Panthea Lee (she/they) is a writer, cultural worker, and transdisciplinary designer/facilitator committed to life and liberation. She has built and supported coalitions of community leaders, artists, healers, activists, and institutions fighting for dignity in over 30 countries. Her practice is rooted in commitments to deimperialization, collective healing, and global solidarity, and explores ways—through narrative, practice, and infrastructure—to weave the spiritual and political in realizing structural justice. Panthea has held fellowships at Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity and Digital Civil Society Lab, and at Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination. She has served as trustee at DemocracyNext, The Laundromat Project, People Powered, and RSA (Royal Society of Arts). From 2010-23, she served as co-founder and Executive Director of the award-winning Reboot. Her work has been covered by Al Jazeera, CNN, Fast Company, and the New York Times, and her words have appeared in The Atlantic, Harper’s Bazaar, In These Times, The Nation, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and more. Panthea is based in Taipei, Taiwan, on the traditional lands of the Ketagalan people.
Panthea is a graduate of Cohort 15. We had the pleasure of speaking with Panthea this month to learn more about how she is integrating The Resilience Toolkit into the incredible work she does.
Describe your experience of facilitating The Resilience Toolkit in 1-2 words.
Expansive and complicating
How are you working with The Resilience Toolkit?
There’s maybe two ways that I’ve currently been using it. And then one way that I think I’ll be experimenting with later on this fall. I’ve been doing it a little bit in the traditional way as in just holding pure Resilience Toolkit sessions. I’m not advertising these – these are actually mostly just for friends and peers when I sense a need. So these are mostly activists and cultural organizers largely of the global majority. And because I’m just in dialogue and in community and in struggle with folks, when I sense there might be – not necessarily a need – but that this could be a helpful offering, I would often just be like, “by the way, I did this thing, and I have some of these tools in this moment if I can be supportive.” So that’s actually been nice to be able to have something to offer my community. Sometimes we’re in very heady strategy sessions and tactic sessions and, and so I bring it up and say, “hey, this is important too,” and offer one-on-ones and small group things. And I get feedback back from folks saying that it was great and they want to share it with others.
But I think mostly it’s actually been integrating it into the other types of works and workshops that I do. That’s been with the same crowd – activists, artists, cultural workers. I often get asked to facilitate and hold space around organizing and sometimes mediating conflicts and things like that. I haven’t done it in pure mediation work yet, but especially with group stuff, there’s always conflict. There’s always things that come up. So as I’m planning a gathering or a workshop now, it’s often something that I will try and work into the flow of things.
Most recently I was invited to run a workshop for a group of cultural organizers and activists from Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Taiwan. I knew the technical things that they needed to talk about, and I knew that that was going to be bringing stuff up for people. So partway through, I created a space to talk about “What does conflict bring up in us? What are the feelings? What are the emotions? And here are a set of practices.” And that’s been actually really nice. It’s felt very natural to then say – as people talk about the heartache of being in struggle and trusting folks, and then can talk in technical and head-based ways – to be able to say “okay great, let’s try some of these practices together.” This particular group that I was facilitating for, I know they are a cohort in many ways. They work together in other constellations. And I’ve gotten feedback that they’ve actually incorporated this into their language and into how they run meetings and gatherings. That’s been really beautiful. So I’ve been grateful to have that. And I haven’t necessarily introduced the entire Toolkit, but I pick and choose different things and integrate them into how I’m hosting.
And then the thing that I’m not sure about and I’m excited to experiment around with is in the fall, I’ll be participating in the Matsu Biennial, our exhibition here in Taiwan. It’s on what is known as one of the frontline islands. As we know, tensions with China are escalating. I don’t know if they’re at an all-time high, but they’re definitely heightened, and there are military exercises going around our islands. And this Matsu Biennial happens on one of the islands. It’s very close to China, and actually, I think it’s the most militarized island in modern history. I’m going to be there running a set of workshops. I’m creating an installation and then also running a set of workshops with residents and visitors talking about their lived experience of their culture, their history, their memories of this land and of this place. And contrasting that with global media narratives – these people didn’t choose to be frontline residents. They didn’t choose it, but this is their reality. And I think that new Cold War logics often cast people on the front lines as pawns in geopolitical chess, and we reduce their lived experience to that of chess pieces in these great power rivalries like US versus China. And I think the frames that we have for them, like “tinderbox “ and “US-China relations” or “first island chain,” all of these things, really flatten and then and erase the lived realities of folks. So basically, long story short, I know it’s going to be quite an activating set of conversations. But I also feel like these are important conversations that we want to have because we want to challenge the political erasure and the cultural erasure. But it’s tender. It’s hard. It’s right now. It’s not like something that happened in the past. Literally tensions are right now. And so I’m thinking now about what it might mean to bring this set of practices as I’m hosting these workshops.
