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Learn about the principles and practice of nonviolence as an active force for personal, social, and political change. Co-hosted by Stacie Freasier, Robert Tyrone Lilly, and Jim Crosby, the show covers current events, learning opportunities, and nonviolent direct action taking place locally. Airs 1st Thursdays of every month from 1-2 pm CT at KOOP Community Radio 91.7 FM in Austin, Texas, and streaming online at koop.org.
She was white haired when I met her, a little bit bent over. Know thyself, she told me, and to thine own self be true. But I didn't have to know her long to learn the simple lesson. She'd become the self she was wearing other folks' shoes. She taught them in their schools, healed them in their clinics, fed them bread when they were hungry, water when they was dry.
Jim Crosby:She laughed when they were happy, cried when they were crying, lived right with them in their living, died a little when they died. Well, she'd seen the world when she was young with Dickens, Twain, and Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Marx, and Chekhov, and Dostoevsky too. She'd picketed and slept in cells, mourned the dead and loved them well, soiled her hands with the stuff of life wearing other folks' shoes.
Jim Crosby:Well, it's other folks' shoes, it's other folks' shoes
Jim Crosby:It's walking in their moccasins a mile, maybe two. It's knowing yourself, forgetting yourself, seeing what yourself would do if you walked around this world a while in other folks' shoes. Studio fade, and we'll pick up the second half at the end of the show. Happy empathetic New Year, everybody.
Stacie Freasier:Happy new, renewed, peaceful, active, powerful New Year, everybody. Welcome to Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour. I am your host, Stacey Fraser. I am joined with my comrades, brother Robert Tyrone Lily, brother Jim Crosby, and my dear friend and comrade also Jenna St. David.
Stacie Freasier:Welcome to the studio Jenna. This is your first time with us here.
Gena St. David:Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Stacie Freasier:Yeah. We're excited to have you sit in circle with us and talk about the great nonviolent actions that you're making in the world through your teaching, through your writing, through the way you're moving through life. So happy to be here. Happy new year, Rob.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Happy new year. Happy new year. You hear the horns in the background? Happy New Years to you and to everybody out there in the listening audience. Peace and blessings to you.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:We pray that this year is much more productive and forward moving than last year. That's our prayer for you.
Stacie Freasier:Amen. So I think we just go right in on Nonviolent Brain and perhaps you can tee us up with, with the book that you previously wrote and your journey into nonviolence.
Gena St. David:Sure. God, it is such a joy to be in this circle with you people. And I'm so appreciative of the work that you're doing with your, your action and your, campaign for nonviolence and this radio show. And there's just like in in all the literature about nonviolent movement in the world, there is this theme of like gentle, loving, relentlessness.
Jim Crosby:And that is you all being in relationship with each other
Gena St. David:and the community and just thank you for the leadership you're providing. I'm so glad to be here. My entry to this conversation about nonviolence started in my own life through I'm a therapist, a mental health practitioner. I teach students who are training to become therapists. So I'm steeped in neuroscience, brain science, and fMRI imagery, neurobiology.
Gena St. David:And so the driving question for me for a few years has been when we want to reach for nonviolent solutions. How do we make that possible for us given the realities of our nervous system, our neurobiology, and we can only work with the way that our brain is already wired. And so how do we do that? How do we condition ourselves? And that question led me to a really exciting study that I started a couple of years ago.
Gena St. David:And it has proven to be the first study of its kind where I had the privilege of I'd already connected with a lot of people who were committed to nonviolence all over the world in different domains towards humans, animals, the planet, or or all all three.
Jim Crosby:And, Jenna, you have to introduce your your new term, your coinage for or you had got it from someone else, but your word you use for those people?
Gena St. David:Nonviolentists. Yes. Robert Holmes was was writing about this decades ago, and he coined the term nonviolentists. And these folks would identify with that. They have been practicing nonviolence as a lifestyle for any amount of time, most of them for more than ten years.
Gena St. David:And I, had the privilege of interviewing 30 of these folks. They spanned five continents. And so it was a very cross cultural, multi faith. Just asking them, how did you come to this practice? And I learned something surprising, so I'll give away the ending here, and then we can backtrack and unpack some of the really fascinating things that I learned through that study.
Gena St. David:But I went in with a preconceived notion that, that I was going to hear how stressful nonviolence is to practice as a lifestyle. And I was I was prepared, I was teed up to ask them like, well, so how do you how do you continue to persist under stress? What Like, do you do? And over and over again, the folks that I was interviewing were baffled by the question. They were like, I don't What are you talking They were like, I do it because it feels good.
Gena St. David:I practice nonviolence because it feels good in my body. It's returning good things in my life. It helps with stress. It reduces stress in my life. And that was a surprising finding.
Gena St. David:But then when I thought about it more and researched more about the brain science behind it, the neurotransmitters, it made more sense. But, so I'll I I had the joy then of writing up my discoveries in the book, The Nonviolent Brain, which will be coming out in 2026. And
Jim Crosby:And share with our listeners the, subtitle. That I think that opens it out more.
Gena St. David:Unlocking our potential to save animals, the planet, and ourselves.
