others where they feel loved, they feel cared for, they feel nurtured – a space for peace – for freedom – for clarity. I am grateful.
Retreats & Workshops
Our Diasporic Soul Heritage and Healing Experiences include retreats and workshops that integrate culture (SOUL) & contemplative practices, including restorative yoga, yoga nidra and ritual.
Speaking Engagements
With passion, joy, love and creativity we celebrate the ways that WE GOT SOUL. We offer our insights on how culture (SOUL) and contemplative practices allow us to deepen our capacity for healing and restoration, resilience and resistance.
Creative Healing & Restoration Resources
Our Diasporic Soul Heritage and Healing Experiences include offering creative responses to race-based stress and trauma in ways that integrate the elements of SOUL (culture) and contemplative practices. This includes our Stopping the Clock Grief Ritual and Series, which was a co-created with Artist Angela Franklin, Chez Alpha Books, Xavier University’s Stained Glass Initiative and the Bryant Educational Leadership Group (BELG) in response to “racism [that remains] as pernicious as ever” and “a global pandemic [that has] disproportionately affect[ed] the black community, [at a time where, so it seems,] we can hardly take the time to sit with that horror as we are reminded, every single day, that there is no context in which Black Lives Matter.
Sampa the Great