From grandmothers who whispered in their baby girl in two fathers on dimly lit street corners, instructing young soldiers to always keep their eyes open. You be queen, you were fired. You will pass through centuries on the hands of your daughters. They called you wisdom. Proverbs on the backs of diamond eyed school children who groom into hymnals recited by amethyst holding urban philosophers who recited neighborhood commandments out of the windows of restored Alchemedo cheriots. To keep the warmth of their blood, be wise, be smart, being black, Opal Brown courts, bloodstone and prayer, be every form of Jim se King told, scribe, scribe, told son, son, told wife, wife told her daughter, and daughter told the asses. And the ancess has told me that you would come to give wisdom. Thousands they said you would come, Dropping Dropping Jim. Welcome back. We're on episode twenty of the Dropping Gemps podcast. I'm your host Stebbie Brown. Guys, today, I really want to deepen our journey with the concept of Joey. Joy has become a significant part of my life, especially in this very unique time. So I would say the last seven months especially I have completely revolutionized my spiritual practice, and it is sitting inside of in golfing just radiating with joy, and it has been such a major, major catalyst for transformation I hadn't experienced yet. So I really want to speak to that today with you guys. We're going to have a special guest joining us a little bit later in the show, who I Love and who I just think is just absolutely brilliant and incredible, and I'll get to her and ingest a bit and give you that full understanding of all the power that she stands in. But when we think about joy, you know, I think it's really important for us, and we're going to explore this through the show many many episodes and do a lot of beautiful and packing, but I think it's really important for us, as we are on our different journeys, or as we're experiencing ourselves in new ways, to always question what effect has colonialization or patriarchy, or systemic racism or capitalism had on the way I experience healing or the way I allow myself to experience myself. I think for women, and especially women of color, we have always been pushed into this false belief that love has to be earned that lie is painful, that it just is, and that we are not allowed to feel a process in real time, that all we can do is go into this path of forced resilience where we are just focused on how strong we are and staying strong and not gifting ourselves opportunities for tenderness and softness. And I, for one, and I've talked about this in previous episodes, but I had a really significant breakthrough on my journey a couple of years ago. And that's the that's the really beautiful and divine thing about this journey, Right you think you've healed something and then you notice that you're triggered again, And what it really is, it doesn't mean that you haven't healed or you didn't do all that work. It really just means now there's opportunity to deepen that healing and to deepen that understanding. So a couple of years ago, something that came forward for me that was really revolutionary in the way that I saw myself and created quite a shift in the new system of ways I would work with my spirituality were it was really focused on having this this really this veil lifted on myself of the way that I experienced me, and for me, that came an understanding that my identity, my value system was so wrapped up in how much pain I could tolerate and how strong I was perceived as, and how many things I was fixing for other people and fixing for myself. And what I really came to understand is that although those facets of my personality were something I really was proud of and really treasured, you know, none of us we all have challenges, right, and my strength and my ability to aid others, my ability to be this fixer be a little more enlightened sometimes than some of the areas I was in. You know, that was something I was really proud of. It's something that helped me survive. But I also saw that in that same vein, it was so limiting and it kept me from really being able to expand and stretch open my heart. And so I didn't want to live a life where my value was measured by how much pain I could tolerate, or my value was measured by how resilient I was. To have so strong, she's so strong, and you're the strong friend, and you know, all those things that a lot of us experience or receive funny memes made about on Instagram. You know, I didn't want that to be my life anymore. I've always been a really enthusiastic and exuberant person, but I realized that there was a deficit of joy in my life. I didn't really understand what joy even was. Is that the same thing as happiness? Is it? I'm just walking around celebrating all day, you know, I didn't quite understand how to implement it in my life and learned to embodiment. So for the last two years I have been a journey of joy and coming into this very unique moment in time. You know, we keep referencing this, you know, unprecedented times, global pandemic, election, all of the ways in which we're meeting ourselves more deeply because of the isolation and the uncertainty. You know, the last seven months really gave me this gorgeous gift, gorgeous gift of some pretty agonizing pain, but also learning how to transmute that pain with joyousness. So if you follow me on Instagram or you are part of my Karma gain community on karma blist dot com, then you know I am always talking about finding the tiny joys, finding the moments, big, small, grand, private, to really savor the present moment, to really connect to the gratitude of each moment and truly find worth and depth and literally everything and anything. So for me, that is how I've begun to cultivate and experience more joy in my life. And before we get into our guests, we're gonna have so much to talk about, and we're going to really be on this show so often exploring joy, whether that is you know, joy through celebration or joy through pleasure, or new ways to make our journeys feel better from the inside out. We're going to get into so much of that over the next many, many episodes, um, but today I really want to focus in on how do we perceive joy? So the working definition for joy, it's joy is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. The way that I experience it is more so as this interesting combination of peace and celebration at once. And sometimes it feels a little conflicting, right because we're kind of taught that peace means like being very like, you know, I'm still and I'm silent, and I'm kind of unmovable to the storms of life. But I experienced peace really is just gorgeous deep knowingness and surrender. And so when I experienced joy for me, it feels like deep, deep peace and also exuberant celebration, like really