VIRTUAL SUMMIT
Leaning into Liberatory Practice:
Bringing Love + Relationality Back Into Therapy
What does it mean to resist perpetuating colonial harms, and integrate liberatory practices by centering collective care, liberatory imagination, and anti-oppressive ethics?
Access 5 days of resistance-led insights for therapeutic practice, soul-nourishing conversations, & resources for practical integration.
We’re not kidding when we say
soul-nourishing...
Check out your 5-day line up.
Videos are available to access through the end of 2024.
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Bhupie Dulay & Abby Chow | Connective Intentions: Roots of Shared Liberatory Practice
Kick off the summit with us as we explore the intentions and roots of shared liberatory practice, influential thinkers and dreamers that shaped our development, and the most impactful lessons we’ve learned to date.
Rachel Ricketts | All About Love…As Activism
Addressing bell hooks' definition of love as the foundation for radical change, community care, accountability and transformative justice in our individual and collective lives.
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Jennifer-Lee Koble | Decolonize? We are not there yet...
An invitation to connection and practice, rather than tips and tricks. How do we lean into relationship, wisdom, and fullness; embrace the unknown, resist fixing and knowing and instead BE.
Gabes Torres | Revolutionary Healing in the Global South
This talk will explore the tendency to centralize the West's methodologies of healing, and what to do with this tendency. We will then look at how healing spaces in the global South have looked like, with more attention to the colonized islands of the Philippines. What can we learn from the islands about healing, without taking a consumerist, 'gaze-y' approach? How can we learn about the intersection of healing and justice practices from teachers who live in the most stifled and oppressed parts of the world? How can communities and practitioners in the West integrate these models of care in their own practices and spaces?
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Ji-Youn Kim | Intro to Disability Justice & Mad Liberation in Therapeutic Practice
What is wellness and mental health without addressing disability & madness? Ableism and sanism are too often dismissed in anti-oppressive discourse without the recognition of how abled supremacy is at the core of so many systems of oppression. Given how the mental health industry is built upon categories of normal and deviant, healthy and unhealthy, this conversation offers an introduction to understanding and analyzing mental health and therapeutic practice through Disability Justice and Mad Liberation.
Xu Wang | Ambiguous Soup: Queering Therapy and Care
In this conversation, you are invited to expand on what we call therapy and relational work through query. With an exploration on how to bring queer therapy to life in our practice, we explore what care is in relation to therapy and how we invite that into our practice.
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Travis Heath | Contemporary Narrative Therapy: Resisting Neoliberalism and Late Capitalism in the Modern World
Individualist ways of relating to the world are so present in our current realities that they often are taken for granted as the only ways of being. Ideas of personal responsibility and the self as a brand or a commodity to be bought and sold can have profound effects on peoples’ lives. This is especially true with the proliferation of social media and other forms of digital branding. Dominant approaches to therapy often unwittingly reinforce neoliberal ideals and story them as mentally healthy (and thus anything that deviates as unhealthy or pathological). In an effort to demonstrate these ideas in practice, this video will highlight work with a couple that attempts to tend to the effects of neoliberalism and late capitalism on the life of their relationship.
Ashley Lagrange | The Personal is Political: Self Disclosure as a Tool for Radical Transparency
This conversation will explore the value of lived experienced providers and the ability to use self disclosure as a means of trust and connection building. Self disclosure will be expanded on as a means of honoring radical transparency and exemplifying to folks the layers of politicization within our identities.
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Bhupie Dulay & Abby Chow | Reflexive Directions Beyond the Talks
Unlearning is generative. Join us as we unpack each conversation further with common themes, sparks of insights, and practical transformations. Get ideas for what’s next in our shared work and how we can dream it into reality.
And beyond:
We will be releasing a bonus video with Vikki Reynolds in the coming months further informing the lineages of resistance we’re connected to in our work. Stay tuned for updates!
Vikki Reynolds | Activist Orientations and Histories of Liberatory Practice and Revolutionary Love (Nov 2024)
In this dialogue Vikki will engage with Bhupie and Abby around the influences and mentors whose shoulders her work stands on, across time, in relation to Liberatory Practice and enacting Therapeutic Love.
