The Black Box News had the opportunity to digitally interview Rochelle Jamila and learn even more about her Outta Box Genius.
She has shared some spiritually sound words that we are excited to share with you below!
She has shared some spiritually sound words that we are excited to share with you below!
Photo: Still from "cotton root(werq)" (2019), by Rochelle Jamila
What are your first childhood memories centered around movement as a healing practice?
"I think the earliest memories of movement as healing are from ballet class and going to church and school. My family didn’t dance much, so my earliest experiences with healing movement were outside of my home. My family attended the same church my entire childhood (and to this day), so I grew up swaying and clapping and feeling the spirit every Sunday. I never thought of this as “dance” when I was growing up, but now I realize churchgoing was an embodied spiritual practice. Church first taught me the spiritual power of music and rhythm. Around the same time I was in afterschool programs and went to school dances, where we danced for fun, played little Sally Walker and games like that. These moments taught me dance as a play, to move my pelvis freely, and also the proverbial cipher/circle of dance. All this happened before I turned 8 or 9. This was my exposure to dance through my community.
On another hand, I started taking ballet when I was three years old and it quickly became the axis around which my artistic life revolved. Growing up in a southern and very Christian influenced ballet studio, I learned from an early age that dance is a way of connecting to God or a higher power. There was a bible verse painted in huge letters across the back wall of one of our studios: “Praise him with timbrel and dance.” I learned early on the magic of formalized dancing with other young women, how dance can cultivate community and sisterhood. In a very segregated city, some of my closest friendships were with white girls I grew up doing ballet with. To me that’s amazing, because there aren’t a ton of places in Memphis that you see Black and white youth form intimacy like that. That has long been an incredibly powerful part of dance for me, how it cultivates connection. It is a technology for us to connect with spirit and one another. "
"I think the earliest memories of movement as healing are from ballet class and going to church and school. My family didn’t dance much, so my earliest experiences with healing movement were outside of my home. My family attended the same church my entire childhood (and to this day), so I grew up swaying and clapping and feeling the spirit every Sunday. I never thought of this as “dance” when I was growing up, but now I realize churchgoing was an embodied spiritual practice. Church first taught me the spiritual power of music and rhythm. Around the same time I was in afterschool programs and went to school dances, where we danced for fun, played little Sally Walker and games like that. These moments taught me dance as a play, to move my pelvis freely, and also the proverbial cipher/circle of dance. All this happened before I turned 8 or 9. This was my exposure to dance through my community.
On another hand, I started taking ballet when I was three years old and it quickly became the axis around which my artistic life revolved. Growing up in a southern and very Christian influenced ballet studio, I learned from an early age that dance is a way of connecting to God or a higher power. There was a bible verse painted in huge letters across the back wall of one of our studios: “Praise him with timbrel and dance.” I learned early on the magic of formalized dancing with other young women, how dance can cultivate community and sisterhood. In a very segregated city, some of my closest friendships were with white girls I grew up doing ballet with. To me that’s amazing, because there aren’t a ton of places in Memphis that you see Black and white youth form intimacy like that. That has long been an incredibly powerful part of dance for me, how it cultivates connection. It is a technology for us to connect with spirit and one another. "
Photo: A Still from "ritual for a 5th world" (2020), by Rochelle Jamila
It’s quite common for art practitioners and healers to begin diving into practice through the passing down of knowledge from a ‘long line of teachers, conjurers, caregivers, and earth tenders’. Is there a time when you realized specifically that your path into becoming a doula, herbalist, reiki practitioner, and or dancer became your own and one with your being?
"It took me some time to connect the threads between my wellness and healing practices and ancestral practices in my lineage. When I started studying herbalism, it was something I had never been exposed to in Memphis. My parents are city folks and academic folks. When I ask the right questions now, I can find answers, however I was not exposed to herbalism much in my childhood. What I can say deeply influenced my devotion to nature is that I spent a lot of time visiting friends and their families in the rural areas outside of Memphis. Pretty much every summer I was visiting someone’s grandparents or home in rural Mississippi or West Tennessee or Arkansas. Honestly, even some parts of the city in Memphis can feel quite rural. I spent a lot of time outdoors and I felt spirit around me.
Eventually my herbal studies aligned so that I learned Black southern herbal traditions, and I was like “oh, so we’ve been doing this and it’s been forgotten by many of us because of migration, assimilation, disconnection from the land.” There was a time when the only medicine most Black folks could afford was herbal or “root doctoring.” Traditionally Black midwives, mothers, femmes, and some menfolk held herbal wisdom. We also have practices of “laying hands on” that are very similar to Reiki or other modalities of hands on energy healing. When I considered and learned more of my history, it became clear that this is my legacy even if for some generations my elders forgot it.