just oh my gosh, I am so warm and on fire from my own life inside of my body. So, you know, I think also to um a lot of times when we're thinking of joy, it's so often equated with what we assume happiness is, and so sometimes it's hard to grasp what joy can be in our life because if you're having a bad day or perceived bad day, you're saying, well, I'm not happy, So how do I have joy? I'm not happy about this, I'm not happy about that. And I think it's important to know that, you know, when we think of joy, when we think of happiness, happiness for me often needs a catalyst of some sort. When we think of that emotion, I am happy happiness, you know, it's it's really something that that quite often requires a catalyst. Versus joy is experienced as more of a deep aboding and embodiment. So from the depths of you radiating out into the world. I experienced joy also as just the state of euphoria in the midst of being in full surrender and in full trust, which means I am leaning into fully the knowingness that life was designed to be uncertain, that we don't control anything other than how we feel about and treat ourselves. So for me, that feels like joy. And I think, you know, it's interesting. As I I even dive into and develop more of my relationship with Joy, I always come back to this one particular passage in the Bible. And you guys know, I'm a lover of so many belief systems and so many sacred texts and so many you know, ascended masters and saints and just embodiments of the divine. But when I think of joy in this moment, in the moment that we're in the country and the moment that we're in with ourselves, I think of this passage from Second Corinthians Um, which was and I probably shared this on a really early episode of the show, but when I was in a really difficult, challenging state in my life eight years ago, this was the passage that made me understand what faith was and what surrender was. And you know, every time we reread something over the years with new circumstances, were able to deepen our connection to it, and so in this moment, this passage for me also represents the freedom and the ability to choose that we have at all moments, and the joy that we can connect to even in the midst of profound suffering and pain. And so Second Corinthians the passage and it says I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect and weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weakness and insults and hardships and persecutions and difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. I love that. I love that this this passage means so much for me, especially in you know, finding way is to have joy, anyway, finding ways to feel good about yourself and your life, regardless of everything that feels like it's falling down all around us. So the first time that I really started actively, actively, actively pursuing joy like I don't mean I'm just passively allowing perhaps I'll have some joy today, it'll flow in and out. I mean I am in hot pursuit of joy in every moment, like I am delightfully chasing it and you know, playing hide and seek with it in every day and every moment um. And that really kicked off for me at the top of this pandemic. So April may Ish, you know, life was. Life was so radically shifting for me personally, professionally, also global. All the things right, all the things were familiar with now, and I said, I can't survive this without cultivating more joy. And raising my son with joy is something that is so significant and important for me. And so to do that and to do it authentically, I knew I had to find new ways to fill my cup and to supercharge my experiences of my spirituality. So for me, finding joy looks like going outside and when I feel that sun on my face, on my skin, when I get a faint smell of something lovely, you know, going to past my nose or the wind hits my face, taking a moment to savor it, taking time to savor myself and to savor my day, and it could be seconds, it could be minutes, but really just saying, oh, that feels good, and taking a moment to root and anchor and that feeling and really accept that feeling and allow myself the gift of it. So that's what I love to do, really in each moment as I'm in the world and privately as part of my spiritual practice. Joy for me really looks like every single night, after I put my kid out of bed, turning on, you know, an epic playlist of some sorts that feels really good, lighting some candles, making some offerings, and then just dancing and letting myself be free and letting myself build my own happiness and build my own joy. And that's what I think is so important too about our spiritual practices and our connection to joy as we grow, as we transform, as we heal. You know, it really teaches you the deeper understanding of how to self regulate to where I don't need a catalyst to feel good about myself for my life. My day doesn't even have to be technically going well by comparative standards for me to still feel good as hell about me. And that comes from really anchoring your identity in your spirit, and not in the roles that we play, and not in the things we are for other people, not even in for the most part, our own fluctuating emotions, you know, just really anchoring in and finding what our personal recipe for feeling good is. So we are going to get into so much of that. I have an amazing guest coming on the show. Her name is Thea Mounier, and Thea is just a remarkable, brilliant, brilliant woman. She's a therapist, she's a spiritual teacher. She has incredible programs that she does on decolonizing mental health, healing with joy that are available on her Instagram and her website. She's done some really incredible campaigns and she and I actually met. Well, I'll save this for her, but let me finish giving you the beautiful rundown on her. So. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a writer, and a creative whose work stems from her unwavering commitment to healing and her belief that true healing can only occur in a liberated and non oppressive society. She is the host of Shaping the Shift podcast and the director of de Colonialization for the multimedia platform Black Girl Mixtape, as well as a curator of the Black or the Brain decolonizing mental health series, and THEA is currently featured as a go Daddy maker to discuss mental health and marginalized communities and accessing joy and pleasure. So, without further ado, here she is THEA. Hey Devy, I'm so excited to be here, so excited anytime I get to talk to your girl, I am like, I am all in clear the day. Yes, let's do it. I'm so we've we promised that we would do this often, so we'ren yes. So THEA I was saving this story. Um, let me give a little background on out via and I'm neck guys. So we were actually at the amazing My Leak Teals retreat that is my boo love me so my Leak um. She hosts a yearly beauty