Stacie Freasier:I don't know, Jenna, if you saw the testimonial that I wrote for it yet, but I'm gonna read it right here because this is a my my takeaway from it, which is, Geno St. David skillfully weaves personal narrative with neuroscience, making complex concepts accessible and compelling. The nonviolent brain arrives at a critical moment when our society desperately needs tools for healing, divides, and resisting authoritarianism. This book offers both scientific grounding and practical wisdom for anyone committed to nonviolence towards self, others, and our planet.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. As I was listening to you, there was a recurring thought that had come to me while I was, you know, pondering your journey. And I was thinking, especially the science part about that's an interesting take. Right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I don't you don't often I don't often hear nonviolence spoken of in the same breath as we talk about science, empirical study. Right? But I was thinking about, Gabor Mate's book, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, where he talks about brain trauma or the way he talks about trauma, not brain trauma, but trauma and it the way misshapen the wiring of the brain. Is that in any way addressed in your book? Or how does that relate to this topic?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:You know, the experiences that people have early on in their lives and how they formulate the way they're gonna go through the world, these trauma response, these things that then behaviors that become trauma responses. How does that counter or deal with, relate to non violentist behavior?
Gena St. David:Yes. Mate's work is cited in the book because he's really helping broad swaths of readers self reflect on why is my brain reacting the way it is to, you know, certain cues. Another neuroscientist, Dan Siegel, will say what fires together wires together. So a number of us, I think, as adults are on this exploration journey of like trying to map our own brain and understand why I react the way I do, why I feel the way I do. And the way that relates to nonviolence, I've come to the idea that nonviolence is hardwired in us.
Gena St. David:And we see this in children. Under stress, certainly children will react sometimes, possibly a version of violence of, not wanting to share, you know, self protection. And also, what we call this tend and befriend instinct is also just as natural and, innate as anything else. And so under optimal circumstances, nonviolence really may be our default. We're social creatures, and it feels good in the body, it releases positive, pleasant feeling neurotransmitters.
Gena St. David:And so we can think of trauma or violence as anything that comes in and interrupts that. And so I have come to think that the process of becoming nonviolent is more of a matter of subtraction than addition. It's like clearing away the things that are obstacles to us being our natural best. Does that res how does that resonate with your experience?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Yeah. I mean, when I was reading the portions of it that I did read, I was reflecting on my own journey. I grew up in a very violent community. New York City in the 1970s, everything about it was violent. Not just the behaviors of the people, but the circumstances that we had to contend with.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:The structural dilapidation, the the neglect, the blight, all of these things are now today understand them to be forms of social violence that we we have to endure. And I I was unprepared, but nonetheless had to had to had to deal with it. And, you know, early on, I adopted my environment. You know, might made right. If you hurt me, I hurt you back.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Or if you threatened to hurt me, I hurt you before you hurt me. But at some point, you know, as I became more rational, believe, I started to get I came to a point where I thought, what would happen if the whole world were this way? If everyone decided where the motto was might may write and if you hurt me, hurt you. Well, if you threaten to hurt me, I hurt you first. I thought that's not a sustainable world.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I mean, I just took that to its rational conclusion. And I then saw what my community looked like when retaliation was the norm. So, you know, you hit my family, then five of us are gonna go hit 10 of your family. And if that continues unchecked, we'll a complete society of wounded and devastated people with wreckage that we've created. And so my journey has been exactly what you described in the book, has been a process of unlearning.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And I'm not gonna even sit here and tell you, I still have tensions in me that I have to be honest about. You know, I'm a child of the seventies and I grew up being influenced by, you know, the black power movement's right to defend itself, right, against injustice in our society. The rhetoric that supported our privilege, if you will, or right to say, you know what? No. You're not gonna harm me.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And that took on different ways than what I adopt today. But it's been a series of self exploring, pairing away what I no longer believe in good conscience I can hold to and still be the kind of human being that I wanna be in the world.
Stacie Freasier:You brought up, Brother Robin, that story and thank you for that. Something that Jim and I were just discussing before the show and that is you Jenna recently were with Kazuhaga which is another influential person in the movement And we were talking about the idea of martial arts and self defense. How has that revealed itself through your exploration and your work? Can you talk for a minute about that?
Gena St. David:Yes. Well, I'll say that, through the research that became the book, The Nonviolent Brain, martial arts was brought up quite a bit as an early resource that helped nonviolentists connect with their body and what felt good and not good in their body. And so, I'll just mention that, that it was an interesting, surprising discovery. And yeah, in my conversation with Kazuhaga and in listening to your story, brother Rob, I I would say I feel a lot of empathy and understanding for the the impulse to retaliate, the impulse to give back the hurt, because we have to do something with that pain in the nervous system. It has to go somewhere.
Gena St. David:So I can completely understand and empathize and have my own experience with that. Writing about starting And to write about non violence and teaching about it, I will say I never, I'm very careful to not prescribe non violence actually to an to another person or another community because everyone has to decide how to live their life and how to defend themselves and how to protect themselves. And so what I will say is that violence isn't sustainable. That's just an evidence based fact. And that nonviolence does feel good, ultimately, even if it's challenging in the moment.
Gena St. David:And the ripple effects of nonviolence can be so I mean, it just like sparks the imagination to imagine what we could create together with more nonviolent patterns. Your story brother Rob brought to mind, Gary Slutkin is a researcher. He's actually an epidemiologist. So he studies infectious diseases. And he helped start a what was a study.
