Our Approach

At ERJ, we begin with the body. We’ll ask: What does your body want you to know?

In each of our offerings, we’ll help you name your visions for the future, deepen your commitment to liberation and justice, and strengthen your support for movements led by BIPOC, queer and trans, and working-class communities.

Our offerings grew out of specific requests from Black somatics teachers to white teachers in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. As a result, many, but not all, of our offerings are specifically designed for white people engaging in racial justice.

Dara Silverman founded ERJ to respond to this call to support white people to show up with accountability, dignity to meet the political moment.  Her long-term commitment to racial justice also led to the prioritizing of redistribution as a part of ERJ. 

A group of people practicing a traditional martial art or dance in a park, holding wooden sticks and forming a circle under a large tree on a sunny day.
Explore our offerings

  • "Engaging conflict directly and practicing ways of responding generatively is not something we do often or well as people with white privilege, so this retreat offered a desperately needed antidote to our patterns of under-accountability. Getting to practice being brave, messy, and caring in a container that's committed to both individual healing and developing disciplined, collective anti-racist praxis among white people has helped me become a more committed organizer, leader and community member."

    —Eli, Community Organizer 

  • "When I was first exposed to somatics, I was a little scared. I felt nervous talking about bodies. So if you are nervous, I’ve been there. But the somatics courses are totally worth it. I see somatics as an investment in myself and my leadership. It helps me show up, meet this political moment, and be the parent I want to be."

    –Ty, Teacher

What is Somatics

Somatics describes practices that incorporate the fullness of the body.

Soma has a greek root and means “the body in its wholeness”.

Somatics is an attempt to name and understand the human being as an integrated, biological, psychological, social, and energetic whole. This is a shift in paradigm from a Cartesian Model (I think, therefore, I am.)

Our lineage draws from several cultures and practices from around the world- from East Asia and South Asia, South America, and Eastern Europe.

All cultures have embodied practices, including those of European ancestry. Often racism, white supremacy, and colonization split our minds from our bodies and devalue embodiment.

Two pairs of people are practicing a dance or partner activity in a room with wooden floors and yellow walls, with chairs against the wall and windows.
  • Black and white abstract spiral design with rough textured edges.

    “the study and practice of how change happens in bodies” and “the study of our bodies, trauma, and the practices we generate to develop awareness of our bodies and transform them. I think of embodiment as related, but inclusive of all the practices, rituals and ceremonies that people have used across time to transform not only individual bodies but our collective bodies as well.”

    –Prentis Hemphill

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    “When we use the term “body” we use it in the somatic sense of the word, which from the ancient Greek means the living body in its wholeness. This is not the sleek, airbrushed body on magazine covers or the Cartesian notion of body as beast of burden that ferries a disembodied mind to its intellectual appointments. Nor is it the mechanical, physiological body of modern medicine or the religious formula of flesh as sin. The body, in the somatic sense, expresses our history, commitments, dignity, authenticity, identity, roles, moral strength, moods, and aspirations as a unique quality of aliveness we call the ‘self’. We cannot act or live in the world without the body, or the self in this sense.”

    –Richard Strozzi-Heckler

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    “A politicized somatics can act as a fundamental collective practice of building power, deepening presence and capacity, and developing the embodied skills we need to generate large-scale change.”

    –Generative Somatics, What is Politicized Somatics?

  • Black and white spiral pattern with rough, textured edges

    “Trauma and oppression work to dis-integrate us, or disappear things, or break us, or compartmentalize us both individually and collectively. Somatics is one healing and transformative methodology that really tries to make us whole again individually and collectively. And decompartmentalize us and integrate us and have us, bring all of ourselves and know how to do that.”

    –Spenta Kandawalla

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    “Somatics is a holistic methodology and theory of change that understands both personal and collective transformation through a radically different paradigm... Somatics understands both the individual and collective as a combination of biological, evolutionary, emotional, and psychological aspects, shaped by social and historical norms, and adaptive to a wide array of both resilient and oppressive factors. Somatics is an intentional change process by which we can embody transformation, individually and collectively. Embodied transformation is foundational change that shows in our actions, ways of being, relating, and perceiving. It is transformation that sustains over time.”

    –Staci Haines, The Politics of Trauma

Meet Our Team

The Embodying Racial Justice team brings a wealth of experience to support you. We are coaches, consultants, facilitators, meditators, bodyworkers and singers. We look forward to meeting you.  

  • "The work of being in our bodies - in my body - is essential in order to be authentically in the fight for racial justice and our collective future. It is both a necessity and a gift to live into the fullness of my life."

    —Justine, Community Funder

  • "I had never before been in a group of white people that felt so alive and connected, and this gave me hope that we can participate in building a new world beyond white supremacy. This course helped me orient to my commitments and community in new and powerful ways. I now have true peers that I can continue my personal and community growth in racial justice alongside."

    –Robin, Artist 

Lineage & Training

We learned from teachers at two sister organizations, the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics. We also want to recognize generationFIVE, an organization founded by Staci Haines and others to end sexual violence against children in five generations and BOLD, Black Organizing for Liberation and Dignity, founded by Denise Perry. Both organizations developed and iterated language, frameworks, practices, and theory that influenced and informed our curriculum and work. 

Our influences include:

Richard Strozzi-Heckler, Spenta Kundawalla, Staci Haines, Nathan Naik Shara, Elizabeth Ross, Jennifer Ianiello, MawuLisa Adeyemo, Liu Hoi Man, Wendy Palmer, Arianna Strozzi, Richard Hall 

Many of the practices we learned draw directly from:

Morihei Ueshiba
Founder of Aikido, a nonviolent martial arts practice from Japan, developed after the devastation of World War II.

Elsa Gindler
Wilhelm Reich M.D., Doris Breyer, Randolph Stone M.D., Dr. Ida Rolfe, Magda Prower and Moshé Feldenkrais Ph.D. This is a group of mostly Jewish practitioners from Eastern Europe after World War II.

Charan Singh in India
And the Insight Meditation tradition of meditation and breath work.

Fernando Flores from Chile
Who developed linguistic framing and distinctions.

Dr. Karen Horney
Who defines core distinctions of safety, dignity, and belonging and conditioned tendencies.

Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy, the wide schools of Jungian Psychology, and the ongoing development of Feminist psychoanalysis. 
All contributed additional psychological and psychoanalytical frameworks.

Read more about the lineage of this stream of somatics here. 

Political Commitment to Redistribution

As a part of an ongoing commitment to resourcing Black embodiment and organizing, we redistribute funds from tuition payments to Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD) and Black and Indigenous organizing, where we hold trainings.

Between 2020-2025, ERJ redistributed over $215,000 to BOLD and other organizations.