Radical Acceptance and Welcoming

Podcast featuring Dr. Beth Berila and Teo Drake

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Teo Drake talks about making the world as we know it more welcoming to those on the margins. He discusses transforming and creating a safe space for people who are different or more marginalized then ourselves. Radical welcoming is the incarnation of  all voices and power to be heard and felt. Hard talks, awareness, and discomfort are the embodiment of truth.  The work of community is to create resilience and acceptance. Real and authentic conversations are difficult but an embodied practice requires it.

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Teo Drake  is a spiritual activist, an educator, a practicing Buddhist and yogi, and an artisan who works in wood and steel. As a blue collar queer-identified trans man living with AIDS, he has 101 reasons to not want to be present in his own skin. The physical and spiritual practice of yoga and Buddhist traditions made it possible to begin to heal and feel at home in his own body. When he isn’t helping spiritual spaces be more welcoming and inclusive of queer and transgender people or helping queer and trans folks find authentic spiritual paths, he can be found teaching martial arts, yoga, and woodworking to children. His writing can be found in the anthology Yoga and Body Image and at the blog Roots Grow the Tree.

Beth Berila, Ph.D., LLC, RYT is the Director of the Women’s Studies Program and Professor in the Ethnic and Women’s Studies Department at St. Cloud State University in St. Cloud, Minnesota.  She is also a registered yoga teacher and is completing her 500-hour Yoga Teacher Training program at Devanadi School of Yoga and Wellness.

She is a founding board member of the Yoga and Body Image Coalition. Her current projects merge yoga and meditation practices with feminism and mindful education to create a form of socially engaged embodied learning.