Gena St. David:And then it was so the evidence was so compelling, it became a program rooted first in Chicago, and they've tried it in different cities. And Gary Slutkin calls it nonviolence interrupters. And so they would go into a community after there had been a violent assault or attack or killing or shooting. And they had trained up folks from within that community who could go provide aftercare to the survivors and the loved ones. And they found that through that relational connection, grief, lament, care, it, it reduced retaliation and the further, the it was like violence spreads like a disease, like a contagious disease.
Gena St. David:And it served like a vaccine, like it stopped the spread. And, I find stories like that just, really compelling because we have to do something after we risk, after we experience violence. It has, that pain has to go somewhere. So how are we tending to it?
Stacie Freasier:So we are listening to each other sit in circle on Co op Community Radio ninety one point seven FM and thank you to anyone who sitting anywhere listening online koop.org we stream to all corners so we are sitting today in our first episode of twenty twenty six with Jenna St.
Jim Crosby:David
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Happy New Year
Stacie Freasier:Happy New Year Happy hopeful New Year. Jenna is the author of The Nonviolent Brain, which is coming up soon this year, publishing.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Soon to be released.
Stacie Freasier:That's right.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:On our last show, we talked about my grandmother's hands. And I'm hearing a connection in my soul about your writing in that book. And what brought it to my mind was your statement about there has to be something that the nervous system does with that pain. So there's two things coming to my mind. Number one, what's the author's name?
Stacie Freasier:Resma, Minikum. Doctor. Resma.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Thank you for that, Stacy. He talks about how it's transferred from body to body. And, you know, he talks, he starts off the book talking about how Europeans transferred it from one European body to another and then eventually to those bodies they found in the what became known as the colonies. It's found out to be fascinating. If you haven't read the book, I encourage folks to read this this new
Jim Crosby:There's couple of footnotes in the nonviolent reign, I
Robert Tyrone Lilly:think, to Oh, wow. Okay. Wonderful. Yeah. So we're hitting two for two today.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Right? We're batting it out the park. So but the other piece of it was I'm I'm also an abolitionist. And I believe that carceral logics are just as much at root the problem as the physical acts of violence that occur. The carceral logic undergird the way we cage and harm bodies because we believe those bodies have harmed others.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Right? So do you explore the thought of restorative practices in the book? Is this a a way that you've kind of wrestled with some of these ideas? Because at the end of the day, that's the logic behind causal logic, that if you harm somebody in the society, then quite naturally, don't you have to be punished? And that's not necessarily naturally.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Right? There are other ways that we can approach this, but there's seldom very there's few outlets, I think, theoretical outlets that allow us to entertain options. But I'd like to hear your thoughts on that.
Gena St. David:Yes, absolutely. Well, yes. So Menikum's work has hugely influenced my whole field. And yeah, I really took a deep dive into thinking about how did we come to that idea that punishment is necessary and that punishment's effective. Oh.
Gena St. David:If we You
Robert Tyrone Lilly:explore that in the book as well?
Gena St. David:I explored even more in my first book, The Brain and the Spirit, because I was coming at it from a traditional Christian theology lens.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I read that book.
Gena St. David:And I was looking at how the, in early, early Christian rituals, you know, the Christian community would would provide sanctuary for the person who was accused of a crime to to protect them from from punishment, from violent punishment. They were
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Cities of refuge.
Gena St. David:They were practicing an early form of restorative justice. And it was very neuroscience savvy because neurobiologically, in order for the brain to learn, or we're talking about something very physical, very anatomy, like the the the actual neural pathways and gray matter changing in the brain, it's a very physical process. And we know now so much more about the conditions that are necessary for that to happen. And it requires, elements of safety and a little bit of stress, just the right amount of stress, but too much kicks the brain into a brainstem threat response. And the upper lobe shuts down and goes, you know, metaphorically dark.
Gena St. David:And no meaningful new learning is happening in that. It's just survival is happening. And then somebody is left with the same neural pathways as they had before, and they were likely to follow the same patterns as before. And so for meaningful new learning to happen, which is what all of us are about, in terms of justice, corrections, education, religion, spiritual care, mental health, physical, like we all are trying to ask, how do we rewire the brain to grow and mature in healthy ways? And we need enough safety to balance out the stress in order to learn.
Gena St. David:And incarceration, what we need to study, does that create the right conditions? I think-
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Well, my empirical I would tell you that it wasn't the most hospitable environment for one to evolve and grow. I'll say this and then yield. I'm thinking about how, you know, I've read historically European societies. There's a way that Europeans have looked at the body that I think is problematic. And I think that also derives from its theology.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Right? The body was considered this thing, the base instrument that by default we had to embody because we fell from heaven. And so everything negative or unhealthy or problematic, it's it's source is the flesh.
