TRANSCRIPT

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[Cheerful theme music begins]

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. 

As we continue to navigate years of collective upheaval, are there ways for us to face the complexities of our time with joy, authenticity, and connection? Prentis Hemphill, embodiment practitioner, therapist, and activist, shows us that we don't have to carry our emotional burdens alone. 

In this episode, Prentis is joined by comedian, author, and filmmaker W. Kamau Bell in a grounding conversation exploring the principles of embodiment awareness and how we can create a future in which healing is done in community. In the conversation Prentis shares ideas from their latest book, What it Takes to Heal, which draws on their experiences as a trauma survivor and a clinician, as well as lessons learned from their time as a social movement architect. Prentis invites us to heal our bodies, minds, and souls, to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to bust down the doors of disconnection and take the necessary risks to reshape our world towards justice. 

This episode was recorded during an in-person and live streamed event at California Institute of Integral Studies on June 27th, 2024. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

[Theme music concludes]

W. Kamau Bell: How was that?

Prentis Hemphill: Sweet.

W. Kamau Bell: Are you used to people cheering when you walk into rooms?

Prentis Hemphill: No.

W. Kamau Bell: I think you have to get used to that. It seems like it's going to happen more and more now that the book is out.

Prentis Hemphill: Thank you. Thank you.

W. Kamau Bell: Thank you all for being here. Just for the sake of some accounting, who here is affiliated with this school by raise your hands? Just if you're trying to see who's in the room.

Prentis Hemphill: Oh wow.

W. Kamau Bell: Okay.

Prentis Hemphill: I thought there was going to be a lot more of y'all.

W. Kamau Bell: Okay. Let's see. That's good. This is why I do this. So only a couple people raise their hands for people watching on Zoom. Yeah. So I just wanted to know who we got here. So first of all, I feel like your book is amazing. I listened to it. I feel like we started with, it's hard to say I read your book, but I listened to it. So I really know you now. I'm saying what people say to me when they listen to my book. Now I really know you. And I think we have a few things in common, some obvious, some not obvious. One of those things is we both seem to have faces that people like to talk at. So you talk about in the book about how, even though people, you'll see it on a plane and people start to divulge personal, deep information just on a plane ride. And if I'm guessing the way I feel, it's like, I'm just trying to get to Detroit. What is it like to be, have the gift and maybe the curse of having a face that people like to share things with? Even though that's your job, but you're not always on duty.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. It's not the question. I love that question. My sister talks about it because I have always been like that. Even as a kid, I would just be talking to people and listening. Oh, that's so interesting. What about this? What about that? And she's, she thought I was pretending for a long time when I was a kid, she'd tease me and she'd be like, you always pretend like you like to listen to people talk. I was like, I actually do like to listen to people talk. I get really curious. I hear a lot of stories. So I think probably it's my curiosity that's coming through my face, but sometimes I am deeply not curious. And I'm trying to be internal and still somehow my face. And I don't have, I smile a lot, but you know, I also have a very extreme serious face, but it doesn't seem to stop anyone from talking to me.

W. Kamau Bell: No. And I think there's, like you said, I think there's something about our faces. Cause I feel the same way that like I've always had this face.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: People always talk to me about things. But now that I'm known to talk, people feel like more invited. But then I also find myself in a situation where people I know don't know who I am you're talking about things that happen to you on planes. And it reminded me of a story that I've never told. I was on a plane one time sitting next to a, the kind of white woman you did not expect me to get along with. A Fox news, white lady.

Prentis Hemphill: Sure.

W. Kamau Bell: Not that she was that I'm just saying that's the kind of person. And she was nervous about flying the plane. And before I realized it, we were holding hands so I could like help her. Cause I was like, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Next thing you know, it's like, Oh, okay.

Prentis Hemphill: That's quite profound.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. So I just think there's, I just realized there's something about me and you where people just feel like I can be close to this person. Even if it's not a person that I, that you would think I would want to be close to.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. It seems to surprise them sometimes. You'll be like, I don't know why I've never told anybody this. I don't know why you're doing it either. But here we are.

W. Kamau Bell: Do you think some of that comes from, cause you also write about being a middle child. Does any of that come from being a middle child and being in a position of having to listen and having to sort of like navigate, you know, that middle space?

Prentis Hemphill: Probably, probably. I think, I think being a middle child, being a queer middle child, I think there's all this kind of a bridge thing about my way of being and my personality. I always feel like I can relate to people across a lot of differences. I don't assume that I can't relate to a lot of people. Even when I travel, I don't assume that I can't relate to people. And then I always end up making a friend. My partner always talks about whenever we live somewhere, we go somewhere, I always find a coffee shop and make a friend. I'm always, I will sit in a coffee shop and I will make like a lifelong buddy. Yeah. And I think that has something to do with being a middle child, but a middle child also to me is I'm both a person that listen and the one that kind of said the thing that no one wanted to be said, like, shut up. Why are you saying that? So it's, it's that experience too.

W. Kamau Bell: This question is selfish for me. The rest of these are for you, but this one's just for me. I have, I'm an only child, which I have no, like, I loved being an only child when only children like I wish I had, I don't relate to any of that. I wish I had, I didn't wish I had nobody. I currently live in a house with too many people. I have three daughters and my wife. So that's like five people. When I was growing up, it was just me and my mom. And so I have my daughter, I have three daughters, one of whom is a middle child. What advice can you give to my middle child? So you thought it was going to be easy. You thought.

Prentis Hemphill: Well, I also have advice for the parents of a middle child.