And maybe one of the complicating things that we might talk about is that folks already have their own practices – Tai Chi practices, Qigong practices – that are very much a part of folks’ lives. And there’s so many layers to it. There’s both existing practices, like physical embodied somatic practices like tai chi, or different types of meditation. And then there’s also so many different ways that people explain stress. There’s so many different ways that people explain conflict that are religious, that are cultural, and so on. It’s so interesting. So I think I’m still in a place of listening and learning and understanding when, whether, and how these practices make sense in the context of what people already have. So that’s the thing I’m going to be experimenting with in the fall.
In some workshops I’ve held, I ask, “what are some tools that you use?” and validate and acknowledge the different practices. And also, I think what’s incredible about the Toolkit is that these are deceptively simple practices. They are very quick and in the moment. So it’s honoring acknowledging our different practices, and I talk about how the Toolkit and these incredible teachers have distilled so many of these practices, and borrowed and learned and continue to honor them. So the Toolkit has distilled these quick practices that you all from many different countries and cultures can use, this can be a common language that you continue to use in your gatherings and so on. And it’s helpful, because you don’t have to have this super long learning process.
What has been most satisfying in your work as a Resilience Toolkit Facilitator?
I think what has been really satisfying – one thing I mentioned before which is the most obvious – is being able to provide a set of tools and support people in different ways. And I think in multidimensional ways, as a person that’s holding space. When things come up, I can’t be like, “oh and by the way, after this, why don’t you go see someone else?” And so just being able to integrate – and I say “I’m not an expert or a trained mental health professional, but this is what I can offer.” So I think on a very personal level, that’s been very helpful to go in with a different type of confidence. And to know that I have different tools to help support or to offer folks when things come up. So that’s been just really empowering.
And then also, I have done other types of thematic practices, embodied social justice type trainings before. And I think that it’s in mainstream culture now. Like The Body Keeps The Score has a bestseller for however many weeks – things like this. Embodiment is very much in dominant culture discourse right now, and being lionized I think. There’s a pendulum shift from where we were – so disassociated and so disconnected. I think before I did the Toolkit, there was kind of a sense of, “embodiment! You have to have embodiment!” And what was actually really helpful going through this process was to also now have the language and the confidence to be like, “nope, embodiment is not helpful in every instance and all the time.” We had many sessions talking about dissociation, and when freeze has been helpful – it’s your body’s intelligent response. So it’s been helpful to have another language instead, and a lens to assess, again – when, whether, and how to create a space or a container to be in our bodies, to sense into it, or to be in dialogue with our stress with our somas. And that question: “how is stress showing up and is it helpful to you?” Because if it’s helpful to you, keep on keeping on, you know? Not forever! But giving me that discernment I think has been really, really valuable, because without it before I would have been like, “Embodiment is great! We got to do this!” whether or not it is. And there’s a de-pathologization of the dissociation that I was actually super grateful for in this. So just having a flexible toolkit, and the critical thinking abilities to abilities discern when and what is appropriate.
Describe a challenge you have encountered in your work as a Resilience Toolkit Facilitator.
For the most part, I’m not leading Toolkit practices in – I don’t know what the term is – like clinical settings, or settings where people are coming in being like, “I’m working on this thing.” So depending on the gathering, I don’t necessarily have a way to do intake in the same way and be able to understand what’s going on for people and whatnot. So I’m trying to watch the room. I guess what’s been hard is then understanding how to assess what’s going on for people to understand at what depth to go or what practices to offer.
For example, in a workshop that I led, there was a Burmese activist in the room. And in the workshop we didn’t tremor very long – it was less than a minute. But I think that just opened something up that I think was quite challenging for him. So I followed up with him, and we ended up having a one-on-one. But it made me think about, in a big space where lots of people are coming in with different things, how do I optimize for safety? Because you can say things, like “stop when you feel discomfort,” but I also think that especially at entry level, when you’re just coming to this practice folks don’t necessarily know how to engage with that. So I think for me it’s how do I deepen my discernment and not try or want to give everything because I’m so excited. Because I think for a while I was like, “right, of course, given everything that’s going on in Myanmar right now and what’s happening with the military junta and all the attacks. I should have known better.” And then I was like, “well, I can’t know better always.” I have people coming in from all sorts of backgrounds. I can’t always understand the political situation and what people might see. And it’s not even always the big politics that you can read about in the news. So for me it was shifting from: don’t self-blame or don’t take on over-responsibility, because you can’t know everything, to then say okay, how do I discern or just prioritize safety? And then also when something does happen, then what are my practices for aftercare and follow up? And just making sure that I’ve created space and room for that. So I think I’m learning around all this.
