Cedar and Lucien: ALC ChangeMakers Podcast Interview
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[00:00:00] Hi everybody, and welcome to the ALC Changemakers Podcast. I'm your host, Jennifer Sconyers, and I'm so glad you're here. Today's conversation is one I've been looking really forward to. I'm joined by Cedar Landsman and Lucien Damaris, co-founders of Relational Uprising, a powerful initiative that supports mission-driven organizations in cultivating healthy, resilient.
Deeply connected cultures through relational practices. Cedar and Lucienne are facilitators, educators, and change makers who bring a unique approach to organizational development that's rooted in embodiment, collective care, and deep listening. Their work challenges the dominant culture of individualism and offers a transformative model for how we build power and connection together.
Especially in times of complexity and change. We [00:01:00] first met back in 2019 through our mutual friend and colleague Mark Fairfield, who you may remember from a previous episode. I had the privilege of attending one of relational uprisings workshops and immediately knew this was something special work that had depth, integrity and relevance to everything we do at Abundance Leadership Consulting.
In this episode, we're diving into what relational culture really means, why it matters for social change, and how it shows up in organizations trying to do values-based work. Whether you're new to these ideas or already steeped in movement building and systems change, this conversation will give you so much to think about and feel into.
So let's get into it. Here's my conversation with Cedar Landsman and Lucien Damaris.
Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to have you. So for listeners to know Cedar and Lucien run Relational Uprising, and I want them to tell you all about what it is and the awesome work.
I know them through our mutual contact Mark Fairfield, and Mark has also been the podcast. And so I think it was 2019, maybe might have been 2019, uh, that we really like met in person and I went through your. Workshops at that time. So really got to see firsthand the really important relational culture work that you do.
So I want our listeners to hear all about it. So yeah, Cedar, Lucien. Tell us about yourselves and a little bit about your leadership journey. I. Great. Well, I'll start. Thank you so much for having us. So great to get to be part of this cool podcast [00:03:00] project. And just in this relationship these years now.
So I'll just introduce myself and then Lucien can introduce himself. I am co-founder of Relational Uprising. My own background is in organizing and in social change work. In organizations big and small. I, my sort of, uh, study, you know, my background in study and training is in social movement, history, urban planning food policy and food justice.
I was. Deep in that world for a while, and I've worked in organizations as a leader and a facilitator for many years. I think what brought me to this work of relational culture and focusing on how we, how we protect our relationships within communities working for social change together. I think as a passion, you know, for understanding how change works.
I studied [00:04:00] social movement history. I've, you know, looked at and participated in change work from a variety of different sort of entry points and angles. And I think that, both an interest in how work that work happens and is successful. And also just a fortunate set of encounters and relationships, including with Mark, including with Lucien uh, has been yeah, wanting to really, it has led me to really wanna focus specifically on the relational aspect of change making work.
How do we tend to the. The relationships that we build, how do we understand that as not like a, either a positive or a negative byproduct of the work, but actually central to making change work successful and generative and I, have just found over these years that [00:05:00] it is essential to meeting.
The challenges of our time to tend to the relational aspect of change work. So that's a little bit about my own background and yeah, what leads me to this work in particular. Awesome. Thanks, Cedar Lucien. Hi. Hi everybody. So I'm also like Cedar. Co-founder and director of Relational Uprising.
Uh, my background though is slightly different. I actually come from a deep background, 25 plus years in, in the world of somatics and embodiment. I was interested in healing from an early age. I'm from Ecuador and from, uh, coming through. I guess exposure to the healing traditions and indigenous traditions of my country was really shaped by a somatic understanding of, healing, which I would say is a little different from just a wellness understanding.
It has that, sort [00:06:00] of idea that in order for you to truly heal, there's something about your world beyond culture that also that needs to be addressed. Came up, uh, migrated into the states and tried to found, you know, the trail of that sort of interested in healing by studying acupuncture and studying Elliot health practices like the Feldenkrais method of somatic education.
And I was a wellness practitioner in private practice for a number of years, uh, doing some body work, doing some acupuncture, but, I think that what happened to me is that I was missing that, that shamanic aspect, which, you know, really became the leadership aspect of the somatic awareness and somatic development of my practice.
