85. About resistance, with Elissa

11/04/21 • 42 min

When you think of the word resistance, what comes up for you? My guess is that you (and most of us) think of resistance as something bad; as something to be avoided. But let’s ask a different question: What is resistance good for? I would argue that resistance - which I’ll define as the experience of feeling pressure between ourselves and something outside of us - is good for helping us understand and define who we are. In this solo episode that sets the month’s theme, join me to do a somatic experiment around the feeling of resistance, and explore why it can indeed be a very useful experience.

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84. About elevating disability pride, with Tiffany Yu

Tiffany Yu is on a mission to elevate disability pride. Through the work of her social enterprise Diversability, as well as her social media platforms, speaking, and writing, Tiffany is working not just to lift the stigma about disability, but to celebrate it. In this episode, Tiffany shares her own disability origin story, and together we discuss what it would look like to go from living in a supremacist society (where a certain way of being is the “right” way to be”) to truly living the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it’s not as pie-in-the-sky impossible as you might think... sometimes it just involves stepping up to cut someone’s steak.

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86. About talking to people you disagree with, with Josh Trent

One day this fall, I was scrolling through my Instagram feed, when I saw a post from my friend Josh. It was a screenshot of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s response to President Biden’s mask mandate. Gov. Abbott wrote “Biden’s vaccine mandate is an assault on private businesses” and below in the caption Josh wrote “I DO NOT comply.” My first thought was “Eesh, I need to unfollow my friend Josh.” But as my finger moved to hover over the button my second thought was: “Elissa Weinzimmer... you’ve got one person in your feed who’s not in your silo of agreement. This is an actual chance to practice Conversation Culture.” In his comment, Josh had also said that he really wanted responses, especially from people who disagreed. So I took him at his word and instead of unfollowing, I commented. A real conversation ensued, and now we’ve brought that conversation to this podcast. Thank you so much Josh Trent, CEO of Wellness Force, for opening your heart to speak with me in a way that most of us avoid. Josh and I agree that these conversations - that really hearing each other - are the keys to creating change in our world. We hope this conversation is helpful to you, and if it ignites something that you want to share please reach out to either or both of us... we genuinely want to hear from you.