How do we do effective, sustainable social change…without burning out, internalizing systemic toxicity, or replicating urgency culture? A trauma-informed anthology with contributions from 13 activists and community organizers—for readers of adrienne maree brown, Staci K. Haines, and Ejeris Dixon When your work is inextricable from your identity, your community, and your own liberation, you need a unique praxis of care to sustain it—and for mission-driven activists, organizers, and changemakers working under oppressive systems, making space to center vital needs like rest, self-care, and healthy boundaries isn’t as simple as clocking out. Practicing Liberation reorients collective justice work toward a model that transforms the effects of injustice, harm, and oppressive systems into resilience, joy, and community care. Through frameworks like trauma-informed methodology, transformative movement organizing, engaged Buddhism, and healing justice, editors Hala Khouri and Tessa Hicks Peterson show readers how to: Embody healing, wellness, and beloved community Guard against replicating systems of harm Disrupt racist, classist, anti-queer, and anti-trans behavior and systems Celebrate creativity and radical imagination in movement work Center healing from intergenerational trauma, white supremacy culture, and extractive capitalism Honor that self-care is a necessity—not a luxury—that strengthens our collectives Featuring essays from editors Hala Khouri and Tessa Hicks Peterson and contributors like Kazu Haga, Taj James, Nkem Ndefo, Jacoby Ballard, Sará King, Kerri Kelly, and more, Practicing Liberation can be used on its own or alongside The Practicing Liberation Workbook to help readers orient toward embodied leadership, interconnected collectives, and a bold vision for transformation—the vital tools we need for collective wellbeing, healing, and long-term social change.

The accompanying workbook to Practicing Liberation: essential skills, exercises, and journal prompts for social-change workers to protect boundaries, prevent burnout, and nourish organizational cultures of resilience and care What do you imagine a better world to look, feel, and sound like? Practicing Liberation Workbook shows that nourishing our movements and communities depends on nourishing ourselves—and that centering rest, prioritizing joy, and celebrating creativity and radical imagination is necessary for long-term change. To be sustainable and realize the transformation we’re working toward, we need to care for our body, mind, and spirit, even (and especially) when the needs of our communities are urgent. In this accompanying workbook to Practicing Liberation, editors Hala Khouri and Tessa Hicks Peterson respond to the real needs of activists and changemakers—like healing from stress and burnout, processing grief and rage, and addressing overwhelm and disconnection. Examples of practices include: Guided journal prompts for self-care critical reflections: Reflect on the ideas and practices you’ve inherited around survival and self-care. What did you learn about survival in your family of origin? What did you learn about self-care? Embrace and release, an embodied exercise to support you in times of overwhelm Shared reflections for building community: What experiences or circumstances have shaped you in your life? What gifts has this given you? What can’t you see about the world as a result? What support would give you more tools or uplift your gifts in this work? Meditations for self-forgiveness, equanimity, and connection with nature Holding space and being present for others through embodied listening Readers are invited to try out the practices alone, with friends, in ceremony, at work, and in nature—to pick those that resonate most and use this toolkit in service of the care and transformation we each need to show up, sustain our work, and thrive for ourselves and our communities.

Liberation Psychology: Theory, Method, Practice, and Social Justice guides readers through the history, theory, methods, and clinical practice of liberation psychology and its relation to social justice activism and movements.

Social work theory and ethics places social justice at its core and recognises that many clients from oppressed and marginalized communities frequently suffer greater forms and degrees of physical and mental illness. However, social justice work has all too often been conceptualized as a macro intervention, separate and distinct from clinical practice. This practical text is designed to help social workers intervene around the impact of socio-political factors with their clients and integrate social justice into their clinical work. Based on past radical traditions, it introduces and applies a liberation health framework which merges clinical and macro work into a singular, unified way of working with individuals, families, and communities. Opening with a chapter on the theory and historical roots of liberation social work practice, each subsequent chapter goes on to look at a particular population group or individual case study, including: LGBT communities Mental health illness Violence Addiction Working with ethnic minorities Health Written by a team of experienced lecturers and practitioners, Social Justice in Clinical Practice provides a clear, focussed, practice-oriented model of clinical social work for both social work practitioners and students.

Liberation psychology is an approach that aims to understand wellbeing within the context of relationships of power and oppression, and the sociopolitical structure in which these relationships exist. Liberation Practices: Towards Emotional Wellbeing Through Dialogue explores how wellbeing can be enhanced through dialogue which challenges oppressive social, relational and cultural conditions and which can lead to individual and collective liberation. Taiwo Afuape and Gillian Hughes have brought together a variety of contributors, from a range of mental health professions and related disciplines, working in different settings, with diverse client groups. Liberation Practices is a product of multiple dialogues about liberation practices, and how this connects to personal and professional life experience. Contributors offer an overview of liberation theories and approaches, and through dialogue they examine liberatory practices to enhance emotional wellbeing, drawing on examples from a range of creative and innovative projects in the UK and USA. This book clearly outlines what liberation practices might look like, in the context of the historical development of liberation theory, and the current political and cultural context of working in the mental health and psychology field. Liberation Practices will have a broad readership, spanning clinical psychology, psychotherapy and social work.

In this book on higher education the contributors make The Black Lives Matter (#BLM) their focus and engage in contemporary theorizing around the issues central to the Movement: Black Deprivation, Black Resistance, and Black Liberation. The #BLM movement has brought national attention to the deadly oppression shaping the everyday lives of Black people. With the recent murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd from state-sanctioned violence by police, the public outrage and racial unrest catapulted #BLM further into the mainstream. Institutional leaders (e.g., provosts, department heads, faculty, campus administrators), particularly among white people, soon began realizing that anti-Blackness could no longer be ignored, making #BLM the most significant social movement of our time. The chapters included in this volume cover topics such as white institutional space and the experiences of Black administrators; a Black transnational ethic of Black Lives Matter; depictions of #BLM in the media; racially liberatory pedagogy; campus rebellions and classrooms as sites for Black liberation; Black women’s labor and intersectional interventions; and Black liberation research. The considerations for research and practice presented are intended to assist institutional leaders, policy-makers, transdisciplinary researchers, and others outside higher education, to dismantle anti-Blackness and create supportive mechanisms that benefit Black people, especially those working, learning and serving in higher education. The chapters in this book were originally published in a special issue of International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education.

Drawing on Indigenous wisdom traditions, a shamanic healer offers a body-based approach to working through the fear and trauma that inhibits transformation and growth To create a world free from oppression, we each have to face the ways that we maintain toxic social systems within ourselves. In indigenous cultures throughout the world, it’s understood that true transformation starts in the body with a change of heart. Shamanic healer Langston Kahn offers the Deep Liberation Process, a body-based approach that allows us to radically transform the range of fear-based stories we each hold in ourselves: from traumatic experiences, internalized oppression, and habitual emotional patterns to the outmoded beliefs that hold us back from healing, transforming, and freeing our authenticity and unique genius. Bridging the shamanic wisdom of ancient spirituality with the needs and demands of modern-day life, Kahn offers concrete skills to cultivate deep grounding, skillful boundaries, and a healthy energy body; methods for authentic shadow work and healing our triggers; and tools for effectively tending personal and collective well-being in community. “With Deep Liberation, our sacred calling is made accessible to all who are willing to listen for it within themselves.” —adrienne maree brown, author of Pleasure Activism