Parcon Resilience Facilitator Training 2019
Congratulations to the 2019 Parcon Resilience(PR) Facilitator Training cohort! We are a 12 person collective that spans from San Diego, CA to Boston, MA with desires to use this work in dance, psychotherapy, theater, race equity work, and visual art teaching. Together we embarked on an 8 day intensive experience inviting our minds and bodies to learn the PR framework and to dive deep into collective consciousness building! I am so excited to build together into the future!
Testimony:
"Dancing to fulfill our needs. In the midst of #stretchingandgrowing last week with such brilliant and remarkable humans, I sometimes found myself doubting the value of my own contribution to the group. We then did a partner exercise in which one person expresses a need they feel in that moment. The partner supports them in meeting the need through movement, touch, etc. My need: to feel adequate, useful, needed. Thank you, @ur_leo21 for helping me break out of my mental fog and feel powerful in my body again." -from Anne Tangi
"As much as I have spent all but 5 years of my life dancing and love it very much, I couldn’t help but wondered if I would ever reach people with my dancing, enough that I would make an impact. I also couldn’t help but entertained the thought that there are more important things to take care of in the world, and perhaps spending time dancing is a privilege of the self-indulgence. Yet I’ve stuck with it not only because it makes sense to me but also because of the places dance has taken me and the people have I gotten to be in relationship with.
This summer was a sweet reminder of the beauty inside this mess. From wcciJam, I met Andrew Suseno and Kimberly Tate, where I was exposed to Parcon Resilience. I resonated deeply with the work as a powerful tool to imagine and nurture empathy, which can lead to long-termed and sustainable changes in the way we are with each other. Post wcciJam, I followed my intuition to join the first cohort of Parcon Resilience Facilitators in an 8-day intensive in New York. So much sweat, tears, bruises, and revelations were shared through dances so good I wished I could spend the rest of my life doing just that. But there is no time to be sleeping in comfort – for we are nowhere near the end!
When Andrew asked me why I wanted to engage in anti-racist work, these are the answers I couldn’t remember in the moment:
In high school, my ex used to walk around school saying “I hate blacks” in Vietnamese, to black students. I was too ignorant and naïve to know what was going on, so I let him continue to say that shit till a mixed kid threaten to punch his face out and he stopped.
When I first started dating my husband, my own family’s first reaction was shock. “You’re dating a black guy??? Is he in a gang? Etc.” Around the same time, I stopped going to nail salons.
When I used to work as a manager of a restaurant, a Mexican woman screamed at me from across the room, “You’re a China, I know you are!” – as she kept asking my co-workers where I came from. No one stepped up to defend me.
Last week, a white man to whom I am a stranger asked me if I my husband was white or Asian. When I responded “he’s mixed,” the follow up questions were “what kind?” and “Is he a US citizen?” And I kept responding!
This morning, before I took my niece (who is black) out shopping, my husband asked me for a favor. He said “Could you please make sure no-one touches her hair like she’s a little doll?” and I understood why he asked.
I want to do this work because I have no other choice. I want to do this work because my sanity depends on it. I want to do this work because I want to see justice served in my lifetime. I want to do this work because I feel it is my life purpose. I want to do this work because it is better to weep in community than to smile in utter loneliness. I don’t want to feel lonely anymore!
SO! I am calling for support so we can continue to build community, to ensure that there is enough financial resources to compensate the new facilitators who is going to share Parcon Resilience with their communities back home. I calling for support so that there can be fair and equitable compensations for those who have and will continue to put in the work, in order to sustain and grow this beautiful idea into a reliable resource for change. " - Nhu Nyugen