[00:00] Valerie: Rise, renew, reconnect. Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where every episode ignites hope and healing. Today I'm joined by my dear friend, Nasser Versatil Ismail, martial artist with over 40 years of experience and the creator of the warrior class and the free movement festival. Nasr, or Ish, as I call him, shares his journey in Capoeira and movement therapy, blending dance, combat and psychology. Please note, this episode touches on sensitive themes, including sexual abuse. And as a heads up, there's a slight dip in audio quality halfway through, but the conversation remains impactful. Let's dive in. All right, everyone, welcome back to the show. My name is Valerie Beck, and I am your host for today, a very special guest. With me, Nasr Versatil Ismail, known by many other names. He is a master teacher of Capoeira, a therapist, a loyal friend, an international traveler, an ambassador of sorts, I would say an activist and a very family centered man, and so much more. So I can't wait to get into his story. Welcome, Ish.
[01:28] Nasr: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for that introduction. Covers a lot of points and. But misses the fact that I'm also one of your dance students. I think that's always been an interesting thing over the years because I've taken your dance class and you've also taken my Capoeira class, and I think our friendship and has been really this mutual admiration thing. So I'm really very happy to be here with you and with your folks. Yeah, thank you.
[02:04] Valerie: Well, it's been quite an adventure. So I've known you for about ten years now, and I've learned so much not just by having direct interaction with you, but just seeing how you interact with other people, how you've developed your own philosophy on how to teach Capoeira, how to integrate that into your therapy. And just what you want to bring to the world is so clear. And it takes a lot of inner work to get to that point, to be able to lead people from that conviction. So today I want to get first into your from the ashes story. One of many, I'm sure, but one that you feel like captures a moment in your life where you've really had to step back and consciously question your approach to life.
[02:53] Nasr: Yes, I think my biggest challenges in life, and depending on the lens that you look at life through everything, is relational, but my greatest challenges in life have been relational, and that is both in relating to other people, but primarily then relating to myself, which is the foundation of being able to relate to others. And I think around the age of 36 or so is when I had this huge breakthrough. And I start there because before that, I was living my life. I was in the dance world, in the martial arts world. I've been in martial artists since at the age of four. Both my parents are martial artists and both have been teachers of mine. And then got into a little bit of b boying on the tail end in Detroit. So, you know, that's the eighties. You know, I'm hip hop years old, but I got more into the name dances like Roger Rabbit, that kind of era, just before new jack swing, and then moved to California for undergrad. And I kind of had some glimpses of it at that point because I was raised in this very strict Muslim household. And so, you know, for a long time, I thought I was going to be betrothed to somebody or have an arranged marriage date or anything. And as I started meeting the opposite sex, there was definitely a lot of inability to understand what expectations were. But again, I was very much still deep in my studies and trying to be the good. I guess I'm like a half generation immigrant. I had to learn English. I had to deal with, you know, being the odd person out as I grew up and learned to be American, right? And as I became an adult, really relating to other people was kind of the most difficult thing. But once I hit my thirties and I got into this relationship, it was. It was quite tumultuous. The other person was very strongly presented, very kind of take charge. Also at times explosive and angry. And I was kind of in and out, in and out. I also didn't. I kind of pushed off the relationship talk for literally years because I didn't want it to be formalized. And it was kind of characterized in our conversations as like a fear of intimacy or a fear of commitment, which I think a lot of times people, like, take that pop psychology approach to, oh, this person doesn't want to be with me because they're broken in this way or that way. But at about 36 or so, I had this flood of memories that came back, and it was memories of having been molested from around the ages of like six to ten, maybe a little bit longer by a babysitter. And I was like, this is my eureka moment. Because I was looking for a reason why I was broken. I was looking to put some kind of label on it and to have this silver bullet that said, okay, if I fix this, then I'll be able to be normal. I'll be able to have relationships in the way that I want, be able to be understood. I mean, there's a real complex of things and it got deeper as I went in. So I was already in therapy, but I started a new therapy experience with the purpose of trying to heal from this experience of sexual abuse specifically so that I could be well in this relationship. And we went for a few months and the therapist told me that he's come to this understanding of me that I'm not ready to hear, but he felt ethically that he needed to hold a mirror up to me so that I could see what he sees. And so he tells me, tells me that, you know, by the way that you talk about your relationship and the way that you talk about and experience the fallout from your sexual abuse, I can tell that you're wanting to exit the relationship has nothing to do with the sexual abuse, but it is a valid desire to exit the dynamic of that relationship. And no, you're not going to want to hear it, that it doesn't have anything to do with your molestation. Some of the ways that you're acting out do, but your desire to leave the relationship does not. And so you might want to start thinking about how to either change the dynamic or to follow through with what you need out of the relationship. And he was right. I wasn't ready to hear it, so I terminated with him. And then we did couples counseling for a while and it was with her therapist. So that's usually not a very good idea because the therapist will naturally have much more empathy for their original client rather than seeing the couple as the IP. So, yeah, yeah. So it ended up being a lot more of the, oh, you're afraid of commitment kind of thing. So that didn't quite help. And then I found an organization called male Survivor. Okay, and male survivor is this group that they're sponsored by one in six.org comma, which also does a lot of education for clinicians and practitioners around male survivors of sexual abuse specifically. And then male survivor, uh, does these recovery retreats all around the US and Canada, and its like a three, four day thing. They have, I think, two or three different levels of it. And so I go out to this farm in the middle of Ohio, super random place, and there are about 60 some odd other men from the ages of like 20 to like 60. I think 65 or 66 was the oldest, who are kind of engaging in this for not the first time. We all, I think, had to have been in therapy around it for a while to qualify to apply for the program. But still, people who have been dealing with this or not dealing with this for multiple decades in their lives. And so we did a lot of different modalities, from large group exercises to small group breakouts, aspects of talk therapy. And then we got into aspects of theater of the oppressed, like sculpting, lots of different