Jim Crosby:The occasion of sin.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Yeah. And so in order for this to be righted, we have to flagellate or punish the body. Right? I remember reading about how there was these these tests when there was some sort of dispute in the community. They would be brought before these arbiters and they would heat these stones.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And they would have to grab the stone. And whoever could hold the stone for the longest, they were in fact telling the truth and, you know, God was on their side. And of course, this is not something I read in school. Right? They don't teach you this in school.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:But if I had read that in school, I would have really questioned faith a little bit more critically. But these were practices that have been passed down to us. But I only bring that up in the morning to kind of like poke at it a little bit. But also I think to point out that it's something, I'm questioning in my mind how much of what we are describing today is our view of the body. Cause you're talking about the brain, right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Which is a part of our bodies, right? But all elements of our brain are a little bit more, I think, lofty than just the substance called the brain. I mean, would that be an accurate way of describing it?
Gena St. David:Well, certainly, you know, a Cartesian Descartes, you know, introduced that mind body split. And I would I would suggest in in the field of mental health these days, particularly driven by neuroscience, we're really coming to a more holistic understanding. And the brain really descends down through the brainstem, through the vagus nerve into our gut.
Stacie Freasier:And it embryonically starts in the gut. The same type of physical cell, right? Lines your gut, that lines your brainstem?
Gena St. David:Yes. So we're learning so much. I mean, we're really at a pivotal moment in our age and time right now. We're gonna be thinking about these things thirty years from now, even very different than we are today. But I think what you're saying is something important and true about, it is about our relationship with our own body.
Gena St. David:And can we trust it? Can we trust the information from our body? Are we listening? And are we caring for it well so that that information can be trustworthy?
Stacie Freasier:I will I was gonna add to that sentence, and can we love our body? Because it's from love which non violence flows and the ability to love one's own body and for bodies of culture and for women's bodies and for disabled bodies. We are told endlessly that these bodies are unlovable. So I think we hit on love there. Yes.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And I also think, you know, the counter to that, not counter to your point, but the counter thought is we live in a world where valuation has been placed on. That's what I'm hearing in your thought. You know, bodies that are abled, bodies that are differently abled, bodies that are white from bodies that are black, right? They've been given these values, this hierarchy of humanity. That's problematic.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I think that's a barrier in the way of us getting to that place of really appreciating this complex entity called the self and the physical as well as the metaphysical. Whatever that is in its totality, I think it requires us to abandon some of these archaic notions of ourselves and others, particularly others. So I'll pause there. Is there anything that you wanted to read from the book?
Gena St. David:Well, I sure there's poetry sprinkled throughout the book and for a very intentional reason. Number one, I think a lot about the integration between the left and right hemispheres of the brain because they each are helping us do something slightly different in the world. And the integration between the two is really what helps us function at our best. So I wrote the book also from a very left and right brain reader experience. And so, I'll share this one poem from the chapter about feeling and feeling synchronizes so much with what you were just saying, brother Rob, about, our relationship with our body, what you were saying, Stacy, about loving ourselves.
Gena St. David:That was a big additional theme from the research was that nonviolence often starts with us, are we in a nonviolent relationship with our own body. And so, coming to feel what we're really feeling in the body and caring for that well often is a starting place for everything else that we're talking about. Shall I read?
Stacie Freasier:I would
Gena St. David:love This is called How to Feel Everything. When everything hurts to numb is a relief. Don't do it. Well, do it if you must. But one morning when the coffee is right and the light is perfect, say just for today, I will feel everything.
Gena St. David:Sit down with a timer. Wrestle with yourself. You want to get up? Sit one minute more. You still want to quit?
Gena St. David:Rise. There's more to feel today, so go find it. Unearth hunger, bump into boredom, cook with your anger. Feel tension when your partner says we need to talk. Say yes to fear and hello to desire for revenge.
Gena St. David:Think of all the numbing you could be doing and don't do it. Well, do it if you must, but better yet fume. Take your feelings outside. Allow them to walk you around on a leash. Something low to the ground will catch your eye.
Gena St. David:Delight. The strawberries are ripe. Disappointment, the birds have picked them clean. Because of all this terrible, wonderful feeling, you will be intoxicated with elation over a single berry, pluck it, but do not eat it. Well, eat it if you must, but more likely you will think anticipation sweetens the joy.
Gena St. David:Carry home a tiny red globe tenderly in your cupped hand and long for something. What is it? Find your partner standing at the sink, filling the kettle. Hear your own voice. Is that you?
Gena St. David:Asking, would you like a berry? Stand there shocked to discover you feel hopeful holding out your hand.
Stacie Freasier:Thank you for that.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Very beautiful. Beautifully delivered and beautifully written. Thank you. It was very peace evoking. Thank you.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Yeah. We must create some space and community for this beautiful human being and her works. I've just completed a book myself with poetry. A friend of mine, we wrote it together starting when I was incarcerated. It's called Inside Out.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:A Texas Prison's Poetry Story. And poetry is definitely a way in which I've found myself healing from trauma in the past. It gave me an outlet that was less toxic and adverse. My pen and the ink, I didn't have to worry about hurting someone or hurting myself. And no one had to see it except me unless I shared it with someone else.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:So thank you for bringing us to that left right dichotomy, right?
Stacie Freasier:Thank you for bringing that element into your book because I'm a science nerd. I've read all the Newland books. I've read a lot out there. Yours is so approachable, and it does evoke a sense of, it makes it easier to access the scientific information that you're presenting. And so just fan club, fan girl here.
Jim Crosby:Can I
Stacie Freasier:Thank you, Jenna?