full retreat. And we were there and they and I and we were in Mexico, and I remember one of the days, uh, I think it was towards the end of our time there. I went out to the beach and I saw you and one of your girlfriends standing in the water, and I was like, I want to go talk to them. So I just walked over to you guys and I was like, can I join you in the ocean? That was so beautiful too, Like it was great, it was perfect timing, Yes, and you guys welcomed me in, and then we all just started talking about all the things as we're like literally wading in the water, Spirituality, motherhood, like which makes me because we were literally standing, so all those things naturally came forward and we just Yeah, we connected really deeply, and we have built and kept that friendship going. And I shared with everyone so many of the incredible things that you do and so much of the justest of brilliance that you embody, and so I was so excited to have you on the show. So THEA, let's let's like get into the meat of some of this, like we're going to talk about the really we're gonna talk about all the yummy stuff as it relates to joy, but you know, let's talk about you're also you know, you're also a licensed therapist, and you're somebody who is deeply spiritual and deeply connected and intuitive and and really embedded in so much ritual. And so what I love is you know the deep I guess what we'd call like more scientific background to healing and then also you know, the beautiful understanding of how the divine heals outside of our own personal inquisitions of self. So when we think about, especially for the BIPOP community, when we think about the role, you know, mental health, much like wellness, are incredibly on trend right now. I mean, my gut, it's they are the they're the just these trigger words that are said so often and so often it's not really unders of what the meaning is. Like, you know, the things we keep hearing are you know, de stigmatized mental health or you know, care about your wellness, And it's like nobody is fully unpacking like how to do that because the conversation so far surpasses just saying like go to therapy, girl, find you a therapist. It's so far surpasses that. It's so much deeper than that. And as someone that has gone to therapy off and on for the last decade, um, you know, something that's so incredible, because there's always more to know about the movement to d colonized mental health is when I even reflect back on previous therapy sessions, I'm like, oh my God, like being informed of the effect of colonialization, on the way we experience ourselves, on the way we connect to spirituality, connect to therapy. It is such a massive role that it is so understandable how someone could say, I've been in therapy for ten years and they haven't even healed, you know, necessarily a lot of the things they went in to heal, because the effects of colonialization are not really clearly understood most definitely by the patient, but really by most therapists that you go and speak to. I would say, yeah, I would I vast majority, And even if they understand it, it's not sanctioned within the field of mental health to even discuss or unpack. So what does it mean to de colonized mental health? So thank you for everything, I mean, for laying that out, for having me here. I'm so honored. You were definitely one of the big gifts that I left that retreat with and and it just continues to be a blessing. UM. So thank you, UM, thank you for even you know, having this conversation as we're raising awareness, because you're right, like these words like wellness and mental health come up, and when we see things become on trend like that, we can pretty much safely assume they've only entered the mainstream because they've been sanctioned by whiteness, which means they've been sanctioned by by that same colonial energy. They've been colonized, Right, the concepts themselves have been colonized. And so we have to begin with thinking about the fact that mental health as we practice it and as we see it originated within white culture, within specifically thinking about European white culture, specifically thinking about affluent European white culture. Right, that's a very narrow group of people that now when we say to somebody, go get therapy, girl, those are the people who were intended to receive this practice. And yet we're now mandating it for people without expanding the field to include their values and their perspectives and their stories and their ancestry. It's not that prior to that there weren't ways within our communities of managing emotion UM dealing with mental health. Usually a lot of those things dealt with community. It was viewed as a community issue if somebody was going through something like, what are we not offering them? What do they need? How can we support UM? And so when you look back pre colonial dates, it's not that you don't see strategies for wellness, or for mental health, or for spiritual health. It's just that they were more communal and they were more integrated. So it's not like we gave them a separate name or a separate category. It was built into what we were eating, It was built into how we were relating with each other, it was built into how we were relating to nature. And so separating it out in and of itself, it's already an indication that you started to encounter Western thought as dominant thought. Right, So the idea that mental health is separate from you know, folks religions and their spirituality, or how they prepare their food, or how they said at the kitchen table, that for us, all of these things are truly mental health. What what can we name that doesn't have an impact on our toal health? Right? Right? So? Right, Like, so mental health is actually everything and everywhere. It's not in this space or in this office, except it's only seemed as valid and it's only labeled as that when it happens within a framework that has been constructed by that affluent, white European ideal. Right, So what we say decolonized mental health what we're saying is let's go back. Really, what we're saying is, let's say colonize of society to be honest, because mental health is everywhere. We're saying, let's go back to a time when my humanity was so valid I didn't need a therapist. Let's go back to values that when I'm sick, people don't look at me and say something's wrong with me. They say what's wrong with us? And how can we work on that together. That's really the ultimate battle cry of what we're saying with the colonizing mental health. But we're challenging the field first because because it is a buzz word and because it can penetrate all areas of our life. Yeah, give me if you would. Let's help. Let's help illustrate this further, especially for people that maybe listening, that haven't even that are not on a therapy journey per se. So when I think