This body mapping activity will require you to trace an outline of yourself on a large sheet of butcher paper. Therefore, leaning over and stretching will be involved in terms of mobility.

We will also be sitting on the floor, so please wear socks and bring a yoga mat. If you do not have a yoga mat, please let us know.

Light refreshments of water and snacks will be available during our breaks.

For many immigrants, “home” is a nebulous construct that is shaped by identities, social conditions, and desires. It is well established that the settlement process for many migrants involves health, material, and social challenges. Physical bodies change as they interact and encounter such experiences – reaffirming that just like anything else in nature, they are malleable to their environment. Thus, making “home” starts, continues, and ends with bodies. This interactive art workshop aims to use co-storytelling and body mapping as vehicles to explore how bodies carry dreams of the possibilities of constructing “home” in the diaspora. Together in a guided exercise, participants will develop body maps and share ideas of what a responsive “home” can look like based on their needs, desires, and dreams.

 
Zoha Salam is a social epidemiologist. Her research focuses on understanding how systemic and social factors shape mental health disparities in the diagnosis of disorders and access to care among racialized migrants in Canada. Integral to this, her work examines the intersections of legal status, conceptualizations of mental health, and settlement processes. Born in Rawalpindi, Pakistan and migrating to Canada as a child before 9/11, her lived experiences as a first-generation immigrant shape her work.