On another note, I am on the healing path out of necessity rather than luxury. Since I was a child I have felt grief for the Earth. In my adult life I arrived at a place of feeling quite depressed. I went on a psychedelic journey after college where the Earth pulled me into her embrace. That trip was a turning point for me. Afterwards, I began shifting and reorienting my life to honor earth based healing. My practices help me to heal, and I want to share this healing with others. "
"It took me some time to connect the threads between my wellness and healing practices and ancestral practices in my lineage. When I started studying herbalism, it was something I had never been exposed to in Memphis. My parents are city folks and academic folks. When I ask the right questions now, I can find answers, however I was not exposed to herbalism much in my childhood. What I can say deeply influenced my devotion to nature is that I spent a lot of time visiting friends and their families in the rural areas outside of Memphis. Pretty much every summer I was visiting someone’s grandparents or home in rural Mississippi or West Tennessee or Arkansas. Honestly, even some parts of the city in Memphis can feel quite rural. I spent a lot of time outdoors and I felt spirit around me.
Eventually my herbal studies aligned so that I learned Black southern herbal traditions, and I was like “oh, so we’ve been doing this and it’s been forgotten by many of us because of migration, assimilation, disconnection from the land.” There was a time when the only medicine most Black folks could afford was herbal or “root doctoring.” Traditionally Black midwives, mothers, femmes, and some menfolk held herbal wisdom. We also have practices of “laying hands on” that are very similar to Reiki or other modalities of hands on energy healing. When I considered and learned more of my history, it became clear that this is my legacy even if for some generations my elders forgot it.
On another note, I am on the healing path out of necessity rather than luxury. Since I was a child I have felt grief for the Earth. In my adult life I arrived at a place of feeling quite depressed. I went on a psychedelic journey after college where the Earth pulled me into her embrace. That trip was a turning point for me. Afterwards, I began shifting and reorienting my life to honor earth based healing. My practices help me to heal, and I want to share this healing with others. "
Photo: A Still from "ritual for a 5th world" (2020), by Rochelle Jamila
What is a Reiki practitioner? When did you feel called to take up such a unique path?
"Reiki is a Japanese technique of hands on energy healing. Practitioners channel light energy through their hands with touch or distance to the receiver as a way of helping balance the energetic body. Each of us has an energetic body in addition to our physical body. You might be familiar with the chakras from yogic traditions or meridians in Traditional Chinese Medicine. These are different structures in your energetic body. Reiki channels healing energy into these and other energy systems to offer relief for stress, pain, or even trouble sleeping.
Energy medicine changed my life…
Even before I became a Reiki practitioner I learned how to balance my chakras. This practice became one of my favorite self-care tools and motivated me to learn more about other energy healing practices such as Reiki. I also practiced meditation and knew that Reiki incorporated a lot of the same principles. I was blessed to find a training with a Fillipino Reiki master Maui Villapondo, that was geared towards BIPOC. Maui does a lot of grassroots healing work in NYC, which inspired my practice as well. I see my practice as an offering to my community."
"Reiki is a Japanese technique of hands on energy healing. Practitioners channel light energy through their hands with touch or distance to the receiver as a way of helping balance the energetic body. Each of us has an energetic body in addition to our physical body. You might be familiar with the chakras from yogic traditions or meridians in Traditional Chinese Medicine. These are different structures in your energetic body. Reiki channels healing energy into these and other energy systems to offer relief for stress, pain, or even trouble sleeping.
Energy medicine changed my life…
Even before I became a Reiki practitioner I learned how to balance my chakras. This practice became one of my favorite self-care tools and motivated me to learn more about other energy healing practices such as Reiki. I also practiced meditation and knew that Reiki incorporated a lot of the same principles. I was blessed to find a training with a Fillipino Reiki master Maui Villapondo, that was geared towards BIPOC. Maui does a lot of grassroots healing work in NYC, which inspired my practice as well. I see my practice as an offering to my community."
Photo: Still from a performance at Queens liberation gathering
What you do feel your greatest lesson has been as a Reiki practitioner as it pertains to your own approach to the history of restorative movement practices within the black community?
"Reiki is such a beautiful practice with a specific lineage, but as soon as I learned it, I realized it was akin to “laying hands on.” That was a very important connection for me to make. There are so many parallels between healing practices that are becoming mainstream and the healing we have always done in Black communities. To me energy healing is about shifting the energy, changing the vibration of a space. That is essentially what dance does. Growing up I saw dance as a site of joy, bliss, jubilation, grief, release. Dance has always been vibrational healing, even if we didn’t use that language to describe it.