about and please correct me, um, if you're understanding, but if I think about how I've experienced colonialism in therapy, it would be like, say I go into my therapist and I want to talk about things I'm experiencing in the workplace. You know, maybe I am really starting to feel a certain level of worthlessness or anxiety or anxiousness um in dealing with some coworkers where I work, and you know, there might be microaggressions happening network, and you know, all all of these different little things that are sometimes invisible to the naked eye, but you feel it, and you feel you know when some things are because you're a woman, or because of your race, or you know, there is a tone, there is a there's a deeper intuitiveness than that. And so I may be talking to my therapist about and she she might be helping me unpack it, right, She might be like, well, so tell me, so, how does that make you feel? Or tell me you know what comes up for you when that person does that. But then there's this elephant in the room that we haven't talked about, which is perhaps what I'm intuiting is valid based on systemic racism, based on colonialism, based on you know, all of the systems of oppression and plays against women, against people of color. And so actually, like, instead of me navigating how to just focus on myself and my role in things, it's like calling out, well, your boss is most likely you know, bigoted or racist or you know, this might be mail aggression or and I'm making this scenario completely up, but you know, it's like it's it's those unspoken elephants in the room that are the effect of colonialism that don't get talked about when you're in a session. And so what I found is so many of us walk around, especially up until recently the last couple of years, when we've been having these expansive conversations, so many of us walk around and it's as if everything is our fault, or as if you're imagining, or as if it's like somehow I was just born into this hole that I can't climb out of. And when you go to get help and you go to get resources, people are only directing you to understand what you can do differently, what you can do better, but without validating that your experience is such because of all of the systems and structures in places. Yes, so crystal clear, perfect example, right, perfect example. And so because you laid that out so well, what I can now do is go back and point out all the spaces that something should have and could have been done differently. Right. So the first thing is when we assess clients, when they're coming in for mental health services, we need to ask questions about systemic oppression, spystemic racism. Have you experienced it, how has it shown up in your life? You know, what are your feelings about these things that already acknowledges that what you're coming in here to work on there's a portion of it that wouldn't exist if we were in a different society that value different things. Right. So, one of things I always say is if I took somebody from the society and put them in a more affirming society and their issues go away, right, the anxiety, the depression, the self worth, right, the feelings that I have to be productive, I have to be on all the time because I moved them into a non capitalistic, affirming, non racialized society. Then it's never been the person's illness. The person is actually demonstrating and screaming out for the society to recognize its own illness. We are reflecting back that illness, right. And so when you do therapy, the way it's set up in a in a colonized way is they don't have the tools or the language to even assess for it because it's very problem centered and problem focused and so you do leave their feeling like one. They've never named systemic oppression, they've never named racism. They've never said hey, are you know we do and not even asking right because they would say do you think it's racism? No, don't say that. Say well, we know that we live in a society that is rooted in anti blackness, and we know that corporations and businesses set up a model based on plantations. Right, that is the model for modern day business. And you can listen to that back in the sixteen nineteen project. That's how we established business. Right, that's how we established the workplace off of plantations. So we know that these are the facts, and as a therapist, I felt it's important that I state those facts. I'm not even gonna ask you that question, right, do you think it could be? Right? Because then it's like still on you. Right, it's like, well, let's just call a thing a thing, right, and that that is playing a role in what you're experiencing, or it could be because maybe that person isn't ready to admit that it could be about racism, and they're like, oh, well maybe I never because we don't always give reselves permission, because we don't think it will be valid validated value. So exactly what you said what that person should have done is they should have walked it into the room. You shouldn't have had to and before you even as if you identified as a person of color, then in your assessment, there should have been information and things that signal to you that it was okay to discuss this in a racialized way. Um. And so those are some of the steps that we're trying to put into the processes when we think about the back of the brain, because that makes all the difference in the world, because then you're not gonna tell me to just go debreathe and drink some water. You're going to tell me too that I'm valuable and I'm that and what I'm experiencing is real, and not leave me, and that is enough. Sometimes now walk away from your office wondering if I'm crazy or feeling so vulnerable that I expose myself in this way. You know, Yeah, and you know so much of like the process of transforming ourselves, whether that is through therapy or that's through our own spiritual practices. But you know, very often in the beginning, it's like you are looking up at this giant mountain and you're saying, how the hell will I scale this? How do I even attempt to climb this mountain? I'm now getting downloads of all the things out of alignment in my life, of all the traumas I've experienced in their effects, and how do I even attempt this? You know? And I think from what you were saying so much if there is uh more of a thoughtfulness and the implementation of these understandings that you've shared within all therapy and therapies. I don't know if that's the word environment, you know, then that would um, it's not a mountain anymore, because it's it's not about you, Yeah, it's not, well, not just about you. You're understanding your role in the collective. And so then there's opportunity to find peace that even though these systems exist where in the we're in the process as always of trying to dismantle them. But you know, these systems have been