The EMBODY Praxis™
Remember. Embody. Educate. Empower.
Our lived experiences are sources of knowledge.
The EMBODY Praxis™ is a framework created by artist-scholar Yao Kahlil Newkirk that connects storytelling, performance, guided reflection, and creative expression. It helps participants explore how the experiences we carry shape the ways we learn, lead, create, and connect.
Rooted in Black cultural memory, the framework recognizes the body as a keeper of history, identity, and knowledge. Memories, gestures, habits, and traditions can reveal what we have inherited, what we have endured, and what we might create.
What does “embodied learning” mean?
Embodied learning engages thought, feeling, movement, and reflection together. A story may prompt us to notice a familiar gesture, recall an experience, consider another perspective, or express an idea creatively.
Through that process, participants examine how lived experience informs their understanding of themselves and others.
The approach in practice
Each engagement combines a selection of activities suited to the audience and purpose:
Storytelling and performance that bring personal experiences and cultural histories into focus.
Guided reflection that helps participants recognize connections between experience and perspective.
Accessible movement and creative activities that offer different ways to explore and express ideas.
Facilitated dialogue that invites attentive listening, thoughtful questions, and shared learning.
Participants choose what they wish to share. No previous artistic or performance experience is required.
Remember. Embody. Educate. Empower.
Remember
Explore the personal stories, cultural histories, and inherited knowledge that shape our lives.
Embody
Notice how those experiences live in our gestures, habits, responses, and ways of relating.
Educate
Bring lived experience into conversation with scholarship, creative practice, and the perspectives of others.
Empower
Use that understanding to make intentional choices about how we learn, lead, create, and participate in our communities.
Rooted in artistic practice and scholarship
The EMBODY Praxis™ took shape through Separation Anxiety, Yao’s year-long performance honoring Trayvon Martin and victims of lynching, past and present. During the performance, he wore a hoodie sewn into his hair, making the garment part of his daily existence.
That sustained exploration of racial trauma, grief, memory, and witnessing deepened a question central to his work: What knowledge do we carry—and what becomes possible when we engage it?
Drawing on performance, Black cultural memory, racial trauma scholarship, and healing-centered approaches to education, The EMBODY Praxis™ creates space to examine difficult histories, recognize agency, and imagine possibilities for change.
Bring the approach to your organization
The EMBODY Praxis™ informs Yao’s keynotes, workshops, and creative residencies. Engagements connect the framework to your audience and goals, whether you are exploring teaching and learning, leadership, cultural memory, belonging, or creative expression.
Available for schools, universities, corporations, museums, cultural institutions, and community organizations.
