Hello,
Welcome to WAVES. This is a place that must be eaten whole, like a good meal.
Here, you will find embodiment practices, sensorial experiences, playlists, essays, recommendations and musings for the week. The aim is to decondition from oppressive systems through a place rooted in tenderness, inspiration, and beauty. We get unstuck by dancing. This is an underground network of nurture rooted in radical love.
Waves are constantly moving and changing, and so does this newsletter. Even if under the umbrella of feminism, ecology, tenderness, social justice and poeticism, I intend to dance.
Here, we are allowed to breathe, think, rest, to live joyfully and beautifully whilst still being aware of the systemic oppressions that inhabit our bodies and our environments. Here, we use poetry, art and cultural criticism to observe the systems that oppress us and colonise our minds and bodies. Here, we decolonise and decondition joyfully and beautifully.
Antidote: a medicine taken or given to counteract a particular poison/ something that counteracts an unpleasant feeling or situation.
My intention is to nurture a space where we can learn to access poetic antidotes to systemic issues on a daily basis. Think pleasure, slowness, righteous rage, and ritual. We will learn to spot them also by looking at writers, scholars, or artists who live(d) by them, who have taught revolution through poetic, beauty and joy - some names include bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Albert Camus, and James Baldwin.
Here is a snippet of what you can find:
Creative, poetic reflections - On Beauty, Ode to Poetry, The Great Exhale
Series - deeper dive into a subject, one example: Love
Reflections inspired by myths and folk stories: read one here
Conversations with Amazing humans who do poetic antidote work, see my conversation with Sophie Strand and Ayesha Khan
Poetic Antidotes in Movement is an ongoing collaboration with Movement Alchemist Kindra Calonia, who pairs up with me on a particular topic creating a movement series for it. See here and here.
Essays on the creative process, with writing prompts and all.
I want to understand the world as a multitudinous ecosystem. Each essay has sensorial elements that range from curated playlists to embodiment practices, to oil mixes. This is because I believe that the integration part of deconditioning comes through the body (and because it’s fun).
I find ritual to be a tender and erotic practice that helps connect to the self, to listen to my body, my cycles and most of all my intuition. Sort of a F**k you to grind culture, and an invitation to SLOW DOWN. Both are revolutionary acts - or poetic antidotes - in a world that pushes a fast-paced distraction-heavy life on us.
Most of the articles on Waves are free with some extra features behind a paywall. So go explore!
Trying to practice what I preach, the newsletters won’t always be regular. This is not a space for producing constant content to fill space, but it is a place where content comes out because there has been deep thinking, embodying, and transformation. I don’t take these topics lightly, and I am constantly learning.
Waves is supported by its readers, here are different ways you can support:
Referring Waves to someone
through a paid subscription (70$ a year, 7$ a month)
Joining one of our workshops
Speaking about it at a dinner with your loved ones
Engaging, leaving a comment or writing me about your thoughts, I love a good conversation!
Future vision 👀 (which might change ‘cus we are ever evolving)
I imagine having enough budget to get others to write unique pieces for Waves and have beautiful collaborations with artists and creatives.
Thank you for being here.
Mucho Amor,
V