mindfulness practices, such as eating mindfulness. We did authentic movement, music therapy, dance therapy. And that combination of all these different, especially, I feel like the cultural arts based practices really cracked me open. I experienced this flood of emotion that I had never felt before. And a lot of times it was contrasting emotions all at the same time. Like, I could be laughing, crying, like in tears on the floor, rolling around and laughing hysterically all at the same time. And this was. This was extremely odd, because before that, you know, I knew myself as thought I knew myself as this person who was very easy to get along with. I couldn’t really ever say that I used the term excited about myself. So my emotional sine wave was almost flat. And then all of a sudden, I’m feeling these big emotions, like being on a sea that has these huge waves going in all directions. And I realized that up until that point, I was very much emotionally numb unless there was, like, this explosive anger. And even anger was something that was very, very late to come and very slow to come. I didn't really feel any emotions. So that allowed me to be very much a people pleaser and never to defend myself, to be railroaded into anything that anyone else wanted me to do. So through this experience, I discovered one, that there are a lot of typical traits that we as survivors of sexual abuse have. And there's the masking. There is the differential emotionality. There is the lack of self-love and ability to create boundaries. And it was just textbook, all these things down the line. And even my partner at the time was like, you know, I've known you for all this time. And I realized that when you, you have a lot, you're very gregarious. You've got a lot of friends who know a lot about what you know, so they know your passions. They know that you're into languages and martial arts and dance, but they don't ever really know how you feel. And sometimes I don't know how you feel. And in her reflecting that, I realized that part of that was my masking. I had this way of keeping people at arm's length and yet still engaged. And it was a very safe way of being. Safe way of holding friends and being popular in certain ways, but also not being vulnerable. And that was compounded by the fact that in order to let someone else know how I feel, I have to know how I feel. And I didn't. I was also immune to that for the most part, unless I was furiously angry. So because of that complex of not knowing who I was, not being able to really express my emotions or my needs, really only valuing myself by what I could do for others. And that was regardless of what my own volition was, what my own boundaries were. In retrospect, I understand that I had a lot of really horrible experiences that I facilitated. I literally raped myself on other people. At times. I would have sex with folks that I did not want to have sex with because that person wanted to use me. Or maybe even that was not the intention of that person, but I wasn't there and I didn't want to. So they didn't get consent for me. They got acquiescence, but they didn't know that. So these things are very, very sticky. And I would then respond like I couldn't respond directly. I didn't know how to confront. I didn't even know that I wanted to confront. But I would respond very passive aggressively. I would either hold things and then when they built up enough for me to feel them, then I would get angry at somebody. And this is 4568 months after the thing that I'm angry about actually really happened. And they're like, what's going on? I would be extremely duplicitous. I would lie about things that I was doing to try to get myself out of the relationship. We'd break up for a time, I would start seeing somebody else, and then somehow I would get dragged back in the relationship. And I would lie about having been with other people because there is this part of me that wanted to be in the relationship. And I didn't understand that part. I didn't recognize that part. I call that part the hamster. It's like if my head was a one of those clear hamster globes that you put your hamster in. So the hamster's in there?
[15:13] Valerie: Yeah.
[15:14] Nasr: But when I finished this work with a male survivor, I could actually feel the hamster in there. And I call it the hamster in clinical terms. We would often call it the repetition reflex. And so it's that thing inside you that sees your trauma and is attracted to it because it's comfortable. It's the circumstances that you're used to. And then you subconsciously make choices to end up in similar circumstances. You choose people who are similar to people who've harmed you in the past. Even if that person isn't harming you, but is in a way that makes it harder for you to be yourself, you will choose that. And so the. For the first time, I was able to feel the hamster and be like, okay, I see this brokenness in this situation, and I'm attracted to it, and I know that I need to make a different choice, so I'm going to say no and I'm going to go this way. And it was revolutionary. I remember when I told my partner at the time that we were going to have to break up and that I meant it this time and she understood that I meant it. And it was. It was really. It was really rough from that point, but it was solid. And I stood by that decision. Maybe for the first time in my life. Prior to that, if I felt any kind of discomfort or wanted to be out of a relationship, I would have to engineer a way to get that person to break up with me.
[16:39] Valerie: Yeah.
[16:40] Nasr: So I would do ****** things to make sure that that person realized that they didn't want me around and then be able to be like, I'm so sad because I was broken up with, but in reality, I. I had found this place of calmness because finally I was out of a dynamic that I didn't want to be in. And a lot of those dynamics, they weren't the other person's fault. It was my lack of ability to be authentic. Like, if I am hanging out with you and. And as a person who's been in my life, I'm sure you have experienced this, like, you know, I'm hanging out with you. And there is. It was something that you want to do that I don't want to do. I would generally be like, okay, let's do it. And then later on, I might be like, man, that was an hour that we could have, you know, that could have been an email. But I think also by the time we met, I had worked through a lot of it, but it's an ongoing process, so I'm sure you still, like, were able to see some of those behaviors as. And maybe as they've transformed over, over a decade and become much better handled. So I think that's actually my first question for you, is, do you recall any of those types of tendencies that over the past ten some odd years, things that I've become better at or things that have shifted in my way of moving?
[18:11] Valerie: Yeah, that's a very good question. And also, I will be very honest, too, in that I recognize a lot of what you said in myself, I don't have the same experiences. However, I do have the same tendencies to people please and to just go along with what the other person wants. And it's not. It was not a conscious thing. And, like, I had to really. It. I didn't notice it until it became right here in front of my face, screaming at me, being like, hey, you're, like, ******** up your life right now because of this behavior. So I want to thank you for articulating all of that, because I think it's something that I don't. It's hard to recognize in yourself. Yeah. You know, and I guess in terms of, like, as far as I've known you and those tendencies, it helps me understand you better. When you have two people who are people pleasers trying to please each other, it can get very hairy.