So energy healing, and Reiki as just one energy healing technique, is something ancient. I think of dance as one of the most ancient energy techniques we have. To dance all we need is our bodies, the earth beneath our feet, and if we are lucky some music or rhythm. We can even make that rhythm ourselves. We don’t need fancy tools or instruments. Tools are magical and add to the energy work, but dance is energy work anyone can do anytime and anywhere. As Black people we subconsciously know and feel this ancient knowledge in our bones and culture."
"Reiki is such a beautiful practice with a specific lineage, but as soon as I learned it, I realized it was akin to “laying hands on.” That was a very important connection for me to make. There are so many parallels between healing practices that are becoming mainstream and the healing we have always done in Black communities. To me energy healing is about shifting the energy, changing the vibration of a space. That is essentially what dance does. Growing up I saw dance as a site of joy, bliss, jubilation, grief, release. Dance has always been vibrational healing, even if we didn’t use that language to describe it.
So energy healing, and Reiki as just one energy healing technique, is something ancient. I think of dance as one of the most ancient energy techniques we have. To dance all we need is our bodies, the earth beneath our feet, and if we are lucky some music or rhythm. We can even make that rhythm ourselves. We don’t need fancy tools or instruments. Tools are magical and add to the energy work, but dance is energy work anyone can do anytime and anywhere. As Black people we subconsciously know and feel this ancient knowledge in our bones and culture."
With the intersectionality of your healing and performance practice in mind, would you say that accessing your drive to actively create work is easier? Or does it present certain barriers?
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"When I get too literal and overanalyze how to incorporate the two, that presents a challenge. I try to remember that these are not separate or disparate practices: art and healing. They are two faces of the same coin. Art is healing and healing is an art. Sometimes I have to consider how explicit I want to make those connections.
Take herbs, for example. Plant medicine is always a part of any dance I make, but it’s a question of how clear I want to make that to my audience. Sometimes the plant is mainstage, like in my piece cotton rootwerq, where I literally dance amongst raw cotton. But more often, I sit with a plant, working with it as medicine and as a spiritual guide. This influence appears in the work even if the physical plant matter is not present. I made a whole dance about collard greens, the botanical history of collards, greens as a food, the various colloquial meanings of “greens” and “green”, etc. But do you know what? I don’t think anyone who witnessed that piece knew it was inspired by my love of collards! With my healing and birthwork, I initially tried to make them separate from my art practice. My clients, however, encouraged me to share about my dance work. I found they were hungry for and intrigued by dance. Currently, I am in a process of integrating movement more deeply into my womb and birth work. Movement is extremely important for birth and womb healing, so I encourage my clients to move a lot whether that be prenatal yoga, twerking, African dance or improvisation and I try to get them to move with me." |
Photo: Still from "cotton root(werq)" (2019), by Rochelle Jamila
Video : "cotton root(werq)" 2019, by Rochelle Jamila
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How do you utilize your groundwork in herbal and spiritual healing to inform your performance practice with full understanding of the political, social, and artistic boxes black woman bodies are placed in?
"Black women and femmes have always been and will always be magical. That’s that on that. My herbal and spiritual healing work is grounded in ancestral knowledge and historical awareness. Many of the technologies I engage are ancestral practices of Black resistance, resilience, and joy. There is a reason knowledge such as herbalism, birth traditions, food sovereignty, and even African spirituality have been repressed in this nation. Black people’s power exists in connecting to the land and remembering who we are. From dance to herbalism, I hope my work empowers others to heal with the Earth and honor their sacred natures. Many of us have been taught to fear herbal medicine. Can you imagine the power we feel when we look down at the ground, recognize a plant ally, and know how to heal our livers with dandelion or nourish our wombs with red raspberry? What else can you learn to empower yourself and take control of your health? Health is wealth. When we empower ourselves in these seemingly small ways, we are resisting the medical industrial complex, the food industrial complex, and structures of domination such as white supremacy and capitalism. We are remembering how to live in harmony with nature."
"Black women and femmes have always been and will always be magical. That’s that on that. My herbal and spiritual healing work is grounded in ancestral knowledge and historical awareness. Many of the technologies I engage are ancestral practices of Black resistance, resilience, and joy. There is a reason knowledge such as herbalism, birth traditions, food sovereignty, and even African spirituality have been repressed in this nation. Black people’s power exists in connecting to the land and remembering who we are. From dance to herbalism, I hope my work empowers others to heal with the Earth and honor their sacred natures. Many of us have been taught to fear herbal medicine. Can you imagine the power we feel when we look down at the ground, recognize a plant ally, and know how to heal our livers with dandelion or nourish our wombs with red raspberry? What else can you learn to empower yourself and take control of your health? Health is wealth. When we empower ourselves in these seemingly small ways, we are resisting the medical industrial complex, the food industrial complex, and structures of domination such as white supremacy and capitalism. We are remembering how to live in harmony with nature."
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With respect to your private spiritual customs are there any healing and recharging practices that help maintain your creative and personal well-being that you are able to share?