in place since the dawn of since the inception of society as a construct. It would help us, you know, understand how to still access joy and worth and meaning in our lives even if these systems are still in place and power and some part of what you have to ask as a practitioner, any sort of practitioner, because because wellness, if you're a yoga instructor, you cannot work with black bodies and yoga the way you work with white bodies and yoga. We carry different things, and so does your practice, your yoga practice understand that, because what you're teaching accommodate for for what we're storing in our hips, in our bodies. Does your yoga a practice accommodate people who were once enslaved and could not authorize within their own bodies? Right, So it gives them peace, right because if there's the validation, but it also gives them power, like to walk out of that space and be like, I'm not crazy, you're crazy. This is crazy. Tony Morrison said, racism is neurotic, it is psychotic, It is crazy, and it feels crazy, and she's accurate in that. But we when we put it on the people who are experiencing it, then we are saying, no, it's not that, it's not crazy, you're crazy, which is gaslighting. Right. So then here we are as people who are here to help, as people who have good intentions, but we're being used as an extension of a system to gaslight people back into what work, back into work, back into line, back into capitalism, back into the same plantation system that we all grew up in, right, And so that power piece is so important because that begs the question, if you are a healing practitioner, no matter what area of wellness you find yourself in, who do you work for? Do you work for the society or do you work for the liberation of the people that you're serving, Because those are two very different ball games. If I work for the society, then all I'm trying to do is get this person called mis centered enough to go back to work and functioning. But if I work for this person that I don't just want them to leave at peace and at ease. I want them to leave empowered and self authorizing because I want them I recognize that the only way the work that I'm doing makes sense is if one day it heals everything. I have to be able to envision a world that's not sick. And if I'm a healer, and that's what I say, I'm committed to. It's not just about this person. It's about making sure this person is equipped to go back out into that world and say no, I'm not the sick one. And and in doing that that I need to be challenging that system and saying it's sick. I need to be calling get out right, because my goal is to heal us all unless my goal is just to sit here and play my role within the system. Yes, God, and what you just spoke to first of all, it's all so damn powerful. So let me just sitting that for a second. Well, so you know what I'm really hearing from this too, And and this isn't I didn't even learn to apply this word to myself in the last couple of years, and I didn't even see where it applied to moments in my life. But a big, big part of the experience of being non white in America is just not understanding how to having permission to or even knowing that you can advocate for yourself self. Advocation has changed everything about my life and what it really is. It builds up your confidence and your personal power when you're able to exercise it in real time. And so what I'm hearing from a lot of what you were sharing is even just the knowledge and being validated that these systems are at play and are at work. That awareness then empowers you to an every moment advocate otherwise and every moment call out things in real time and have the confidence in doing so and in understanding what these structures are and in knowing when you are being mistreated, even at a micro micro level, because the mistreatment in this country doesn't just happen on those macro levels. It's not it's not the big moments you know all the time where you're walking down the street and someone maybe calls you the N word, or you know, some man um you know, without consent tries to touch you or be you know, um belittles you because you don't want to give them attention. It's usually in those tiny little macro ways, those little quick little words or tones or you know, body language, and being able to be equipped without awareness and build up that personal power of advocating for yourself when you've all mistreated or calling things out in real time, that is what you know. Ideally, you should be walking out of a therapy session building in yourself. That should be the muscle you're building how to stand in your truth, how to know what's real and true and what isn't and what's programming. And this is where you're gonna love this because this is where the spirituality piece comes in. Right. This is why when we talk about de colonizing mental health, we are simultaneously talking about activating ancestral practices and integrating spirituality. Right because Okay, when that person walks out affirmed, right and validated without even my help, after that point, there's a natural process where that third chakra begins to activate, right that that sense of self, that sense of autonomy and authority, and what can support that further is your spiritual practice. Right. So for me, I practice after spirituality partly because I get to see energies and the form of black women who walk around and are like, I can't even feel you're evil that you're trying to throw at me. I don't even recognize this as valid, Like I don't even know what you're talking about, Like I can't it can't even like to walk around in so much power. And I couldn't find examples of that in Western um spiritual practices, but there's so many and Afro spirituality that like when I'm like when I go from that therapist office and then I then I pick up a book on o yah or on oshoon or on Yeah. But yeah, I'm like and and I'm like, I can do that, right, I can authorize myself in that way. You know, it's so interesting to watch. I mean even you know, we've been going through election stuff, but like I'm watching the self authorization of people and them self liberate and and I a cohort member, Darnicia Lawson said, is a part of our the Black or the Brain cohort. And we have these ongoing conversations about this. I mean, you're going to have to come talk to this cohort. I cannot wait. Yeah, it's great. There, You're gonna love it. They're brilliant. And she was like, I just want to be clear that what we are advocating for is not emancipation. It's liberation, right. Emancipation is waiting for someone to come free you. And I do feel like a lot of us have been trained to condition to wait for emancipation. Oh my gosh, I feel like that I was that so many of and it and it comes in so many forms, right, like not even just in the historical context of like being