Episode #52

Episode #52 Full Transcript: Sacred Activism, Spiritual Resilience, and the importance of Cultivating Beloved Community with Hanifa Nayo Washington on the Psychedelic Leadership Podcast.

My name is Laura Dawn, and you’re listening to episode #52 of the Psychedelic Leadership Podcast featuring this powerful conversation with social entrepreneur, sacred activist and co-founder of the Fireside project, Hanifa Nayo Washington. 

Hanifa Nayo Washington, is a woman of many talents and she is a powerful role model for embodied leadership in the psychedelic space. Her leadership is clearly rooted in integrity, equality, and her leadership is heart centerd, she is kind and caring, which is something I love about Hanifa.  

Hanifa calls herself a sacred activist – a topic we’re going to be diving into today –  and she’s been a healing justice practitioner with 20 years of values-based nonprofit leadership experience, 

Hanifa is the Co-founder and Chief of Strategy at Fireside Project a nonprofit that is creating systemic change in the field of psychedelics.  

And if you’re not yet familiar with Fireside Project it  is the first Psychedelic Peer Support Line, and they also have an app now, which is incredible. And what they have essentially done is created a nationwide safety net that has substantially decreased 911 calls and hospitalizations while democratizing access to free high-quality care. The line has supported thousands of callers since launching in April of 2021. 

I had Hanifa’s co-founder Joshua White, who’s also a dear friend, on the show a while back – that was episode #33, and that conversation was more focused on the Fireside project and what they are doing. 

And if you haven’t yet listened to that episode, I highly recommend giving it a listen, not only because Fireside is such a valuable resource, but because they are also a great example of visionary leadership and creating something unprecedented, that didn’t yet exist in the space, and filling a really important need. 

And launching big initiatives like this, is not easy, I’m in the middle of launching an unprecedented initiative as well right now, called Grow Medicine, which is why we need spiritual resilience. 

And these topics of sacred activism and spiritual resilience and building community are so important right now, and that’s why I wanted to bring Hanifa on the show. 

And the more I learn about Hanifa, the more I’m just so in awe of and impressed by this kind and caring human being. She’s also a facilitator, reiki master practitioner, and a creative, she’s a musician, digital designer, and works at the intersection of mindfulness, place making, and social justice to cultivate organizations, gatherings, spaces, and experiences rooted in the values of beloved community. 

Hanifa is also the Co-founder and Organizing Principle of One Village Healing, an online BIPOC centered healing, resilience, and psychedelic wellness space.

Hanifa also released her 3rd album called Mantras for the Revolution where she offers these soulful, connective, kirtan-style, songs as a collective practice, coming together to use our voices as medicine in this time of revolution that is both- within us and around us.

At the end of this episode, I’m going to leave you with one of her heart-felt mantras so you can tune into this frequency and prayer for peace. And if you would like to support Hanifa in her creative endeavors, you can find a link to purchase her album Mantras for the Revolution by going to lauradawn.co/52 where you can also find links to her website and social media,  and all the other wonderful resources mentioned throughout this episode. 

Before we dive in, just a couple of quick announcements. We are weeks away from the launch of Grow Medicine. 

And through a partnership collaboration, grow medicine is now a project of the Indigenous Medicine Conservation fund, supported by RiverStyx Foundation and Dr. Bronners. 

And Grow is essentially an easy-to-use mobile-friendly donation-based platform for the psychedelic and medicine community to step into right relationship and give back to the traditional knowledge holders from which these medicines come. And we are featuring different indigenous-led non profit organizations for each of the 5 keystone medicines, so ayahuasca, peyote, iboga, sacred mushrooms and Bufo. 

And it’s also an education-based platform where we’re helping to broaden our awareness and deepen our understanding around plant medicine conservation. 

And our official launch date is May 31st, and if you’d like to support that launch and learn more about what we are doing, you can go to Grow Medicine. Com – and our new landing page is up and it’s looking so so so gorgeous. So please check that out, and we just got our IG account up, so please follow @ supportgrow medicine. 

I’ll actually be announcing the launch of Grow Medicine in Switzerland at the Psychedelic House in Davos in less than a couple of weeks. And I’ll actually be seeing Hanifa and Joshua there who are also speaking and those talks will be streamed for the Psyched Conference, and I’ll include a link to that in the shownotes if you want to tune in to that. 

https://www.psyched.studio/conference-2022

Then after Davos, I’ll be flying right to Colorado for the Arise Music Festival, the weeked of May 27th and 28, 29th, – and there are still tickets to that available, and I have a special code if you want to come join me and get 15% off your ticket, I’ll link to that as well. And I’ll be offering a keynote on Psychedelics, Creativity and Visionary Leadership – my favorite topic to speak on. 

so lots coming up for me, and then right after Arise we’re in launch mode for Grow the first 2 weeks of June. And then I’m going to need a vacation y’all, so I can practice spiritual resilience. 

