Shankari Goldstein is a Program Manager at the Mind & Life Institute. Trained in the lineage of Integral Yoga, Shankari has spent years connecting to breath, body, strength, movement, and energy. She is a Certified Yoga of Recovery Instructor, an Accessible Yoga Ambassador, Activist and a founder of The State of Union (Yoga) Address series, Shensara Yoga Festival, The Black Female Farmers Network, and the Black Yogis of Virginia group. An avid Social Justice activist for over a decade, she continues to find ways to help propel the voices of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) forward and share their embodied practices. Shankari lives on a regenerative farm, with her husband and more than 60 animals and livestock.

Tema Okun has spent over 30 years working with and for organizations, schools, and community-based institutions as a trainer, facilitator, and coach focused on issues of racial justice and equity. Dr. Okun currently co-leads the Teaching for Equity Fellows Program at Duke University, which works with faculty seeking to develop stronger skills both teaching about race and racism and across lines of race, class, and gender.

I’m excited to share this conversation with you—an interview with a dear friend and beloved, Jeanine T. Abraham. Jeanine is a playwright, actor and producer founder of VisAbleBlackwoman productions. She’s been practicing the 8 limbs of yoga for 20 years and has been a health coach and JourneyDance Facilitator for over 10 years. She founded VisAbleBlackwoman productions in 2017 as a space to center Black women’s stories to preserve our legacies.

This episode features a special interview with four of Michelle’s close comrades and colleagues. Michelle brought the team of Healing in Community facilitators together to hear about how they are tending their hearts at this time—Katie Veleta, Johnette Walser, Amy Burtaine, and Stephanie Ghoston Paul co-led an online retreat this past summer with Michelle, and they are reuniting for a special offering this fall: an online series exploring topics such as Collective Grief and Liberation, Embodying Grief, How to be a Living Ancestor, Decolonizing Our Relationship with the Land, and more. In this conversation, Katie, Johnette, Amy, and Stephanie share about the ways in which they are continuing to heal in community and how they are finding and creating refuge at this time.

This podcast emerged from work based in the exploration of collective grief and liberation. It exists to remind us about all the ways we can find refuge during unsettling and uncertain times, and to remind us about the resilience and joy that comes from allowing ourselves to find refuge.