“I envision a future in my wildest dreams where everyone understands, knows and embodies themselves as being God as being part of the body of God, and understanding our divinity.” Ava Riby-Williams
E149 – Ava Riby-Williams on Embodiment, Trauma and Grief
Moving Into Collective Divinity
Listen to the conversation:
If you love the show, you can subscribe through iTunes, Stitcher or Spotify and listen offline on your favourite device. Podcasts are great for long drives and commuting!
About this interview:
How can we experience our bodies as diverse resources for liberation?
“I envision a future in my wildest dreams where everyone understands, knows and embodies themselves as being God as being part of the body of God, and understanding our divinity.” Ava Riby-Williams
In this episode, Amisha talks to Ava Riby-Williams, a queer, British Ghanaian/Indian visionary. Ava acts out life purpose as a creative facilitator, Yoga teacher, activist, and artist who encourages play and promotes diversity in all of life. Ava is driven by the importance of making healing possible for marginalised communities as a tool to unwind trauma, whilst learning about the cycles, which oppress them in order to share teachings on equity. Ava’s work encourages us to become our own inner teachers, recognising ourselves as divinity and in unity. With over 10 years of Yoga, creative practise, facilitation, and performance experience, her teaching is often woven with song, poetry, and play as a way to deepen our capacity to Love and experience life. For 2022, Ava is developing a new series of somatic movement workshops.
Together they explore ‘From Me To We’ our upcoming learning journey and the embodiment journey Ava will be hosting within. Drawing inspiration from biomimicry and the patterns of nature, these collective journeys are seeking to connect us with our bodies’ senses letting our weekly themes percolate and ripple into diverse physical experiences that are seeds of change.
Ava speaks about her sexual identity and the shame that is often attached to being queer and gender-fluid in our heteronormative world. She reveals a traumatic personal experience that has caused her waves of grief and how she integrates the complex dualities of this into her life with grace. Ava believes that trauma and grief an embodied experiences and can show up as collective physical dis/ease. These collective experiences tend to be systemically de-contextualised turning them into culture deeply affecting our marginalised communities.
We learn that her work with spiritual embodied practices is intended to open pathways for us to reconnect to our divine essence overcoming personal and ancestral blocks igniting transformation that brings us individual and systemic freedom.
“Everybody is divine, and there is a system that we live in that is oppressing everybody and limiting everybody’s potential, and everyone’s capacity to understand themselves as a divine being.” ~Ava Riby-Williams
Ava Riby-Williams is a queer, British Ghanaian/Indian visionary, living in London. She acts out life purpose as a Creative Facilitator, Yoga teacher, Activist and Artist who encourages play and promotes diversity in all of life. Her work focuses on finding presence and feeling in the moment, while guiding groups into deeper contemplation of issues concerning their liberation and wellbeing- on personal and collective levels. As a guide, Ava is clear that the point of her work is to encourage students to become their own inner teachers, recognising ourselves as divinity, in unity. With over 10 years of Yoga, creative practise, facilitation and performance experience, her teaching is often woven with song, poetry and play as a way to deepen our capacity to Love and experience life.
Ava is driven by the importance of making healing possible for marginalised communities as a tool to unwind trauma; whilst learning about the cycles which oppress them in order to share teachings on equity with others. She has been creating and facilitating trainings in this field with communities and also activists and healers that support them since 2017. She is passionate about creating brave, accessible spaces for self exploration, movement, expression and acceptance, and is deeply curious about how we can do this across lines of oppression. For 2022, Ava is developing a new series of somatic movement workshops which she will be sharing with groups in London.
To connect or work with Ava, visit thecreativesoulcollective.com
To connect or work with Amisha, visit amisha.co.uk
artwork:
Resources and links from this episode:
- Ava Riby-Williams – Instagram account
- Ompowerment Project
- Brene Brown
- Black Lives Matter
- adrienne maree brown . Emergent Strategy
- Reesma Menakem
- From Me To We
- Meditate on Death – Midnight Gospel on Netflix
From Me to We Find out more about our latest learning journey, and join us on May 2nd – here.
Connect more with us:
- Beautiful Leadership mentoring
- Amisha’s One-to-One sessions
- Amisha’s book – INTUITION
- all that we are membership
←Previous Podcast Episode Next Podcast Episode →
You must be logged in to post a comment.