ways of being
ONGOING PRACTICES & POSSIBILITIES (IN THREE WORDS)
My response to this self-inquiry became Ways of Being, a collection of nine cards that facilitate meditation, conversation, and creative guidance around practices we can make possible in our everyday lives.
Echoing personal and communal commitments expressed within the design, organizing, and somatic spaces I’m a part of, this collection invites us to slow down and listen for what guides us by engaging with a range of creative acts and inquiries.
If I could describe the practices and possibilities that continue to shape my life, in three words, what would they be?
PUBLISHER
Self-published
PUBLISHED ON
June 2022
DESIGNED BY
Denise Shanté Brown
PRINTED BY
MOO
the full print collection
Ways of Being honors inquiries as seeds that can grow more possibilities in our practice and personhood when we build from our questions and choose to participate in what emerges.
holding space for the emergent,
Ways of Being exists to illuminate the changes we need to make for the futures we want to grow and to expand our capacities for intimacy and wonder, with ourselves and each other.
The cards were revisited a year later and translated into Spanish as a commitment to transnational belonging and to deepen existing creative, collaborative relationships with people living in México.
The “diseña con cuidado/design with care” set asks:
¿qué sería diferente si tus co-creaciones canalizaran la poderosa ternura del cuidado desde la concepción hasta la manifestación?
what would be different if your co-creations channeled the tender power of care from conception to manifestation?
Image of “begin with grace” card resting within someone’s home altar space among plants, candles, vessels, and other intentionally chosen elements.
They are made to be carried with us, wherever we choose to enact another way of being.
Ways of Being has been…
activated by communities of fellow designers, writers, healers, artists, and organizers throughout the US and México
featured in “An Exercise in Persistence: Graduate Studies Alumni Exhibition” at the Maryland Institute College of Art
distributed in care packages to a group of grantees focused on community care work and to a cohort of spiritual herbalism apprentices
Each card is designed to be easily woven into everyday life as a self-reflection tool or as a facilitation medium for communal gatherings.
ways of being, in movement
Curious about how the inquiries could live as movements and motions in the body,
I invited erika (they/them)—a design justice collaborator, artist, and performance maker—to respond to the creative act and inquiry that resonated with them the most.
They chose: trust your body - when you tune into your inherent ways of knowing, what intuitive messages, longings and rhythms are revealed?
What a treasured gift. The three words on each of the “Ways of Being” cards have brought me continuous comfort since Denise Shanté first shared them with us.
After a brief professional pause to figure out what I wanted to do next, the cards helped me approach my transition with wonder and ease. The guiding questions layered above dreamy colors and textures provided an expansive space for dreaming and imagining what could be possible. I took them into the forest with me, placed them in my lap, pulling one card at a time, listening deeply for answers from my spirit. I manifested the work that I dreamt about and two years later, I continue to use the prompts as a thread between the present and what’s possible in the future.
— Teena Lewis, Instructional Designer and Healing Arts Facilitator