PRACTICING LIBERATION:
Transformative Strategies for Collective Healing & Systems Change
An Intimate Conversation with Nkem Ndefo, Hala Khouri & Jacoby Ballard
All event times are posted in Eastern Time / New York time zone.
Check how this translates into your local Time Zone.
We’ll also send out the recording to anyone who is unable to attend live - but you must register.
JOIN US LIVE FOR THE FREE EVENT
ABOUT THE EVENT
How do we do effective, sustainable social change…without burning out, internalizing systemic toxicity, and replicating urgency culture?
When your work is inextricable from your identity, your community, and your own liberation, you need a unique praxis of care to sustain it—and for mission-driven activists, organizers, healers, and changemakers, making space to center vital needs like rest, self-care, and healthy boundaries isn’t as simple as clocking out.
Oppressive systems, dysfunctional structures, and the impacts of living in white supremacy culture lead to burnout, anxiety, illness, and fatigue. And often, these stressors are compounded when well-meaning organizations fail to align their internal culture with their external vision…and fail their staff and volunteers in the process.
Practicing Liberation reorients collective justice work toward a model that transforms the effects of injustice, harm, and oppressive systems into resilience, joy, and community care. Editors Hala Khouri and Tessa Hicks and contributors Kazu Haga, Taj James, Nkem Ndefo, Jacoby Ballard, Sará King, and Kerri Kelly, demonstrate in real time how embodied leadership, interconnected collectives, and a bold vision for transformation are the vital tools we need for collective wellbeing, healing, and long-term social change.
This event is free to attend live, plus when you register you’ll also get access to the recordings. Order your copy of Practicing Liberation: Transformative Strategies for Collective Healing & Systems Change here.
JOIN US LIVE FOR THE FREE EVENT
August 7th, 2024 from 3pm - 4pm ET (U.S. Eastern Time)
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN
In this intimate conversation we will learn:
Embody healing, wellness, and beloved community
Guard against replicating systems of harm
Disrupt racist, classist, anti-queer, and anti-trans behavior and systems
Celebrate creativity and radical imagination in movement work
Center healing from intergenerational trauma, white supremacy culture, and extractive capitalism
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTERS
Nkem Ndefo
Nkem Ndefo is the founder of Lumos Transforms and creator of The Resilience Toolkit, a model that promotes embodied self-awareness and self-regulation in an ecologically sensitive framework and social justice context. She is known for her unique ability to connect with people of all types by holding powerful healing spaces, weaving complex concepts into accessible narratives, and creating synergistic and collaborative learning communities that nourish people’s innate capacity for healing, wellness, and connection. Originally licensed as a nurse midwife, Nkem has extensive post-graduate training in complementary health modalities and emotional therapies and has worked in settings ranging from large-volume hospitals to mobile community clinics. She brings an abundance of experience as a clinician, educator, researcher, and community strategist to innovative programs that address trauma and inequity, build resilience, and shape liberatory change for individuals and organizations across sectors, both in her home country (US) and internationally. She regularly provides trauma-informed subject matter expertise to organizations, initiatives, and governmental agencies. Nkem is particularly interested in working alongside people most impacted by violence and marginalization. Most recently, she led a multi-year embodied diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism initiative for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. Learn more about her at https://lumostransforms.com/team/nkem-ndefo/ and https://theresiliencetoolkit.co/about/.
Hala Khouri
Hala Khouri, M.A., SEP, E-RYT (she/her), is a sought-after speaker and trainer on the topic of trauma informed care, embodied social justice, trauma informed education and resilience. She has been teaching yoga and movement for over 25 years and has been doing clinical work and trainings for 15 years. Originally from Beirut, Lebanon, Hala has dedicated her life to the study of trauma, justice and building resilience. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Columbia University and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology and an M.A. in Community Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Hala is also trained in Somatic Experiencing, a body-based psychotherapy that helps resolve trauma and its symptoms.
Hala is a co-founder of Off the Mat, Into the World, a training organization that bridges yoga and activism within a social justice framework and an Adjunct Professor at Pitzer College. She leads Collective Resilience trauma informed yoga and somatics trainings nationally. Hala also trains direct service providers and educators to be trauma informed and culturally responsive. She leads a monthly, online membership program called Radical Wellbeing which supports people through embodied practices and community building. She is the author of Peace from Anxiety: Get Grounded, Build Resilience and Stay Connected Amidst the Chaos (Shambhala). She lives in Venice, CA with her husband and two sons.
Jacoby Ballard
Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator and yoga teacher on Shoshone, Ute, Paiute and Goshute land now known as Salt Lake City, Utah. He leads workshops and trainings around the country on diversity, equity, and inclusion. As a yoga teacher with 24 years of experience, he leads workshops, retreats, segments in teacher trainings, teaches at conferences, and has been an artist-in-residence on dozens of college campuses. In 2008, Jacoby co-founded Third Root Community Health Center in Brooklyn, to work at the nexus of healing and social justice. Since 2006, Jacoby has taught Queer and Trans Yoga, a space for queer folks to unfurl and cultivate resilience, for which he received Yoga Journal's Game Changer Award in 2014 and Good Karma Award in 2016. Receiving prenatal yoga training in 2021, Jacoby now offers a Queer & Trans Centered Prenatal Yoga online and LGBT inclusion workshops in prenatal yoga teacher trainings so that queer families can be anticipated and supported in their process. Jacoby has taught in schools, hospitals, non profit and business offices, a maximum security prison, a recovery center, a cancer center, LGBT centers, gyms, a veteran’s center, and yoga studios. He is the author of A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditation for Liberation, released in 2021, a critical love letter to teachings and practitioners of yoga and Buddhism, and serves on the board of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. More of his teachings can be found at www.jacobyballard.net.