We will circle around Popular Education movement and teachings of Revolutionary Love which Paulo Freire describes as solidarity with others and commitment to their cause. We will touch on the history of Ignacio Martín-Baró being executed by an American backed Salvadoran Death Squad in the 1980’s, and why he was so dangerous to oppressive rulers was his call for Liberation, in all sectors of life including our work. Martín-Baró said, “In order to have a Liberatory Psychology, Psychology must first be liberated” and taught that resistance to political violence and torture is never individual, but always social and an act of communal love. And we will also touch on how The Mothers of the Disappeared of Argentina inspired and educated Vikki's practice in framing love as a liberatory communal practice of solidarity, courage and dignity.
These threads have interwoven love, dignity, and liberatory practice as community projects and profoundly influenced Vikki's frame of justice-doing in community work.
The speakers
you’re unlearning with:
Rachel Ricketts
All About Love…As Activism
Rachel Ricketts (she/they) is a queer, disabled and multiracial Black woman. She is a spiritual abolitionist, alchemist & award-nominated author of the international instant bestseller DO BETTER: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy, and the mindfulness picture book - and Read with Jenna pick – ALL I NEED TO BE - for kids and inner kids alike.
As an intersectional social justice leader, collective mirror and healer she supports individuals and organizations learning to lead with love and center Black and Indigenous femmes to support collective change, healing and liberation.
She has helped numerous global brands and organizations including Google, WeWork and Buzzfeed and was named one of well+good’s 2020 Changemakers.
Rachel & her work have been featured on Good Morning America, Today, the New York Times, Essence, The Root, People, Forbes, The Atlantic, Elle, Glamour UK & more.
She loves donuts, dancing, divinity & disruption (ideally all at once).
Learn more at www.rachelricketts.com and @iamrachelricketts
Jennifer-Lee Koble
Decolonize? We are not there yet…
Jennifer-Lee Koble (she/her) is Métis/Cree on her mom’s line and German on her dad’s. She was born on traditional lands of the Cree, Saulteaux, Dene, Dakota, Lakota, Nakota, and Métis peoples. She is mother to three amazing adults, an Auntie, daughter, sister, niece, cousin, partner, and friend. These relationships anchor her - providing daily responsibilities, learnings and joy.
Jennifer-Lee is currently living, working and raising her family on the stolen traditional, ancestral homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh peoples. She earned a BSW and MSW from UBC School of Social Work and has a clinical practice supporting Indigenous community members in the healing from the historic and ongoing impacts of colonization. Jennifer-Lee provides clinical consultation; 1:1 and small group, to white and IBPoC therapists wanting to expand their practice lens beyond the colonial education they have received and develop greater accountability and an embodied connection to living on stolen lands. Jennifer-Lee has been invited to facilitate her Anti-Indigenous Racism workshops in the health, education, social services and private sectors for many years. Since 2020 Jennifer-Lee has been learning from and facilitating Somatic Abolitionism workshops with Resmaa Menakem.
Jennifer-Lee’s has been guided by teachings from many Elders, knowledge keepers and truth speakers thru her life. Her strong, heart-centred voice comes from the deep connections she experiences with her Métis kin and Ancestors.
Gabes Torres
Revolutionary Healing in the Global South
Gabes Torres (she/siya) is a mental health practitioner, grassroots organizer, and writer based in the global South. Her clinical practice and research focus on collective and intergenerational trauma, and the psychological implications and stress from imperialism, racism, climate catastrophes, and human rights violations. Gabes writes stories on mental health and international solidarity at Yes! Magazine. Her passion is to elevate communities and models of collective flourishing within and beyond the West.
Instagram, Threads, and Twitter: @gabestorres
Ji-Youn Kim
Intro to Disability Justice & Mad Liberation in Therapeutic Practice
Ji-Youn (they/she) is a queer, relatively non-disabled Corean femme, immigrant and settler, joy-seeker, liberatory dreamer, psych survivor, justice-oriented therapist-ish and ongoing creation of community. Born in Bucheon, Korea, they grew up and continue to live on the unceded territories of Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in what is colonially known as Vancouver, Canada, which shapes their relationships with land, kinship, sovereignty and co-resistance. Ji-Youn works in private/alternative practice in relationships with predominantly Sick & Disabled QTBIPOC client community members with the orientation of therapy-sh as a space to practice embodied liberatory practices in the spirit of collective liberation.