[19:19] Nasr: Oh, my gosh, that's hilarious.
[19:22] Valerie: Right? And so that really does help me understand kind of our dynamic, too, when we were first starting out in our. In our relationship is that, like, there's sometimes a dance that happens, right? Because we don't know what we want and we're relying on someone else to tell you, but that person is not. Is also not. Is also dancing the same way. So there's this kind of, like, touch.
[19:50] Nasr: And go explain so much. It's like, after you. No, after you.
[19:54] Valerie: No, after you.
[19:54] Nasr: No, after you.
[19:57] Valerie: Yeah. And it has, and it's an ongoing process. I've had to really look at my tendencies to go with the flow, I think. I often discuss this with my guests and with my clients, is that some of our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses. I say this all the time because what has allowed me to flourish in some areas, be friends with a lot of people, you know, get along with others, can also be the same, I guess, mechanism or tendency that sometimes allows me to be taken advantage of and to be forgotten and whatnot. Right.
[20:42] Nasr: No, that's amazing that you said that because that really resonates for me as well. For instance, that ability to go along with things, to not be so reactive to differing opinions and ways of being, have allowed me really, over my entire life, to be the mediator, to be able to be friends with people who are enemies and to help those people smooth out their relationships or their at least associations. And then thinking about that emotional wall, as you said. Now, I am a mental health practitioner. I'm not a therapist specifically, I'm trained as a therapist. I'm an MFTI or an AMFT. The terminology has changed. So I'm pre licensure however, the modality that I work in, which I call the warrior class, is an arts and movement based modality, so it's not one that falls under the rubric of licensure. But I’m still also working on my licensure and do love doing standard talk therapy. But in any case, the emotional wall, which is lower now, but I still have to look over it in order to really check in with myself, also allows me to sit through really tumultuous energy from the other person and be able to hold their container without whatever is going into that container splashing on me. So that has become a superpower for me within my practice as well as within my ability to operate within community. Like post working on myself and post then actually studying as a therapist and getting a master's in counseling psychology.
[22:25] Valerie: Yeah. And I think those aha moments, they continue to come, right? And they're just not as. They're not just as abrupt. You kind of start to just accept, expect them as we learn more about ourselves.
[22:38] Nasr: Yes, yes.
[22:39] Valerie: Yeah. So that brings me to Capoeira, and I know this has been a huge part of your life, and you use it extensively in your warrior class, so tell us a little bit about, you know, how and why you use it as a modality for your work.
[23:00] Nasr: So for those who don't know what capoeira is, capoeira is an afro Brazilian cultural manifestation that includes a martial arts dynamic, includes dance, music, storytelling, theater, and it's trained, but it's also played as a game. And that's the general kind of final form, as it were. There are other manifestations that are more contemporary, more commercialized, like the tournaments and stage shows and things like that, that do have an influence inversely on the art itself. But in general, we train capoeira so that we can play capoeira. And playing capoeira is this huge social enterprise that brings, you have a live orchestra of people playing instruments, you have a group of people surrounding, watching in a circle called a roda, which we would call a cypher in the hip hop culture. And like all these parallels that you see throughout all the diaspora arts. So it's a cousin to hip hop as well as to many other African diasporic art forms. And I've been doing it since 1991 and have never stopped. I've been in the same group for the most part, although I started with Masva et Nalima, so she was my mother, of capoeira, as it were. And we still have a good relationship. And it struck me, it always struck me that people had this sense of euphoria doing Capoeira, being surrounded by this community of people who are supportive, who are sometimes really pressuring you to do things that you never would have done before, but often also very non judgmental and accepting of the fact that you're not ready to do certain things. There's a lot of space for a lot of folks. We also, because of that, have a lot of figuras, which are people with very strong or interesting or wild personalities, because there's space and there's a container for that. And I asked myself the question, well, why is Capoeira so healing? Why is Capoeira so? And I would edit that now, in retrospect, to say palliative, meaning that in the roda, in the circumstances where we are playing capoeira, most people feel this euphoria and this freedom and this happiness. However, you go home to be with your partner, and you're having the same quarrels, you go to work, and you're having the same issues with your boss, you go to visit your family, and you're having the same disputes with your, with your siblings or your parents. And so in many cases, you know, I saw Capoeira improving people's lives tremendously, but relationally and in a lot of foundational ways, I saw that people weren't being changed or weren't taking the steps to, to apply the lessons in the healing that they found in the roda, in the cypher, in the, in the training to their lives. I was like, well, one, why is Capoeira so healing? And two, if this is a real thing, then how do we, how do we make sure that those lessons get, get carried through? And my aha. Moment was because I had that question for a very long time. And I explored capoeira as an educational framework. I explored capoeira as an organizational framework for grassroots organizing, and I've even presented on that at the US Social Forum in Detroit in 2012, with a lot of help from some of the groups there. Misride. In fact, we had a roda. That was the first had that I knew of, at least, where all of the groups in Detroit actually had a roda together, because there had been drama up to that point. So it was a beautiful moment. And through that experience, I understood that the macrocosm being modeled in the microcosm of the Roda, of how we interact, was a very potential, potent, powerful thing, and that it could be applied in many different ways. So then I go through my therapeutic journey, and as I said before, I go to this retreat, and they're doing all of these cultural modalities that are based in dance and movement and singing and music and art, and I'm like, well, these are all. These are all effective. There's tons of research on these modalities that shows their efficacy, evidentiary research, and these are all the components or