#SelfCare Chronicle of the Second Training Module:

Healing our Selfs, Heal the World

November 2015

We enthusiastically greet and share with you the pleasure of learning and meet in
the Second Training Module; Healing our Selfs, Heal the World organized by the
regional strategy of self care IM- Women Defenders and facilitated by Capacitar
International.
We had the opportunity to meet from October 22 to 24th in Mexico City. Fifty human
rights defenders pertaining to the commissions of self care at National Networks
from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, and members from the State
Network of Oaxaca Defenders, met with the aim of continuing the training started
last March.
The second module began with a ritual called
to the women ancestors in order to focus all
energies on achieving the goals of knowledge.
Then we talked about the implementation
of the knowledge acquired in Module I of
training. We were thrilled learning on how
some colleagues developed and explained
the techniques in their native languages
or employed the music from their cultural
tradition; how the practice of learned exercises
improves the work with groups or individuals
that we serve; how some already began to
teach linking it to the traditional medicines
of their countries; and how our families and
ourselves had beneficiated from some of the
shared techniques.

Among shared stories, all the creativity that we strive to improve the care for young
persons or with different capacities, women, organizations, towns and communities
and comprehensive protection, sneaks out.
Later, we work on two emotions that commonly invade the human rights defenders
by the contexts of injustice in which we work: the anger and fear and its effects on
our health.

After recognizing the social and personal causes generating these emotions, we
embrace and laugh accompanying the decision of learning on how to handle them
as this will improve our safety and welfare as well as, from the people surrounding
us. This was another step in the task of accepting our selves tired of being angry,
and eager to turn these emotions into creative and healing potential.
To deal with anger, we use ancient techniques from around the world to help
clean and balance our energy. Gradually we were feeling how our hearts started
beating differently; stronger, more compassionate (word that we understand as the
awareness of social and personal causes that generate this emotion in people) and
therefore more loving.

Those techniques were based on how to vent, balance through polarity, to

release us from fear, despair, diseases, disorders and associated dispositions.
Techniques that help us to understand that we are together and united in this
harsh but beautiful world, we had time to heal to each other, to discuss with
passion and plan further meetings on the ground.

During the Training, many of us were also involved in a query about how we should
organize care for women with exhaustion or fatigue from performing activism. We
had two focus groups where we imagined how it could be the space that we call
House of Healing and Respiro La Serena, a regional initiative of the IM-Women
Defenders which has slowly been cooked in our dreams and hopes.

We said goodbye eager to meet again, knowing that wherever we are, each one of
us is building for herself and her closest, and practicing with increasing frequency
a careful and sustainable activism in the midst of the chaotic context that these
historical moments present to us.
The train reading materials that we use in the second module are enclosed. We are deeply grateful to Pat Cane and Alibel Pizarro
and their generosity in sharing their knowledge with us. We are also sending two radio capsules produced by the IM-Women
Defenders in order to socialize some of the lessons learned. The capsules contain the guide for two basic exercises for emotions
management; conscious breathing and balance emotions. We invite you to play them and use them as support material in different
spaces. Likewise, we send a short video recalling our first training module:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gkzck2xsj2ze9z7/AAANQLR0eknCJDA7qI4qvM4Ua?dl=0