Moving Into Alignment: A Healing Circuit in the African Diaspora is an exhibition I curated in my final semester of coursework at UT Austin. This exhibition focuses on the everyday, moment-to-moment strategies and tools that are necessary in the healing process. This exhibition consists of stations designed around the seven chakras or energy centers of the body. The goal is to introduce the role of each of the energy centers as a way to connect with our bodies and heal the wounds caused by navigating violent social landscapes. The exhibition will generate conversations about imagining future possibilities for ourselves using our creativity as a tool. The stations will feature artifacts such as songs, poems, and paintings created by Black women of the diaspora as well as have interactive activities for participants to have an embodied experience. By pulling together these artifacts in one place, we re-member fragmented tools and pieces of our histories and memories into a space where they are valued for their healing properties. Holding them in the same place binds their energies in a networked constellation that guides us toward a well future.

Please find a comfortable seat and share the next five minutes with me as I guide you through a short body scan meditation.

Press play when you are ready to begin.

See Moving Into Alignment: The Fundamental Elements of Love in Action Below

Tree Mural Art by Semente @artbysemente

Mindfulness Yoga was an hour-long yoga flow in which a group of young women of color graduate students joined to heal together to the sounds of SZA. In continuously violent spaces of academia, women of color need access to spaces of healing that do not perpetuate the same harm against them and their bodies they experience in their every day. My goal in holding this workshop, was to offer such a space of healing at the graduate school I attended.

"The piece 'Walking with Natasha' choreographed by Ananya Chatterjea, resonates deeply with me. Preparing for this piece I had been stuck inside of my head terrified to forget the words, or make a mistake for weeks. When we finally had an audience, I began to breathe deeper, feeling the responsibility and opportunity that was under my feet. I looked up from the ground and into the eyes of audience members and spoke to them. I implicated them in my message, making them shift in their seat. It was then that I realized the potential my work truly had. The moment when my theories felt grounded I had the power to teach in that moment. My body as my medium, I invoked spirit to walk with Natasha. Spirit guided me, and let me know there was no other place for me to be in that moment but present in my body, with them."

       -Raiye Adeleye "Re-covering/re-membering the fundamental elements of love: Black women’s wellness in the African Diaspora"

"Walking with Natasha is an homage to young black and brown women thriving in the face of hate. It invokes both Natasha Nkhama, the student at Baylor University, and Professor Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley. While Natashe Nkhama is a reminder of the context in which this piece is made, the feelings after the recent election and the refusal of young women of color to submit to it is my tribute to Omis'eke Natasha Tinsley. It is about the way in which two women of color have found each other to create a practice of solidarity without necessarily making a deliberate 'plan' and continue international love and support."

                -Ananya Chatterjea

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Photos: Lawrence Peart, Courtesy of The University of Texas at Austin

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