W. Kamau Bell: I'll take that too. I'll take that too.

Prentis Hemphill: Which is listen to them, listen to them and give them space to be themselves and acknowledge the specialness of their space. So I think that's what I longed for as a middle child to be like, oh, you're a middle child. The attention is always kind of like shifting away from you. I want to give you space. I would mostly give that to the parents. I think to a middle child, you know, the thing I'm learning as I get older is how many concessions I make. I was just having this conversation with my partner about who in our house, like who can have the office, like who's going to, she's like, she's, she's, I hope she's not watching this.

W. Kamau Bell: She's not, she's not, she's not.

Prentis Hemphill: She definitely is.

W. Kamau Bell: Turn this part off.

Prentis Hemphill: But I, yeah, but as a middle child, I think I'm always like, no, no, no, no, you do that. And then I'm like, so learning to be like, no, I want to take up space and I don't have to kind of concede it as something I'm still learning.

W. Kamau Bell: So take up more space,

Prentis Hemphill: Take up more space. And then as a parent, allow more space to be taken.

W. Kamau Bell: Well, it's interesting because as an only child, I feel like I relate to my middle child because I'm like, I had the exact opposite experience you had. So I, so when you feel like there's nobody's like, you're not, you don't have enough space. I can be like, you don't have enough space.

Prentis Hemphill: Right. 

W. Kamau Bell: They used to have all the space. Every ounce of space. I see what, so it's not in your head. I sort of often like, no, no, no, you're feeling correctly. There are other ways to be and you and let's take a walk and get away from all these people.

Prentis Hemphill: That's lovely that you can see that.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. No, I think it's, well, to be fair, also I call my middle child Kamau Jr. That's just the thing we did because we both brood. So thank you one person.

Prentis Hemphill: It's appreciated.

W. Kamau Bell: I like to acknowledge the one laugh. I'm going to read you a text I got from a friend of mine and see what your response is about this event. This is all mostly about me. 

Prentis Hemphill: This is hilarious.

W. Kamau Bell: I told you it'd be different.

Prentis Hemphill: I'm into it. Let's go.

W. Kamau Bell: So my friend Yolanda, you know, Yolanda.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah, I do. Hi Yolanda.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. So I got a text from Yolanda. I love that you're interviewing Prentis tonight at CIIS and I wish I could be there. She's not here. And then she said, kind of surprised to see you in the touchy feely somatics orbit though. And then this, this emoji and then it says new jam, two question marks. What did I get myself into here? So first of all, for people, since there's not a lot of people from this school, I feel like it would be helpful for me. I'll put myself on the line to say, what is somatics by definition? And then what is it for you?

Prentis Hemphill: Sure. How many people here are therapists? That increased the number of hands. Okay. Great. How many people know what somatics is? Oh, well, yeah. Cause you're like, why else would I be here?

W. Kamau Bell: For the record, there are a few people whose hands did not go up. So

Prentis Hemphill: Wow. You know, I always say I've been doing this work for so long and it never gets easier to talk about. And I think in part that's because of what we're talking about is so obscured in the world that we live in. And it's also trying to give language to something that is almost unlanguageable in a way. But we can start with somatics, which to me is a canon really of practice and thought and teachings that are about understanding the body, you know, Thomas Hannah, who kind of coined the term somatics use this Soma, the Greek word for the body and its wholeness to talk about our bodies, not as kind of just these fleshy instruments that walk our brains around for our lives that we try to make pretty or try, you know, use our bodies to do things, but the body as a whole place that we are and live from, that we act from, that we feel from, that we interpret from, that we're creative from, the body as flesh and bones and everything and ideas and all of this. To think about the body more broadly and all these practices that bring us more deeply into our feeling, our felt sense, because our bodies can carry our stories, they carry our histories, our bodies sort of shape to our stories in a way. You know, we come in the world with bodies, our bodies, we have very different bodies and our bodies are also then shaped by the things we experience and so we can carry stories through our behaviors, through the things we do and don't do. I talk about with folks that I've worked with, the way you might move your mouth or the way you move your hands, what you think is possible, like how wide can I move, how small do I need to move, all of these things can be shaped by the experiences we have and trauma is one of those things that can also inform how we live inside of our bodies. So somatics is a whole host of, I mean, there's dance and somatics, there's neuroscience and somatics, but kind of interrogating what a lot of us call this mind-body split, which I don't really use that language. And to me, you know, I use more the term embodiment these days because I love somatics and everything that has kind of been cultivated and created inside of somatics. But I also think this piece around culture and where we come from, you know, when I really look at culture and all the things we do, dance and sing and eat and love and worship and rejoice and all of these practices and rituals and ceremonies that humans have done across time, to me, that is what embodiment or somatics is. People have created rituals or use the technology of rituals and practice over time to move things through their individual and collective bodies to ready themselves for transition, for seasons changing, for birth and death, that we've always done these things. But we, what we call the mind body split to me, I say it all the time, mind body split to me is just a kind of enforced way of living in our bodies to say that feeling, emotions, sensations are less important than what we can think or produce. And that that causes us and that kind of societal way of being causes us to be in our bodies and in our lives in particular ways to discount what we feel and to discount what others feel and that a lot of domination and exploitation is really built on the necessity for us not to feel and not to be seated deeply into our bodies, which I think is kind of the beginning of sovereignty and liberation. So in short, that's what somatics is to me. And I could say a lot more, but that.

