Hello everyone and welcome to the Sex, Love, and Super Powers Podcast. I’m your host, Tatiana Berindei, and I am so delighted and honored to have with me today, Uzo Nwankpa. Today we’re going to be talking about the spiritual gifts of a woman’s body. Uzo is a phenomenal, phenomenal woman. I had the good fortune to meet her recently at the HoneyRoot Women’s Embodiment Festival out in California and was just so touched by the fierceness, and the grace, and the power, and the beauty that she brings to her work. I just want to welcome you with such a deep and open heart, Uzo. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it, I feel quite honored.
I’m going to start off asking you the same question we ask everybody here at Super Power Experts. What are your super powers?
You can think of me as the town crier.
Let me see. The first thing that comes to my mind is you can think of me as the town crier. The town crier has the ability to gather people together and share what is relevant right now, what is the need right now, we need to gather. I believe particularly in my own lineage and in my own family, which is where it started for me, to be able to speak up, speak up when things were amazing and also to speak up when things were taboo and not right.
Yeah, that is a really awesome super power and one that’s so needed right now. How are you … I want to talk a little bit about how you employ that super power in the world and in some of the work that you do.
Yeah. You know, one of the things that I continually assess and one of the things that I constantly have to think about is am I outing this person, am I honoring this person or is this organization, am I being malicious? I do think about that and at the same time we’ve been taught, I believe I’ve been socialized to be quiet, don’t ruffle feathers. What that means is when I’m facilitating workshops or I’m having a performance or I’m speaking to something that’s important I have to think about whether or not I’m going to call names to really dive into what the issue is. By saying Exxon Mobil did this … Now, I’m just throwing out a name, or to say Uncle Joe did this. Not just uncles out there or just multimillion corporations, but being specific as to not they but who, who exactly, and not being afraid to do that in my work, but also being able to praise folks who are doing the right thing.
Yeah, I think those are really important and I think you’re right, when we have this gift of really a lot of courage with the voice it is a responsibility too.
Yes, yes. We don’t have a choice, we can choose to be quiet but in my young years of being quiet I suffered.
Yeah, yeah.
I suffered. I suffered in my body and I suffered in my voice so being able to speak up is a skill that I’m learning. In fact, I’m claiming it as a super power because I’ve become much better than I ever have been.
You know, it’s so interesting too that we chose this topic, The Spiritual Gifts of a Woman’s Body, because I’ve been thinking about in relationship to the voice lately there’s this saying that I’ve heard often in the personal development world, “You have two ears and one mouth, use them accordingly.” I was sitting with one of my elders a while back and she was talking about how women actually have two mouths. We have the mouth in our face and we have the mouth down below in our vagina, in our yoni, and I’ve been thinking about how actually it is our time to speak. That is part of the responsibility of holding a woman’s body right now is to speak but not just to run your mouth but to really speak from both mouths.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I was going to say that my second super power is the ability to swim across the spectrum of masculine and feminine and that is, that comes with my queerness. I was so trapped being on one end of the spectrum and didn’t realize what I was missing and losing by being so called straight; not particularly in my sexuality but in my consciousness, and in my thinking, and in my fluidity. As a girl that grew up in West Africa, Nigeria, to a girl who developed into womanhood in the West, in the diaspora here in the United States of America, it has been quite a journey to be able to speak from both mouths. From a place of victim, so shutting up, shutting down to surviving, opening up a bit more and telling my stories and sharing my body willingly, so now thriving or what I like to call surf riding, which was coined by a woman here in Oakland, California who was speaking to the ability not just to survive but to thrive.
The yoni is such a powerful place once we’re tuned in.
The yoni is such a powerful place once we’re tuned in and I had been socialized to not look at her, to not touch her, to not allow her to enjoy. All of that comes in the context of being willing to float, and swim, and fly across the spectrum of the masculine and the feminine.
Beautiful. I want to give you an opportunity right now to tell folks who might be listening in and know nothing about you, just tell us a little bit about what your work is in the world, what you’re doing and all the ways that that is looking for you right now.
Sure. I’m originally from Enugu I’m an Igbo woman and basically our people are located in the southeast region of Nigeria, West Africa. We have been experiencing years of genocide and in some cases some might even say ethnic cleansing. The lineage I come from is of that and my parents are survivors of the Biafra War, the Nigerian Civil War, which is basically the war when I people decided we were done with the oppression and wanted to leave. We seceded and got our own country called Biafra. For three years we lost the war to Nigeria and their support.
I think the US, not I think, I know the US was a part of that process and we got re-absorbed into Nigeria. That actually is my foundation in that when I came over to the United States I was 15 years old. I was really excited to be in this land of the free and from the context of the African girl it was the land of the free. Then over time I quickly learned at a cost, so the freedom here on this land was actually at the cost of my people, it was quite treacherous to think of that. Now, the Uzo Method Project is something that I created down the line after that. I was living in South Florida and I was teaching fitness classes.
I was in America, I didn’t know about healthy eating and exercising and well being and so I gained about 50 lbs. in one year as an 18-year-old. Nobody told me, nobody gave me the guidance and so I had to learn on my own through becoming a fitness instructor and learning about these things and I wanted to share it with the whole world. I wanted to share it particularly with people look like me, little brown girls. I would get together with my friend, Sarah, and we would host these little workshops at the local Y and then it just kind of took off.
Then Hurricane Katrina happened and we were affected as well in Florida and what was what drove me to further my education and go back to school and become a registered nurse. I’m just giving you the background of how the Uzo Method Project came to be. In nursing school I realized that I had a big dream of creating health and wellness opportunities all over the US. I quickly found out that it was a sick model. Nursing is a sick model, meaning we care for the sick, we’re not really thinking about preventing people from being sick because the people are already so sick and we need to care for them.
The science of connecting with spirit.
Then I was inspired to create the Uzo Method Project which is hearing through music and movement. I’m doing this through alternative routes, particularly looking at ways to gather evidence around the work that we’re doing so that not only is it valid in the healthcare world, it’s also validated by scientists. These ancient technologies that we’ve always known about and have always existed; the science of vibration, the science of moving our bodies, the science of connecting with spirit and the appropriate ways to do that. Where do you go to learn that? Where do you go to find that?
When we commit people into mental institutions because they’re having a spiritual breakthrough we coin them as crazy, we brand them as … These are the healers of society so when I saw all of that I was just really inspired to have an opportunity to come into spaces, set up a space where we’re able to blend the mind, the body, and the spirit, and harmonize that in the text of a community setting and it’s just been a journey for the last seven years.
I love what you’re saying, it’s very much in alignment with what we’re doing here at Super Power Experts of really providing a space for people who are having these experiences to say you’re not crazy, this is actually … These are super powers and if you really can embrace them and go deep into them you have the power to positively affect change in the world. That’s what the healers are here to do, right?
Right.
I love so much that you’re bringing the embodiment piece into it because I think we really, we can’t do this work without the body. We’re going to go, we’re going to take a quick break and then we’re going to come back. Before we take the break, where can people find out more about this work and if … I know that you travel and you host workshops and things and if someone wants to get a hold of you and know more about your work, where can they go to find that?
You can find my work at www.theuzo.com, theuzo.com.
Theuzo.com, beautiful. Well, I’ve been her with Uzo Nwankpa and we’re talking about the spiritual gifts of a woman’s body. When we come back from the break we’re going to do what I call the high vibe deep dive into this topic so stayed tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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