Jim Crosby:Yeah. Can I contextualize in two ways? Please. One, for our listeners out there, Stacy is doing a great job of getting our shows, into podcasts. And so in addition to my grandmother's hands, our focus in December was on Rob and Lauren's book.
Jim Crosby:And, with the second half of it, we got around to, reading some of the forms. And so that was I commend that to people. And the other thing I wanted, if it's okay, just to share those seven words. So feel is the first of them that you kinda
Stacie Freasier:And and I do not in any way disrespectfully mean to cut you off, but we are at the half hour, and I would love to go into this framework. So we will be right back. You are listening to Co op ninety one point seven FM Radio Austin. Some community announcements. Welcome back listeners.
Stacie Freasier:You are listening to nonviolent Austin radio hour here on ninety one point seven FM radio Austin and all over the globe. This beautiful, beautiful sphere we are all tied to by gravity. K o o p dot o r g. I am Stacy Frazier. I'm with brother Robert Tyrone Lilly, Jim Crosby, and Jenna St.
Stacie Freasier:David. And we are exploring, her upcoming book, The Nonviolent Brain. And take it away, Jim. I'm glad you introduced this part of the
Jim Crosby:the book. I just wanted to further contextualize and not to over spill beans. I just wanna, as an open ended question, put it out there for you, these seven words that you use. And, basically, what you discovered in interviewing these 30 nonviolentists that you talked about. So you start with feel, question, speak, imagine, learn, experiment, and integrate.
Jim Crosby:So you describe that as a spiral staircase, not necessarily sequential, recursive. You keep going back to them. And and, but but maybe even bring in some of the people you interviewed and and, you know, aspects of their stories that that kinda clued you into those seven different things?
Gena St. David:Yeah. The spiral staircase is a really helpful image because it's not necessarily linear. And, what I discovered was that folks often would start these kind of seven steps in a particular domain of practicing nonviolence towards themselves, and then possibly towards humans or towards animals or towards the planet. And I'll give some examples of those. And then often, sort of like a fractal, it would grow and expand to then the same steps would be practiced in expanding domains.
Gena St. David:And that feels very exciting because then we can imagine the ripple effects of that. An example of the first one, feeling, there was often this pivotal movement from seasons of life where numbing was more of the pattern to simply, and this could be an incredibly courageous act to simply say, I'm gonna feel more of what I'm feeling in my body and get to know myself on the inside. And we sometimes need a lot of help with that support. It's hard to do that kind of courageous work on our own if if numbing has been the pattern. But oftentimes the people that I interviewed describe numbing either through substances, alcohol, or avoidance or, distraction, like a form of violence to themselves.
Gena St. David:And and really the, you know, health outcomes indicate that. And so the the choice to start to feel sometimes that this one particular person that's coming to mind talked about a period of sobriety after well, he had had this hunting incident where he had gone out with some friends that he really wanted to connect with. Alcohol was involved. He's he's just trying to have a a good social time with people that he wants to be in relationship with. He was sort of pressured to fire a gun, a bird was killed, and he felt that in his body and also masked it from his friends.
Gena St. David:There was some laughter, there was this video that was taken of him, it was then shared back with him and he felt embarrassed. He felt the dissonance of it, conflicting with his values, but he wasn't surrounded by a community that shared nonviolent values. And he said, you know, the first thing that he did with that grief was feel it. And then, he said, I'm not gonna use alcohol to numb this. I'm just gonna feel that this feels bad.
Gena St. David:And from there, started to he, he talked to another friend. He was like, these friends this this other friend of his, girl that he had known for a long time, he was like, these friends are from work. I really wanna, like, be friends with them. But she was like, but you seem really stressed out at work anyway. And she was like, maybe you do maybe start doing yoga.
Gena St. David:He was like, what how is yoga gonna help? He started doing yoga. He's like he did a few yoga sessions and he just started he found himself crying. He was like, why am I crying? And it's it's this beautiful process of starting to let the body feel and react to the authentic emotions and desires.
Gena St. David:And he said, what happened was he started sleeping better because he was drinking less. He started connecting with more people through yoga who shared more of his values. And he said, I just started feeling better. And so one good act leads to another. And the feeling ended up being a consistent pattern across really all of the people that I was interviewing.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:You know, first of all, thank you for that. When you were talk when you were reading the poem earlier, I was and and thank you for that introduction of that content from the book too, Jim. But as you were reading earlier, I was thinking about my own journey in recovery and my own experiences with rediscovering or discovering for the first time myself as a sentient being. You know, men in this society, and this is kind of going back to the point I made earlier about some of our archaic ideology around humanity. Right?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:On one hand, we're told that pleasure is bad. So to feel good is something that I should be questioning my desire for. Right? That it borderlines with this identity of sinfulness. And then on the other, you know, so we could become hedonist.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:That was another term that's bandied about. And then on the other hand, you know, the the idea of, you know, we don't even get taught that feeling is important, especially for men. I'm thinking about myself as a man. And as a child, any expression of emotionalism was punished. And so here I am as an adult now.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I don't really know how to feel. In fact, it's only been a couple of years that I actually learned a question. I was like, why do I have emotions? Like, why do I feel this? What is the purpose of me feeling embarrassment?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I wouldn't tell you I'm feeling embarrassment, but I know I'm feeling something. And then even worse than that, it came a point where after the drugs and alcohol were going in my life, that I'm now getting the opportunity to experience emotion, but I'm feeling things that I don't have words to describe. And that was a major discovery for me because I realized how self alienated I had become, you know, as a result of trying to conform to this world or being forced into conformity in this world? Any thoughts on that?
