United Bodies

Kendall Ciesemier
United Bodies

United Bodies is a podcast about the lived experience of health. Join health and disability writer, producer, and activist Kendall Ciesemier and her guests as they explore how different components of our health – mental, physical, social, and spiritual – interplay with one another and intersect with the whole of our identity. When we understand these forces in our lives, we can meet both ourselves and others with more empathy and maybe even realize our fights for equity, justice, freedom, and accessibility are united.   

Episodes

  1. MAR 18

    What Makes an Enjoyable Life With Andrea Gibson

    As the first season of United Bodies comes to a close, here’s a conversation that will buoy us all by proving what’s possible.We’ve been talking about building the world we need -- be that through destigmatizing the hard stuff in our life through humor, liberating ourselves through movement, choosing to write a new story for our lives, finding bodily pleasure, or reconciling our spirituality. Today we are bringing all of those threads together in a conversation about accessing joy amidst the ...

    48 min

  2. MAR 11

    Pleasure Is For All of Us with adrienne maree brown

    Today we’re talking about pleasure. I can already tell that some of you are wincing. Pleasure is experienced in our bodies and keeps us full of aliveness—whether that’s the pleasure that comes from feeling sun on our backs, tasting our favorite treat, or from a steamy sexcapade. We’re talking about it all today with the person who wrote a whole book about its importance. adrienne maree brown is the NYT Bestselling author of Pleasure Activism. She’s a writer, activist and organizer who b...

    40 min

  3. MAR 4

    Reclaiming Spirituality After It Was Weaponized Against Us with Phillip Picardi

    For many of us, spiritual health is a facet of our health that we consider less, perhaps even give less weight to or spend less time cultivating. There are many reasons for this. Spirituality can feel elusive, confusing, scary, and unknown. It can bring up religious baggage, ostracization, and pain. Religion is one of the most notable constructs of how people find and express individual and communal spirituality, but it’s also been used as a tool to oppress and commit violence. At a time...

    44 min

  4. FEB 26

    The Liberating Power of Movement With Morgan Dixon and Aj Williams

    Moving your body, in any way you can, can be a liberating experience—to feel your power, your strength, your security and resiliency through a step forward, a dance, a roll or stroll through nature. Studies support this—movement has a profound impact on our brains: reducing stress, anxiety, and depression, encouraging creativity and ingenuity. Think about it: when we are babies, we move our bodies naturally. We are born with the desire to move because movement feels good to us. But ...

    45 min

  5. FEB 19

    Writing A New Story with Stephanie Foo

    Content warning: child abuseTrauma is everywhere we look. Most prominently, trauma is marked by a sense of powerlessness and loss of control. This is one of most overwhelming parts of experiencing trauma. It’s terrifying to lose control over our bodies and our lives. Recovery is then about regaining control over all that was taken from us. One tool that can help us is the act of writing our stories. When we are able to reclaim our own stories, we can find a power greater than the power w...

    37 min

  6. FEB 12

    Laughter is the Best Medicine with Samantha Irby

    Welcome to the second half of United Bodies, where we’re focused on building the world we need. A huge part of building a better world is about imbuing our world with joy and there’s nothing that makes me feel more joy than laughter. I love to laugh and I particularly love to laugh about my own problems. This is what I think they call… coping. Laughter is contagious. It literally extends our lives. Laughter can also help us reckon with circumstances we cannot control, like the ones our b...

    38 min

  7. FEB 5

    The Power and Potential of Grief With Wanda Irving

    We are living in a time of collective mourning. Millions of people are mourning loved ones lost to COVID, others are mourning those lost to rampant gun violence or police brutality, and still others are mourning the smaller or slower losses: the loss of progressive illness, relationships, jobs. It can feel like everywhere we turn, there’s new loss. Grief is long, complicated, isolating, and devastating. It’s also something that we will all experience. So then, the question becomes, if so...

    38 min

  8. JAN 29

    The Criminalization of Mental Illness With Krista Cezair and Brittany Packnett Cunningham

    Content Warnings: This episode includes discussions of suicidality, psychosis, violence, and police brutality.Over the last number of years, we’ve made significant progress in destigmatizing mental health care -- many of us openly talk about going to therapy, follow therapists on social media, and even trade tips on dealing with side effects of taking popular medication for depression and anxiety. However, this de-stigmatization hasn’t reached all kinds of mental illness or all kinds of ...

    41 min

  9. JAN 22

    If Our Pain Were Believed With Samantha Reid

    There is a huge gender gap in those that experience pain and how pain is treated. More than 51 million people in the United States – more than 20 percent of adults – live with chronic pain, but 70 percent of pain sufferers are women.To make matters worse, women and nonbinary people, particularly women and nonbinary people of color, are treated poorly by the medical system. Our pain is ignored. Our needs are unmet. Our diagnoses are late. We are gaslit by doctors and in turn we distrust them. ...

    49 min

  10. JAN 15

    How America Took the Healing out of Wellness with Fariha Róisín

    Content Warning: Child Sexual AbuseIf you listen to a podcast, scroll through Instagram, read your favorite news site, chances are that you’ll run into an ad for a new wellness product that you likely do not need. Preying on our innate fear of our own mortality, the wellness industrial complex is the manifestation of a kind of capitalism, colonization, and white supremacy, that promises you that if you buy this green juice, or do that colon cleanse, you too will be saved from illness, disabil...

    45 min

  11. JAN 8

    Our United Fight for Bodily Autonomy With Imani Barbarin

    Together, throughout United Bodies, we’ll explore how different components of our health—mental, physical, social, and spiritual—interplay with one another and intersect with the whole of our identity. When we understand these forces in our lives, we can meet both ourselves and others with more empathy and maybe even realize our fights for equity, justice, freedom, and accessibility are united.The first half of our season is focused on addressing and navigating the world we have. The second h...

    39 min
  12. Trailer

    12/27/2023

    Trailer

    United Bodies is a podcast about the lived experience of health. Join health and disability writer, producer, and activist Kendall Ciesemier and her guests as they explore how different components of our health – mental, physical, social, and spiritual – interplay with one another and intersect with the whole of our identity. When we understand these forces in our lives, we can meet both ourselves and others with more empathy and maybe even realize our fights for equity, justice, freedom, and...

    2 min
  • 12 Episodes

5
out of 5
25 Ratings

About

United Bodies is a podcast about the lived experience of health. Join health and disability writer, producer, and activist Kendall Ciesemier and her guests as they explore how different components of our health – mental, physical, social, and spiritual – interplay with one another and intersect with the whole of our identity. When we understand these forces in our lives, we can meet both ourselves and others with more empathy and maybe even realize our fights for equity, justice, freedom, and accessibility are united.   

Information

  • Creator
    Kendall Ciesemier
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2024
  • Episodes
    12
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2024 United Bodies
  • Show Website
    United Bodies

You Might Also Like

To listen to explicit episodes, sign in.

Stay up to date with this show

Sign in or sign up to follow shows, save episodes, and get the latest updates.
Select a country or region

Africa, Middle East, and India

Asia Pacific

Europe

Latin America and the Caribbean

The United States and Canada