parallel to the components that we have in capoeira. So, duh. Of course, Capoeira is healing because Capoeira has all of these healing components. And I was like, well, so how do I implement this? So I talked to my therapist, and he was like, well, you've got to go to Pacifica. Then I talked to Anna, who is probably one of the greatest samba teachers in the world, and we have her in our community, born in hue in the manga samba school, but she's also a therapist, and she's like, no, then you need to go to Pacifica. And so all these people, including my somatic experiencing. Doctor, somatic experiencing is a somatic modality that helps to remove the traces of trauma from your central nervous system and from your physical tissue, your muscles, your endocrine system, your gut. And actually, I had a neck injury from dancing. I used to do head hoppers, which is usually. You do hoppers on one hand, both hands. I did it on my head, and I've seen other people, so I slipped, and my neck went Kirkland. And the curvature of the spine, which is supposed to be like this in your cervical vertebrae, was like this. It reversed, and I got lots of chiropractic done and bodywork for over a decade, and the best they could get it to be was this kind of straight line, but it never went back to that, the s curve that your spine is supposed to have. Then I do four months of somatic experiencing work when I go to my chiropractor, just. Or normal readjustment, and there's a boom as he's adjusting, lightly adjusting my neck, and he's like, whoa, okay, we need to get you to x ray really quickly, because that we should not have heard that type of sound. So the x ray and the s curve is totally restored, and he's like, well, what kind of things have you been doing? You've been doing exercises? Have been doing, like, what? What have you done? Because what I did was just preliminary. I wasn't even. There's no way that what I did has. Has restored your s curve like that. And the only thing that I had done was this somatic experiencing. So it was this psychotherapy that had actually fixed my body, because that's that's really what it does. And so this is an element of also what is what is done in Pacifica. In fact, that that doctor trained at Pacifica. So I had all these things pointing to Pacifica, which is a graduate institute in Carpentaria next to Santa Barbara, and their whole their depth psychology institute in the Jungian tradition. And they are very centered on myth, mythic systems and cultural systems, which are bound up in Jung's understanding of the collective unconscious. And that is this understanding that all the cultures in the world have these archetypes of behavior and of nature and of life that are very much parallel. There'll be slightly different in this culture, in that culture, but that is a connection that all humans have and that archetypology and that what goes on in our subconscious, then creates what goes on in our psyche. And so that in engaging in our mythic systems and engaging in our arts are ways to deal directly with the subconscious without having to go through the mind, because the mind, this prefrontal cortex, this highly evolved part of our neurology, is something that is able to lie to us and able to cause us to lie and creates cognitive dissonance all of the time as a necessity. It's part of its job. It allows us to overcome our instincts and overcome what the limbic system is telling us to do. It allows us to be the cultivated human that rides the animal that is our body, than just being our body. But at the same time, it also allows us to be out of sync with the animal that is our body, which is also ourselves. So there are issues that come out of that. So being able to deal directly through the body rather than through the mind opens up a whole realm of efficacy and ability to reveal things that we hide from ourselves, as well as to affect change and healing. So I go to Pacifica, and it was an amazing experience. And they were rather than kind of spoon feeding me what I needed to do, there was tons of training and tons of really great direction, but they were, all of my teachers were extremely interested in the work that I was doing and research around capoeira and martial arts and movement arts as a healing modality. They had a lot of different ideas, and some of them were involved in the dance community, in the movement community, and would, for instance, there's this solstice parade that happens during the summer solstice, Santa Barbara, led by Mestre Mariano Silva. And some of them would dance in the solstice parade with Mariano. So they themselves were in that aspect of practice. Not just movement as practice, but movement as that culture, dance as that culture. So it wasn't just something that was. And to me, this is one of the dangers, something that is just extrapolated for its particular use, but they were in and of the culture as part of the culture. And I think, you know, we've, we've spoken about this before, this ossification or fossilization of culture, because it moves into the sporting realm or it moves into commercial realms or it moves to other countries. And in Capoeira, we deal with, with this in the sense of knowing that capoeira is an evolving culture, but that we also need to maintain a connection to the roots of somehow and how it's done in Brazil, and even further studying the martial cultures and the cultures of the people who were brought from Africa to Brazil in order to understand it even more than maybe the elder masters of the art that we think of as foundational would have even understood. So that is to say that it just made total sense once I started studying and started looking at the aspects of capoeira, why Capoeira was so healing, and through the training that I received at Pacifica and being able to see how other spiritual and movement modalities were able to take these cultural elements and then use them for analysis and use them for reflection, use them to help people have a mirror, to see themselves and to see how their subconscious was operating, which they themselves weren't necessarily able to understand. It was absolutely amazing, and it allowed me to start applying that in the way that I teach and then through the work that I did to develop a modality that is scaffolded upon all of these cultural forms, but specifically, a lot of the work of Roberto Freire, who is this Brazilian practitioner of a system that he created in the sixties, during the very tumultuous era under Vargas, was maybe still in power, but under the dictatorship in Brazil.
[35:46] Valerie: Hey, listeners, if you're enjoying the stories and insights from, from the ashes, why not stay connected with our community? Join my mailing list for bi weekly updates on upcoming events, wellness tips, fun tidbits, and, of course, new podcast episodes. I promise, no spam, just valuable content to help you live your best life. Head over to www. Dot intrepidwellness. Dot life and sign up today. Don't miss out, and let's keep the conversation going.