emancipated, right, like like being told you can be free instead of knowing you were free. But then also especially for women down to you know, the simplest things like growing up on Disney movies and cartoons, that that's say that I'm sleeping, I'm sleeping beauty and someone came to free me, or you know, the posle and someone came to free me, and that was my only means of being free. Yeah wow, yeah, And so she she highlighted that and that we we are actively rooted in liberation meaning people. We believe people have the power to self authorize and self govern right and self um and self liberate. So part of what we have to know though, is most of the people were dealing with have been trained in condition for emancipation, which is why our role as healers is so important. In that moment, we are engaging in an act of emancipation because that's what they've been conditioned for. But then we have to set them up to sustain their liberation from that point forward, right, And so when they bring in their ancestral practices, and they bring in their ideas, and they bring in so many beautiful aspects of themselves and their individual individuality, it is our job to continue to affirm and build with that not to say, well, I don't know. I think Freud would have done it this way. Funk Freud. They're talking about Freid. He's a indciation. You know what I'm saying. We're talking about you and your life, you know, and everything you're saying is completely Validlet's build it in and I'll bring my knowledge, you bring your knowledge, and I bring my answers and you bring my answers. And this is what the colonized therapy is, right. We all hear a family, community, spiritual and in the physical world working together towards a healing moment, a healing opportunity. You know what the of course the miracle says, is a miracle, this healing moment of revelation where we see each other as we truly are. That's it. That's all we're trying to create, and we cannot do that through a colonized winds. Yeah, everybody listening is your iPhone on fire right now? Wow, talk to me about black or the brain co co cohort because I know so many people listening. Um, I mean, this is something this is something so revolutionary, and I know so many of the listeners of this show. We're gonna be like I need to add this to cart, Like give me. I'm so excited about it. And let me tell you're already like black or the rain in it. I'm just saying, you know, I mean curious, you're like me and you we go together, so we're gonna be We're gonna be weaved into all of one another's projects. I'm like, I'm like, Dee's part of the cohor So so the Black of the Brain is a movement, you know, And and I had to accept that name. It was actually one of our cohort members that described it that way, and I was like, that feels like a lot. And then I was like, Okay, that's what it is. Right, It is a movement. I hear, I hear to talk in that a little bit. The black are the very right exactly. It's totally influenced, right, And so um it's a conversation, an ongoing conversation. We have a cohort and we have um a campaign. Right. So the campaign is this part of just like building awareness about what do we what do we mean when we say de colonized and mental health? What are we talking about? And then we use that to engage people into the conversations, which are lecture series that you can tap into. We do them like once every six weeks. And the next one we have coming up it's called Free to Heal, which is like the practices. What would it look like to decolonize um all your practices. Now here's the thing what I love, love, love about the Black of the Brain. The first thing about it is it's not just about mental health, even though it's called the Black of the Brain. It's interdisciplinary. We have teachers, educators, professors, physicians, people in tech. Our cohort is so amazing because what mental health is everywhere. If you work at a grocery store, I would love for you to be a part of the Black of the Brain because how persons treated in customer service impacts their mental health there. I can't think of a single area or person that could be left out of this conversation. And the more we get people from these different spaces, the more beautiful it becomes. And so the cohort is interdisciplinary, multi racial, multi ethnic, multi identities. We have such a good time because we are joy centered in our work and we're badass about it, like you can be both right, like you could be you know, joy is are metric as we're creating these concepts and these ideas about how can we create a plan for families who have a person in their families suffering from mental health illness so that they don't have to call the police and run that risk as a black body. Right, we're creating that, but we're centering joy in that process so that everything we produce brings joy and power to the people who are using these tools and these strategies. Um. So it's it's expensive. Like I just feel like next year, with this group that we have, you're going to see like documentation, presentations, curriculum, Um, you're gonna see mentorship. But we're working with new our new little therapy babies who are coming up through the grad programs. We're gonna catch them early, decolonize them earlier. You know what I'm saying. It's it's just it's everything. It's so beautiful. It's like my favorite thing to talk about right now. I love it. I love it, love it, love it, love it. Please guys, And I put this at the beginning of the show, But you gotta connect with the like you got ahead to your Instagram, you got ahead to your website, talk to me about joy. Let's talk about healing with joy. So top of the show, I shared some of my experiences with really expanding my capacity for joy, and the way that I really did that was by leaning into the tiny joys of every day, in each moment, and so feeling deep gratitude and presence and anchoring in you know, when the sun hits my skin, or you know, catching um, being able to like look my son in his eyes and you know, smile at one another, or all of the moments that are not grand. I think so often we think, oh, joy, that sounds big, that actually maybe sounds bigger than happy, and so that means like you know, like a three day stay at Disneyland, or that means you know, some giant celebration or and joy is for me that that deep aboding and that embodiment. Um, So talk to me, how does one number one heal through joy? But number two, if joy is not even in your emotional rolodex, if it's not in your mental rolodex, how does one begin to court joy, to flirt with joy, to invite joy in? You know, I don't even I'm trying to think where do we begin with this? Because joy is so expensive to me. Um, So I'll there's two. There's so many things. Okay, joy is healing, Joy is transformational, and joy is a metric. So joy is healing is really important for