Democracy as a Practice of Care | Jeremy David Engels

Hi friends! The Mind Bod Squad is BACK!

After a few months apart (Jeff squirreled away up in BC, Tasha bummin’ around in Toronto), we’re returning to you on this, America’s birthweek. And we’re here to celebrate INTERdependence instead of independence.

This week we’re hanging with Jeremy David Engels — Penn State rhetoric professor, yoga teacher, student of meditation, and author of the gorgeous little book On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World.

Two hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of Independence, Jeremy has done an audacious thing: he rewrote it as a Declaration of Interdependence. His new iteration has the same word count and same shape, but where the original lists “27 grievances against the king”, Jeremy offers 27 insights into democracy as a practice of care: caring for ourselves, caring for each other, and caring for the life we share. After all, he argues, there’s already enough grievances to go around. Maybe it’s time for a change.

And Americans, as your loving continental siblings to the north, we can definitively say, we like this version better. 😅

We talk about:

- What it means to treat democracy as a daily practice of care

- How to find common ground with someone you’re sure you disagree with

- Why conflict is part of being human… and how to hold it well

- Modeling a different way of being, instead of arguing people into it

- Hope as something you practice, not a mood you wait around for

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The Adventure:

This week the practice is the reading itself. Jeremy reads us the closing crescendo of his Declaration of Interdependence and reminds us the original was made to be spoken aloud. So we slow down and let the lines land in the body: our independence has always been interdependence.

Let us know in the comments what you think!

K, That’s all for this week. Happy to be back & Thanks for tuning in.

🧘🏽‍♀️ Tasha & Jeff 🧘🏼‍♂️

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