[36:16] Nasr: Roberto Freire was a student of Augusto Boao has theater depressed who is a student at Paulo Freire? So it's this lineage of Brazilian applied theater and movement in arts but his modality was in the context of the dictatorship in Brazil and was an anarchistic, social, communal modality that was also based in the tenets of Capoeira, Angola. And so knowing that somebody had actually done the work to figure out how to use capoeira, so I used his ideas as a template, but I wanted, the context is different. And even just our backgrounds as practitioners are different. So I first started kind of just intuitively feeling a shift in the way that I was teaching capoeira and decided to really more mindfully apply some of the tenets. And this is because in the world of Capoeira, you hear things like, we want to have a great class. So for the time that you're here, leave your drama from outside there, and you had a rough day at work, leave it all at the doorstep and then come in, we'll have a great time, and, and we'll grow from it. And it sounds nice, but there's really no way to leave those things out. You are inside with them and suppressing them. So you're creating neurosis whilst you're, you're, you're in this very psychodynamic space. And to me, that makes no sense. And so one of the things that I will tell both my students, as well as folks who I'm doing work with, that, you know, if you have something, then you have it. You know, if you pretend like you don't have it, then it has you. So we will deal with it as it comes up. And because of that, you know, sometimes we'll stop the roda, we'll see people moving or getting stuck in certain ways, and we'll ask, well, what's going on in your life? What, what happened today? What, what's been happening recently? And maybe they'll, they'll be like, yeah, I've just been having this issue with my boss, and we're just kind of stuck, and they don't recognize the work that I've been doing, and I just feel like I'm hitting myself, like, my head against the wall. So that's why you keep repeating the same thing and hitting yourself against a wall as you're playing. Well, how about if you looked at other angles and I don't know what those angles are, but approached it from a different angle with your boss, and the person's like, well, yeah, there are some other things I could do. Well, okay, why don't you try approaching this movement from a different angle? And so they try the same thing but approaching it at a different angle, and then all of a sudden, it creates a flow. And so what rarity and Boao realized is that we don't have to create precise plans of how we're going to execute the betterment of our cultures, or our societies, or our communities. We just have to create the space of understanding that it is possible. And through theater and through play, we're able to do that. And so by creating that differential, repeating, instead of repeating in the same way, repeating from a different angle, or allowing the energy to come through, rather than resisting the energy, you find the flow, and then things shift, and then the power dynamic may shift, and things may end up in, in your favor. And that's extremely powerful, one for one's motivation, for one's ability to not feel stuck, and to be able to take the next actual step in a life practice. But it's also extremely important in creating an actual plan to do something, an actual tactical approach, and it almost feels woo. But it's actually just about the fact that mindset is extremely important, and that a lot of times, modalities like CBT and ribt really approach mindset from this logical standpoint. Oh, you have these insane thoughts, and you here repeat these phrases and it works, it helps. But at the same time, you're working through your mind. And these embodied modalities, theatrical play based modalities, work through your subconscious. So instead of having to go through all of the static, this perpetual perceptual static that your brain is meant to place in the way of what your instinct is, you're able to actually affect the instinct of directly and to fulfill what your soul wants, rather than fulfilling an objective, a rational objective, and hoping that the soul follows along. So both the things work, but my sense is that it works in a deeper way and may also help to address the root cause, rather than placing a functional band aid on the outside. And so that is how I grew my practices, my set of interventions, and my principles around specifically things like the physical metaphor and listening and reflecting ways of assessing a client's abilities, what their place in the world is, and then leveraging that worldview for their particular types of interventions. For instance, if you have a student who is a musician, then you may have them bring musical instruments to a session, and may do interventions that are about what they sing, or if a person is a dancer, even if they're not, but if they're a dancer, then you can leverage that in a lot of ways. If they're a martial artist, you can leverage working in restrictive stances and repetition of blocking and counter attack movements to work conceptually within the subconscious. So it's extremely powerful and extremely versatile and requires this creativity. It requires you to be in a place of dance, of being able to read and being able to accept. Oh, that didn't quite work. So we're going to move this way and. Whoa. Okay, it was a dip, but. Okay, it turned into a walkover. Oh, that was fresh. What does that mean to you? So we as practitioners, end up also having to approach from a. Because we're playing the game as well. So we have to approach from this place of humility that our client is the expert in their life experience. And so we're not here to dictate to them, but we're here to experiment with them and play with them and have them play with each other and then invite them really to have their own reflections and to feel into their own intuition, to arrive at understandings that then work for them. So it's not as clear cut as this is the issue and this is the intervention that this section of this book dictates that I have you do in order to reduce your anxiety or in order to reduce your depression or what have you, it's a lot more dynamic and requires us, or myself, at least, those who follow me as well, who assist in this work, to be artists in the act of therapizing, of helping people through their issues.
[43:48] Valerie: Okay, so there are a couple of questions I want to throw at you. The first thing that I want to focus on is that you made this distinction, or you wanted to redefine, maybe capoeira as palliative as opposed to therapeutic.
[44:05] Nasr: Correct.
[44:06] Valerie: And I want to add another layer to that of the consciousness of something being compartmentalized as opposed to holistic.
[44:17] Nasr: Thank you for those. The words that I was looking for. But yes, yes.
[44:23] Valerie: We were talking earlier, before we started the episode, about how, you know, these practices are taken out of context to. To be used in different ways. Right. As a sport, as therapy, etcetera, etcetera. Then this is my thought. I want to hear what you think about this. When we take something like capoeira and we start to start saying, this is how it should be, and we're going to practice it this way, it stunts that growth and evolution of it and also kind of takes it out of the context of the people.
[44:58] Nasr: Yes.
[44:59] Valerie: Right. When it comes to practicing holistic wellness, we're always looking at the macrocosm.
[45:08] Nasr: Yes.
[45:09] Valerie: And participation in the macrocosm. Right. And when we start to compensate, compartmentalize, which is a very western tendency. Yes, we. We put on blinders that, I think sometimes hinder the therapeutic function of something.