W. Kamau Bell: We can get into a lot more. No, I appreciate that. So for me, when I hear that, I think about the ways in which I like, I am my body and I feel my body and everything you're saying makes sense to me. And then I think about the ways in which the world often reflects differently who I am in my body.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And how I have to navigate that difference.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: You know.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. And so however you feel, like how you feel when you, how I feel when I close my eyes and I'm just me, and we're finding a room by myself versus when I'm out in the world and how people, is that a part of this too?

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely. And it's an indicator. I mean, that feeling that I think maybe we have in different ways too, it's also an indicator that something is deeply wrong.

Cause

W. Kamau Bell: Wow. That really resonated over here. That was a deep, that was a deep, almost got churchy. We almost got an amen over there.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. Because if, and I think that's important information for you to go, oh, this world is actually not constructed in a way that allows me to live safely in my body. It's not, the world is not built for me to take a deep breath. The world is not built for my nervous system to settle. That's an indication that something is deeply off. And I think that's, you know, to me, I think that is the design of oppression in a way. I think it is a structural thing. And the impact is that certain bodies have to live slightly outside of themselves. And that seems deeply troubling. It is deeply troubling to me.

W. Kamau Bell: It's funny. I was having a conversation with a black man for the person story. I need to identify his race. Although I don't have a problem identifying people's races. It's basically my career. But like, and he said, yeah, like, you know how in the pandemic people moved, some people moved to other places, moved away from, they found other places to live where they're like, oh, I don't need to be here anymore. I can be here. And it was a black guy. And he said, yeah, I actually moved to Utah. And I was like, good for you. He's like, why'd you say that? Like every other black person doesn't say good for you. And when they, when I say I moved to Utah, I was like, cause I envisioned you having a lot more land and space and not having to engage with America the same way you had to engage with it when you were in Los Angeles.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: So I'm like there. Not that there's no racism in Utah.

Prentis Hemphill: Right. But you have space.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. But you have this, you have a buffer between you and the racism.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Because he had some money. So I'm like, you probably got a pretty big buffer.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: You know? So yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: I think that is actually a really important point because a lot of our work and work that we do with the Embodiment Institute, you know, there's a, for us, embodiment is about being embodied in our physical bodies, but it's also being embodied in relationships. That is, a lot of us have to relearn how to be in relationship with one another. And I think we are inherently relation, we are created through relationship. We are representative of relationship. And that also includes relationship with land and ecosystem. And we have a land project where we're actually doing some of this healing work on land and with land and partnership with land. But one of the things, you know, when we first got this piece of land, we had folks come out and so many folks were like, I haven't actually been on land that I felt like I could relax on ever before. I've been in rural places and I felt like I had to be more on guard. This is one of the first places where I felt like I could settle. And that is a deeply transformative experience, especially for people, all sorts of people that have been displaced or been exploited on that particular land, which is where my ancestors come from. So that's a part of what we're talking about when we're talking about, for me, when we talk about healing or somatics or embodiment, it has to also be thinking about the ways our relationships have been severed and we can't inhabit them in the ways that we might.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah, before we came up, we were talking a little about how you used to live in Hawaii, how we had met there years ago. And I remember when I first I grew up on the East Coast, so I did not or Midwest and East Coast. So I didn't go to Hawaii because I was in California. And so when I moved out here, my wife who grew up out here was like, we finally went to Hawaii. And I remember going there and feeling like, this isn't doing for me what people.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: I didn't feel relaxed and on vacation. There's something about it that I didn't feel like, ah, yeah. And then I did a couple of United States of America in Hawaii. And the first we did was about how the land had been stolen and never agreed to be a state and how native people are exploited. I was like, Oh, that's what I was feeling. Yeah, that's why I couldn't relax because my blackness is to attune to exploitation.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah, yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And so that idea about being the land and where you are on the land and whose land it is and what your connection is to the land really resonates with me. And that's what we're talking about. Why are they I wanted to talk to you about that because that's a place that you have lived. And if you I feel like if you're on Hawaii and paying attention at all, you can't help but feel that at every turn.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: And especially someone who's not who's, like, you're not from there, but you want to live there and be a part of the community, then you have to be actively letting the community know, I'm on the right side of history.

Prentis Hemphill: Well, yeah, you got to show up. I mean, my partner's from Hawaii, which is how I got there in the first place, as I had never been and then some love happened. And then I was like, Oh, okay, well, so I was not one of those people that had fantasized about going I wasn't like and then one day I'm gonna go to Hawaii, I had no idea that I would live in Hawaii. And then I did. And I actually felt I feel it's actually such a special I'm going to be there doing a book event next week or so, community there. Friends reorganize this event, but it's a place where I feel so much love and gratitude. It changed me profoundly. And I always felt unsettled. And it felt like that was the way that I was supposed to feel. I live there is to live with that. And it kept me kind of agitated. And and when I came back here, I was like, Oh, this agitation. I'm not numb to the agitation as much anymore, though the history is different here. I mean, my my ancestors, I live in North Carolina, my ancestors are North Carolina for many generations, long time. But you can feel the unsettling but it was it was a place. You know, when I talk about connection to land, every friend that I had, every homie I had had a place where they were in reciprocal relationship to land. They'd be like, Oh, yeah, I go here or I'm here. I met Uncle such and such. Everybody had a place where they were working and offering. And if you didn't have a place, it was weird. And my social group, you know, it was weird to be like, Oh, yeah, I don't do anything.

W. Kamau Bell: I'm just here.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah,

W. Kamau Bell: Just enjoying it.

Prentis Hemphill: Unacceptable.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: Unacceptable.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a certain responsibility you have to the land. 

