SA
Tada, How has your day been so far?
T
Strange, as usual.
SA
I feel as if, over the past year and a half, the days for me have also been getting more bizarre. Always running into awkward coincidences and feel like we are all trapped in a weird parallel universe. How do you ground yourself amongst all the strangeness?
T
Gosh well, I don’t know if I do. I’m taking a moment right now though.
SA
I hope this conversation might be some sort of meditation.
T
Already is 🙂
SA
I came to your work at the start of COVID last year, when I, for the first time in my life was completely alone. It was through isolation that I truly began my healing journey and one of my entry points was interrogating and exploring the field of somatics. I read My Grandmother’s Hands and then one day, through many YouTube rabbit holes, stumbled onto conversations you had presented. I was mind blown because for the first time, I had language to articulate my experience as someone who up until recently lived with extreme pelvic floor ‘dysfunction’ through vaginismus. What was your arrival into the ‘field’ of somatics like?
T
Ah yes, I see.
Lemme see.
Well, first I want to welcome your whole self, your pelvic bowl and the generations of all pelvic bowls connected into great mother. She is annoyed with me because I don’t do that enough or haven’t.
I get a feeling of high lifting sensations in my brows, it’s probably a bit of grief, to say that somatics is really a lineage of work in which has a lot has been written out, especially the wisdom of women (in the widest definition). Even in my own study, there are limitations of my understanding, I am finding, more and more. Just wanted to note that.
‘Her’ body is so much more sensitive to the subtle energetic system. So let’s just honor that.
I met somatics on the dancefloor, as she presented herself as rhythm. I was a club kind, going out to these parties that played jazz (in the widest sense) on vinyl in the late 90s and early 2000s. I saw people dancing in circles – in womb space, Hara space – now as I understand.
So I met somatics there. I’m inclined to say more but I feel like it would get ‘heady’ and I’m feeling like leaving a space here. Opening and pausing. This is my training at the moment. Finding pleasure in this open space even though it feels ‘bad’ haha.
SA
Thanks for nourishing that openness.
The dance floor, for me, is truly one of the safest places I found to come back to my body. I feel most aligned with my mind, body and spirit when I am dancing.
T
Well, something I might say, quickly, as a nod, that I think safety isn’t safe. At least this is my attitude to somatics more and more. For example, this track, , undoubtedly brought SO MUCH healing, especially to queer black and brown folk. But did anybody know about the *drop* that would happen after this era? Not all of it is the fault of anybody, but it’s part of a larger cultural up and down movement and that isn’t entirely safe.
SA
Right – yes.
T
Like the blessed DJ Larry Levan, tell ‘you’ that you would have kundalini experience that will rock you to your core and change your life forever? Some don’t ‘survive’ this passage. In some ways he ‘knew’ that would happen. And he also succumbed.
SA
I understand, I’m reflecting now about my time on dance floors, although it’s been a while, and my definition of ‘safety’ includes being under the influence of some substance. Which at that current time was the only way I could feel in my body. Which, can become unsafe very quickly.
T
Yes. Exactly. And something about not sanitizing that feels very essential. Especially when we are engaging in embodiment forms that people have survived intense oppression through. I can feel that very strong in my sacrum as I write that.
But also, is it safe when people channel their intensity towards …hmm, I’m gonna pause here.
I can feel the jagged edges.
SA
It does feel a bit prickly. I’ve been dancing a lot at home lately, but I find the only way I can feel safe to fully unwind is if I am completely alone without disturbance from my housemates. Otherwise, and this is the addictive tendencies in me, I turn to marijuana or alcohol.
T
SA
Totally – I think, I’m still navigating the shame that comes with using a substance to completely release.
T
That’s really interesting, the shame. I think of our ancestors. Undoubtedly they disinhibited through these substances to sacred ‘altered’ states.
SA
Right.
T
Some of it is I think, letting the ancestors have their jollies. Pouring alcohol for them. Leaving marijuana for them. So they don’t need to do it all through your nervous system. And of course, you may still channel. I mean tbh I’m also repatterning a lot of my relationship to sensate pleasure through developing a better ability to channel (that is open up your nervous system to the ancestors and also they already are all the time), experience, and then disentangle/integrate.
My knowledge here though is weak. I’m being humbled. My colleagues such as Dare Sohei and Larissa Kaul understand this way better.
SA
I’m learning so much already!! Do you think it is irresponsible for folks who are trying to heal, trying to regulate their nervous system, to also maintain a relationship with alcohol/marijuana, or is it just about cultivating an intentional one?
This is so confusing right? Because what is ‘healing’. We are in the first time in thousands of years that ‘we’ can engage in freedom of sex, alchohol and drugs. So is healing the thousands of years of pain coming to the surface and transmuting that beautifully? Or is it being able to maintain stable relationships? Is it chaos or tranquil magick?
I don’t really know. For some moments of life clearly that chaos is it. And then in others, its tranquility. And things that stimulate us they fit into all of that.
I know less and less.
SA
No one size fits all. I’m reminded of when I returned to Sydney after 3 years away from my family. My mother found my cigarettes and asked me if I was an ‘addict’ and it triggered me.
T
Well, addiction is so many things. But yeah, a lot of shame around labels.
SA
Right, and after processing I thought, the cigarettes soothe me in a way that my mother could not.. Hahah. And that was such an awkward, uncomfortable realisation to come to.