[45:27] Nasr: Totally, totally. I think that approach allows for better commodification and extraction, and thus ends up dehumanizing somebody on one side of that equation. Whereas, for instance, diasporic arts and even aspects of theater, classical theater, even classical European. And this is one thing that I really stress when I talk about culture with people, because there tends to be the idea of the global south and the global north and almost a demonization of Europe and Europeans. But Europe is huge. And there are Europeans who are indigenous and have stayed in their countries and have never gone to colonize anyone and have this connection to the land and their foundational cultural practices. And I think it is that understanding that those practices are always an inclusive and non-separating practice. And so that means that in Capoeira, in b boying, the real cultural route is that there's never an audience, there's never a spectator. Everyone who is watching is watching and participating. We're creating the music, we're creating the theater space. We are waiting for our game. So we're also studying what's going on and listening to the lessons that are being given by whoever's directing the Roda. And our reactions, the ways that we're responding in song, are not just. They're not just there, they are also contributing and shifting the energy. So I think that trying not to compartmentalize, trying to accept. And I guess if you're looking, for instance, in therapy, we talk a lot about the medical model. And even if you look at Freud, which a lot of folks now are like, oh, Freud is just that Freudian way of thinking. It is very soulless, is very medical. But in reality, Freud is very soulful and very rooted in the mythic arts. And when his work was translated by the British medical establishment, it was purposely translated so that it would be very rationalized. Psyche was translated as mind rather than soul, for instance. And even now, if you are Austrian or German and you are getting a European licensure in psychology, you can't read Freud in German and apply that. You have to read Freud in English under that British specific British translation. And so that medical model looks at the disease and wants to treat the disease, rather than looking at the whole person and wanting to better the whole person and understanding that there's a context, there's a nutritional context, there's a social context, there is an emotional context, there is a spiritual context, all of a familial context, all of which underpin what is going on for that person. And by looking at that, by holding that, by becoming part of it in a way, by using counter transference as a way of participating, rather than dictating to your client, then you're able to really cause some very effective change and allow the client to be rather than dictated to and pathologized. They become the hero of their own story, and they become the guide for their own healing. Or that process, which, again, is never ending. It's just a process of constant change and progress towards your goals. And as those goals shift, and then the process also shifts. So I think that is really where I wanted to be. And I think that also harmonizes with really where Capoeira and other African and other diasporic arts really come from, at their root. And so although this is an extrapolation of capoeira, I think it's also very true to the roots of Capoeira and its communal discourse and its non compartmentalization and its acceptance of people as their whole being. And within not just one specific mythic system, but the various mythic systems that intersect and overlap within the Roda and within the. The culture of the multiple practitioners.
[49:54] Valerie: Amazing. So I want to transition then, to focus on the warrior class, if you can tell us a little bit about what that is. And then also within the warrior class, you have something called the Safe Schools initiative. Explain that and why that's so important and how I feel that you're trying to essentially change the face of cap water a little bit.
[50:24] Nasr: So, as we kind of spoke before about how, in a lot of ways, these recontextualizations or extrapolations of warrior arts, right. Warrior arts come from war. They come from trauma, they come from brutality. They come from what, at some point in time, groups of people perceived to be necessity. But those arts remain. And through the process of cultivation, many traditions have found ways to take that out of the context of war and use it to heal and to create thrivants rather than the reaction that we have when we were in survival mode, I really feel like the Polynesian warrior arts and practices bound up in kapu, for instance, have been really good at that. And understanding that a warrior needs time to re acclimate and needs to go through certain practices of mindfulness and inner work before they’re able to then transition into general populace. In Bushido, the Japanese tradition, there is the idea of balancing the warrior arts, the killing arts, with dance and music and art, Shodo, all of that, so that you have a well-balanced individual who is able to move back and forth, depending on the necessity, which, because of the context of the power structure, still led to a warrior class that was very brutal to the peasant class. But that warrior class's ability outside of that framework, to move from being on the battlefield. But having this great acceptance to then being able to create beautiful art was quite well realized. And I think that is what I wanted to see in capoeira, not just as something that we talk about, but something that we can actually experience and benefit from. And so I went to grad school, did a lot of research. My thesis ended up being my primary product of that research, as well as the foundational work upon which I created my modality. And since then, I've been working on different frameworks and outlines of my practice so that other people can learn aspects of it. Because I realized that that cultivation is, you know, it's why we see martial arts teachers as masters. Because we tend to expect that a martial arts teacher or a master practitioner is also a master of themselves and a master of life, whether that is warranted or not. And in a lot of cases, it's not warranted. In a lot of cases, we've got people who are great fighters, who are just out of the trauma of war and are still using their wartime, maladaptive, wartime things that are working there, but that are maladaptive in normal society, in normal life. And so I wanted to be able to bring that cultivation. One might call it professionalism, but I would really prefer to think of it as cultivation and mindfulness to the teaching practice. And so, reaching back to my own inner inner struggle as a people pleaser, I have learned that conflict is not something to be avoided, but that conflict and uncomfortable conversations are the pathway to freedom. And so that has been a theme in my life. And that is one of the things that I try to create within. With my presence in the community of capoeira, I will bring up stuff that nobody wants to talk about at random times and get the ball rolling. And hopefully in ways that are self deprecating and humorous enough that people are into the play and are able to be truthful about these things. And by having that, we're able to see teachers have a different understanding and have an understanding of how they need to carry themselves in order to create healthier spaces. I don't like the term safe space. I prefer brave space. But in general, healthier spaces for their students to flourish and healthier communities that have a level of resilience that can deal with issues that pop up. Issues are always going to pop up. You know, it's just part of being. Being human. But the tendency is often, again, the compartmentalization, like, okay, well, that's your personal thing. These are just two adults, so we're going to sweep it under the rug and let those two deal with it. But I thought you said we were their community. I thought you said we were