Defying (Society's) Gravity: A Spiritual Praxis Group in Defiance

Just some Wicked lovers trying to live into their values, one short song at a time.

In Wicked, there's a lot weighing Elphaba down. She idolized the Wizard, was bullied her whole childhood and young adult life, her favorite teacher was arrested, the boy she liked was dating her best friend, and her best (and only) friend basically told her to get back in line when she suggested they confront the Wizard.

There are so many reasons why Elphaba might not have jumped onto her broomstick. Yet, despite it all, she did. How?

That's what we'll be exploring in this class together.

Clinical psychologist Sunita Sah defines defiance as "acting in accordance with your true values when there is pressure to do otherwise." In this 8-week virtual class, we will turn to Wicked to better understand how Elphaba learns to defy and live into her values to explore how we might increase our capacity to do the same. What does Elphaba teach us about how we might defy authoritarianism, fascism, and other systems of oppression in our own life? How do we build our individual & collective capacity to live into our deepest values? Who are the guides that can show us how, and what are the practices that can help us along the way?

If you love Wicked and/or are struggling to figure out how to show up in these times, this course is for you. Each week, we'll explore how tools and skills like imagination, embodiment, grief, anger, friendship, pleasure, and witness empower Elphaba to defy the not-so-wonderful land of Oz and live into her deepest values. Then, we'll explore how these themes show up in our life and turn to practices to help us build our own toolkits for defiance.

Each class will include time for grounding, individual and/or small group reflection, large group discussions, and facilitated practices related to each week's theme. You will also receive optional reading lists of additional books that might help you dive deeper into these themes beyond our class time. While subject to change, you can see a draft outline of some of the themes we'll be exploring each week below.

LOGISTICS: This class will meet virtually once a week on Zoom for 8 weeks for 2 hours, meeting on Sundays from 6-8pm EST, on Oct 19-November 23 & November 30- December 7 (accounting for a break during Thanksgiving week).

There are three tiers of payment available: $150, $200, and $250. Please indicate the tier that best aligns with your budget on your registration. There is also the option to pay over 3-months.

To pay at the $150 rate, please use the coupon code THANKGOODNESS

To pay at the $200 rate, please use the coupon code ONESHORTCODE

To pay at the $250 rate, do not use a coupon code.

There will also be 5 free spots made available on a first-come, first served basis, for people who could not otherwise afford to participate. To claim one of these free spots, use the code DEFYGRAVITY. If it says the code is invalid, that means those spots have already been claimed.

A minimum of 15 people will need to register by one week before the start date for the course to run. If you pay but the course does not run, you will be refunded by Oct 20.

SAMPLE SYLLABUS (just a draft to give you the flavor!)

Week 1: Introduction - Wicked & Defiance (No One Mourns the Wicked)

• We'll begin exploring our own relationship to Wicked, define our terms, begin exploring the gravity of Oz, and do a practice to articulate our core values

Week 2: Imagination (The Wizard and I)

• When and how does imagination help us defy? When are we stuck in the imagination of structures and norms we don't even agree with? How might we support each other to tell the difference? This week, we'll practice visualizations as a way to activate our own imagination

Week 3: Holding Space for Grief & Anger (What is This Feeling? and I'm Not that Girl)

• We're often taught that hard emotions like grief or anger are "bad," and many of us - depending on our specific identities and social dynamics growing up - might have certain feelings we're more adept at feeling and/or feel more safe experiencing. Yet, what if having space to feel grief and anger are important to defiance? What role might feeling these harder emotions play in our capacity to defy, and how might we support ourselves and each other to have safe-enough spaces to hold these emotions? This week, we'll explore letter writing as a practice.

Week 4: Pleasure & Embodiment (Dancing Through Life)

• Elphaba comes deeply into her body in a different way on the Oz Dust dance floor. How might embodiment and pleasure be related to defiance? This week, we'll explore altars/centerpieces/dressing up (including thinking of our bodies as an altar) as a practice.

Week 5: Friendship, Mentorship & Community (Popular, Something Bad, and the lion cub scene)

• We often think of defiance as something an individual does, but what role do our friends, mentors, communities, and relationships have on how, when, and why we defy? This week, we'll explore pod & resource mapping as a practice.

Week 6: Witness & Complicity (Emerald City visit)

• None of us want to admit the ways in which we've caused harm, but Elphaba's act of defiance doesn't come until after she herself is complicit in causing harm to many animals. What role does witness, proximity to harm, and reckoning with our own complicity have in our capacity to defy? This week, we'll explore chanting as a practice.

Week 7: Part 2 Discussion & Debrief: Reimagining "Goodness"

• This week, we'll pause our regular programming and do a discussion of Wicked: For Good, which will be released the previous week! We'll have a little bit of time to just geek out over how you're feeling from the second part (if you've had a chance to watch it), and we'll also take some time to explore themes of "goodness" and "wickedness" as they show up in Part 2/Act 2 and try to understand what that has to do with defiance. This week, we'll briefly explore Dean Spade's "what else is true" exercise as a practice.

Week 8: Defiance & Wrap Up

• This week, we'll finally turn to the title song for this course - Defying Gravity - to explore what we've learned and set some intentions for ourselves moving forward.