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Currents: Episode 10 // Essence w/ Hanae Bezad
45 Plays5 months ago
What does it feel like to be a luscious red flower in bloom? What is it to revel in the joy and delight of the power of women from around the world - especially from South West Asia and North Africa? What is it to put into poetry and words, the experience of Black and Indigenous women finding their expression and to be a part of their empowerment?
Hanae Bezad is a poet, novelist, and essayist. She is the author of Nomadic eyes, Sporadic heart, a self-published collection of poetry about the experience of travel, diaspora, love, loss, motherhood and femininity.
We did an essential self session just before recording and you can feel Hanae’s energy as she shares how she expresses this energy through everything from dance and the creation of festivals for impact to innovation and authoring Being Other, which takes you on a journey of her own lived experience as a woman, an Arab, a Muslim, and an African as it intertwines with tales of other inspirational women.
Her work does not shy away from the intensity of the world. And yet through the radiance of her energy through her writing, she shines a light on how racism, misogyny, and deep-rooted power dynamics can be confronted and transformed into a foundation for unshakable dignity, self-worth, and self-love.
You can feel her essence oozing through this episode so I hope you’ll tune in and receive just a bit of the gift that Hanae is to the world.
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Transcript
Introduction & Energy Session
00:00:00
Speaker
Thank you so much for being here. I have my really dear friend, Hannah Bazad, and she's just one of the most amazing people I know, so I'm so grateful to have you here and to get to share your essence with those who are listening just as a way of... Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you, dear Ray. and so It's an honor to be here. Yeah. um
00:00:30
Speaker
So we're just coming off of an energy session that had the intention of sort of shining through and radiating um Hannah's ah essence. And I'm just, um I'm still feeling it. It was so sweet and nourishing. And so I'm excited to just yeah give give you the space and you know happy to reflect to my experience of of just receiving your energy. And just to start, I feel like I want to describe it, but I want to give you the chance to describe it. Oh, I want to hear you describe it too. I know. We'll start with
Hannah's Visions & Experiences
00:01:12
Speaker
you first of how you experience your
00:01:16
Speaker
like essential self and quality and you know like what does that feel like for you and your body and like what are the moments that you feel like it comes alive? um Yeah. Well, it's it's's fair it's very useful. Actually, there's no resistance. And I think it's because there's also this beautiful trust and continue that you create. um But right a minute into it, I saw.
00:01:47
Speaker
can't even you know know the time but I opened the window and then I started feeling and seeing the flowers of Lisbon where I'm based and it's spring time and that became spring and a number of images and moments ah came to me in you know but upon your invitation of moments recently where I was fooling myself and it was it was times or in the nashram uh in india with ama it was being on stage and singing opening a festival that I had uh curated and and that I hosted it was moments of sharing my work in my book and also the the
00:02:29
Speaker
The sense that I had was just that it was a beyond me. You know, a lot of times I can be kind of trying to find words and just be precise, to be fair, ah for them to learn well and activate and my audience. and then and And at this point, it's just completely beyond me and my body started to move and it started to feel so... delightful and and yeah and very sweet and the dance, the sensuality, um calling in elements that tornado very much ah
00:03:02
Speaker
you know, drumming, dancing, like it was a whole festival inside of me all throughout. And in the most beautiful way without, you know, the Jane and the fatigue of the festival, it was just like, oh, and gratitude and also this invitation of receiving back the energy I find it so powerful. Yeah, this sense of complete and equanimity and you can be dissolved into that delight. Yeah,
Generosity & Modes of Expression
00:03:33
Speaker
yeah, amazing. It's so interesting that you said flowers because that's what I experienced too from your energy was like these like big red
00:03:42
Speaker
kind of like blossoming flowers and this kind of like, very, like you said, like soft sensual, sweet energy, but that was also had like a an aliveness to it, this like potency of like, I am a here, you know, like, yeah makes so here and, um, And big, like not in a, you not in a threatening way, like you said, but just this kind of like, like, a like, like being in the middle of a flower blooming or something, you know, it's like, it like takes up like the whole world. And um yeah, I feel like, you know, it's been so interesting in these sessions to experience the the person who's sitting in front of me because I'm also receiving you, you know, I'm receiving you and your energy and it's teaching me like,
00:04:42
Speaker
how to feel that pleasure and that delight and, you know, like receive the earth. And like I was really feeling like earth energy and like it all of its like bounteous kind of like, you know, like abundant giving nature. um So definitely like a sense of like generosity with that, that felt really sweet and wonderful. And so A, thank you for that. And then B, I mean, I think you've already sort of started to name a little bit the ways that this energy kind of expresses itself through you. I mean, creating literal festivals and also um like writings and expression and song, but I'm curious if you wanna put into your own words, like you know how you feel this energy
00:05:37
Speaker
uh it offers itself to others and the world in ways that and you're you I mean you're living a pretty very aligned life I would say and so um I'm so curious how you feel like this energy expresses itself and you know the things that you're doing or um yeah saying speaking I in in this uh session I really felt like I was diving into the multiple ways of being me the way I like to be myself, you know, and so ah the womanhoods, the exploratory aspects, the travels, and um at some points I'm
00:06:25
Speaker
I was in the jungle and felt it was Brazil and I was really deep dive into the jungle. I put my hands inside the earth and kind of found something, a treasure there. It kind of was like a fish and I had this insight that it would have to be my next book or one of my next books. And, you know, my body started to really doing it, you know, I started writing or with my right with my left hand. um So I find it so powerful, because you have just the immediate confirmation for an intuitive validation of, of
00:07:11
Speaker
super strong seeds inside of you that want to be born and and you carry them and then also at the end of it and I'm i'm giving those few images I'd love to give more um but at the end of it it it really felt like I was bowing to many many people's spirits and an entire gratitude because what what I had as ah as an insight is the sense of confidence that by the end of my life I will have expressed everything that I needed to express for the greater good.