"Some of the simplest practices I have are around water. Drinking lots of water, taking hot showers, taking spiritual baths. Our bodies are mostly water and tapping into the healing energy of this substance is so powerful. There is a reason so many spiritual songs talk about water and rivers. Food is medicine. Eat lots of leafy greens: kale, collards, turnip greens for optimal health. Treat meat as a seasoning. Eat fermented foods like sauerkraut. In the south we have something called chow chow. It’s on my list to learn how to make this and other fermented relishes during quarantine. |
Video :"❀ st. john's wort | after the solstice ❀" (2020), by Rochelle Jamila
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Ritual. There is a book by Sobonfu Some called The Spirit of Intimacy that talks about the beauty of ritual in connecting to spirit and the natural world. Treating my artistic practice as a ritual has been powerful for me. "
You have embarked on a beautiful journey to establish a BIPOC farm to ‘support healing by helping them reconnect with nature’. Can you share what brought you to such a profound journey and what ways to best support you in manifesting this dream?
"Heal with the Land is my baby! Analise, my co-founder, and I came together earlier this year and were amazed to realize we held similar dreams of creating a safe nature oasis for Black people in Tennessee. We are manifesting the funds to buy 40+ acres of land in west Tennessee to create a BIPOC nature sanctuary and retreat. Growing up in Memphis, I rarely enjoyed the natural beauty of our state outside of city limits except when visiting family friends. It’s challenging for Black people to feel safe in rural southern settings, even state parks. My deepest dream is to create a place for Black artists and activists to have reprieve and heal with the earth. We plan for our retreat to be a space for cooperation, experiments in liberatory living, and nature education. I dream of an herbal farm so we can provide an herbal CSA to West Tennessee communities including people in Memphis and Jackson.
People can follow our work and invest in our land fund at healwiththeland.org"
"Heal with the Land is my baby! Analise, my co-founder, and I came together earlier this year and were amazed to realize we held similar dreams of creating a safe nature oasis for Black people in Tennessee. We are manifesting the funds to buy 40+ acres of land in west Tennessee to create a BIPOC nature sanctuary and retreat. Growing up in Memphis, I rarely enjoyed the natural beauty of our state outside of city limits except when visiting family friends. It’s challenging for Black people to feel safe in rural southern settings, even state parks. My deepest dream is to create a place for Black artists and activists to have reprieve and heal with the earth. We plan for our retreat to be a space for cooperation, experiments in liberatory living, and nature education. I dream of an herbal farm so we can provide an herbal CSA to West Tennessee communities including people in Memphis and Jackson.
People can follow our work and invest in our land fund at healwiththeland.org"
What advice or recourses would you give BIPOC who are interested in healing practices such as yours?
"Learn from your elders. It is so important to honor the knowledge of the elders in our communities. Follow your curiosity. It’s ok and wonderful to explore what excites you. There is no perfect or pure way to heal. This journey is a spiral, so have fun and be gentle with yourself.
Also, there are many scholarships out there for BIPOC healing practitioners right now. If there is a practice you want to study, reach out to an organization that you feel compelled by and ask how they are making this work accessible to BIPOC. Healing is your birthright and legacy. Keep your ear to the ground and do lots of research. If you want something, it’s possible. Dream big!"
"Learn from your elders. It is so important to honor the knowledge of the elders in our communities. Follow your curiosity. It’s ok and wonderful to explore what excites you. There is no perfect or pure way to heal. This journey is a spiral, so have fun and be gentle with yourself.
Also, there are many scholarships out there for BIPOC healing practitioners right now. If there is a practice you want to study, reach out to an organization that you feel compelled by and ask how they are making this work accessible to BIPOC. Healing is your birthright and legacy. Keep your ear to the ground and do lots of research. If you want something, it’s possible. Dream big!"
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If you could talk to your younger self and give them some words of guidance and encouragement to prepare them for their journey what would you say?
"I would tell my younger self that my path is my own. Trust yourself and your intuition. I’d tell her not to be afraid of following her pleasure, letting her freak flag fly, and marching to the beat of her own drum. I always felt like a weirdo growing up. I’d encourage young Rochelle to unapologetically do her thing. " |
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TBB News is so grateful to have the opportunity to share space with Rochelle Jamila!!
Please continue to support our O.B.A. Artists by donating directly to their artistic endevors.
Rochelle's work can be supported via Venmo (@rochelle-jamila)
AND
Rochelle's land fund in support of Heal with the Land can be supported by clicking this link.
Please continue to support our O.B.A. Artists by donating directly to their artistic endevors.
Rochelle's work can be supported via Venmo (@rochelle-jamila)
AND
Rochelle's land fund in support of Heal with the Land can be supported by clicking this link.