their family. So why are we sweeping things under the rug? Like, it doesn't mean that we are the police or that we are some investigation division that can handle absolutely everything, but we can center a complainant when something goes wrong and we can find out what their experience is and validate it, and then bring in the other person and talk to them and see what the facts are and see what the feelings are. And a lot of times, much of the time, it's the inability for both of them to humanize one another. So you can create that ability to humanize, to play in that context of conflict and make that conflict a very generative and constructive thing. So my ability to be awkward and create awkwardness has also become a superpower. So the warrior class in and of itself is this, like, intervention. And then what we do in the context of capoeira is to one, try to make people understand that this really is a way of being that is rooted in the principles of capoeira and makes your school safe. It'll make your bottom line better because you want to have people leaving because there is some drama. You may have people leaving because they don't want to do the work to hold space and to better themselves and to better others. And I would rather have them leave because of that than have them leave because they feel like things that were harmful were not addressed. And so because of that, I, working with some groups that have had issues because people knew that I was a couple of base mental health practitioner and thought that that would be very helpful in dealing with issues that were going on in their group. So through some of those initial working experiences, as well as other adjacent communities, learning about transformative justice, even training with Tamiya Mingus, working with some of Marayama kabas writings, and looking at various frameworks for transformational justice, I realized that there was a framework that worked for Capoeira. And there's some very concrete guidestones that we can place in front of folks. And if they decide to just do certain of the steps, it will still make things better. So in my sight, there's the full outline of my framework, which is the safe schools framework. And, you know, anyone can go look at it, anyone can use it. It's not copyrighted. The whole point is that if someone wants professional assistance in going through it, they can. But it should be enough that people realize that there are options, rather than sweeping things under the rug, that can. Can really help make their spaces safer and more vibrant and honestly, more lucrative because people can retain their student body. And I think some of the major tenets of that are creating a culture. This is really the first one creating a culture of communication, because in a lot of cultural groups, and it's not just capoeira, it's sports, it's dance, it's whatever things happen. And then nobody wants to talk about them, but everyone wants to talk about them. There are all these back channel chats and rumors, and then people hear about things, not from either of the people who were involved, but from these rumors, and they choose a side. And all of a sudden, you have a schism in your group, and people want you to get rid of this one person. People want you to stick up for this one person, and people start leaving or causing problems because of this. And you might, as the teacher, as the person who's the head of your community, might not even know that something has happened. And so it's important to have a practice of communication, which means monthly meetings or quarterly meetings where everyone gets together and is able to speak their mind, speak their feelings, to challenge the teacher around things that have been happening in class or the way that things are running or how they want events to be run. And through this practice, people start to learn that they can actually speak openly to one another and that space can be held. And that some of the power differential that made communication difficult starts to shrink. So that requires us as teachers also to be very willing to accept criticism and accept fire from our students. Like, if they're angry at us, we want them to be angry at us and not hold it back and not give reprisal and not be like, oh, it's about respect. No, it's about respect being a two way street and that you're an adult in my class, and I need to listen to you. There's a Mestre in the Bay Area named Itabura, and I have known him for years, but I think one of the most formative experiences with him, for me, was visiting him during an event that he was holding in Indonesia, and it was in Bandung. People that are Sundanese ethnicity for the most part. And this Mestre was highlighting Sundanese culture. He would have dance classes and demonstrations in Silat and was trying to learn Sundanese language. He was just really very open and trying to understand his context and talking to him. For him, it was very simple. It's like we are spreading this cultural art here. I expect my students to learn afro Brazilian culture, and so I should expect it myself to learn the local culture and try to learn the local language, not only so that I can be more communicative, but just as a degree of respect. If I expect that respect from my students, then they should have the ability to expect that respect from me. And although I've seen that done by many teachers, I've never really heard it spoken in such an eloquent way as I'm seeing in real time them doing that practice in such a vibrant manner. So I have to thank Mestre Tabora for that affirmation and that example. And I think that there are a lot of jewels that we as teachers are able to learn if we accept our students as our teachers as well. But in any case, that first rung of the ladder is creating that culture of communication. And from that, then you're able to create the organs that allow a school to be resilient. You're able to have an ombuds committee, for instance, people who are able to listen to complaints, or a system where maybe you have a Gmail account that anybody is able to just send a complaint to anonymously, or that's harder. With Gmail, you create a Google form where people are able to submit anonymously. And then the people on the ombuds committee, then we'll check that weekly to see if there's anything new that's coming in and then be able to address it. And it goes on and on. And these things aren't things that cost a lot of money. These things are not things that are difficult. They just take people to be willing to do the work and to be willing to confront in a constructive manner, to have the difficult conversations and to talk about the elephants and gorillas that are in the room, the pink elephant and the 800 pound gorilla that we were always trying to avoid so that we can create harmony in the moment, but that end up really making it impossible to have harmony over the long term and have health in a way that is growing and in a way that is inclusive of everybody. Rather than pushing out. In most cases, women get pushed out because a lot of teachers are men, and womanizing is an easy thing. I'm also polyamorous, non monogamous, and so I also use that as an undergirding in my framework, because dance, athletics, capoeira. You're around a whole bunch of beautiful people who are in their primes and are extending their primes beyond their prime years because they're doing these things that are healthy. And you get this bond and this attraction to folks, and there's nothing wrong with that. But you have to be able to have the conversations that allow you to be upfront about what you're doing and about who you are and about the relationships that you are in so that that person can make an actual choice. So all of these things that allow people to relate and be, as my father likes to quote a lot of Native American thinkers, it's really all about being in good relation. And if you can be in good relation, then everything else, even without a precise plan or precise trajectory, can be teased out and it can be understood and can be co created.