Gena St. David:Yes, gosh. Well, so my being forced to conform and finding ways to creatively resist that tyranny is what I'm hearing is like how like, sometimes feeling and connecting with ourselves in an embodied way is its own form of resistance, of nonviolent resistance to those forces of oppression. And, yeah, when I think about this, what you were raising, brother, about the question of like, can we trust our pleasure? Or or is it possible that it will, like, mislead us in an actually dangerous direction? And I think it's a good question.
Gena St. David:A lot of spiritual traditions have asked that question in helpful and non helpful ways throughout the centuries. I think neurobiology can offer something helpful because the neurotransmitters that tend to be involved in pleasure, the big three are dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. And they all do something slightly different. We feel they but they they produce good, positive, pleasant feelings in the body. And learning to discern, detect what is like a pleasure that's like a it's kind of like cheap fuel.
Gena St. David:Like it'll burn hot and fast, and then there'll be like a hangover afterwards or
Stacie Freasier:Like a Snickers bar.
Gena St. David:Yeah. Versus versus like the really nourishing pleasure and pleasant feelings that are driving me to do more of that, like in the story of that person that I shared, do more good healthy things for myself. And I think that's part of maturing. This is where that word experiment comes into play. So running small experiments and gathering data on how the body feels and what are the outcomes that it produces in my life, That's a good metaphor for living.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I like that. I don't wanna cut you off Stacy if you did have a thought I was I'm gonna
Stacie Freasier:looking at maybe go to question. I wanna hear just a nugget, a sprinkle. You'll get to read the book if you're interested, but I wanna move into a couple more. I wonder though, if Feel is the one you picked first because it's such a big one. Like was there a sequential order to introducing these?
Gena St. David:There was like a slightly sequential order, although it progressed non linearly, meaning like you could go forward and backward or come to the same spot from a different height on the staircase. But field did tend to be the starting place. And then from there, people often noticed they were questioning then the teachings or patterns that they had been conforming to that were tell telling them not to trust their feelings. And so that questioning could be like questioning a religious system or questioning things that they, you know, were taught by the previous generation or questioning
Jim Crosby:the Does might make right. Does
Gena St. David:might make right, the incarceral system. We're all questioning a lot these days. Then from there, questioning tended to lead to the courageous act of finding safe people to speak honestly to and to say, hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm questioning my sexuality. I'm questioning, hunting. I'm questioning, you know, the ways that I've been thinking about politics.
Gena St. David:So that can be a very brave and risky act. So finding those relationships in groups where it's safe enough to speak honestly about what's happening inside us, but we have to do we need that. We we really I think nonviolence as a practice, as a lifestyle, is very difficult to do without community support.
Jim Crosby:And and because we have the context of of one, our December show and and what Rob has been sharing with us of his own life, I think of, you know, one studying Toastmaster and being being being the Toastmaster and and also your poetry, you know, just finding your voice in those ways. Yeah. So speaking.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Yeah. I'd I'll say this here. I like the idea. So when I was incarcerated, I would tell people that I saw this moment for me like as if I was in a test tube. And I was shaking my life up in that test tube, experimenting with new ways of living.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:That's what I would tell folk. That I consciously embraced an idea that this had to be a testing ground. Because what had my ways of showing up in the world in the past were not successful for me. They weren't producing. When I when I sat down and I asked myself what kind of life most appealed to me, the results that I was getting was not was not amounting to that.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Right? And although I don't blame everything that transpired in my life directly on myself, the truth of the matter is that there was some agency involved in that. Right? And so to the extent that my agency was part and parcel the contributor to the outcome, I needed to reevaluate that. I needed to look at that anew.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And so that moment for me became a testing space. I even came across mister Eric Erickson. I see you got his Gandhi's Truth book over there. His his writings were helpful to me as well. But I think when I tell people this last time, because I went back to prison after fifteen years and never thinking I would find myself in a cage again.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And I remember getting to this place where I was like, I'm not healed. I hear the word, but I don't know the process for me. And whatever this healing thing is that all these people keep telling me about that I need to have, I've gotta find it. Come hell or high water, I need to heal. Whatever that means.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And it just kept it led me to this notion of, yeah, I needed to embrace all of who I am as a human being. I only saw myself as this very physical entity. And this other part of me, this sentient part, I had not I'd I'd never explored. It was uncharted territory. And so that's when I prompted when I I started really exploring, what is what is this emotion?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Conclusion is I came to the the idea that an emotion was a message. All it is is a message telling me how I'm experiencing the world around me. And if I'm not tuned into that, I'm not fully reading all of the signals that I need to gauge how to navigate. Right? And and then the last thing I'll say on that is the best thing I tell people, the best thing that I could have done for myself was to get an emotional vocabulary.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I had seen these lists of words that sometimes you go into the therapist and they give you or the smiley faces or the faces. And I've seen it, but I didn't really pay attention to it. I didn't really see it. I saw it, but I didn't see it. And when I looked at it anew, I was like, are these just synonyms?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Well, they are synonyms when you go down the list. But I looked at something, I said, oh, under mad, you know, enraged is not the same thing as disturbed. So there's gradations to my emotional experience. Wow. I can have nuance.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:So it's not just I'm boiling hot with anger. I I could be disturbed. And that is an expression of anger. That that is an indicator that something is amiss in my life. Something is something is causing me a disease.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And I need to look at that. But I didn't have that sophistication. I didn't have that nuance. And that to me was my liberation. Getting to that place where I could fully make contact with me.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:That was my the cage wasn't my cage, really. It was the fear, the shame, the the anxiety that I was living in with in my head with mostly based on what I thought you were thinking about me or how I thought you were feeling about me. That was my real prison. And that's the case that I needed to break free
Jim Crosby:from. We
Stacie Freasier:are at the fifteen minute left mark folks. You are tuned in to Nonviolent Austin Radio Hour. We are with guest Jenna St. David this month to talk about the nonviolent brain. Thank you, brother Rob.