Alright friends, as always, thank you so much for continuing to tune in, without any further ado, here is my conversation with this wonderful Hanifa Nayo Washington. 

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Yeah, it’s so nice to be able to drop in with you today. Hanifa, I was just looking at your website and, oh my gosh, I love this photo of you on the cover of your site. It’s just gorgeous and the dress, and just, it’s such a powerful statement where you point to the work that you do. And I love these three terms that you use on your websites, sacred activism, spiritual resilience, and cultivating beloved community and community of belonging.

And these are three topics that I would love to dive in with you 

today. Awesome. Well, I’m so happy to be here with you today and to get into the juiciness of this, that photo is like a once in a lifetime photo. And just a really quick story about that. I was I lived in new Haven for many, many years.

I just made a move out to Oregon. But I won a, an arts award from the city and it came with a photo shoot. And so there I lived there that was in 2018 or 17, I think was 18. And so my very good friends where the photo studio that was selected to do the photo shoot. So I had gotten that dress and I hadn’t worn it yet.

And I was like, what am I ever going to wear this dress? And so I was like, oh, this is, this is it. And so I was doing my photo, you know, they do your makeup. And then my friends, you know, they were shooting. So it was, I was very comfortable and they were playing. Just really amazing music. And I remember this, that, that photo is toward the very end of the shoot.

And they had put on living my life, like it’s golden by Jill sky. I was like in the group and I literally then like, began to feel. And welcome my ancestors into this space. And so literally I could like fill them, filling up the room and all around me. And they were so proud and I was sort of like twirling and they had this fan on and I was just like there for my ancestors and like listening to Jill Scott.

And it was like this really powerful moment and it was captured. And so whenever I see that photo, I’m just like, it fills her with so much joy also. And I think like, it’s just like, that’s my ancestors. You’re seeing me like fully up in my ancestor. So I was wanting to like, share that. I love 

that. I mentioned your photo.

I mean, you can really tell that there’s something profound happening in that moment. And music does that for me too. Music has such a way of just moving the spirit and then that opens up that channel. And that’s when you know, all of our ancestors can actually really stand behind us and also the generations to come before us.

Yeah. And you are such a living embodiment of sacred activism in action with the work that you’re doing with fireside and also the work that you’ve done in the past. And for people listening to this who, yeah. Maybe we can start with just like your definition and how you think about sacred activism. And maybe I’ll just set a little context here for people who listened to my solo episode on leveraging psychedelics to shape and mold our sense of identity and habit change really follows identity change, and actually the sense of spiritual resilience and sacred activism is kind of a very powerful narrative to embody as a sense of identity.

So I kind of wanted to frame it that way. Sacred activism as a sense of this is who I am, and this is how I’m showing up in the world. 

Yeah. Ooh, I love that, Laura. This is who I am. And this is how I’m showing up in the world. And I really think at the core of that and how I anchor into sacred activism is, is through, you know, practices that bring deeper spiritual awareness that bring more healing that bring more justice for equity.

And all of that is so much steeped in my relationship to power and this concept around conscious co-creation. So for many years, I’ve worked with a group called CEIO which stands for co-creating effective and inclusive organizations slash organizers. And at the core of that work is the sense of not only just understanding what conscious co-creation.

But practicing it and being it. And so when we, we kind of use this, I hear this word used a lot kind of thrown around in terms of like co-creation co-creation, let’s, co-create this co-create that and Coke conscious co-creation isn’t collaboration, right? It is about consciously being aware of how am I using my power, my energy, my life force in this moment.

And in this moment, and in this moment, and in this moment how am I bringing my gifts How am I holding people accountable? How am I saying the things that need to be said, how am I sitting in silence? How am I, how am I making this happen? And so I think that for a long time, like I was acculturated to be silent, you know, to always speak when spoken to, to just sort of be the helper.

And there’s a lot of conditioning, you know, that I’ve been undoing a growing awareness around and so around my relationship to power. And so when I think about. Being a sacred activist. It’s really like I take every moment, every interaction like with such heart and sacredness, because it is, it is a sacred privilege to be alive to be conscious, to be aware to, to create in this world.

And so I think about the injustices and the imbalance of power and also how other people have been acculturated and unblinded. And so I feel it is my duty sacred duty responsibility to be in this world, supporting others, to understand their relationship to power to create spaces. Awareness and healing where folks can tap into to enter their sense of self and to their source into their remembering.

Right? And so to me, that is what it’s central around. Like when I say I’m a sacred activist, it’s about understanding the sacredness of life, understanding my responsibility to other, to, to ensure that folks are healing and safe and have the tools that they need because we need, we need each other.

It’s a, it’s a back and forth. It’s a back and forth. And so again, within the sacred activism for me, It’s not about like, I’m trying to be famous or I need to make excellent of dollars. It’s not a career path. It’s a, it’s a way of living. 

I love that you framed it as understanding a relationship to power.