And I think especially since I’m working primarily now in contexts where I think there’s just different language or different culture, I’m trying to be more skillful and understand where people are coming from and what practices already have interoception. How much dialogue there can be about sensations and proprioception. There’s just different ways, like people might talk about their chi – their life force energy – but they might not talk about their sensations in their body. So I’m trying to translate a bit and then understand, okay, in this context, what different types of language might be useful? The weather pattern? The colors? Or is there other language that is more readily available and commonly understood? And so as I become more skillful, it’s just something I’m practicing into.
How are you seeing alchemical resilience and transformation show up in the work that you’re doing?
Big question. I think that maybe I’ll start from the small. I think that for myself, I am… just finding a lot more capacity to sit with complexity. When you’re advocating for something or when you’re working on a campaign, I think there’s sometimes – and I think this is all being debated now – but I think there’s some of this desire to have just one message, and this is right and that is wrong. And I’m in a moment of questioning whether or not these narratives around “this is the fight” and “they’re bad and we’re good” – is that serving us? Obviously the second Trump presidency brings up a lot of these questions, like do we need to change our tactics? So I’m having these questions and I’m in conversation with folks. And I think that my own practices and having that regulatory flexibility has really helped me in being able to hold all of these things at once. So just on a personal level, that’s been very useful.
And then on a larger level, this question of alchemical resilience is something I’ve just been thinking about a lot, maybe because I’m in Taiwan now and I think that so much of the global narrative is: you say you’re from Taiwan and people go, “oh, so when’s China going to invade? When’s that going to happen?” It’s not an if, but a when question. So I’ve been thinking in many ways about how folks have been able to navigate this – being in a land and from a land where people have written you off, “well, you’re a tiny country. What are you going to do?”
I see the alchemical resilience perhaps not in the ways that I have traditionally understood it. Taiwan has a really robust and beautiful and complicated and challenging democracy. There’s many things going on right now, but I think about how folks have channeled a lot of the grief and the pain into transformative justice initiatives, for example. How do we grapple with the past? A country with either the highest or one of the highest rates of colonization in history and the most number of colonizers ever, because of the strategic location and all these things. But they have channeled it into a way around. How do we heal? And healing doesn’t happen on an individual level. It’s got to be collective and communal. And so trying to channel these into structural initiatives, given all the grief and the pain that’s still very real and very present. The ghosts of all this still are amongst those on these lands. And they’re still living and walking around, even folks with memory of the dictatorship. So just watching folks translate that into structural initiatives that have baggage and complications – I think that’s been really inspiring.
I also think about what happens when the rest of the world has written you off. What are the different narratives? There’s a lot of Buddhist influence in Taiwanese culture. And I think one thing that I’ve really struggled with is this notion of “well, this is just your karma.” Like we’re struggling in this life because in the past life, something must have happened and therefore, this is just the way it is. Which I think when I was younger, I treated as a kind of fatalism that I really detested. It’s like, “no, but we can change things.” And in Western society it’s like “pull yourselves up by your bootstraps. You can change anything. You can be anything.” And I think now as I’m here, I’ve come to respect more that maybe there’s just some things that you can’t change. And maybe actually having these religious concepts and these spiritual concepts to come back to is helpful. Because we can tremor all we want, and some things are just not going to change. Now, we are going to continue to fight and to stand up for our right to agency and sovereignty and whatnot. But there’s maybe some things in this lifetime that are just going to be the way it is. So then how do we actually talk about that? And I think that is resilience, a beautiful type of resilience that challenges the notion that I can just heal myself and then everything will be fine. And of course that’s not what the Toolkit teaches, but I think that I’m trying to find this balance of like the “yes, and.” Yes, we have to be able to regulate ourselves to be able to face these challenges that are coming, and to also to be able to hold the narratives of, there’s a certain level of acceptance that to be human is to suffer. So yeah, I think I’m just deeply impressed and in awe of all the ways that Taiwanese people have embodied and worked with alchemical resilience in these structural ways in the way of civic design and acts of care that show up in the social fabric.
Interested in exploring more of what Panthea is weaving into the world? Visit panthealee.com or connect with her on Instagram @panthealee