WITH SUPPORT FROM BIVIUM CAPITAL PARTNERS, LLC
Healing the Spaces Between Us
NOVEMBER 13–15, 2026
A free three-day global digital gathering for Black community leaders across the diaspora, designed with the collective Black body in mind.
Free access to each prerecorded offering for 48 hours after release.
All-Access Pass extends access to 12 months.
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3 DAYS
INHALE → EXHALE → INTEGRATION
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FREE
Register with your name + email
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15+ OFFERINGS
Host-guided conversations, practices, and experiences
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48 HOURS
Each prerecorded offering stays available for 48 hours after release
Online, across the diaspora, with live opening and closing gatherings.
The Black body was created to be loved.
What if a gathering was built from there?
Across the diaspora, Black life holds an extraordinary range of histories, cultures, lineages, spiritual traditions, disciplines, practices, and ways of knowing. This gathering makes room for that breadth.
A place spacious enough for the complexity of Black life, and intimate enough to tend what happens between us.
For those of us who spend our lives tending people, communities, organizations, movements, and spaces, this is also a place to be tended.
01 — FOR US, BY US.
Black Exhale is Black-led and created from within the communities it convenes. Black life shapes the questions, the rhythm, the people at the table, and the way the gathering is held.
02 — THE DIASPORA IS VAST.
We gather across the diaspora, across lands, lineages, generations, disciplines, practices, identities, and lived experiences. Difference is part of the learning. It gives us more to encounter, more to question, and more to receive from one another.
03 — HEALING IS VAST.
Healing can happen on a therapist's couch, in ceremony, in prayer, through movement, art, story, scholarship, community, the body, spirit, and relationship. Each way of knowing and tending can carry a piece of something larger.
04 — THE WHOLE PERSON GETS TO COME.
Body and spirit. Intellect and intuition. History and imagination. Grief and pleasure. Individual experience and collective life. This is a space where those parts can belong in the same room.
05 — TRAUMA-INFORMED IS HOW WE GATHER.
The structure cares for the people moving through it. We resource before complex material. We honor pacing. Pausing is welcome. Context matters. Integration is part of the experience. Your capacity is part of the design.
The people holding others also need conditions that allow them to be present.
06 — WE ARE PART OF A LINEAGE.
This gathering stands in a diasporic and Pan-African lineage of Black people reaching toward one another across borders, exchanging knowledge, making culture, organizing, building kinship, and imagining freedom together. We honor that inheritance by creating another place to practice relationship across difference.
07 — A THIRD SPACE FOR BLACK POSSIBILITY.
Black Exhale creates a room where knowledge that is often kept apart can meet: ancestral knowledge and trauma research, embodiment and philosophy, art and organizing, spiritual practice and intellectual inquiry, healing and structural change. More becomes possible when these ways of knowing can be in relationship.
08 — WE BEGIN WITH WHAT IS ALREADY HERE.
Beauty. Memory. Humor. Creativity. Pleasure. Spiritual practice. Relationship. Resourcefulness. Imagination. Medicine. Ways of caring. Ways of making life.
We don't have to begin with the wound to heal the wound.
This is the room we are building.
Come receive. Come exchange. Come remember. Come bring what you carry. Come see what becomes possible between us.
ANTOINETTE COOPER
I’m Antoinette Cooper, founder and executive director of Black Exhale, a writer, multidisciplinary artist, educator, embodied leadership coach, trained collective trauma facilitator, and student of Somatic Experiencing.
My life has always been diasporic, and my DNA is Pan-African. I call Africa my grandmotherland, Jamaica my birthland and motherland, and America my surrogate mother, the country that raised me in her belly. Alabama and Ghana are also part of the geography that formed me through familial nourishment, shaping how I understand Blackness, belonging, healing, and relationship across difference.
I am the author of UNRULY, hold an MFA from Columbia University, and have spent more than two decades teaching and creating across universities, museums, ceremonies, community spaces, and spaces of incarceration. Black Exhale is where those strands meet.
IN REMEMBRANCE
This inaugural gathering also carries the absence of Euphrasia “Efu” Nyaki, whose life and work helped shape my understanding of what is possible in collective healing. I imagined Efu as part of this Summit before I even knew how to make it real.
Light, peace, and progression to her spirit.