Stacie Freasier:You always bring authentic truth of experience to the conversation and that takes us out of intellectualism, which is a disease of white supremacy culture. And thank you Jenna St. David for bringing in poetry and creative expression and accessibility. Again, through that lens of there are ways of accessing the truth that are beyond just the brain paradoxically.
Gena St. David:Well, maybe beyond cognition alone because so much more is happening in the brain than simply cognition.
Stacie Freasier:Oh, that's beautiful. So I wanna give you the opportunity and Jim always comes with beautiful questions. And Jim, I'd like for you to perhaps prompt one more question. And, Jenna, I would like to my question for you in this remaining time we have together is, what did you learn on this journey as a nonviolentist? And then what have you creatively envisioned as your perhaps next stepping stones on your walk in this body of practice?
Jim Crosby:You want me to throw out a hodgepodge and you can pick and choose?
Jim Crosby:Sure.
Jim Crosby:And and keep that one in mind? So I wanted to hear the mama story from Lyle because it was such a vivid mental image to me. Plugging me right into Roadrunner and Coyote, but Wile E. Coyote. But David on Ubuntu and forgiveness, Gladys, empathy for poachers, whole I mean, your your Israel Palestine context is, you know, much more than we can deal with, obviously, but, huge.
Jim Crosby:And Tim on nonviolence and and Sufism. So any of those you wanted to grab and and take hold of. And the last thing that just occurred to me, Rob used the word liberation, his own liberation. And I was thinking about your last of those seven terms, integration. What's the relation of liberation and integration?
Gena St. David:Oh, is a great yes. Well, you you named such meaningful stories from the book readers to go take in these incredible people and their stories and find common themes and patterns because, you know, each individual is so different and also our bodies and our brains is what we hold in common. We and we have so much more in common than we are different. And so, yeah, those stories are so inspiring. And a common theme is something that brother Rob was just talking about related to emotion and that kind of being the starting place for the spiral staircase for all the other steps.
Gena St. David:And what you were saying, brother Rob, made me think of Dan Siegel also says name it to tame it and finding the right word for what we're feeling, what we're questioning, what we're desiring and finding words to put that into communication to somebody else who can partner with us then and thinking about how do I then imagine what a new life could look like. And I wondered that was the next step in that staircase was feel, question, speak, then imagine that body. Maybe I could have more nonviolence in my life. Maybe I could be a part of a more nonviolent world. And I I wonder, Rob, how did you come to imagine that something new could even be possible?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I mean, I think that's exactly what I did. I imagined. I mean, there was no other way. I saw other people around me and I was curious. I heard words from other people and they prompted me to think, what do you mean?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Just things like love. When somebody would say, I thought love was a fictition. I didn't believe in love. I didn't believe that relationships needed to be I thought it was a European concept that had been created to trick me. Forgiveness.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Ideas like forgiveness. People used them so much. I didn't they didn't have meaning for me. And so I had to really ask myself, and I think that's I'll go there with that my response. I think at the end of the day, it boiled down to me, who do I wanna be in this world?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And as I looked around at the panoramic, you know, imagery of of great heroes from my past, I saw many striking examples of human beings that impressed me in ways that people in the contemporary time didn't present examples to me. So looking back, because that's what I had to do, it gave me the ability to look forward. And when I saw people in our history who showed up and some of them were violent, some of them were not violent, but they were all very human and they gave me a sense of what it could be for me to be human. And I had a choice now. I could select which one of those examples most resonates with the desire that I have to be in this world.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:And it was truly a matter of experimentation. I could not get to this new version of myself unless I tried other ways. But I'll tell you, lastly, you know, a great deal of it was intellectual because I got to a place once where I contemplated what I now know is a final decision solution. Right? Well, if people with that body are my enemy, then all of them need to be removed.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:I thought about it. Are people with that body really my enemy? Because the thing that I don't like in that body, I'm seeing in other bodies too. So it can't be the body. You know?
Robert Tyrone Lilly:So bringing the plane in for a landing, I looked back and I saw examples from other people that became a catalyst for me to see myself in a new way.
Gena St. David:This is Yes. Thank you so much.