00:07:44
Speaker
and And because of the help that I also received and the support and and this co-creation of sorts. So that
The Book 'Being Other' & Its Impact
00:07:52
Speaker
that is just delightful because sometimes, of course, you know and the day-to-day, the challenges, the setbacks, the resistance that you can find as a changemaker and so on. I don't want to say you lose track, but so like a number of things can pile up. But just revisiting that in such an easy and powerful way. Amazing. What an amazing confirmation to have. Like, you'll do it. You'll do it. That's simple, you know, as in it doesn't have to be forceful. It's just, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:08:30
Speaker
I love it. And so you mentioned writing another book, but you have also just expressed a really beautiful book into the world. And we actually did a session around that, which is really, I feel very, very honored to have gotten to play a little part in the in the birthing of that. And I was wondering if you want to share about that at all, like how how this energy has been coming through you in the expression of this work or any other work that you're doing. But you know I feel like the book has been such a beautiful expression of the things that you care about and um the ways that you're bringing people together and um awakening possibility, especially for women in the world.
00:09:22
Speaker
um This book is called Being Other, the beauty and power of being an outsider. And I published it um at the end of last year. And it was a very ancestral desire, I want to say.
00:09:45
Speaker
As a kid, I wanted to become an author because my mom was reading books and felt like they were taking her attention away from me. So I started becoming really interested in books and writings and reading a lot and writing short stories. It was this whole play with with my mother and the people that with whom I had the connection. and And the the moment I felt like it was about time was a moment in the way of crisis because it was a crisis of identity. It was a moment where I needed i needed to reflect back on my years, my early years of professional career and
00:10:23
Speaker
make sense of that and really try to offer it to the to the world in the sense that I needed to metabolize a number of lessons even further to to to share it beyond my experience and kind of activate the women, other readers, um thinking of ah black individuals and women of color, um yeah the younger generations and really kind of giving them something that I wish I had and I wish I had studied or known a bit more or heard about ah while studying and then in a way not really because now I completely honor the experiences but it really yeah it it feels like we're at a time where
00:11:11
Speaker
A number of people are awakening further into what can can be a world with with more equality, with the with social justice, and ah ah with communities working really together to serve life and embrace the needs of um Mother Earth and and really ah then dance with her.
00:11:35
Speaker
And so what I did was in a way that was rather vulnerable, but also practical, bring those experiences into this book and then bringing to to life through a worldwide book tour that is continuing, as a matter of fact. But I was honored and excited to to hold master classes and book readings and book talks in a lot of places, starting with Lisbon, Kigali, Nairobi, Cape Town, London. Dubai, Davos, I crisscrossed all of India and I cannot wait to go back. wow um and And I'm looking now at doing work with ah universities and community-led organizations in North America and so on. and and Or you know just last Saturday, I gave a masterclass to women in Togo.
00:12:30
Speaker
And it was just delightful. It's so powerful. you know i her Being able to kind of ah use that as a platform to listen and hear and receive the expression of their but your dreams, you know, and then bring it to a level of, okay, what's so I'll get there. And I'll do that together. So this activation is, I mean, super rewarding. It's super exciting. I love doing that.
00:13:03
Speaker
Amazing. It sounds to me, I'm curious, your experience of that, like, you know, the the energy sort of like moving through you to all of these, you know, ah women who you're holding space for and to receive them, like, just curious how that feels for you. And
Balancing Beauty & Social Change
00:13:24
Speaker
it it sounds it sounds like there's this note of like nourishment in that. And like you know you mentioned delight. um But I'm curious how it's felt like an expression of you coming through and how how you you find nourishment in it. What do you receive back?
