OUR STORY

The Body is Home is a multidisciplinary research initiative exploring what it means to be at home in our bodies through movement, sport and community.

The Body is Home began as a passion project by Asha Edwin based on her experience completing her second yoga teaching training certificate and running her first marathon in 2023. For Asha, these experiences were transformative. Together, they allowed her to reflect on her relationship with her body and wellness and her experiences with movement, sport, and community.

In 2024, the Body is Home initiative sought to explore the breadth of wellness and its impact on well-being. Her love for wellness has always been a prioritized practice for Asha, and her experiences as a yoga teacher and runner allowed her to develop a deeper and more intimate connection with herself and, through her work, others.

Yearning to learn more about what it means to be at home in our bodies and how movement and community impact herself and others, she birthed Body is Home. Since its inception, Body is Home evolved into a research initiative focusing on the experiences of Black, racialized, and marginalized groups and their experiences in doing and reimagining healing, health, and wellness.

We began our first project in April 2024 with 15 Black women runners and members of Hill Run Club. The project explored the impact of running on self-esteem and community and the initiative's overall mission to further understandings and definitions of wellness for Black women.

OUR BEGINNING

The Body is Home initiative explores the intersection of movement, community, sport, art, education, and social justice to examine what it means to be at home in our bodies.

Through this, we challenge notions of intimacy, pleasure, displacement, resilience, and representation, explore the meaning of ‘home,’ and examine how we define, affirm, and challenge our individual and collective identities through participation in and reimagination of movement and community and their impact on healing, health, and wellness.

The Body is Home is a study facilitated by the IDEAS Research Lab.