196 - Rusia Mohiuddin - People Are The Source Of All Power
"It's not optimism; it's just an inner knowing that more people love than not." - Rusia Mohiuddin
I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of amazing folks. Believe me when I say there's something special about the frequency from which Rusia Mohiuddin operates. She's tapped into a universal rhythm that, in simplest terms, is the deep understanding that people are the source of all power. If that level of embodiment comes across as too lofty for the "average" person to access, allow Rusia to share another vital facet of her being: "I have a potty mouth like a true New Yorker as well." That's what showing up as your whole self is all about.
As founder and principal of Universal Partnership (UP), Rusia combines her vast experience as a master trainer, facilitator, and somatic coach with generational wisdom––the lived understanding that social movements require holistic foundations to achieve healthy momentum. Her work uniquely introduces the practice of somatics into an agency's organizational & organizing practices. UP provides these innovative self-healing tools and life and leadership skills to support movement workers in sustaining their humanity and the humanity of the communities they serve by organizing from a place of wholeness.
Let's revisit the lofty-sounding ideal that people are the source of all power. Note how Rusia centers on the cooperative rather than the singular. Individualism (especially here in the US) is killing us. "If everything, all the ecosystems on earth, are reliant––our bodies and the ecosystems within them are reliant––why would all this reliancy then create societal systems that are unaligned and not reliant on each other, that's actually reliant on the suffering and the oppression of most of us?" Hell if I know, but here we are, in the wake of every -ism coming before us.
There IS one -ism that can save us: collectivism. Us. The people with the power. It's a lesson handed down to Rusia through her elders, and we all have access to similar wisdom if we commit to relearning its language. "You do enough practice to change yourself, to be more acutely aligned, the more openly you can feel the enormity of love, the enormity of people wanting to do good, the enormity of people wanting to be connected."
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
CWH007: Meditation - Just Do It Already!
Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition
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Rusia N. Mohiuddin’s mother raised her children with this as a foundation for understanding the world & what united peoples were capable of doing. Rusia, based in New York, is a master trainer, facilitator, & somatic coach who pioneered the integration of somatics into an organizing framework. Her current mission, through Universal Partnership, has been developing a holistic model for social justice change work that places in its center the necessary transformation of social change agents.