Prentis Hemphill: You have to

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, one of the big things that came out of your book for me, and, you know, it's funny, I even when I bring it up, I feel like I want to frame it in the right way. But there's a way in which healing can be seen in certain communities as being soft.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And how that if you are engaged in healing, somehow, that's not a strong practice.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: That you're seeing is like, Oh, you gave up.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Or you or you're not really you're not. You're not hard,

Prentis Hemphill: Right?

W. Kamau Bell: You need help.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: You talk about it, especially writing a book about healing, knowing that there's an audience of people from maybe your community who will read that book and be like, that's not a that's not a strong thing to do. Or it's a little bit or it's even like, there's ways of which healing in this country can become like a whitewashed activity.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah, and I think it can be untrustworthy for reasons for a lot of reasons. I think one, what you're pointing to being hard, it's sort of like letting your gut tell you what you're doing. It's sort of like letting your guard down. And can I afford to do that? You know, we're making these assessments, can I actually afford to let my guard down? And I think the other part about it being whitewashed is that I think the way that we try to make healing this solely individual thing, you know, that we can experience all these things, all these collective harms and individually, I'm somehow going to heal the wounds of massive traumas that my ancestors have experienced by myself. And I'm going to be able to complete that.

W. Kamau Bell: I'm the chosen one,

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: Like the Neo. The Matrix way,

Prentis Hemphill: Right. And we just like keep buying them and I keep buying. Maybe this will do it. Maybe this will do it. Maybe this will do it.

W. Kamau Bell: I need to find the perfect water bottle.

Prentis Hemphill: Right. Yeah, exactly. I think that makes it untrustworthy a lot of times because we can see, you know, you talk about feeling that unsettled feeling. You can go like, something's not right about this kind of healing that people are talking about. Something is missing there. So in a way, you know, I really trust that suspicion because I think the way that we have practiced and conceptualized healing has been in ways that really easily maintain a certain status quo. And even when I was becoming a therapist, I mean, it was like the profession was some like 85% white women at the psychotherapist level. And then it was like 85% white men at the psychologist level. And then you're like, hmm, who is defining wellness?

W. Kamau Bell: And then they ask, why don't black people go to therapy?

Prentis Hemphill: Right, right. Exactly. So I think it's, and I think that we can get into these habits around, you know, it's not safe to look in or look back perpetually. And so I never will. And that's when it becomes like, okay, now we're actually stuck in our habits and we're stuck in this assessment. And I was there. I mean, the fact that I am here writing, I said, the fact that I wrote a book called What It Takes to Heal, if we went back 20 years, that person would be like, are you so for real right now? What are you talking about? I did not want to be soft. I did not want to be vulnerable. And I am so squishy soft now. But at the same time, when I became softer, or I will say, when I knew how to soften in the places that I wanted to, I actually became much more powerful in other places. So it became this thing that I could, there's more flexibility and movement. And, you know, one of my somatic teachers was a martial artist. And he would say to us all the time, the most powerful body you have is a relaxed body. Because from a relaxed body, I can do many things. I can do what's appropriate. From a tense body, I have a smaller range of things I can do, I can only do the thing I'm sort of bracing to do. But from a relaxed body, I have a lot more options. So there's something about my softening that made me actually feel much more powerful than the kind of habitual tension I was locked in.

W. Kamau Bell: I mean, do you find it true? I mean, or can you talk about the idea that like, for a lot of impacted communities, which is a word I never thought I would use, but I feel like I'm trying to.

Prentis Hemphill: I know what you're saying.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. It feels like there's not time to heal. Because you got to get through the day.

Prentis Hemphill: Mm hmm.

W. Kamau Bell: You know, I gotta I gotta I gotta work this job that isn't paying me enough and go to the other jobs that pay me enough and then get home to take care of my family and put kids you know, and da da da da da. But there's not like, you know, there's a I mean, I would put myself in this category. I don't got time to meditate.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: You know what I mean? I'm like, I don't have I got I got these three kids, you know, they don't want to pay for no groceries. You know what I mean?

Prentis Hemphill: At all

W. Kamau Bell: At all. At all.

Prentis Hemphill: Ever.

W. Kamau Bell: Get annoyed when you ask him to kick in for something. But like, so there's there's a type person who feels like I would love to have the luxury to heal.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: But this system has been designed. So I don't have the time to even think about it.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: First, first, that's real. I think it's real. And I think it's, again, designed that way. You know, when I talk about oppression is, for me, the concentration of trauma into certain bodies in certain communities, and the removal of the resource of time, space, whatever you might need in order to heal from those same traumas, that is the tension we're in. And at the same time, there are things that we do and have done. That to me, I think that's why it's important to say healing is not the necessarily the expensive retreat, you know, where you go and have a whatever people be having organic such and such, you know.

W. Kamau Bell: When you go to Hawaii,

Prentis Hemphill: Right. 

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: But that healing is also the way that my grandmother touched my back. Healing is also Gosh, I saw this Tick Tock yesterday of this grandmother just going, walking through the field just praying over her whole face. She had land, I guess, their family. Yeah, I don't know the story because it's Tick Tock.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. But it was 11 seconds.