T
Hahaha. Well maybe there is a great dark mother in the smoke that needs to be worshipped. .
I mean I think it’s real that you and I’s generation are in that spot of healing millenia of stuck trauma and know that is what we are doing. It’s just the beginning. And we have to be a lot more decent to each other while we are doing that. Have a sense of humor. Not be so fragile.
SA
Humour is something that I am definitely trying to incorporate into my journey. Holding the contradictions as divinely hilarious instead of frustrating and exhausting. Do you think, as non-white people, we sometimes lose the ability to find those moments of humour throughout our journey.
T
Well I am right now reading this very weird passage (don’t judge me).
“When you enter a certain octave of this transcendence to time and space you enter into what Yeshua referred to as “love.” This love is impersonal. It is not romantic in the sense that most people think of it. It is not erotic attraction. It is a resonance that holds all existence in one interrelated vibration, and this vibration is all-inclusive.
This state of consciousness is very strange, for when you are in the vibrational state of impersonal love you can easily hold conflicting opposites together.
They are seemingly resolved in the serenity of this vibration called love. But at the same time there are other perceptions and other realities co-existing with this vibrational state.
My personal difficulty with the concept of “oneness,” as it is used in the New Age, has to do with a lack of boundaries, a lack of accountability and personal responsibility. It is also a nesting place, ironically, for some of the darkest shadow material of humanity.
Those who leap frog into the idea of oneness, enter a tenuous path if they conclude that at a higher level of being we are all one and there is no differentiation. My reason for saying this has to do with the edges of vibrational states.
The idea of “oneness” is being used as a hypnotic vehicle by some people to sidestep the complexity of existence. Some of these people believe that if we are all one then there is no need to do anything, and, in my belief, this is a sad error.”
An excerpt channeled by a white guy of Mary Magdalen LOL. So that’s my sense of humor.
And yeah, I think we do. In any place of marginalization we lose humor. On a simple level, we don’t understand we’re often going to be triggered into our ancestral stuff with our ‘oppressors’. And we are ALL each other’s oppressors, ancestrally. So it is a bit of shit show lol.
So when we are exploring these millenia of traumas in our bodies, in close quarters with each other, we just have to recognize that hmm … Larissa told me once, the issue is basically as if the ancestors don’t exist and THEY DO. We have to change our ways of being with each other under the premise that ancestors are real, ghosts are real, spirits are real, … there is a big nervous system that isn’t ‘ours’ that is influencing our lives so deeply.
SA
I needed to hear that. That puts so many of the pieces of the puzzle together for me navigating yoga as a practice rooted in caste and now in the west.
T
I mean the caste system is basically cultural kundalini syndrome with energy completely getting lodged in ‘high vibes’ and power getting concentrated in these heavenly human beings. So when you export that spiritual practice without taking that in consideration, you’re going to maintain the caste system in different ways. It actually shows the dangers of spiritual practice in a way on a cultural scale – it’s the same everywhere in the world.
SA
Right… the exportation of the status quo and spiritual hierarchy. So strange. What’s it going to take for society or modern culture to acknowledge the existence of our ancestors beyond a trendy slogan printed on a tshirt ‘I am my ancestors wildest dreams’ etc?
T
Haha I dunno. My colleague Dare talks about animism being pre-religion. They are mixed-race so they have something I think where they are necessarily both futuristic hybrid and also proto all templates. If we go to the pre-religion place, we have a LOT of freedom. So you can stay connected to the more recent ancestors with a built template of culture but also filter down to the essential building blocks.
SA
So much space has been created in your articulation above!! And so much hope.. Thank you, Tada! Before we end, can you tell me a couple rituals that have been keeping you going and grounded over the past year?
T
So yes, I was wondering, what you, think of the above music?
SA
This is one of my favourite tracks, this Coltrane tune. I think all the music you’ve shared above in some way or another teleport me to a different planet and also provide some sort of meditation..
T
I’ve been super ungrounded LOL. I dunno, keep seeing my belly. Be willing to be weirder. Stabilizing in destabilization. Allowing the chaos to be and also not get so ashamed. It’s when our shame catches us and dissociates us, we get untethered. So less shame. I’ve been going through a lot the last few years, in my professional and personal life, if you haven’t been aware.
And it’s been fighting through that.
I think re: the Coltrane tune its like that weird ancestral mixing place? I dunno. That’s how I feel about the world. There are currents underneath the status quo, shiny, cultural mixing for social capital thing. Something that is dirty, funky, and you can feel the ancestors having a good old nasty time haha.
That you can move through the destabilizing times and still be so generous with your insight and knowledge and time is super moving.
SA
I agree, the Coltrane track really reminds me of some futuristic fusion that happened in the past between our ancestors.
I feel the same with .
T
Yeah, thank you. I feel your generosity as well. Many blessings. And haha this album cover.
From a cultural appropriation perspective you’re like wow is this OK lol. And well, there is just that liminal queer place I hope we get less fragile about. Where we can feel the real.
Tada Hozumi offers coaching and consulting work, as well as workshops based on a practice they refer to as cultural somatics.
Tada’s work draws upon three main lineages:
- ‘Western’ healing modalities such as expressive arts therapy (which I am certified in), somatic therapy, and dance movement therapy
- Ancestral Asian/Japanese somatics
- Afro-diasporic popular dance, specifically ‘popping’.