Jim Crosby:And I feel so close to you in the stories that you've
Gena St. David:shared and they resonate with me too. This is the power of stories that are in the book. And I would leave with the idea that we all need a community of people who can imagine a nonviolent future with us and partner in experimenting with us and trying out small experiments.
Stacie Freasier:What are you curious to explore next?
Gena St. David:Well, experimenting with nonviolence toward animals has been an important domain for me. And I'm learning a lot about myself in my relationship with animals through eating vegan, for instance, through trying to gently help the little critters in my home to leave my home nonviolently. And not that I think that I'm making a huge impact. That's not about that. It's about what happens inside me when I practice that non violence towards animals or somebody who's even more vulnerable than me.
Gena St. David:And then I am hoping that that is gonna create ripple effects in terms of how I am in relationship with the planet and certainly with other human beings and with myself. And so I am looking these days to have these conversations with more friends and community where we can resource each other exactly like Rob was saying, because our mirror networks will, you know, we will mirror each other and then that ripple effect will continue to grow.
Stacie Freasier:How can folks be in community with you, Jenna? Online, where can people find your work?
Gena St. David:Yes, So I am active online in social media. My website is my name and, I'm, connecting with people all over the world who are this is really becoming a global movement and conversation. And I'm so glad you are helping bring it to Austin and further it here. It is absolutely global.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Do we have any announcements?
Stacie Freasier:That's what was gonna say. How can you be in community with us? Well, continue to listen to our monthly show. Listen go back and listen to the archived conversations. We are 18 episodes in.
Stacie Freasier:Is that right?
Jim Crosby:Think so. Woo hoo. Woo hoo. Yeah.
Stacie Freasier:Our organizing home continues to be the nonviolent Austin Facebook group. We have a website out there that folks can send us a message and contact us that way. And, we are truly a participatory consensus based open door come in and contribute as you wish.
Jim Crosby:And every Friday, we still gather in front of the Capitol on 11th Street sidewalk, from four to five. So try to do that year round and a handful of us there singing and holding banners and signs.
Robert Tyrone Lilly:Yep. And one last thing I wanna say, if this conversation today has been stimulating to your soul, then we wanna encourage you to be a contributor to the the station that brings this to the to the airs and that's Co op Radio ninety one point seven. We we would appreciate you being a sustaining giver. We cannot do this without your contribution. We appreciate you so much.
Stacie Freasier:And that contribution can be time. I started I'm a volunteer here. We're all volunteers. And there's a monthly volunteer orientation. So coop.org is one of our organizing homes.
Stacie Freasier:So thank y'all and we'll
Robert Tyrone Lilly:see you
Stacie Freasier:Happy New Year. It's gonna be what we make it. Jim, take us out and tell us what you're taking us out on.
Jim Crosby:More of, other folks' shoes. And this started out, I think I've been reading some stuff. You mentioned Dorothy Day a time or two in the book. I had been reading some of either stuff about her or by her. And but then I got to adding in ideas from Martin Buber I was reading at the time.
Jim Crosby:I think the tree part in this song is about from from him is right inspired by him. But also just the teachers, the nurses, the folks that I knew and worked with. She was white haired when I met her, a little bit bent over. Know thyself, she told me, and to thine own self be true. But I didn't have to know her long to learn the simple lesson.
Jim Crosby:She'd become the self she was wearing other folks' shoes. She taught them in their schools, healed them in their clinics, fed them bread when they were hungry and water when they was dry. She'd laugh when they were happy, cried when they were crying, lived right with them in their living, died a little when they died. She'd seen the world when she was young with Dickens, Twain, and Shakespeare, Steinbeck, Marx, and Chekhov, and Dostoevsky too. She'd picketed and slept in cells, mourned the dead, loved them well, sawing her hands with the stuff of life wearing other folks' shoes.
Jim Crosby:Well, it's other folks' shoes, it's other folks' shoes.
Jim Crosby:It's walking in their moccasins of mine, maybe two. It's knowing yourself, forgetting yourself, seeing what yourself would do if you walked around this world a while, other goat shoes. She said, when I draw a tree, you know, or write a poem about it, I become that tree a while, else I can't get it right. I lose myself, forget myself, no oneness with that other, like walking in the deep forest on the darkest, stillest night. And when I'm with another, a woman, man or child, I try to really listen right through the words for truth.
Jim Crosby:The kind you see in the narrowed eyes, it blinks back a tear, the kind you know when you feel the pinch of other folks' shoes. Well, it's other folks' shoes, it's other folks' shoes. It's walking in their moccasins of mouth, maybe two. It's knowing yourself, forgetting yourself, seeing what yourself would do if you walked around this world awhile in other foe shoes. Dedicate this last verse to Joey Lee, Rob Reiner, and Michelle.
Jim Crosby:She's dead now, been dead a while, I'm still left here living. But every time I think of her, I know just what to do. Yeah, I'll get down and feel depressed and then I'll see her smiling. Know it's time I spend some time wearing other folks' shoes.
Jim Crosby:Well, it's other folks' shoes, it's other folks' shoes.
Jim Crosby:So walking in their moccasins a mile, maybe two, it's knowing yourself, forgetting yourself, seeing what yourself would do. If you walked around this world awhile in other folks shoes, yeah walk around the world awhile Other boat shoot. Try walking around this world a while. Boat shoot.