us to discuss when we're talking to bipop communities who have weaved the story of struggle into their story of resilience, because they we tend to remember the harder things more than we remember the beautiful things. And at times, even in the hard things, it were these small, beautiful things that sustained us. But let's talk about that for a quick second. If we're in the midle of all this hard stuff and this one beautiful thing was enough to sustain us, that actually means that the beautiful thing was more powerful, so powerful that it was not even necessary to have a large dose of it to even sustain your generation or the generation that came after you. So the joy is that takes me to joy is transformational. It's a very powerful tool. It's a very powerful weapon, right. It's it's something that you don't need to have in large doses in order to maintain and sustain a brilliant, beautiful life. But you have permission to access larger doses if you want to. And the key for most people, like you're saying is we have been again, even thinking about mental health, even thinking about our school systems, even thinking about our workplaces. Their conditioned to look at problems. They're not conditioned to identify what makes me happy, what feels good. They're not conditioned towards embodiment. They're not conditioned towards healthy relationships with bodies. So enjoy, you really experienced joy first in your body. So joy requires a relationship with your body, because then you feel you see what I'm saying that that now taking back to going back to people who have been disenfranchised, who couldn't own their own bodies, and speaking to the point you made earlier too about being in yoga or being you know, I would I would leave meditations early and early in in that piece in my career, and I would go into a room and I'd say, all right, let's gently close our eyes, and no one could close their eyes. They'd be no one could close their staring at me, you know, just in what felt like terror almost because when you close your eyes, you're inside of yourself and you're vulnerable, and you don't necessarily feel safe in you, And so to that point, I thought that was just an incredible illustration of how deep that goes, how how robbed we have been of joy and of even knowing how to access it, how foreign it feels. Absolutely we have to so in order to access joy, we have to reclaim our DNA, and in order to reclaim our DNA, we have to reclaim our bodies and are in every cell. And I do love the practice of yoga, especially when practice theory colonized lens, because it does just that, it creates its embodiment. I love the practice of dance because it does that. I love the practice of reiki because it does that. I love massage. There all these things say it's safe to return to your body. We know that trauma sort of pushes you out of your body, rejects you from your body, and when it's happening repeatedly, you just find a new home outside of your own body for safety reasons. Hold sit there for a second, Hold on, hold on, hold on, mm hmm. What does that mean? Unpack that? Please? Yeah? I think what it means is like we when we talk about systemic oppression, and I hope, no matter who wins this election, we must continue to now pay attention to Can we now look at the true effects of this thing called racism, of this thing called slavery, because what it means is that for centuries black people weren't just forced to flee and be away from their homes. They were forced to flee their bodies, which were their homes. And now their home is this somewhere in the mind, which isn't a place of their own construction, right, And so there's this this idea that if I go back into my body, I have to feel not just my pain but my great great grandmother's pain. I have to feel not just my pain, but I have to feel Emmett tells mother's pain. I have to feel um, you know, Trayvon Martin's Sabrina Volts. I have to feel all these this pain. So why do that? Why be in my body? And then when we look at health outcomes and we try to say, well, don't eat this and don't do that. I don't even feel when I'm full. I don't even know what it feels like in my body to have high blood pressure because I'm not there. It's safer to not be there. When I'm there, people are staring at me when I'm there. People are assuming things about me when I'm but to turn that off just to be able to continue to function in a racist society. That is a sickness that we have created, that has been created that is man made right, which means we can repair it. And so I start by helping people with embodiment. I don't think you can do decolonized mental health without working with embodiment practitioners, which we have many in the black or the brain, because it's something about saying, even if you don't deem your body safe yet, is not not safe because of you. It's not safe because of what's happening outside of you. And so you deserve to occupy your space because it is not your body's fault that it's not deemed a safe place. And the only way we're gonna get it to move to a safer place is if you feel empowered enough to inhabit it and then to demand while you're in it pleasure and joy. And that is liberation. That is libration, and it can happen if you are anywhere at any given time, but it begins with that return um. And so sometimes I use food with people to help them slow down and catch that. But usually what I do is use joy as a metric. So I will say, joy is that feeling you get when everything is like really clear, right, It's like who you just feel this perfect alignment. It's like almost floating. And we we do get moments of that, but we move through it so quickly because we're not embodied that we don't sustain that feeling of joy, and we don't know what it means. We don't know that we have the power to stretch it out or to make it a lifestyle. And so it's I tell them when. And so what they do know, though, how you can teach them about joy and their bodies real quick is um, they know what they know what discomfort feels like. They're very used to that, right. So what I'll do is tell them and I learned this exercise working with restorative Justice. Um, hold a note in your body while nodding yes, and then holding yes in your body while nodding no. That incongruence that you feel that is the opposite of joy. Right the second, everybody listening, I want you to gently close your eyes if it's safe where you are, take a breath in through your nose, hold it at the top, and let's exhale through our mouths. And let's do that one more time. We're gonna take a deep breath in, hold it at the top, exhale to the mouth, breath in. Now with your eyes still gently closed, I want you to think and connect to the feeling of no. So first, let's just think and connect to say no inside of ourselves. And as we're saying no inside of ourselves, let's not our head yes mm