November 8, 2024

Former CPL Facilitator, Kelsey Milian, who is a PhD student in Ethnomusicology as well as a poet and musician, visited the current cohort of CPLs at the CUNY Graduate Center. There was plenty of pizza to welcome the participants with while the group chatted and caught up with one another. It had been an extremely heavy week post-Presidential election, so some of us took solace in being together. 

The workshop then started with Milian’s brief presentation on her research involving cuerpo-territorio, an indigenous methodology and practice of understanding the experiences of communities and peoples. Medical methodologies and projects working with AIDS patients have used these practices to place the power of understanding in the communities where knowledge comes from. Using body-mapping, the power comes back to our communities, our bodies, our realities. Milian shared photos and artifacts from those projects, and from last year’s workshop as well.

Once the presentation was over, CPLs were guided to the large reams of paper that would become their canvases for body-mapping. Most participants paired up and helped each other trace their bodies. The care that people took in doing so was a delight, even if the body shapes were hilariously inconsistent!

Milian then provided several prompts to get CPLs thinking about mapping their bodies. Some questions were: What do you like people to call you? What brings you peace? Have you ever been heartbroken? Have you experienced physical pain? Ever broken a bone? Where? All of these questions were designed to get us to connect our experiences to our bodies. Students could use a variety of supplies, including colors, textures, and images, to add to their maps.

After the extended workshop time, CPLs went on a gallery walk! Each participant spent a couple minutes sharing their maps. We got to learn special things about each person—the languages they speak, the people they love, and what gives them peace and hope. This activity was not only a creative outlet for the participants, but the workshop facilitated the greater purpose of mental health awareness and community building. Additionally, CPLs were exposed to a decolonizing research methodology through exploring cuerpo-territorio.

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