Good morning. I've been a little MIA this month as Joe and I prepare for the launch of Relationship Tripping. We begin this Wednesday, February 15th and for the next six weeks we guide partners through practices that deepen love and and intimacy. We have space for 2 more couples. If this speaks to you, give a holler.
Today, I bring you an interview with one of my favorite humans, Bernadette Pleasant, founder of The Emotional Institute which is a source of healing through movement and ritual. She has been liberating bodies and hearts and minds through drums and dance in an experience called The Emotional Tour. The Emotional Tour is part dance party, ancient ritual, and an emotional cleanse and Bernadette is offering her first live and online class since the lockdown on February 26th in NYC and on Zoom. I hope to see you there. Below is an interview with Bernadette about the power of drums to hold something bigger than us. The drum has always been there for me. Sometimes I’ve heard it louder than other times. Sometimes it has cheered me on. Sometimes it has soothed me. And sometimes it’s felt like the hollowed out gourd that can hold me. —Bernadette Pleasant
TPR: Your work with The Emotional Tour is in collaboration with drummers. What is the difference between using recorded music and live drums?
Bernadette Pleasant: To me, the drums are the sounds of what I believe God is— always present, understanding and seeing me. It’s like the drums understand all the facets of me without needing explanation.
As long as those drums are playing, I don’t have to know anything. I don’t have to do anything except lay on that sound and allow whatever is coming through to be held. That is when something wide opens up.
The drums, along with the guidance I bring, offer an invitation for people to be present while moving and sounding in community.
There is this moment during the experience when someone stops being somebody — a spouse, a parent—and they are with that pure feeling of being. There is a look that I recognize, and sometimes it’s just for an instant, where people say, “I don’t know what happened, but I lost myself.” It might not even last a second, it doesn’t matter the amount of time, it’s about touching that feeling of being present and being in community when that happens. Even if you don’t know what that was, you can’t forget it. There is medicine that comes in that little crack and it is undeniable.
TPR: For people who haven’t experienced The Emotional Tour, what can people expect?
Bernadette Pleasant: The class is built on a heart rate system so we start slow and build. The drums will be playing from the moment they enter.
When people step into the room, it will feel like it’s a Thanksgiving table that you want to sit at, like the host has been preparing this meal with you in mind and you are so welcome to come to this place to get nourished.
And then we go on the emotional tour. People are invited to fully express themselves in mind, body, sound and movement, whatever that looks like.
TPR: Why do you call it a tour?
Bernadette Pleasant: It’s a tour because we move through emotions. We don’t get stuck in any destination. We begin with joy and then move toward grief. There is a special place on the emotional tour where we get to give anger sound and expression in a healthy way. It’s important to acknowledge that these emotions live inside of us.
Then we move onto desire because once you move through anger and grief, you can actually get to what you want.
To be able to swim in your desire — feeling the fullness in the delight and to dream into those coming true—you can really feel the energy of those things.
The next stop is confidence. To feel and walk in confidence, we do these exercises repeating the affirmation “I am confident” to the tone of the drum beat, which means we are anchoring it in our cells. People have told me that they actually embodied confidence for the first time.
The last stop, even though it’s not an emotion, is flirt. Flirt is being okay with all the other emotions. The fact that you accept yourself as a work in progress means you get to play. There needs to be joy in this.
And then as the heart rate starts to come down, we literally hear the heart beat that has been with us through the whole experience.
We get to be with the silence and let it get cemented in the rightness of who we be.
Like the rain, the sun, the wind, and the snow, our feelings ̶ in all their forms are meant to be fully expressed and experienced as part of the natural balance of life.— Bernadette Pleasant
TPR: Is everyone who comes to the Emotional Tour able to deal with all this emotional expression?
Bernadette Pleasant: Given an opportunity, people want to let it out.
One of my favorite moments was when a guy came in and he said he was worried about expressing anger because he didn’t want to scare all the women, because the class at the time was predominantly women. And at the end, he was like, “Whoa. Okay, I might as well let mine out, too because damn, everyone was going for it.”
TPR: The experience I have had doing the Emotional Tour with you was like an emotional cleansing.
Bernadette Pleasant: That is exactly what it is. And I am real clear. I am not holding it. The drums are.
TPR: Have you been working with the same drummers all along?
Bernadette Pleasant: I’ve worked with other drummers when I travel but Baba Don and Baba Toombe are my aces and they will be there on the 26th.
They are not drumming for a dance class. They have to take the emotional tour as well. They are healers who come to support the work.
TPR: This is so much more than a dance class. It is a therapeutic experience.
Bernadette Pleasant: I see transformations all the time. One woman told me she had an eating disorder she had since she was a teenager and she couldn’t put a finger on what she was grieving and there was shame in that. She said once she had a name for it, and once she felt it and released it, she literally stopped, cold turkey.
I was blown away. That was her watching a recorded class and she said it liberated her.
TPR: How has your work changed since the pandemic?
Bernadette Pleasant: It is bigger and deeper. We are not the same people we were before. We need those drums and we need community.
“ It’s your body, you can do whatever you want with it, including love it unapologetically!” — Bernadette Pleasant
TPR: Anything you want TPR readers to know about joining the Emotional Tour on the 26th?
Bernadette Pleasant: Yes. Bring a rose or some symbolic representation of a rose for my signature Rose Ceremony that will close this experience.
You can register for the Emotional Tour here.
Hope to see you there!!
FROM THE INSTITUTE OF PLEASURE STUDIES
Bernadette offers other powerful workshops and rituals including sacred grief rituals and rest rituals at The Emotional Institute. Sign up for her newsletter to find out about her offerings in-person and online. She’s also a powerful speaking coach, if that is your jam.
Relationship Tripping is a 6-week exploration of love, connection, and partnership. Why not approach your relationship like a laboratory for love. And have a beautiful community to learn from and who is there for you. We begin the next round this Wednesday. I would be honored to share this work with you.