[01:04:51] Valerie: Beautiful. You talk about how you are really trying to make difficult conversations accessible. This is something that I, for whatever reason in my journey now, I fully embrace, like addressing all the elephants. This is something that has become part of my everyday. And I take it for granted that I am able to do this because I have very quickly realized that the majority of people are scared too. Yes, it's very uncomfortable. So it makes my work sometimes hard to communicate because it requires people to look at some ugly things, right? And you know, this is something that you are trying to do in your work. So my question to you is, aside from taking on the responsibility to make it seem lighter or to make it more accessible, what are some ways that your community can support you in your endeavor to make this conversation more successful?
[01:05:58] Nasr: I really think, and this is one of the things that my master, Mestre Amin, says, everybody's gone through their journeys, and part of his journey has been to realize that he has constant work that he has to do on himself and that more importantly than more important than dictating what everyone else in the group needs to do, is that he does that work for himself and tries to be transparent about it and invites all of us to do that work for ourselves. Not only that, but then when there are things that need to be done or things that need to be addressed, he's there. He holds the space and he opens the floor. And then he also allows us to be those of us who are his teaching students, or even those of us who have a background in facilitation, to step up and run things, because he, again, doesn't want to be dictating from the top. He wants things to be a lot more democratized, which is another rung of that safe schools process. So that democratization. So in order to democratize, it's partially the teacher, the person who's on top, letting go of their control and letting go of power. But the other part of it is those who are in the rank and file have to step into their power. And that requires you to do your work, that requires you to look at your ugliness and to accept it and to be able to be open about it. And so I think really, I would ask anyone out there to do their work and to. If you. If you don't have a therapist, get a therapist and try a few sessions. There might be other modalities that are really helpful for you. But I think talk therapy is a really good base and you want to find somebody who's not really so deep. In my opinion, at least, my preference is. Statistically, every modality works, but my preference is someone who is not necessarily too deep in the medical model and isn't so hung up on trying to give you a diagnosis, knows that the best use of a diagnosis is for billing an insurance company, and it's not necessarily that important for the therapeutic relationship, unless you need that in order to have language around what is going on with you, in which case it can be great. So that that self work, if anyone can do, can work on themselves, then they can be better in that space. And that helps me. You know, I don't consider myself a ****** person. I don't think at any time in my life I've been a ****** person, but I have done ****** things. And my inner work and my acceptance of that. I both use the term shadow work a lot now, which I love. Ability to love that person and know what that person's soul was needing also allows me to be very upfront about some of the ****** things that that I've done. And to be able to judiciously disclose those things in session allows me to model the discomfort and model the acceptance of responsibility. So almost in most sessions where I'm working with other. With people who are dealing with things that have been done wrong cause of my long life and long experience and many opportunities to **** up, but I can be like, oh, you know, so let me tell you about the time that I did this and that I caused this damage and that it took me this long to come around and be able to make amends. And people like, whoa, oh, wow. That's not anywhere near what I did. And then they're able to relax a bit. So I think also different practitioners have different feelings about disclosure. But I think disclosure, like and for the practitioners in the room can be a very powerful tool. We don't want to trauma dump on our community, but we want to be able to show our own human foibles and model how we succeeded or how we failed before we succeeded, so that other people can feel comfortable in the room and know that there's nobody here that's perfect and nobody's throwing stones because we all live in glass houses. And so the more that everybody does that work, the more easy it will be for folks to talk about their own gorillas and elephants.
[01:10:25] Valerie: Very good. All right, so that we're going to wrap up here. Thank you so much, Ish, for being on. I would love to have you back because I just feel like there's so much more to dig into and everything that we've talked about day and beyond. And it's really important for people to hear about how we can be just more conscious in our everyday decisions, our choices, and how we treat people and how we navigate with the tools that we have because we have some really wonderful ones. Any last words? Any resources or anything that you would like to tell the audience about?
[01:11:02] Nasr: Sure. You know, there, I really think that one of the major problems for us as humans right now in this society is that the industrial capitalist societies that we live in have taken us away from our cultural roots. And so we don't have close communities, we don't have close families. We don't have these multivalent spiritual systems that we use to interact with one another or understand the world. So I would sell people to, you don't have to join a religion, but really start reading into maybe your family's traditional philosophies. Start checking out cultural activities, be they dance, be they dance rooted in your own culture or another culture that's adjacent, or just a culture that you're in love with, be it cosplay and anime, be it capoeira, be it hip hop, but really try to get active and find a tribe, find a community, because those communities were taken away from us. We don't live in multi generational family dwellings with a grandparent who can listen to the children as they go through their things and tell them old stories that they can relate to. We now have therapists and people, professionals who are paid to do that. But if we kind of get back into these things, then we're able to hold space for one another. And it doesn't have to be as much a thing that when it really bad, then I go to a specialist, no action. I can go to my leaders of the community, or I can go to other people who are into my thing, and we can relate on a level where they're able to hold space for me. So kaporabatuki.org, comma, teinjogu.com, comma thewarriorclass.org, intrepid ayurveda. I think we have so many tools, so many spaces. What's Reed Wasser's space in Long beach called?
[01:12:57] Valerie: Yeah, Human Aeon
[01:12:59] Nasr: Human Aeon.
[01:13:00] Valerie: Human. Human Aeon. In Long beach.
[01:13:01] Nasr: In Long beach. There's so many places that we can go all over the world and that may network with other, other communities that really allow us to be in connection. If anybody knows anything about addiction, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is connection. And so I want to advertise for my work, but I really think that so many of us have so many things to offer, and I want people to start their work by finding those things and by engaging in those things. And you don't have to commit. You try something, find what works, and then go with what works. And not everything has to work. You don't have to do the warrior class. You don't have to do Capoeira. But if you like it, come and do it.
[01:13:43] Valerie: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. I really appreciate you and hope to see you on again.
[01:13:51] Nasr: Thank you. Appreciate you, too. And I'll check you next time.
