8.31.20 reflections on the past month and a note about Erasure

"When you erase Black women's work you uphold white supremacy." - Nova Reid

After our group presented the letters publicly, we took a month for some much needed group care and self care to reground and reset our nervous systems. We are very grateful for this community for surrounding us with love and support. We had some backlash, which was difficult, but mostly were overwhelmed by being seen and heard by this community. 

We have especially been holding all of the beloved Black, Indigenous, and People of Color who have courageously received this information and reached out to tell us that they felt less alone. Your experiences are valid and we love you! We thank everyone for digesting this information and for holding the importance of critical thinking, accountability, and continued learning as we all move forward on our collective journeys towards healing and liberation. 

Unfortunately, some of the teachers in this community have dug their heels in and have done the bare minimum to deepen their humility and self-reflection. We ask everyone to look closely at the activity of teachers who are continuing to hold trainings and observe what changes are taking place. 

Before we went public, we sent David our final response letter to notify him that it was clear he was not asking for further dialogue with us. If you read that letter, you know that we notified him that we would post these letters publicly to help inform the breathwork community of the work and conversations already happening so that others would feel less alone and could help with holding him and his teachers accountable. 

Without a response from David, he posted on his blog on 7/14/20 (“News” on his website) the action steps he was taking towards inclusivity of BIPOC folks and trauma-informed training without any context. If you read his post, you will see there is no mention of where he got the ideas for these next steps. So we wrote to David about our concerns about how he did not acknowledge the labor we all did in this process. 

He could have chosen this as a powerful role modeling moment for his community to witness, however we have not received a reply. This is erasure. David could have written about the correspondence with our group and acknowledgment of our efforts. White supremacy says he doesn’t have to. We wonder if a reply would have happened if 3 out of 6 of us did not identify as Black femmes - a group whose labor gets erased in movements.

Maybe this was overlooked? If it was, we hoped that he would at least respond to our concerns. We are disappointed but not surprised, as this is a common shape of white privilege. Sweeping us under the rug and then claiming that the rug was his originally...this perpetuates the same concerns we had about him claiming the breathwork style without acknowledging the lineage, and cultural appropriation. 

We hope that by sharing this information we can continue to help folks understand that just because a teacher in power announces they are “doing the work” publicly, does not mean things will change overnight. 

As many of you know, the real anti-racism work is lifelong, extremely challenging, life altering and incredibly humbling. We hope that David’s reluctance to acknowledge anyone’s labor, lineage or teachings will change in the future, because we still believe that people can grow and do better. Thank you.