And, that became more interested and more urgent for me, uh, particularly 'cause, you know, I was really affected by, uh, the context we're in and, uh, feeling like, you know, we're in ecological, uh. Collapse and, so many things happen [00:07:00] politically, economically, and justice wise. That, uh the culture of one is the culture of these sort of like relentless, uh, pursuit, you could say of uh, glowing youth and perfect, uh, uh, bodies.
Perfect health was actually antithetical to the very thing I have ended up in this career. So I got more and more. Disorganized by the culture of wellness and their disconnection from, uh, anything related to context and what I consider true embodiment. So I ended up in, in, leadership and, uh, became really interested in particularly relational geal and how religion style was protecting physical process as a relational.
Phenomena rather than this individualistic and disconnected version that I embedded in. And this happened through, you know, the relationships that already have been mentioned, Mark Fairfield. [00:08:00] And the way, you know, we sort of, uh. Coalesce through, uh, uh, an entanglement of social activism, personal transformation and relational understandings.
And since that moment, I've been totally dedicated and passionate to wanna make, uh, the somatic methodologies and the somatic more uh, part of personal transformation and leadership in particularly leadership that is related to group. And culture work and. That's what have brought me here and that's why I'm here and very passionate to be doing this work.
Uh, 'cause I do feel like it's a work that protects an aspect of embodiment that is dismissed in our culture. That the relational aspect of embodiment, that it feels so crucial actually for organizing us to be really present to, uh, how much we need to protect ecology, how much we need to protect our communities [00:09:00] if we really are taking resilience.
To, yeah. Well, I love this. I love this. Let's, break of. What you both have laid out is actually quite complex. So for our listeners who, you know, they don't really know anything about organizational development, you know what I mean? When it comes to relationships, you know, like they know the relationships they have with whomever, friends and family, I.
Maybe colleagues and coworkers. Right. But there's, a lot of layers to this too. Can you explain and really break it down for listeners, like what your methodology and approaches as relates to relationships and why it's important. I'll, and I'll name this for listeners when I went to the first workshop, I wanna say that was the bonding workshop.
I think that's what it was called. It's like, it's a level one intro workshop to the work that, that you two do. It's great. And. The first, one of the first exercises was a [00:10:00] critique of our current set of systems. And I think what stood out to me, and I'll just name this as my interpretation from a western culture perspective, living here in the US right?
A lot of our, culture that we know it here is based on the individual. So an individual person's growth, right? What that individual does, that individual person's impact, but we don't. We don't think in terms of how individuals are actually interconnected. So can you just speak to that a little bit, because I think this is something I found was just very unique about your approach because there's, so many people in the world that do organizational development.
There's so many people in the world that do transformational work. But it feels more plug and play and individual focused. And what you're doing is so unique and it's not that. So can you just speak to [00:11:00] Yeah. The uniqueness of what you do? Yeah. Start first. I. Me? Yeah, I could take a stab and then you could jump in.
So the unique the sort of unique lens we have, I would say is that when we work, we sort of work in two kind of main capacities. One is we run those trainings like you went to, which are four leaders to come and kind of get the full. Download of our you know, our theory of change and our critique of the dominant culture of individualism and how we understand that, how we understand that it impacts us in ways we may not even be realizing.
Uh. And then so we have those trainings and then we go into organizations. We get asked to come into organizations for a variety of reasons. Either, you know, because they just wanna a boost or some help or to strengthen their [00:12:00] relationships or because they are having a breakdown, like you said, or you know, and need help.
And. Uh, in both of those situations, we are bringing a very particular lens that sort of deemphasizes the individual skill of. Individual leaders, individual, uh, members of a community and doesn't necessarily have this approach that the sum total of people's individual skills and capacities is what's gonna create the possibility in the collective work.
We actually say, no. You need collective capacity to hold a whole culture where. Relationships are cared for and protected, meaning we value each other's experience by deep listening deeply and caring about that. We use a storytelling [00:13:00] methodology to do that with a listening and responding practice. We call sharing resonance.