00:13:46
Speaker
I received back the the spark of light that I see in people's eyes when some words have resonated when they had the moment where, okay, they they started writing down this thought that comes from them and it is just bouncing back or reflecting something. I mean, this is the whole stays conversation and so all reading is acting as a mirror almost and also the other people there so there's a lot of there's a strong sense of coherence and resonance that happens during those book talks and even sometimes when I have
00:14:20
Speaker
at times apprehensions. you know I mean, for instance, I i was in Berlin 10 days ago. I had apprehensions because of the context that I know of Germany at the moment and the moderator German-Palestinian going through a number of ah difficulties. to so So that space and that conversation was at the same time you know really warm really deep but it it can also be a little bit of a roller coaster and ah and and in a way a healing session because we talk about things that are light and we talk about things that are heavy and I had to you know I shared
00:15:00
Speaker
um parts of the book I hadn't shared in any of the other readings of moments after the terrorist attacks in Paris where I was living at the time and um that whole dark season and so sometimes out of ah sense of care, you almost want to protect your audience from this. And then at the same time, it was and was really strong because ah because the shift to ah to to other topics and themes and strong ideas of the book in terms of accountability, as a love language, in terms of um
00:15:39
Speaker
and the the power of movement and community as a container for doing all that work, that elevation, that spiritual work into into action, it's just blissful to to to receive after that, to also to receive messages and and things like that. So there's a strong sense of connection, but also
00:16:02
Speaker
weirdly enough, like, not attached to individuality. But it's more about that humanness from that expresses itself in different forms. It's really, really strong. i I am grateful. Yeah. Yeah, it's an amazing thing that you're touching on, because, um you know, your essence is so beautiful and this like blooming nature and yet, you know, you've worked across many domains of social change um that ah often has its darkness, right? um Its shadow.
00:16:44
Speaker
And I guess, I mean, you kind of answered my next question with the humanness piece, but I'm curious, you know, like how it is that you find, ah you know, whether it's the courage or the inspiration or the energy to bring that um the the beauty, right? Like the the beauty and the aliveness and the um, that, that sensuous, feminine, um, I think it's, it's almost like an energy of like possibility and to the world of impact, right? Which is often so much about the problems and, you know, which are real. Um, and just how you dance that, uh, dance that and and what you think the potential is there too.
00:17:41
Speaker
Yeah, I find that deep at the ah the heart of it, it's it's really the the appetite to connect. and I every time I go and you know, God knows I was tired at times and some travels are challenging and ah my my other projects with my client work can can sometimes take the best out of me. ah But then
00:18:13
Speaker
it always happens that I have um a little bit of what I sensed in our session earlier, which is this ah pure sense of awe in witnessing and observing. And I'm ageless at that point. And
Future Projects & Energy Essence
00:18:31
Speaker
I'm just you know, in in and full reception of of that light and curiosity as well. And and i I lean on the trust that some of the more difficult parts of any conversation or connection, I can um i can still flow into it. from
00:18:57
Speaker
um Amazing. Beautiful. I could feel that and I feel like any there was like a little bit of tiredness in me that dissipated. So what a beautiful, such a sweet, um potent ah way that you navigate things. And i I'm so curious, like, you know, you said you had some visions for like this next book. And you know it doesn't have to be that far into the future, but I'm curious you know how you're excited about your essence expressing itself in the world you know these days. And it might still be through you know your ongoing book tour, but if there are any other ways that you're excited, you know even if it's just smelling the flowers in spring,
00:19:42
Speaker
um how you feel like this you know energy of you and this aliveness kind of like wants to express itself in in this time.
00:19:55
Speaker
when When in that state flow, I sometimes have the cheekiness to ask questions. Nice. And sometimes I get answers that are super clear. And whether I should trust them or not, whether it will happen or not, it doesn't really matter. yeah um But it creates a ah ah powerful dynamic. So in this case, ah I heard third book, so it's not the next, it's maybe the one after. and That theme and that situation was, was ah yeah, kind of a um um as a source of curiosity for me. I i i really want to kind of make it super playful to care about Mother Earth.
00:20:47
Speaker
And just like I did, you know, at some point last summer, I, out of a trip in the Azores, I came back and and and I had a naha moment of, well, we should, and one should design a game for ecology that ah is better than monopoly. So, well, like, and I started designing ecopoly, like a game to understand all the different actors at play and possibilities and ways to to use ah technology, collective intelligence, and so on, to to to do climate action in in a way that that is um that is impactful. So it's you know it's it's just those moments where you it's all all of a sudden it crystallizes, and you just ah and you have one piece of the puzzle. and But that piece of the puzzle makes you want to to play more.
