Photo by Texas Isaiah
Prentis Hemphill (They/Them) is unearthing the connections between healing, community accountability and our most inspired visions for social transformation. Prentis is a therapist, somatics teacher and facilitator, political organizer, writer and the founder of The Embodiment Institute. For over 10 years, Prentis has been working with individuals and organizations during their most challenging moments of change; navigating leadership transitions, conflict, and realigning practice with values. All of this Prentis does through an embodied approach, ensuring that our intentions and ideas can be lived out and practiced in our lives and through our bodies.
Before founding The Embodiment Institute, Prentis was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network and a lead somatics teacher with generative somatics, an organization committed to bringing politicized somatics to movement building, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), a group dedicated to rebuilding Black movement infrastructure, for the past seven years. Prentis holds a M.A. in Clinical Psychology and has worked in low cost mental health clinics offering therapeutic services to marginalized people. In 2016, Prentis was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought.
Prentis’ work has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Shondaland. Prentis is a contributor to The Politics of Trauma by Staci K. Haines, as well as You are Your Best Thing edited by Brené Brown and Tarana Burke, and Holding Change by adrienne maree brown. Prentis is the host and creator of the popular podcast, Finding Our Way entering its third season in 2022. Finding Our Way entered the iTunes Top 100 podcasts chart in its first week and has over 450k downloads to date.
Fundamentally their work is to disrupt the complacency and comfort of mainstream healing and therapeutic models and infuse what we know of justice, repair, and accountability into our deepest work of transformation. Their belief is that the reclamation of feeling and relationship makes room for justice in our lives and in our world. Prentis currently lives on a small farm in Durham, NC with their partner, Kasha, their child, and two dogs, on land first loved and stewarded by the Saponi people and near where Prentis’ ancestors first arrived to Turtle Island.
On June 4th 2024 their highly anticipated book What It Takes To Heal, will debut on Penguin Random House.
I AM A TEACHER, AN EMBODIMENT COACH, A WRITER, AND AN EXPERIENCED GROUP AND CONFLICT FACILITATOR, WHO HOLDS THE IMPORTANCE OF INTIMATE, BODY-CENTERED TRANSFORMATION AS KEY TO HEALING AND KEY TO JUSTICE.
Finding Our Way
Finding Our Way is a conversation between Prentis and activists, artists, and leaders to discuss how to realize the world we want through our own healing and transformation.
This isn’t a podcast about answers.
It is an exploration into ourselves, and the skills we need to create and embody the world we want. Throughout the first season, we’ll be diving into topics like embodiment, boundaries, harm, and creativity. It will be a space to share struggles, mistakes, and distill some lessons learned from our journeys up to this point.
SUSTAIN THE WORK
My work is an active intervention to transform the lived experience of Blackness in our world. And in order to actively intervene and transform the experience of Black life, on every level, our movements and our organizations, I value the wisdom of healing justice. My work as a writer and healing practitioner is deeply rooted in intuition and ancestral practice. If you feel called and aligned to support this vision, please join my Patreon. This space has been created to help me sustain resources, space, time, and energy to continue producing meaningful contributions to movement.
Tender enough to feel
Present enough to witness
Humble enough to listen
Courageous enough to act
Accountable enough to change