Cultivating collective power through tending to individual healing with Susan Raffo

Bodyworker, cultural worker and author of “Liberated to the Bone”, Susan Raffo, shares her personal story of discovering the intrinsic connection between individual healing and our collective power to shape the systems we live in.

In this episode, Susan highlights the impact of the histories held in our bodies, and with passionate and hopeful energy, offers the possibility of leaning into our aliveness as an act of social and ecological repair.

In Susan’s We As Nature story, she shares:

• The impact of being raised in a political family and her childhood awareness of the energetic relations between people.
• How her direct experience of political activism at the UK Greenham Common occupation site has shaped her.
• How the hidden histories held in our bodies create fractures in our relationships and collective power. 
• The potent effect cranial sacral therapy had on her baby daughter and how this led her to become a bodyworker.
• How she came to recognise individual healing and collective organising as fundamentally the same body of work, and how her vocation has evolved to embrace and champion this.

Find out more about Susan’s work at The Healing Histories Project, REP, and on her website, where you’ll also find details of her books, ‘Liberated to the Bone’, ‘Queerly Classed’ and ‘Restricted Access’.

Credits
Creative Producer & Host: Nathalie Joel-Smith on behalf of Flourishing Diversity
Music Composer and Sound Producer: Dom Martin
Live Event Production: Katy Molloy,  Laura Tyley & Andrea Langlois
Illustrations: Rohama Malik

About Flourishing Diversity
We As Nature was recorded during an online gathering hosted by Flourishing Diversity.

Flourishing Diversity nurtures the human capacity to respect and uphold vibrant cultures and flourishing ecosystems. The events we produce, the narratives we amplify and the relationships we nurture seek to strengthen existing and emerging restorative cultures by supporting people to protect and deeply connect with the land on which they dwell and the multi-species communities they share these spaces with.

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