What are Acts of Resistance?

‘Acts of resistance’ are referred to in conversations of activism and protest and traditionally include marches, sit-ins, blockades, donating money, and writing to elected officials. We show up and show out to be loud, support others, have our voices heard, and apply pressure to enact change.

Active, outward-directed energy is supported with gentle, inward energy we can cultivate in our day-to-day lives - we show up better for each other when we are rock solid and right with ourselves.

Let’s touch on some more individual acts of resistance that can be used to support our collective.

Wholistic spiritual balancing. Regularly tending to your spiritual garden fortifies self-trust and affects how you show up in personal relationships, how you show up in the world, and the emotional legacy you imprint onto the young people in your life, strengthening the next generation. Oppressive systems rely in part on our feeling scattered and inadequate, and balancing ourselves through spiritual mindfulness can help give you space to breathe and to further support others. Activities such as meditation, breathwork, body movement and journaling fall into this category, and help to steady and secure your soul.

Create Art. Creation is as fundamental to our souls as breathing, and our vibrancy can be amplified with regular art engagement. Self-express as a practice to find the exact words your voice wants to use. In letting yourself create without boundaries, you build potential to reach another’s soul in a way that a sign, a conversation, a tweet cannot. In addition to the better known artistic modalities, an ‘expressive’ lens can be looked through with more conventional activities. Cooking is expressive. Singing to your children is expressive. Drawing a flower in the dirt on your rear windshield is expressive. A multi-day mural project is a wonderful addition to a community, but we can take bites of a big project into smaller moments of our day to get the same spiritual and connective benefit.

Focus energy to your immediate community. It is completely normal to feel disheartened and pessimistic during these tense times of conflict. Working within your immediate community helps people within arms reach and will re-empower you and remind you of your impact. Look for groups within your community working on something that resonates with you and ask how you can help. This could be volunteering at a community event, offering free remote services to a local activist group, or attending a public neighbourhood meeting. Grassroots, baby! Big things can happen at the community level, and making friends with your neighbours helps build a force for larger activism moves.

Rest. I would like to preface this by saying I know a lot of us have plates that are 125% full and have people that depend on us for survival. I would also like to mention that I am not talking about hyper-commodified ‘self-care’. The rest I’m talking about ranges widely from deep breaths in a dark, closed bathroom to reset your nervous system, to taking an extended leave from work to catch up on sleep and healing. It can also mean taking a break from rigid self- expectations. The rest I would like you to think about is the kind that allows your fight-or-flight to relax (even for a moment), and allows you to center and temporarily unplug from this high-speed treadmill we can find ourselves running on. It’s great to have high expectations for yourself, but rest is non-negotiable. Rest will enhance your abilities, I promise you.

The neverending call to productivity and perfection is insidiously sneaky. Embedded deeply in the structure of the world we live in is the message that you aren’t doing enough. I would like to present the idea to you that maybe you are. You have inherent value. And you deserve to rest.

The neverending call to productivity and perfection is insidiously sneaky. Embedded deeply in the structure of the world we live in is the message that you aren’t doing enough. I would like to present the idea to you that maybe you are. You have inherent value. And you deserve to rest.

What are your Acts of Resistance?

Comment your response below.

Featured blog post written by Carly Basso, who is a jack-of-all-trades creative living on unceded sylix/Okanagan land in Kelowna, BC. She specializes in expressive writing, photography, and video production. Find her performing her daily acts of resistance on Instagram at @hunnycee.