Prentis Hemphill: I made up a whole story. And the story is

W. Kamau Bell: You wrote a screenplay.

Prentis Hemphill: I wrote a screenplay starring this person's grandmother, but she was it was there. It was land. It was there. It was land. And it was land. It was their land. It was land. And she was just praying for her whole family. And I was like, in that, you know, I write to in the book about having a child, and how my own experiences growing up kind of move me away from intimacy and connection with people like when someone would come close to me, I'd be like, retreat, you know, and in so many ways, I would pull myself back, I would kind of harden my eyes, tighten my chest, I'd move myself away from connection. And when I had a child, I really wanted to be available for that connection. And just in a moment, I softened my chest. I soften my eyes, I left I let myself stay open and kind of trembling under her looking. And that stopped the transmission of an intergenerational wound to the next generation. So I think time is a real consideration. And it is, we are constrained in that way. And at the same time, if we the the for me, the reconceptualization of what is actually a healing act to me, healing act is connection. To me, a healing act is bearing witness. It's feeling something that's real. And time is a factor and a non factor in that is both. And I think we have to contend with that complexity. It does take time sometimes for us to circle into presence, to drop into presence. But once you're in presence, that's the thing, and it takes no time at all.

W. Kamau Bell: And certainly, I certainly hear you when I think about like my family and my even we say grandmothers, like, there are ways in which black communities have done healing work. And a lot of that was through like this through the church.

Prentis Hemphill: Yes.

W. Kamau Bell: And not even the church as far as the religion part of it, but the community part of it.

Prentis Hemphill: Exactly.

W. Kamau Bell: Like it was a place to go.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And to not have to enter sort of be have a community that was not ruled by the system. A separate like a separate like a little decompression zone.

Prentis Hemphill: And it and it was community. It was community. Absolutely. And it was the transformative principle at the heart of I mean, I think about I grew up going to church. And what's the whole premise in a Christian? I grew up in Baptist and Pentecostal churches. The whole premise is you can change.

W. Kamau Bell: Yes.

Prentis Hemphill: You know?

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: You change.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: You're reborn.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: It's a transformative, you know, alchemizing thing. And I think just having a place where that is possible, where we can bring something and change and we can tap into something larger in order to source that transformation. And we do that collectively and together. That to me is the magic of those spaces and how I've experienced it.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. You talk about in the book and I feel like I don't think we went to literally the same church, but like the church is where like there are people who are being affected. And

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah,

W. Kamau Bell: Suddenly they you know, I feel like in my grandmother's church every week, some black woman stood up, caught the Holy Ghost,

Prentis Hemphill: Fall out,

W. Kamau Bell: Fell out, got carried to the back.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: The fans that had like MLK and JFK on them.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Old school.

Prentis Hemphill: You are not lying.

W. Kamau Bell: Before Obama, our two Black heroes were MLK and JFK.

Prentis Hemphill: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: But like this, that people got taken over.

Prentis Hemphill: And that's somatics.

W. Kamau Bell: I guess I do know what it is then. Yes.

Prentis Hemphill: You do.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: I mean, when I started doing somatic body work, I was like, Oh

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: Oh, I've seen this before. We call it something else. I've seen this. You fall out or when you just, when it hits you, it still hits me.

W. Kamau Bell: You might babble a little bit or speak in tongues.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. That's embodiment. How is it not?

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. The one thing I want to definitely talk to you about in your book, cause I feel like we have different ways of looking at this and I would love to talk more about shame as a bad thing.

Prentis Hemphill: Uh huh.

W. Kamau Bell: Like why is shame bad?

Prentis Hemphill: I don't think I said that,

W. Kamau Bell: But no, no, no. Okay. Okay.

Prentis Hemphill: What I did say.

W. Kamau Bell: Okay. I'll say, here's my, here's my, here's my feelings by shame. And let me be clear. I'm always available to be corrected. So I'm not here to say this.

Prentis Hemphill: We're just talking. Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: We're just, we're just talking. Yeah. I just don't want to feel like I'm not, here's what I'm not building a case against you is what I'm saying. If I misunderstood, then please tell me that I got a problem. No, I feel like shame gets a bad rap sometimes or all the time because people who feel shame, then often say, you made me feel shame. You're shaming me.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And sometimes they're like, yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. I am.

W. Kamau Bell: Like just cause what you have done, you need to feel that this is a bad thing.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: But hopefully, thank you again over here. Hopefully just like any intense emotion, it can be a motivating factor for you to do better.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. Like I'm not saying you should feel shame all the time, just like you can feel anger all the time. You shouldn't feel happy all the time.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: But shame, like, I feel like what we had in this country for a long time, swiftly thinking about like racism is a lot of white people felt shame. And that meant we could walk a little more free for a little while.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: And then they were invited to stop feeling shame.

Prentis Hemphill: Right. Because it didn't. Okay. So, okay. That's important. I do think something is happening there around definitions too, and how words are changing. And so I think what you're talking about around feeling bad for taking an action and the collectives like that sucked and we don't like it and feeling bad about that. I actually don't see anything wrong with that. I think that can be a deeply transformative thing. I think the part around shame is the absoluting that happens of like, you are fundamentally this person. That's one element of shame. You are fundamentally this kind of person. You are fundamentally a bad person. And so while that may coerce people into certain actions for a certain period of time, they won't stick because shame ultimately impedes change. If I am fundamentally bad, then I cannot grow.

W. Kamau Bell: You can't be born again.

Prentis Hemphill: No, you can't be born again. And in a way, there's a part of it is that some people will retreat into shame so that they do not have to change also. It's a familiar place to go to. So I don't use it only as a neutral, like we're shaming and that's bad. I think shame is a place where change cannot happen.

W. Kamau Bell: If you sit there.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. And if we try to, if in how we're trying to create change or make change or coerce change in someone, we're kind of tugging on your fundamental, I mean, it's around belonging and exclusion. You cannot belong here fundamentally. Nothing will change.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: And I'm not saying, I wish it worked in a way. I wish it was like, I'm going to say this and then you'll suddenly go, right, I should change. It just doesn't seem to work that way.