00:21:40
Speaker
so that that I had a few of those and the and then something else that happens because I think deep at court there's a willingness or and and a desire to bring harmony and so of course harmony with the need to be able to kind of flow in harmony with the rest of the worlds and so the the minor frictions of or kindf or or conflicts or sources of tension that i may be undergoing for this or that reason, ah say right now I'm house hunting, the release agent did not show up at the visit earlier. um and ah It kind of diffuses a little bit and very naturally. So it's it's ah um
00:22:29
Speaker
I really enjoy um what you activate, because there's always this this healing, which is a a prelude to elevation, to tapping into possibilities, to tapping into source, really. I realized, i you know, I kept on, that there are moments where I'm completely still, and it's just about tuning in. her Beautiful. Amazing.
00:22:59
Speaker
Well, I'm also curious, like if you as you as you tune into that kind of like essential energy, which again, I feel like I even received i received so much from about like how to ah receive and how to feel like as you feel that in yourself and imagine it kind of radiating out to those who are listening. um Yeah, if there are any words that want to come with that energy that might support, that might evoke um for those who are listening
00:23:37
Speaker
you know what what what you are, what you're about, and um that might support them in ah experiencing or cultivating that in their lives. um Yeah, I don't know if there's anything that comes to mind. There are three words that come to mind. The first one is partnership, because there's one moment also during our session where it really felt like I was holding an equal and the equal was holding me. And um it felt so good, you know, to have to have that to just be in that incredible strength of of balanced reciprocity and and ah trust.
00:24:22
Speaker
Equilibrium comes to mind. Again, throughout that session, I really felt like I was letting myself being porous to the rest of the world that was so generous and so loving and caring. And and it's so good to be to be there. um And poetry. then
00:24:49
Speaker
for the sublime of it, because we need we need to sublime all of it. Yeah, beautiful.
00:24:59
Speaker
Poetry is definitely the feeling that was coming through as I was dancing with you.
00:25:11
Speaker
Sometimes in sessions I sit, but this time I like stood up and I feel like I was kind of like receiving everything and moving with it. And I could feel like. a song, like it was like a song was like passing through, you know, they say like the muses when they come in, it's like, they really like come through you. And there was that feeling of like, being carried by wonder and beauty. And then it's just like, just letting it through, right? Like letting it through to be expressed and feeling like the it's almost like
00:25:52
Speaker
flight or like an opening of like, you know, like the heart and the and the throat to allow it through. And so, yeah, just so grateful to you for um all of these really beautiful gifts and this way of being in the world that you embody and share. And um yeah, I don't know if there's any final words that you want to leave with those who are listening about um about how it you know what it feels like to be you or about what it is to um find your own essence and you know share it in the world.
00:26:40
Speaker
My word is gratitude, gratitude for you because you have this powerful and gentle, very high touch way of ah holding that space. And, you know, and in our session last year, um prior to the completion of my my book, I mean, those images and everything I felt, I really, I look back now and I carried them all throughout and they carried me and they They invited me, so it was immense.
00:27:15
Speaker
and And you know some sometimes that there's an imperative. I find that there is an imperative to know oneself, to be oneself. And when it's so um possible and at hand, because of that energy, um and language and that you offer. um I mean, it's an incredible delight, you know, it's such a delight to be oneself. Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:56
Speaker
Thank you so much. I'm so grateful
Closing Reflections & Gratitude
00:27:59
Speaker
for you and thank you to everyone who's been listening. I hope that you really get to drink in this energy that Hannah brings um in so many different ways and that um please do look her up in her book. It's absolutely incredible. um especially those who are passionate about women's empowerment globally. um She's an incredible author and creator. And um like you said with the partnership, I just want to end with um that that is why I'm having these conversations is that
00:28:39
Speaker
I think that it's through all of us being ourselves and sharing ourselves with each other that we create the world kind of world that we want to see. A flower doesn't bloom. It doesn't try to bloom in a particular way to make itself you know something for someone. It just blooms. and um I think what's being asked for and invited right now is to receive the beauty that each person carries and offers and let that nourish us and teach us in the ways that we, you know, can't and don't, but to allow
00:29:21
Speaker
what is moving through us to be shared equally. right like Some people are a deep don deep strong street tree and others are a gentle flower and others are the wind and others are water and it requires all of us and so I hope that and sharing these experiences and sharing our essence that those who are listening get to just um revel and find nourishment in the diversity of expression and life that each of us carries and find a little bit of inspiration or um insight or energy to, as you say, like just be yourself in the fullest way possible and share that with us all.
00:30:08
Speaker
yeah Thank you so much for joining. Thank you for your lights. Yeah, likewise. And thank you to those who are listening, and and we'll hopefully talk to you soon.
00:30:21
Speaker
ah