That's one of our core practices. We, uh, then, you know, really ask groups to come together to assess. There. Share, like to try to make a parent their shared like picture of what the conditions they're working under. And what are the challenges in the relationships itself. So we kind of, you know, maybe in an organization for example, where you have different departments that supposedly make up one whole organization, but just take on different aspects of the work of that organization.
But actually those departments are working. It totally in silos and are not communicating. And then whenever they do need to collaborate, there's a conflict because they work very differently. And so they're not really acting as a whole organization, right? They're acting in different, separated, broken [00:14:00] down ways.
So that might be a place where we might say. We actually need to look at how are you relating to each other? What's your story? What are your narratives about each other? What's the experience you have when you try to encounter, you know that collaboration I. So that isn't even just one-on-one relationship that's like team to team relationship.
Right. And it makes sense when you describe it, but it actually is not usually part of the logic model we have because we have such an individualistic culture that we tend to focus much more on individual performance and individual leadership skill and less on like, how is this system. You know, building its shared capacity to do this thing together.
And that is that requires a focus on that in between space on the relationship itself. So it's, it is a different approach and it requires different tools and sometimes it requires [00:15:00] reorienting people to what to pay attention to what they don't. They typically kind of ignore or back burner or sort of put out of their minds.
I tried to break it down like you asked a little bit, you know, to like real, uh, yeah, real concrete, but it is complex. I don't know if Lucian, maybe, did I capture it? You, maybe you have more to say about it. Yeah, no you definitely did. I mean, one thing I will add is, uh. This idea or this understanding that I do see missing.
Sometimes there are unconscious biases, you know, it's that's popular. What do we do about them? How do we change our unconscious bias? But it's this deep understanding that if you really are serious about wanting to. Change the unconscious bias of an organization, of our community, of a team, or you know, our own individual, individual unconscious bias.
You got to pay attention to. [00:16:00] We say the deepest structures and frames of language and behavior. We say deep because they're not. Easy to spot. They're not obvious. And because of that's the reason you could say that we're pay so much attention to how we're gonna have this experience and how are we gonna communicate and narrate that experience that we're having.
And like you were referring to it if, we want to really like have a experience that is different from our habitual culture. Yeah, it got to first be the constructive. What is the frame that is setting us up? First of all, what is the frame that is, or the story we like to say it. If you wanna be more specific, the story that is making us suspicious of relation or felt experience or all those aspects of relationship that makes us more whole.
So you got to deconstructed and also add a new experience that. That creates another, an impression in, your system [00:17:00] and your life and your, uh, awareness that. It gives you a shock that something else is possible. Also to, I will say for particularly for those that are in the most, you know, cynical aspects of our culture that, you know have really given up and value in relationship and just want to relate to relationships in a practical way or transactional way.
This is needed. You know, you kind of need to be reminded how important it is. So. Eh, uh, harnessing that experience as well as the deconstruction is very important. So the practices that Sarah was talking about are like geared to like making sure that, you know, that occurs and there is something to cultivate.
Uh, the feels new and the experiences is a new way of dealing with those unconscious biases. Yeah. Well, thank you both for naming that. I, wanna take the time just to break this down even more for listeners, right? Because I think for people who are new to the work. It may be hard for under [00:18:00] to really understand like how this shows up.
So I'll just name at ALC, we've worked alongside Cedar and Lucien with some of our organizations and I'm thinking of some of our like nonprofit clients right where they are because the work they do, which is social impact work in some kind of way, they have been motivated to figure out how to make their.
Culture's better in the organizations, right? Because there's a direct impact. If their teams are healthy and thriving, then the members, the movement space they're in can also be better served, right? So there's a, there's an underlying motivation, and I name that because I. Everything you all are describing.
This isn't like a quick plug and play plug, a whole model, right? This is actually deep work for listeners. If you heard in a previous podcast with Mark Fairfield, I talked about a LC, we have a swimming pool analogy where the work is like shallow, medium, and deep into the pool. Right. So the shallow end of the [00:19:00] pool is when you're really new to something, you're really new to organizational change, you know, you have a problem, you don't know where to start.
You just need some baseline maybe language terminology. A place to begin, we'll call it. That's what I call the shallow end of the pool. So there's some baseline practices and trainings that can help you in the very beginning just to start. There's a middle in the pool for groups that you've been trying to work on, your relationships internally, you've been trying to solve problems like people are leaving the team.