W. Kamau Bell: No, no, no.

Prentis Hemphill: I haven't seen it work, but I do think there's some, it's a tension between naming the action, being willing to name the action, the impact, even our frustration, our anger, all of that. And there has to be a thread of belonging that remains.

W. Kamau Bell: Yes.

Prentis Hemphill: And sometimes that is really painful for us to allow that thread of belong because it hurts or it sucks. And so there always has to be that thread of belonging in order, I think, for the transformation to even be possible. It doesn't mean that people will do it. It's not a guarantee, but it's the only thing that makes it more possible.

W. Kamau Bell: No, that makes sense. I mean, I feel like, so I'm sort of two minds about it. First of all, I have known times in my life where I felt shame, but the person who was sort of inviting me to my shame, hey Kamau, your shame's right here, has done it in such a way that made me feel like, now that I've shown you your shame, let me help you get through this. One of my best friends, I've told the story many times, she actually is attending school here right now,

Prentis Hemphill: Oh cool.

W. Kamau Bell: Is a person who very key in my life was like, you're not doing a good job. Your actions aren't matching your stated goals.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And I was like, I feel shame. You must be wrong if I feel shame.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: No, no, no. I'm gonna sit here in this kitchen and work you through this. And she did. So I know that in my life, I've seen shame. And then there's the other part of shame that is like, at least if a person who's doing bad actions feels shame, at least for a little while, I can get through the world while they are shamed. You know what I mean? I feel like maybe the greatest thing that Martin Luther King Jr. did was made some white people feel ashamed. 

Prentis Hemphill: Right. But they made us feel ashamed for a long time, too.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Prentis Hemphill: So that they can move through the world in a particular way.

W. Kamau Bell: Now it's your turn. But I also recognize that that's not transformative.

Prentis Hemphill: It's not transformative.

W. Kamau Bell: But then there are white people like, I know there's the group showing up for racial justice, which to me feels like, you know that group?

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah, of course. Sorry. Yes, I do. I don't mean to be like, what are you talking about?

W. Kamau Bell: Do you know? Yeah. But the idea, of course, you're from here, but the idea that like that to me felt like white people who felt some level of shame about how they were relating to.

Prentis Hemphill: And responsibility.

W. Kamau Bell: Yes, that's the key part.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah, I think they feel responsibility and the willingness to transform.

W. Kamau Bell: Yes.

Prentis Hemphill: Which, yeah, I'm willing to, yeah, there's some people that use the word shame and then toxic shame to talk about the part that is totalizing. But I think it, I think what we're talking, feeling guilt or feeling that's so, yeah, I feel guilt. I feel bad about things I've done. I feel shame. But I know when I feel like, oh, I'm not, I'm, I feel so ashamed that I cannot belong. I don't actually end up changing anything.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah, I feel such shame that I can't move.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: I can't move through this game.

Prentis Hemphill: Or I won't, I just don't belong. I kind of stay in this freeze state. And a lot of us feel shame for things that are actually about power. You know, feel shame for our skin tone, our size, our hair texture, how much money we do or do not, don't have. Sometimes there's that kind of shame that blankets people. Like I actually can't belong because of these things. Because to belong would mean that I were different. So there's a way that shame is used as a kind of social, it's like a threat and an organizing principle.

W. Kamau Bell: I mean, I feel like one of my big jobs as a parent is to teach my kids how to not let other people put things on them out there. You know what I mean? That are like sort of like, sort of the idea of like, if somebody says this about you, then it's true. So how to sort of like, and you know, how to sort of like let that stuff roll off of you or just let it go past you. And because I took martial arts as a kid, which you're talking about, so I think about it as like, to sort of like the idea is to like, it's better to not be there for the punch than it is to have to confront it. So I feel like a lot of, so when I hear my kids tell stories about things that somebody said something, like I've told my, both my oldest kids this, my youngest is six, she's frail, you can't really tell her much. But like the 13 and the nine year old, I'm like, you're never going to get in trouble for standing up for yourself.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Or for one of your friends. Like you're never gonna get in trouble with me.

Prentis Hemphill: That's right.

W. Kamau Bell: So the idea being that like, I don't want you to be in position where somebody like, tries to, you know, whatever that is, tries to attack you with words or something and you feel like I'm supposed to behave.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Especially raising girls.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: You know, I don't want you to feel like that I want you to behave in all situations.

Prentis Hemphill: That's right. That's such a great lesson. My grandmother told me, get them low, get them on their ankles, take them down. When I was young. So anybody messes with you, go low, you're short, you're close to the ground.

W. Kamau Bell: You've got low center of gravity. Yeah. And I think that sometimes we think of this healing work as turning, not we, but there's a way in which this healing work is talked about that it turns you into sort of like, like you said, so squishy that people can just sort of, that it feels like you might be taking advantage of more often, you know what I mean? Or that you won't ever, that it doesn't also, it's not about standing up for yourself.

Prentis Hemphill: I think a lot of people in the so-called healing space sometimes think that too. They're like, I just have to always let things go by. Yeah. And I actually don't, I think going back to that point, I think it makes us available for intimacy and connection. And then it makes us great fighters too, where we need to fight. I actually wouldn't mess with me. I wouldn't.

W. Kamau Bell: Is that a quote you said before?

Prentis Hemphill: No.

W. Kamau Bell: You got to write that one down. Maybe that's the next book.

Prentis Hemphill: I wouldn't mess with me.

