Part I: We Were Never Really Human with Bayo Akomolafe
January 5, 2017
Hosted by Rochelle McLaughlin, with Co-Hosts Annie Levin and Susan Olesek
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Guest Information
Episode Description
A particular intra-disciplinary ‘turn’ & refocus on the vibrant materiality of the world undoes human exceptionalism and resituates humans in a web of life that is not of their own making. This feminist flattening of things means it is now unthinkable to think of the world (or the self) in the very anthropocentric ways we are used to. This is frightening – the thought that we are not in control – but it opens up new kinds of hope & new spaces of power. Writer & speaker Bayo Akomolafe shares about his experience with Yoruba healers and their guerrilla cosmo-visions of a vibrant, material world & speaks about re/covery, intra-ruptions, crisis, & deep care...while couching all of this in the world of Trump, big oil, & climate change. Situating himself within this indigenous, deeply feminine perspective, he invites new ways of thinking about & making sense of ourselves, our futures, nature, our disenchantments with politics as usual, & the potential for living an abundant life.
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In these times of converging crisis, the world needs us now more than ever before. Revolutionary Wellness Talk Radio is devoted to amplifying inspiring voices or our times, facing challenging realities head-on, opening up new places of power, and inviting curiosity about the paths we might take toward personal, communal, and global health and wellness. Expand your perspective, open your heart, deepen your attention, and cultivate skills and practices that aspire to help us become the change we wish to see in the world, reimagining and co-creating the more beautiful world we all know deep in our hearts is possible.
Rochelle McLaughlin, with Co-Hosts Annie Levin and Susan Olesek
Rochelle is the founder and creator of Revolutionary Wellness Talk Radio and publisher of Revolutionary Wellness Magazine. A professor and researcher of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) in the department of occupational therapy at San Jose State University Rochelle’s primary interests/devotions/passions are in helping humanity embody a radical slowing down, inspiring a collective remembering of our intricate entanglement with the world, awakening a deep honoring and humbling of our human condition, and evoking a revolutionary re-sacralization of every moment of our lives, and from this place co-creating “the more beautiful world we all know in our hearts is possible”. Rochelle is honored to be given the opportunity to hold the “Revolutionary Wellness” space for innovators, change-agents, edge-workers, and healers of integrity working to articulate and bring to light alternative ‘solutions’ to global crises today.
Annie Levin is the creator of The Emergence Network’s Precipice Series here on Revolutionary Wellness Talk Radio. Annie is an attorney and birth doula living in Brooklyn, NY. She has worked in the fields of community organizing, conflict resolution, childbirth education and immigration advocacy, serving in settings ranging from schools to hospitals to Capitol Hill. In 2012, she spent four months traveling the U.S. in search of a path forward in these challenging times, and has been following the threads from that journey ever since. She currently serves as a curator for the Emergence Network, a collective that poses the question, “What if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?” She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has been a scholar at the Orphan Wisdom School since 2013.
Born outside of Boston, Susan spent her formative years in Asia with occasional forays into places of extreme suffering like The Walled City of Hong Kong and the streets of Bombay. These experiences made deep impressions on her Enneagram Type 1, ideological heart. By the time she entered Occidental to study sociology, Susan’s resolve to somehow make a contribution to the world was embedded in who she was becoming. This determination percolated while she raised three boys and began to study the Enneagram, a process that took her deeply into herself and the great losses suffered in her own childhood. In 2009, Susan emerged hopeful and certified, full of ideals, and with just enough self-belief to accept the challenging invitation to teach the Enneagram to 100 inmates in a little prison in Texas. This decision changed the trajectory of her personal and professional life, forever. Susan delights in the unknown yet vast unfolding of the Enneagram Prison Project and is thrilled to be hosting the 9 Prisons One Key Series for Revolutionary Wellness Talk Radio.
