Gratitude

Gratitude helps people create greater happiness and enjoyment for everyday activities. Gratitude improves health and builds strong relationships not just with other people but with one's own self. Gratitude helps us feel more trusting, more social, and deepens our existing relationships. Waking up everyday with a more optimistic approach increases energy to go about your day with more enthusiasm and creates a more welcoming energy for people around you. Completing tasks with a more uplifting attitude can make the menial everyday tasks less overwhelming. To be thankful for everything that is happening now in this moment, makes my life feel more fulfilling. Gratitude allows us to take our time and enjoy what we are creating instead of rushing to get it done. It has a survival value of reciprocity: helping others and being helped in return. Research shows that there are areas of the brain involved in experiencing and expressing gratitude. The fact is: it's a practice. Every moment is a conscious effort and an opportunity to count one’s blessings Everyday, as I inhale my first waking breath I give thanks to the ones before me that fought for the rights I am enjoying today. As I take my first step, I thank the people who protect and heal the earth. As I say my first good morning, I give thanks as I am blessed to be surrounded by company and support. When I dance, it’s a practice of my humility and gratitude, as I give and receive energy. To give back, I try to support and stay aware in order to do my part to leave this world better than I received it for the next generation. When going through a difficult time, the value of gratitude gives me a sense of resilience. It gives me hope and strength to get back on my alignment. Gratitude makes me feel centered, lifted, and grounded. In times like this, in the COVID-19 epidemic, I am grateful for the people that are fighting for the People. I am grateful for the people who choose to become medical experts in-order to defeat this enemy, which is affecting us all, those who are fighting for people politically, even though we have never met. I give my thanks to those who are entertaining people on the internet, keeping people active, healthy, and hopeful. To the backbone of any country I give my biggest gratitude. They are the agriculturists who are still working in order for their nation to be nourished and fed. To every essential employee risking their health and their families' health in order to go to work. I give thanks to humanity.

- Alan Perez

This Body is My Body

This Body is My Body: Response to the video titled This Body is My Body

As a woman of 44 years - I've only just recently begun to trust my own body. Throughout my childhood I remember often feeling moments where others, through their gaze, through their judgement, through their rules, and through their uninvited touch made me feel like I didn't have full control of my body. As I raise my children, I made the choice early on to begin talking to them about consent, before they even understood language. I am so clear that dance for me has been a pathway to feel real agency and control over my own body. It has been a mechanism for experiencing safety in surrendering on my own terms. It's the place where I feel most free, most clear about my power and my fullness. I will never forget attending the Urban Bush Women Summer Leadership Institute where I first heard this call and response chant:

These feet - THESE FEET

are my feet - ARE MY FEET

they're not your fee - THEY'RE NOT YOUR FEET

but there all mine - BUT THEY'RE ALL MINE

which proceeded through different body parts from feet to head ending up with:

This body - THIS BODY

is my body - IS MY BODY

it's not your body - IT'S NOT YOUR BODY

but it's all mine - BUT IT'S ALL MINE!

I remember feeling ignited, fired up, as I yelled these words at the top of my lungs in a circle filled with other women of color. These same women who taught me how to feel proud of all of me, and shared with me this deep knowing that my body was intelligent and to be honored. As many of us did - my body felt a strong desire to shut down and go inward after hearing about the Texas decision. Memories of times where I didn't feel agency and my power to make decisions about my body were taken, came flooding back. Instead of shutting down - I went to a capoeira class and moved in community. I was reminded of how strong and powerful I am, and how unapologetically taking up space and moving my body in rhythm, makes me feel free. I immediately had the desire to share this re-membering - over the next 24 hours Ruby and I reached out to our community of female and fem fam -asking for movement offerings, knowing that we wanted to make this offering as a place to heal, be together and feel whole again. The Bengson's song 'sovereignty hymn' felt like the perfect vibrational partner for this offering.

The process was fast, an immediate response, but also a movement manifestation of a world where we listen to and trust our bodies and a world that is safe for us. It has been healing - art making in community is my practice to make sense of the world. I want to thank all who shared their brilliance, their bodies, their breath and their spirit to the making of this offering. May we continue to create, play, dance, come together, and listen to our bodies. May we keep moving together for our right to choose and to be the boss of our own future and body.

***By the way - the woman at the very end - that’s my mama- she’s the incredible mujer who taught me to be bold, to change the world and to love fiercely. Thank you mama

Conceived and directed by Ana Maria Alvarez

Edited by Ruby Morales

Music and vibrational brilliance by Sovereignty hymn by Abigail and Shaun Bengson (The Bengsons)

In the order of appearance: Alvarez-Orling familia, Holly Johnston, Ruby Morales, Abigail Gonzalez, Kat Yalung, Jasmine Stanley, Raquel "Rocky" Monroe, Liz Lerman, Tashara Gavin-Moorehead, Maya Jupiter, Ana Maria Alvarez, Tula Strong, Michelle Morales, Hummingbird, Maggie Walker, Yvette Flores, Chachi Perez, Amy Campion, Max Allen, Vero Chavez, Maria Pallas, Maria Garcia, Dawn Robinson-Patrick, Sally Alvarez