W. Kamau Bell: It's a great incantation. Yeah. I know me well enough to I wouldn't mess with me.

Prentis Hemphill: Right. Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. My brain is going a million places with that. You know, I always say that, like, I think about like people, like you're talking martial arts and you're talking to, I call myself America's number one Bruce Lee aficionado, non-Asian division.

Prentis Hemphill: Oh, we've got to talk about that. I have a lot to talk about there with you.

W. Kamau Bell: Okay. Good, good, good. I'm down. And the idea being that like people sort of have this idea of Bruce Lee, but really the first half hour of every Bruce Lee movies, I'm going like, I really don't want to fight.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: Don't make me fight.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: I really don't want to fight.

Prentis Hemphill: Exactly.

W. Kamau Bell: I'd rather not do this. You don't understand. If you make me fight, the next hour is going to be me fighting everybody.

Prentis Hemphill: I'm about to make a movie about how I whipped you.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then you're going to be a whole, so, and I think about all the time, like, it's not about not, it's about avoiding it, but also being prepared if you have to show up.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: You have to show up.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: I want to talk a little bit about Black Lives Matter.

Prentis Hemphill: Okay.

W. Kamau Bell: Because for many people in this room, that's a hashtag. It's a political issue. It's something they were maybe afraid of at one point and they accepted and they, whatever. There's a lot, but you were in the middle of it in a way that most people will never understand. I just want, and when I read the book, cause I'm friends with Alicia Garza, I've interviewed Patrisse Cullors, like I have been close and around it. And so when I, as soon as you talked about being there for the, like the creation of the actual organization of it, I was just like, like, that is something that most people probably don't even understand or can imagine.

Prentis Hemphill: You're right.

W. Kamau Bell: And it's also such a compressed period of time. You know, in some sense, it's like this, we think of the civil rights movement as being like this long period of time, but we're really, we're talking about, it's a really small period of time.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: What are your thoughts on, what did you, it seems like a lot of your book is about things you learned from that experience that you then were like, okay, I need to, I've learned how to do things differently because of what I went through there.

Prentis Hemphill: That's true.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. I had a lot of theories and then I had a lot of practice in inside of that. Yeah. I had been a somatic practitioner, I had been teaching somatics, I was a therapist. And then I was doing it in what might be the largest social movement in human history.

W. Kamau Bell: And not just a hashtag, an actual.

Prentis Hemphill: No.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: No.

W. Kamau Bell: That's the thing, I mean, I don't mean to interrupt, but I really want to like, this is not just the people who are like hashtagging on Instagram. You were working with founders of the movement, trying to create infrastructure, trying to create results. And also being, it becomes a popular thing for a minute.

Prentis Hemphill: You know, yeah. And that, you know, was unforeseen in a way, like we were doing it before we knew that that was going to happen like that. And to be doing healing justice work inside of it. I mean, it was like, what that meant at that time, you know, there were chapters everywhere around the world is that people were trying to address what was happening locally in their communities. And they were trying to address deaths, killings. They were trying to address what was happening in their chapters. Cause you know, what was happening, what people witnessed, it was like a massive, it's massive. It was just massive. And so people were assembling chapters and organizing and they didn't know each other and then who's going to do what. And so it was like a million organizations were sprouting and then trying to connect with each other. So there was everything that comes with that comes with human beings. So, you know, some days it felt like from my position doing healing justice work, it was like looking into the vastness of black pain. And it almost felt like it was almost something I could see. Like I could like out of the corner of my eye was just everything. And I had to kind of start to pry my looking away from there cause it was just there all the time. And that, yeah, it changed, it changes you. It changed me fundamentally. I'm a different person after that experience, but also there was so much beauty, like what people were creating that never got talked about in the media, the way people were holding each other that never got talked about. The tears, the love, the grief, the holding, the practice, the, you know, I tell people, you know, I've done some as you've been some matter practitioner, you have an office, you see clients. I was like, I was doing practices when people were in the jail or in the streets or with mothers who lost their children. Yeah. And it felt like doing that, you're like, this is also a historical thing. We're here right now. And there have been many times that this has happened. And it was always, you know, I always felt visited by the past in those moments. So I think what I'm, you know, this is not a BLM book, but I think one of the things I'm trying to offer here is that we don't even know that story yet. And we don't even know also the beauty and the pain of everyday people who are motivated, who are telling their stories, who are experiencing this real time. You don't even know the stories. There's so many people that were on the ground in their communities that were holding each other, that were building, and we just don't even know. And there's a beautiful story there of healing, of transformation, of connection, of grief, of love that hasn't been told yet.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. I mean, as you say, it's not, I don't, yeah, this is not, I don't give my impression it's not a BLM book, but it's a, it is a book about a black person who is living through history. And that was a part of the history you lived through.

Prentis Hemphill: It's true. And trying to learn, I mean, this was me going, okay, what did I see in that last period? What kind of tore us apart and what brought us together? And these are kind of the lessons I've been like holding, carrying around in my backpack the last several years.

W. Kamau Bell: I mean, and you know, and I, you know, I'm not breaking any news, but I think part of what tears things like Black Lives Matter apart, I think about the Black Panthers is the system goes, we can't let that keep going.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: We can't just let that, what racial justice, that does not help capitalism in the world. That does not help capitalism at all. You know, so there's a part of this, like when you look at,

Prentis Hemphill: I think that's a big part of.

W. Kamau Bell: Black Panthers and you look at like the Black Panthers with 10 point program and you're like, yeah, that's all great. But the system was like.