In recent years, she has also been teaching about abolitionist mental health care, the mental health industrial complex and the blurring of the categorization of therapy. Their practices are informed by Black & Indigenous feminist scholars, Disability Justice & Transformative Justice educators, abolitionists and organizers, as well as their lived experiences of mental illness/Madness and psychiatric incarceration.
Xu Wang
Ambiguous Soup: Queering Therapy and Care
Xu (They/Them) is a non-binary, queer, 1.5 generation Chinese-Canadian immigrant settler, residing on the unceded traditional territories of hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh peoples (known colonially as Burnaby). Additionally, Xu identifies as neurodivergent and mentally ill, while acknowledging privileges of middle-class and able-bodied status. Beyond their role as a counsellor and art therapist, they are also a parent to a kindergartener, navigating the chaotic yet magical experience of parenthood. As an avid artist, they find joy in diverse creative pursuits, such as caring for plants and animals, painting, collaging, cooking, and immersing myself in the captivating worlds of video games. Born in Kunming, China, raised by their grandmother for most of their early childhood, they began to immerse themself in art making. Their grandmother was a painter, and the first person to model for them resilience and healing.
Travis Heath
Contemporary Narrative Therapy: Resisting Neoliberalism and Late Capitalism in the Modern World
Travis is a licensed psychologist and is an Associate Professor at San Diego State University where he serves as Chair of the Department of Counseling & School Psychology. Past work he's been involved with looked at shifting from a multicultural approach to counseling to one of cultural democracy that invites people to heal in mediums that are culturally near. His most recent work involves incorporating the work of Black abolitionist scholars into psychotherapy, community healing, and uprising.
His writing has focused on the use of rap music in narrative therapy, working with persons entangled in the criminal injustice system in ways that maintain their dignity, narrative practice stories as pedagogy, a co-created questioning practice called reunion questions, and community healing strategies. He is co-author, with David Epston and Tom Carlson, of the first book on Contemporary Narrative Therapy released in June 2022 entitled, "Reimagining Narrative Therapy Through Practice Stories and Autoethnography." The book is part of the "Writing Lives" series with Routledge publishing. He also completed a video series of his clinical work in June of 2024 for Psychotherapy.net entitled, "Reimagining Multiculturalism: A Contemporary Narrative Approach." Travis has been fortunate to facilitate workshops and speak in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong, India, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, United Kingdom, and United States.
Ashley Lagrange
The Personal is Political: Self Disclosure as a Tool for Radical Transparency
Ashley M. Lagrange (They/Them) is a Queer, Neurodivergent, Non-binary, Fat, Black, Dominican-American Femme therapist with a passion for helping folks develop and navigate Liberatory practices. They have worked with adults and teens who seek a space to explore their identities and impact on the world at large. Ashley is passionate about the collective Liberation of all LGBTQIA+ identifying folks through the power of radical vulnerability, self-reflection, and community connection. They seek to guide folks through their emotional processing through a collective lens that honors individual experience.
Vikki Reynolds
Activist Orientations and Histories of Liberatory Practice and Revolutionary Love
Vikki Reynolds (PhD RCC) is an activist/ therapist and community organizer who works to bridge the worlds of social justice activism with community work and therapy. Vikki is a white settler on the territories of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh and Musqueam nations. Vikki's people are Irish and English folks, and she is a heterosexual woman with cisgender privilege. Her experience includes supervision and therapy with People with Lived/Living Experience and other workers responding to the drug poisoning catastrophe, refugees and survivors of torture - including Indigenous people who have survived residential schools and other state violence, sexualized violence counsellors, mental health and substance misuse counsellors, housing and shelter workers, activists and working alongside gender and sexually diverse communities. Vikki is an Adjunct Professor and has written and presented internationally. Articles & speaks free at: www.vikkireynolds.ca
Click Through to See What’s Included:
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Insights for Therapeutic Practice
5 days of soul-nourishing conversations and resistance-led insights for therapeutic practice
Dive deep into the world of liberatory practice with key thinkers and liberatory dreamers in the therapeutic space. These soul-nourishing conversations will give you resistance-led insights for therapeutic practice, guiding you in building contextual consciousness, and implementing liberatory practice in your work, beyond DEI.
