Deepening Your Queer Body Love with Elizabeth Cooper

Elizabeth Cooper grew up in Japan and Brazil, and moved to the Bay Area for its queer, experimental performance art. She studied Anthropology, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Dance at Princeton University and has completed immersive, residential programs at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts and Antioch Buddhist Studies Program in India. She blends her academic background in cultural politics of the body, feminism and queer theory with her passion for the power of movement and meditation in her Queer Body Love coaching business. She explores the question “How do we love ourselves, our bodies and each other in the face of oppression?” through her work.

Episode Highlights

• Elizabeth discusses working with people who ask, “How do I love myself when I struggle to accept my body?”
• Being a third culture kid, growing up in multiple foreign cultures in a white American household.
• Using movement, dance and art to heal from oppression and become more embodied.
• Healing her connection to her body through yoga and movement deep practice.
• “If I really listen to my body, there is both an impulse towards rest and an impulse towards movement.”
• “If you can create enough space to really begin to rebuild trust and listening and intuition with your body, it will tell you what it needs.”
• How consciousness and connection with our bodies can set us free to relate to ourselves and others more fully.
• Using the Buddhist principle of fierce compassion to set clear boundaries as we can heal ourselves.

Elizabeth’s web links

• Queer Body Love Coaching
• The Queer Body Love Speaker Series