Prentis Hemphill: We can't have that.

W. Kamau Bell: Eventually the stories get told by people who say the problem was on the inside when, when it's humans are humans and humans are always going to human. But there's also like the pressure from the outside.

Prentis Hemphill: And who's on the inside.

W. Kamau Bell: Who gets their way to the inside.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That story hasn't been told yet. We'll wait 30 years for that one.

W. Kamau Bell: Part of that embedded in that, I want to sort of bring it back to that is the idea you tell the story of a Black mom who had lost, I think it was her son. And the thing that comes up for me, and I've talked to moms who've lost Black moms who've lost their sons, cause it is not an uncommon thing, sadly.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: But you hit on a thing that I've always sort of noticed that there's this way in which Black moms, like within like, I don't know, like 24 hours of losing their son, suddenly become spokespersons for the movement.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: And I'm always both impressed and horrified that you have to take that on at a time when you would be, you should just be allowed to mourn and be angry. But there's a certain amount of like, I think responsibility these moms feel, but also sort of a way in which the community sort of turns to these moms. It's like, tell us what to do. And I really have always felt like that is just so much, not every mom is built for that in the same way.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That is, it's an interesting thing because it is, this is a story that is told over and over again. And it is always the question that I've had or the experience I've had of like, who holds that person, that mother, that girlfriend, that family member at night, who holds them that night? And do they, especially as a mother, hold the family, hold the family together and have to keep holding the family together when they've gone through something like that? And I think that is a lot of the orientation specifically for Black mothers who have known that they have experienced that you have to still hold everybody together after you have experienced such a massive loss. And I do, I think there's something there for our communities to really understand. And in those moments, but all moments, you know, who is holding the people that have held it together, who hold us together, who have held us together, who is holding, and do we even know how to do that? I think it's, I think in those moments, it's the most extreme, most devastating example, but it is something that I see time and time again.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah. I wrote a book about myself. It is nowhere near this book. I was going to be clear about that, but I did have to write about my dad and my mom. And there, I remember the fear of like, my dad's like, I'm reading your book. And I was like, oh no, you were just supposed to buy it and put it on a shelf.

Prentis Hemphill: Right.

W. Kamau Bell: You're just supposed to be proud that I got a book published.

Prentis Hemphill: He actually wanted to read it.

W. Kamau Bell: He read it. He read it. He read it. He read it. Yeah. That's for another event. Or we can talk about that later, but talk about your, you become very aware when you're writing a book that's about your life, that at some point like, oh, this is my version of events.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely. Yeah.

W. Kamau Bell: This is not the truth.

Prentis Hemphill: Absolutely.

W. Kamau Bell: And also at some time, I don't know if this happened to you, people fact check you later when it's out in the world. You're like, my mom's like, that did not happen. Okay. Look lady. But talk about that. Like the idea of like, you write this thing. I always say in writing, you're supposed to write like the guilty parties will never read it. But then at some point you got to put it out there.

Prentis Hemphill: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I wrote, I think I wrote that way. I tried to write honestly how I experienced it. Cause I was like, it's not the truth, but it is my truth. It is what I am, what I experienced, what happened and what happened inside of me, especially. But in this book, you know, someone was saying to me, I feel like you were really, they thought I was not as hard on some people in the book as I could have been. And I was like, well, I think the thing is I'm only telling stories that I've done a lot of work around. I'm not telling a story that is unprocessed.

W. Kamau Bell: Still like that are still causing you sleepless nights.

Prentis Hemphill: No, I'm telling stories I've done a lot of work on. But also, you know, I think what was important to me was like, I wanted to feel my dignity in the stories and I, and I wanted other people to be in their dignity without protecting them too, without trying to coddle them or like take care of them in a particular way. But I think there's a dignity in everybody's story in a way. And so when I talk about my dad in the book, I'm not telling, I'm telling the story to talk about abuse and what it does and how it keeps going and how it tears us apart. But, you know, I think the work that I have done in particular is that I don't, it's not that I absolve him, I guess, in some way, but I understand how we got here. And that understanding is actually freeing for me in a particular way. In a way too, because it has me, I'm clear about what to expect from our relationship now that I understand more.

W. Kamau Bell: Yes.

Prentis Hemphill: And so my understanding allows there to be even a dignity in the way that I write about him. Like he is a human being. He is full and whole and human. And he's done a lot of things. That hurt real bad. So there's that. But, you know, we were talking about it back there. Sometimes people just don't want you to say nothing at all.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: You know what I mean?

W. Kamau Bell: Putting our laundry out there. Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: And shame. We're back at shame.

W. Kamau Bell: Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill: And I think one of the things with my own family that I've had to say to them is like, you know, when I write, I'm going to write about it. I'm going to write about it. I'm going to write about it. When I write, I'm going to write from this place of holding people in their dignity. And at the same time, I don't feel like there's anything shameful in what we've experienced or what I've experienced. I don't feel shame around it. And in fact, I think that it can be helpful for people to not have to kind of tiptoe around their own stories and shame, not be willing to look at things because it's too shameful. It's a story. And I'm not even saying my story is the most embarrassing story. It is a story. But part of the invitation is to be like, there's information, there's wisdom inside of our stories. And shame doesn't have to keep us from looking at and contending with and feeling into the stories that make up our lives.

W. Kamau Bell: Prentis Hemphill, everybody.

Prentis Hemphill: Thanks, y'all.

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Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Izzy Angus, Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Patty Pforte, Nikki Roda, and Pele Shalev. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to use our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities. 

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