I think that that is actually really powerful. And I’m curious if we can get actually really practical here for people listening to this and they’re thinking to themselves, okay, how do I become more aware to my relationship to power in this moment? I mean, I immediately think of leadership development training, which a core foundation of that is actually training in emotional intelligence.

And in those sub categories, there’s actually four big categories of emotional intelligence. And we can look at, you know, self-awareness and embodiment practices, but I’m curious, how do you teach people and what are like the practical invitations tools that we can actually share here for people to start becoming more aware of?

What is their relationship to power. 

Yeah, I love this. I, I think kind of a weird way that I inroad to it is actually around gratitude. So I think that if we can begin with understanding what we’re grateful for then we can begin to understand our relationship, to gratitude our relationship to that feeling of wholeness that often gratitude evokes.

And then that can lead to the like, like, why am I grateful for this? And how did this happen? What all had to, I had to coalesce for me to have this experience. And so, and it gets people into the heart center and then thinking about, well, what is it about this thing that I’m grateful for, that I want to remember, or that I want to live on or have a legacy?

What is it about this experience that I want to share with others? And then how do I, how do I do that? Is it through storytelling? Is it through writing some sort of creative way? Is it through something that I, you know, creating an experience? And so bringing it down from the sort of concepts like into the heart center, like how does it make you feel in your body?

Bringing people into the awareness of how gratitude and love, because that’s, what’s behind it all sits in the body. And then you can begin to ask, you know, what is, what is keeping you from being in gratitude at all times? What are the things that are removing you from that sense of gratitude and and love.

And so identifying sort of that feeling first and the notion of that, those super important to me and then moving people into, okay. You know, as Ruby sells famously said, where does it hurt? Like where is the pain? Where are the blockages? Okay. Let’s ask some questions about that. So really kind of probably be able to, through some journaling is a good way to begin.

So it’s like, what are you grateful for? What does love feel like in your body when you think about the things you’re grateful for now? Why aren’t we in that energy all the time? Oh, this, this, and this, I’m busy doing this. Okay. Then we can begin to see where some of the cycles might be. Some of the patterns, some of the conditioning where we have internalized things.

And I, I, I do a very sematic practice. So bringing people back into the breath and the body doing a body scan, you know, from head to tell where’s the tension. Okay. Where, where do you kind of cry? Your body is always giving you data and information. And then being able to sit with that and to meditate and to continue to ask that to sort of explore where, where the pain is.

And then I think that it’s about this, you know, really getting deep in here because it’s really all about starting with yourself and to start with yourself and then it’s about, okay, how can I then help or reflect back or hold for others, but we have to start with self inquiry and masters. That’s where it begins.

And it’s a continual practice it’s never going to just end, like, and that’s a really big thing that I am super clear about with folks that I work with. And for myself, the moment that you feel that you’re above the work, that you don’t have any work to do, like you’re failing and you need to pause and recover.

Like that’s just the truth. So I think there’s a lot of self inquiry reflection. There’s, you know, taking time, you know, so I became a Reiki master maybe four, five or six years ago. And, but I’ve been studying it for longer than that. And so those first three years, I didn’t practice on anyone. I would practice on myself.

It was, it was my own. Spiritual practice that I got to, you know, know what was going on with me, my assistance, how this, how my energy can support, can support this body in this spirit. And then I began to slowly bring on other people who either came to me or what did it, I wasn’t sort of like, you know, flashing the kind of like I’m here, come get, you know, so it’s like, I feel like these practices for for wholeness must come from a super organic and inward place first, like start a whole, right.

And then build out from there. And I think that also choosing something really distinct that you can, can have a positive effect on, I feel like it’s super important to you. I think. We can often have like really, you know, especially with Instagram and all these things, we see everyone doing these big things or whatever is always happy.

And it’s like, you can just really hold space for a friend or you know, donate or go do some volunteering work. You can you know skip a meal and then donate that money to something that feels worthy, like change and systems change, work start from a thought, just like anything else like that, that started the mind and moves outward.

So I would also encourage people to like start small. So like, don’t feel like you have to go start a whole organization or give tons and tons of money or spend hours and hours and hours. It’s about just like in medicine work it’s about intention. So setting your intention and that can, that can be you know, like a mustard.

So those are the things I share on that. And I, I feel like to me, there’s this sort of infinity loop, you know, when I talk about sacred activism and then spiritual resilience, they are like kind of melt into each other. And so when you are living your life to anchor more love on the planet when you are here to change or more or create new systems alongside the ones that are crumbling.

This is really intensive, hard work, right. It’s very it’s very different from sort of sort of technical work or work. That’s like not involved with like critical transformational change. And so it requires right then different ways of being in different tools for your resilience, because you are waking up every day.

In this world and this system that is not built to support those types of changes. And so you’re not only getting up and making the change again, starting within the self and then building out you are then subject to the crunch and the drain and the Decompartmentalization and the disconnection you know, systems.

And so we have to then have practices that give us the resilience to get up every day in this sy