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Foundational Resources Unveiled
Foundational Resources Unveiled
We're sharing the foundational touchstones that have radically shaped our practice. Cut through the overwhelm of leaning into this work by mapping your own journey of resistance and liberatory practice to collective wisdom. You and your practice are one in the same, get support in redefining your relationship to social justice.
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Unlimited Access
Unlimited Access
Access unlimited viewing of all conversations and presentations whenever and wherever you want, now and through 2024. Revisit this work as you unpack what it means to engage in liberatory practice, at your own pace.
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Connect with Community
Connect with Community
Start conversations and build relationships with practitioners who share your collective ethics through our dedicated Justice in Action discord channel. Because liberatory practice is collective practice. You are not in this work alone
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Accessibility Supported
Accessibility Supported
All conversations and presentations come with transcripts and image descriptions, and are created with body-centered capacity in mind. Engage with us on your way to work, going for a walk, or doing chores around the house.
For therapists, by therapists.
Learn from communities of resistance to address systemic oppression in therapeutic practice, build contextual consciousness, and realign with collective ethics.
This summit has been created by therapists for therapists. Connect with what it means to radicalize our practice with love & relationality, resist perpetuating colonial harms, and integrate liberatory practices into our work by centering collective care, liberatory imagination, and anti-oppressive practices in therapy.
The All Access Pass:
With the All-Access Pass, you'll get unlimited access through 2024, to all of the conversations and presentations from the Leaning into Liberatory Practice Summit.
Once you enroll, you'll get an email with login instructions. Set up your password and you're in! If you’re logging in with us in real time, the video module will drip each day. Make sure you engage with our discord community as you go through the material!
Your hosts,
Bhupie Dulay and Abby Chow
Bhupie Dulay (she/her)
Bhupie is a settler who was born and raised on the stolen unceded, ancestral territories of the Semiahmoo, sq̓əc̓iy̓aɁɬ təməxʷ (Katzie), Kwantlen, kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), Qayqayt, and sc̓əwaθenaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsawwassen) Nations; and her ancestors are from India. She is a cis, currently non-disabled, middle class, fat woman.
Currently, Bhupie works as a therapist, supervisor, professor, and consultant. She is honoured to work alongside people and communities navigating and resisting systemic violence individually, within relationships, and communally. These experiences and her lived/living experiences have shaped her personally and in the work. She strives to be moving towards liberation in her work, relationships, and communities. What that looks like has shifted over the years and right now its about being in relationality and connection, and re-imagining/embodying a generative relationship with accountability.
Over the last decade in counselling/psychology Bhupie has noticed a shift where practitioners are heavily focused on modality and interventions and moving away from the relational aspects of therapy. She is thrilled about this summit as she hopes it will support folx currently doing this work in a more relational manner but also invite us to reconsider how we are engaging in the therapeutic space.
Abby Chow (she/her)
is an explorer of wonder and possibilities, witnessing and co-creating with the magic that still manages to survive this dumpster fire world, aspiring to be a human database and connective force for this revolutionary work. Her ancestors come from roots in Chaozhou and Nanjing, and a lineage of creating sneaky practices to survive necropolitics, poverty, and refugeeism.
She is a cis-queer, half-gen, working-turned-middle class settler from Hong Kong currently occupying the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), S'ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Qayqayt, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples and navigates the world in a currently non-disabled, straight-sized body, living with chronic pain and ADHD.
Her work primarily involves providing clinical supervision and justice-oriented operations consulting to practitioners and agencies, while supporting graduate programs as an adjunct faculty member and Healing in Colour as an operations and council member.
Your unlearning gives back
Aside from compensating speakers for their work, proceeds from the Leaning into Liberatory Practice summit will also go towards supporting lower cost counselling for SDQTBIPOC+ folx at Prospect Counselling and local mutual aid efforts in so-called BC.
