THE HOLY MESS OF BEING ALIVE — rediscovering the divinity in falling apart
A workshop led by:
Sanah Ahsan
28/10/2023
13:00 – 15:00
HJL Dream Space
Resource for London
352 Holloway Road
London
N7 6PA
Description
“Unbearable pain becomes its own cure. Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn to sighing; In this way we learn how water can die into air.” – Mirza Ghalib
This workshop led by Sanah Ahsan starts by understanding falling apart as a birthright. Humans enter this world a bloody mess, from womby flesh falling apart. However, our systems are intolerant to any prolonged expressions of messy emotions, where the hurt and grief of global majority and queer folks is persistently pathologised and criminalised. By giving the gift of feeling broken-heartedness; freedom can be rehearsed. How might divinity be found in wild, unruly emotions? In this intimate workshop, participants will sit together in these questions, carving space for unknowing.
Through a container of practices that draw on the body, poetry and collective prayer, the workshop will create conversation with misery, madness and other difficult emotions. Once the session has started, late entries will not be accepted as a way to honor the container of the space. Participants should only register if they are able to stay for the entire session.
This is a space for Black and global majority folks only; additional encouragement for those who identify as queer to attend. There will be some practices that invite discomfort, difficult emotions and vulnerability; participants should check in with themselves if they feel resourced, and able to step towards this invitation, before registering. Sanah trusts participants to discern what to bring into the space, with an ethic of care, courage and compassion.
If you require additional access measures to enable your participation, including BSL interpretation please email info@healingjusticeldn.org. Inline with our commitment to disability justice, we will try to accommodate as much as possible.
Biography
Dr Sanah Ahsan is a poet, liberation psychologist and educator. Sanah works in the cracks, revering our messy emotional landscapes, and the wild edges of falling apart. Their psychological practice is rooted in liberation and community psychology, drawing on embodiment, therapeutics and poetics as life-affirming practices, to support racialised and marginalised people. Sanah’s work centers compassion and embracing each other’s madness; they have written for the Guardian and presented a Channel 4 documentary on the over-medicalisation of people’s distress. Sanah is working on a non-fiction book about the politics of distress, and society’s relationship with unruly emotions. Sanah’s debut poetry collection, I cannot be good until You say it, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury in 2024. www.sanahahsan.com