hmm. Now let's clear that energy out and I want you to say yes inside of yourself. I want you to feel enthusiastic about this. Yes. It's like yes, yes, yes, say that inside the deepest place possible. Yes. And as you're feeling that yes and saying yes, enthusiastically shake your head no. Bea describe for everyone what they're feeling when they do that. What is that feeling of disalignment? When I've done this with people? And thank you so much for beautifully leading us through that. I love that. And gently open your eyes everyone, thank you. Um When they do they when they have the yes in their body and they're not even know it feels like a silliness, like it it's more like, oh, that's silly. Why would I say no when I want to say yes? It's kind of it's a little lighter than the energy of holding the no and saying yes. That feels heavier, That feels a little bit more harsh. And I tell people that's your ancestors, because what I don't want them to create too. I don't I'm trying to rewire this negative relationship with hard feelings in the body. If I label it anxiety, depression, trauma, then they're going to run from it. But if I say, what if that's your ancestors saying where are you going? Why are you saying guest to something you clearly don't want to do, then it's a relationship. Then it's loving, right, And so that healthy boundaries and what that is how to set those boundaries for yourself. Yeah, And that's how you work your relationship with with the hard things. That the hard things aren't things that we run from. Their things that are giving us signals too. They're telling us, just like Joyce as hot, you found the right spot, but we couldn't find the right spot if we didn't have that discomfort telling us this is not the right spot. Right, they're not opposites. They're working together to lead us where we should be. And so that joy is the finding that spot. But it takes a discomfort sometimes to move us and nudge us there. And if we if we judge that, if we have a judgment against what that feeling is, and we shut down and we deem it unsafe, then we will not be able to use it to move us to where we should be. And then we can start using joy as a metric. So now when we're not feeling joy, we know we're not in the right spot, right, and then we can decide moment by moment how to line ourselves up so that so and when I run into spaces that I've created in joy, but then I have a moment of discomfort, I'm like, well, wait a minute. First, let me check that I accidentally let white supremacy, capitalism or patriarchy in the room, because I might have it might have snuck in, right, So let me check for that first. The other thing is I may be limiting how I'm looking at a situation which is also a byproduct of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy. Right, I may be saying, oh, only these solutions are possible. So it's a call to my creativity. You know that that lack of joy means, oh, be more creative, make something up, try something new. All of those nudges are super helpful and if we use joy as a metric, we can build a life. And I promise you this that literally is joyful. And when it's not, it's not because we're doing something wrong. It's just information that our ancestors are bringing us to, not just towards the joy. That's incredible. Yeah. I hate to do this because I know I want to talk here the whole time. UM, but I so I haven't asked of you, but first, UM, please let everyone know how they can connect with you. Absolutely sure. UM. So my company is called Marley I O M A r l E y a y o ay oh means joy in uraba. So um that has information on the black or the brain. That is information on all the things are our company is working on. Um. I'm on Instagram at the amnia at the Black or the Brain and there's so many ads right um at Shaping the Shift podcast which you can catch up on the episode where we had Devvy on. If you like this, you can go list and that and get like a double dose like part one in part two. Um and so yeah, I'm super easily easy to access, and we'll drop all the links below in in the posting wherever you are catching this show. So as we end the show, I love to walk away with everyone having a little soul work so in attention that they can connect to uh an assignment maybe you know a journal imprompt or some tips but for the next week before we get to our next episode, the if you would share a little soul work that everyone can do to spend this next week if you do not connect yet fully to joy a little bit of homework of how the audience can really begin to taste it mm hmmm. Um. One, I would say, replay that meditation that Devi just led you through, because it's a great um way to get accustomed to what that feels like in your body. So once you've done that a couple of times and you're like, OK, I know that feeling. Catch those feelings throughout the day. Maybe you're about to wash dishes and the that you feel that feeling come up. So then you say when you feel the wait a minute, does this bring me joy? To do these dishes right now if not give yourself permission to not do those dishes. See how that feels, right? See what comes up with that? If you decide you want to push through the dishes, then that you have to do so finding a way to frame it with joy. Maybe you're saying, well, I'll wash the dishes even though I don't want to because I want to have a really great meal with my family later on today. And you tap into that joy, right um. But don't move forward until you've figured out a way to either frame it with joy or giving yourself permission to not do it at all, right um. And whenever you feel the little that's like you're key, like, oh I'm about to engage in something. I'm about to do it, I'm saying, guess when I want to say no? Right um? And practice asking well does this bring me joy? And how can I make it bring me joy? Or how can I just decide I don't want to do this right now because it would not bring me joy? And that is also an exercise and self authorization. A uh yeah, oh that's good. You guys really deepen into that soul work this week until we get to the next episode. Via thank you so much for joining My pleasure. Debbie. Thank you anytime you know, whenever you call, I'm running everyone. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the show. And I'll catch you next week. I love you. Hey. Find me on social Let's connect at Debbie Brown. That's Twitter and Instagram, or go to my website Debbie Brown dot com. And if you're listening to the show on Apple Podcasts, please please please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe and send this episode to a friend. Dropping Jams is the production of I Heart Radio and The Black Effect Network. It's produced by Triple and Me Debbie Brown. For more podcast from My heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or We're ever you listen to your favorite shows.