We don't know why. Particularly people with diverse backgrounds, we don't know what's up, right? So you've been trying these different models. You don't know quite what's they've tried without success. Maybe they're more theoretical, not terribly pragmatic for you, right? That's medium part of the pool at a LC that requires a deeper intervention.
You probably need coaching, not just training, facilitate discussions at deeper work. The deepen the of the pool are for groups that have probably made multiple attempts. Harm has been [00:20:00] caused. The problems are very complex, so you need a really well tailored intervention. Intervention's gonna take time.
It's not, going to be a quick fix model. So when I think the work that you all do at relational uprising, it's not really the shallow one of the pool work. I mean, people get dip a toe and maybe take your bonding workshop to know what that's about, but like to really, I. Really go deep with the relationships.
That to me, has always felt like more middle to deep end of the pool. Like you've, really got to be all in and as organizational leadership be invested enough to say it's well worth it for us to go here. To really examine our relationships with some depth. We are willing as or as leadership to make the behavioral changes we need to make to be open to the critique, you know what I mean?
And to try something new on, because what you all teach people is, I would say [00:21:00] it's a muscle we have innately as humans. But it's not when we practice very much here. Right. So you essentially, it's like I tell people it's like going to the gym. You don't start the 70 pound weight, like you gotta start with like 10 pounds, but you're building a relational muscle that maybe has atrophied.
Right. So I that's how I've been interpreting your work. Does that seem like it fits like it's. It's truly meant to have depth and teeth and the storytelling as a mechanism to do that. But it comes with really uh, important inquiry that deals with people's suspicions and their appreciations.
Like I just wanna name for people. That's how I've experienced your work over the years. It's got depth and it's got teeth, and it's a way to really dive in a way. That might feel uncomfortable, but it's just so important if you are invested in really rebuilding the relationships in your organization's culture, that's a great way of putting it.
You definitely [00:22:00] capture particularly the, that fundamental piece of being like a long term commitment. Like Yeah and the depth analogy as well. 'cause uh, we like to say, you know, we're is a work that is. Upstream, meaning we are talking about a campaign of prevention and promotion that, you know, will have a long lasting effect in the whole organization.
And yes, it will require big commitment and it will require the desire and the motivation to. To dive deep and to stay committed along for sure. I don't know if you wants say anymore. Yeah, I would agree with that. This is, it's real meaningful work. It's not surface level kind of. Just you know, tinker with things and then it'll, you know, hopefully fix the problem.
It's, it is like, get under the surface, explore what's really going on, you know, understand how we're relating and that I. It requires [00:23:00] particular conditions, especially if we're in one state of mind and action. You know, you know, in social change orgs, you know, there's a lot of urgency 'cause a lot of stuff is wrong and there's a lot of fast work happening, a lot of responsiveness.
So sometimes, yeah, you have to kind of slow down to be able to do this more reflective and connective work. What I wanna say though, to not scare people off, you know, and think that, oh, it's such a high bar, I gotta go all the way if I'm gonna do this work is, I mean, you do, but I, but yes, it pays off over time, but also we, I think, and particularly over the years, have really honed this, it doesn't mean you have to, you know, uh, kind of go really deep into, you know, uh, the nitty gritty and unpacking things in a way that feels like it starts to drift from [00:24:00] the real purpose of the relationship. In fact, we really focus in this work on how these relationships and what they need to function for.
Are working and can work better, you know, and need to, you know, grow and share more understanding and mutuality and, it's very much. Relevant. I guess that's the point I'm trying to make. It's deeply relevant to the work. Sometimes people make that, and that's actually a bias we have sometimes make that idea that diving into the relationships is somehow something you should only do when there's a problem in the relationship or it's something that takes us away from the work itself.
And actually it's deeply relevant. To work on how we come together around this shared thing we're passionate about. So yeah, I like to tell, I like to reassure people that yes, we're going in the deep end, but like the deep end of, the purpose we're together [00:25:00] And this is work that's designed for mission-driven organizations.
