on lineage pt 2

i wrote this in response to one of my offerings likely being stolen and co-opted by a place that holds more social + economic power than me. this is not the first time that has happened. writing this was part of a way to process my pain about this happening despite my very clear space guidelines asking for the opposite. this is also a further explanation of that space guideline, which is an agreement to hold sacred + honor the lineage of what we experience together in any of the spaces I hold. each space i hold and offer are extensions of embodiments i have worked with for years, and when they are co-opted, there is a lot of pain for the reasons i illuminate below.

somatic snacks is a reader-supported publication written by Sirius Heart, a disabled neuroqueer transsexual somatic practitioner who is working class. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

words are resonant embodiments.

words carry resonance that transmit the shape of embodiments that we hold in tissue, muscle, bone structure, cellular.

we forget that a word is a symbol, a stand in for what it represents. words and their shapes are then used carelessly, contorted into musculature that they were not quite meant to be.

this is important when we talk about lineage. and this is why the lineage, the story, is important.

lineage is never just a way of marking property, nor is it meant to be about possession. the naming of lineage is to tell the embodied story of the origination of something - an idea, a person, a culture (like queerness), violence, oppression, white supremacy.

within the telling of the story is the seed, the embodiment of the origin point. when you skip over naming the lineage and telling the story, you contort and rip up the seed, the embodiment of the origin point, by its roots.

i learned this in a felt way from yoga, a lineage that is not my blood lineage but was taught and passed to me from Jessica Patterson, who was trained by the jivamukti lineage and in other hatha lineages originating from Sri Brahmananda Sarasvati, Swami Nirmalananda, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, T. Krishnamacharya and T.K.V. Desikachar, and UG Krishnamurti.

when jessica taught me about sanskrit, the language of mantra and yoga, she taught me that “the feeling is the meaning.” each sanskrit word holds the embodiment, the way in your body that you actually hold the precise concept it is expressing. when yogic postures have sanskrit names, those names are specific because they are calling up the precise -felt- embodiment of those postures. when we chant mantra, what is most important is the feeling, the feeling is the meaning.

in yogic tradition, one has a teacher, a guru, and often one names someone a teacher. the teacher student relationship is paramount. the teacher guru relationship is important not because it is a hierarchy, but because it is a recognition of the -embodiment- that is transmitted from the guru to the student. one names one’s guru not in the Western hierarchical sense but as a recognition of the embodiment they have received. (as an aside, it is important to notice the ways that hierarchy + power can warp these relationships, because that is also very true and real)

it is because of this teaching, and many subsequent (namely, on the lineage of craniosacral work from Susan Raffo, and conversations with Hannah Harris-Sutro) that i believe in the sacredness of lineage. not just from a property standpoint. i also think it is white supremacy remediation to name the embodiments we have received from both our own lineages and others (such as my own naming here of what i’ve received from hatha lineages).

why? because whiteness is about possession and stealing and disconnection and further, desecrating (usually violently).

to name a lineage is to verbally re-member (literally) the embodiment from where it was transmitted. as a white person, it is to refrain from further desecration, to bow in submission and humility to not knowing it all myself, to not being the savior or the one. as brontë velez discusses in The Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy, i can choose to kneel in submission to an embodiment, a teacher, a submission that i ask for. to name the embodiment and honor it, and feel it, without instantly commodifying it. to reconnect.

so when i request in my work that someone replicate what they learn from me with permission, i am not asking because i think i own it.

i am asking because i recognize that what i am offering is a transmission, not only of my own embodiment and lived practice, but also the embodiments and lived practices i have received.

i am asking because it is a practice of re-membering.

i am asking because i want you to re-connect.

somatic snacks is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.