We haven't really. I mean, so that is a given. Usually there's some shared passion and values that we are building on, you know, and so yes. Yeah, I would say that I, yeah, I think it's important, right? Yeah. That this is the work that is really designated for. Mission driven organizations and that can look different ways.
I know you and I have worked together in nonprofit spaces, but I believe you all worked in higher ed, right? You've, worked in other sectors, right? Yes. Can you speak to some sectors you all have worked in? Yeah, we have. We definitely work in, everything from like really grassroots social movement organizing spaces like frontline organizing spaces to big advocacy nonprofits, legal aid, nonprofits, things like that.
We have also worked in, uh, [00:26:00] higher ed and also, I mean, particularly In our In our past lives, in various iterations of this work, we've worked also in high schools, both with young people, you know, high schoolers and college students. We've also done, uh, professional development and community building among teachers and educators.
And we've done work on like campus culture on, campuses. That is a really. Other, uh, like another really powerful context for this work to happen is in learning and educational context. We also have worked in, with cooperatives, you could say like mission-driven small businesses, like cooperative farms and in the, mostly in the farming and food justice space.
Yeah. On. Yeah, workplace culture, relationships, sort of holding values, uh, [00:27:00] within you know, working on providing, you know, food security or, you know, environmental stewardship, things like that. So yeah we do this work in a real range of con. We've done some faith work with faith-based communities that are socially engaged and faith-based.
Organizing spaces. Yeah. We've done this work in a variety of contexts. Wherever there's groups of humans that, come together and care about what they're doing. Yeah. That are mission driven. I'm wondering if you, if there are any like, wisdom that you wanna impart or advice for people navigating now.
So given that you work in. Social movement spaces, social justice spaces, mission-driven spaces, given all that's happening in the greater context. And I wanna just name for listeners too. I'm going to put things, up like this. Work isn't only just about relationships in the silo. It's interconnection, it's dealing with things like bias, right?
So all of these things that [00:28:00] are part of. A greater national conversation, right? When we talk about the DEI backlash and the DEI actually, when we're talking about relationships, we're tending to all of these things. It's not a weird, funky puzzle piece, so I just wanna name that, right? If you care about healthy organizational systems, you need to tend to things like bias within that system.
So. What are some things you would tell people now who are an organization or a team and they're just trying to figure it out. 'cause it's just been a very challenging time, I think for the social justice space and people who are involved in mission-driven work and social movements.
You wanna take this one? You go. I mean, the first thing that is kind of like a highlight for me, uh, feels like. The realization of, uh, how much connection or the role of connection has in true inclusion. Uh, I do feel like, you know, since we're witnessing the backlash today, I work and, [00:29:00] uh, we're kind of like in the midst of noticing, you know, how far those, you know, efforts really end.
It feels like a very important, you know, sort of moment to reflect on, you know. Was there enough connection in, the effort? Is there enough connection in what we're doing? And are we investing in connection as a step towards inclusion rather than trying to do inclusion by keeping that, that sort of step, like the importance of understanding how our brain even works and I change happens and the deepest structures of our, system feels.
Fundamental to like, okay let's, really, you know, uh, uh, make room for just seeing connection as a very important thing that we need to have as a resource in our communities, uh, in order to do this powerful work that we need to do, which is much, much more complex and much harder. And it will have, you know, uh, uh, a possible backlash and risk if we don't attend [00:30:00] to, uh, this feels like, you know, a more fundamental piece for change.
That would be one thing I'm thinking. Consider maybe I would say too just in terms of leaders right now, you know, uh, we do a lot of, training, coaching, and facilitation with leaders and groups of leaders that are working together. And I think one of the most fundamental things is like, isolation is dangerous.
Do not like. Don't tolerate it. Don't allow it. Don't stand for it. Find support, find connection. You know, sometimes, particularly in organizations that have a kind of a functional hierarchy, a traditional, you know, you have a, you have an executive directory, you have a leader, and you know, and then you have, it's a little bit shaped like this Functionally, that works sometimes, you know, for many, in many instances.
I'm not gonna say it doesn't, it can very much work. [00:31:00] Especially if we understand and can see isolation and the risks of isolation and really understand that we need support no matter where we are in that structure. We, need to we need both the enriching perspective of other voices, you know, and supports.
And we also just, we need to understand that our individual leadership capacity. In our frame is online. To the extent that we're like comes, alive to the extent that we are well supported and maybe folks relate to that. Like sometimes I feel really like powerful and like I have all my capacities and I'm like a, you know, I'm a great leader.
And then other times it's weird. I just feel like I'm just a mess. And some of that is like just because our leadership. Thrives when we're well supported and, you know if we collapse that and think [00:32:00] that's just all about our own individual cultivation, we may end up too isolated and that can be, certainly harmful to ourselves. 'cause isolation is not a resilient state. But also we, it will impact those we are leading or if we're in an organization, those we're managing and those we're supporting. So find support. Yeah. Well I think that's, one of the keys to the work that you do and I know that's what drew me to, to wanting to collaborate and work with you all.
Just for listeners to know, with adjuncts in the ALC team, so that we've been intentional about forging relationship and working together in this work, which is just so important. And I think this piece around support and what that means and what that looks like for people, especially for people who've never been adequately supported, some of that systemic and on purpose.
Right. But that's there. And also dealing with. Isolation, which you both have mentioned multiple times this [00:33:00] podcast, right? Like we have, there's so many articles talking about how different demographics right now in our society are isolated. I think COVID didn't help. We already had an isolation problem, and then you had a period of time where people were literally isolated in their homes or wherever they were.
So it's even worse now. So this is a, this is the type of work that, you know, as it's done and done, the ways that you all have designed it's, the authentic way to actually bring in inclusion and belonging and deconstructing biases and make, uh, really healthy organizational ecosystem. So I just wanna name that we're right at the end of our time.
Is there anything you wanna name for our listeners and viewers? Are there any upcoming workshops or Yeah, any requests you have. Well, you wanna go Lucian? I'll say we do have an upcoming workshop, but it has a prerequisite. Okay. We have an [00:34:00] advanced in-person workshop coming in the fall. Anyone interested in our work?
There's an interest list for an intro workshop on there. If you go to Relational Uprising.org and look on our calendar the residential that's coming up. There's a, you can link to sign up on the interest list for an intro workshop, and then you'll find out if an intro workshop gets scheduled. Uh, that's a great way to sort of enter and we've got a lot of we've got a lot brewing now in terms of programming.
You'll also see on there a link to a convening we're doing for folks in leadership in organizations that's gonna be specifically focused on. Uh, progressive social justice organizations and some of the leadership and management challenges that are existing in that space were kinda like co-hosting a convening around that, uh, in the fall as well.
So those are some things. But we [00:35:00] have ongoing. Programming that we announce regularly, uh on our website every year. Lucian, maybe one thing to make explicit is for those that would like to, you know to be eligible for the, advanced program. Like you said, making really explicit, you can sign into the list.
'cause if there's enough interest, we might actually hold another interim right before the September residential if that's the case. Otherwise, you know, they'll have to wait for next spring. So yes, if you're interested, sign up into the list and we'll definitely we'll be offering another one easier.
Yeah. Awesome. And those workshops were great. They're like, they're the ones I took in 2019. I learned so much as a practitioner, was really great to go to and, really, and it's for their listeners it is an immersive experience. Like you really are in community with people and this in the residential experience and so I just named that if you really want to experience relational culture and what [00:36:00] that is and what that's all about.
Then I would say get yourself on that wait list and yeah, apply. Well, it's been so great. Thank you so much for joining the podcast. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. So great to spend time with you. Awesome. And to our listeners, we have more brewing, so stay at tuned the ALC ChangeMakers podcast now on Spotify.
Thanks everybody. Thank you.
Thank you so much for joining us today on the ALC Changemakers Podcast. If you found today's conversation inspiring or helpful, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and leave a review. It helps other changemakers like you find our show at Abundance Leadership Consulting, we believe in building sustainable leadership and connected communities through justice, courage, and care.
If you wanna learn more about our work access leadership resources. Connect with our community. Head over to jennifersconyers.com. Until next [00:37:00] time, keep leading with purpose. Keep building relationships that matter and keep creating change one bold step at a time.
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