“It is a space you can bring your whole self just as you are at the moment. Nothing to strive for, nothing to prove.”
— MARIAMA WILLIAMS
WHAT WE HOLD TO BE TRUE
Before we gather, there are a few things you should know about the ground we are standing on. The Black Exhale Summit is rooted in a way of understanding healing, relationship, the diaspora, and care. These principles shape the conversations we invite, the way the Summit is structured, and how we hope to be with one another while we are here.
01 — OUR INTERDEPENDENCE IS MEDICINE.
We are shaped in relationship, and relationship can also be a place of healing, repair, and possibility.
02 — THERE IS NO SINGLE WAY TO BE.
We come from different lands, lineages, histories, cultures, spiritual traditions, generations, and lived experiences. There is no single way to be, heal, know, or belong.
03 — THE WHOLE PERSON BELONGS.
Body, spirit, intellect, memory, culture, grief, pleasure, history, imagination, and lived experience can exist in the same room.
04 — CARE IS PART OF THE STRUCTURE.
Trauma-informed means we do not ask people to override themselves in order to participate. We resource before complex material, honor pacing, make room to pause, and include integration as part of the experience.
05 — DIFFERENCE DOES NOT HAVE TO BECOME FRAGMENTATION.
We can remain in relationship across difference without requiring sameness.
06 — HEALING IS NOT ONLY INDIVIDUAL.
What happens within us, between us, and in the spaces we shape are all part of the terrain.
SPEAKER LINEUP
PEOPLE SHARING MEDICINE
Nov 13, 2026 – Nov 15, 2026
15+ offerings from people whose work touches the same terrain Black community leaders navigate every day: body, relationship, healing, power, culture, community, and change.
DAY ONE — INHALE
We begin with the body, with what is already alive, available, and holding us.
Beauty. Dignity. Creativity. Imagination. Wisdom. Connection. Resources. Breath. Medicine.
Inhale grounds us in the resource of the collective Black body. We begin by noticing what helps us arrive, what helps us stay, and what becomes available when we are resourced enough to be present.
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Monet Goode
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Emmett Marsh
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Eleanor Parks
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Karl Holland
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Jaya Dixon
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
DAY TWO — EXHALE
We turn toward what moves through the spaces we tend and inhabit.
History. Power. Rupture. Protection. Relationship. Pattern. Witness. Choice.
Exhale makes room to look more closely at what happens in our encounters with one another: what gets activated, what gets repeated, what enters the room with us, and how histories, protections, and patterns can keep moving through bodies, relationships, organizations, and communities. For Black community leaders, the invitation is to increase what is available in those moments, to recognize what is happening, stay present with complexity, resource yourself and others, and make more conscious choices about what happens next.
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Monet Goode
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Emmett Marsh
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Eleanor Parks
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Karl Holland
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Jaya Dixon
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
DAY THREE — INTEGRATION
We turn toward what becomes possible when what we have encountered can move into practice.
Practice. Repair. Movement. Reflection. Relationship. Creativity. Choice. Return.
Integration asks what we do with what has become available. We metabolize what we have witnessed, reconnect with the body and one another, and consider what we want to carry back into the spaces we tend. For Black community leaders, the invitation is to return with more than information, with practices, questions, resources, and greater choice in how we meet what comes next.
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Monet Goode
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Emmett Marsh
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Eleanor Parks
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Karl Holland
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
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Jaya Dixon
Session Title
One short line about what the offering opens up.
“There’s wisdom here. My nervous system has been talking. Have I been listening?”
— NASIR BAYAN, LPC
HOW WE PRACTICE WHAT WE BELIEVE
Trauma-informed is not only what we talk about here. It shapes how we gather.
We resource before contact.
We listen to what the body is telling us.
We do not confuse collective responsibility with self-abandonment.
We make room for difference without requiring people to override themselves.
We treat pacing, preparation, consent, relationship, and repair as part of the work.
We honor multiple ways of knowing.
We understand that the people holding others also need conditions that allow them to be present.
The way we gather is part of what we are practicing.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DISAPPEAR IN ORDER TO HOLD YOUR PEOPLE.
WHAT THE SUMMIT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
THREE DAYS. ONE ARC.
Move through Inhale → Exhale → Integration, with each day holding a different part of the journey.
HOST-GUIDED, PRERECORDED CONVERSATIONS.
Thoughtful conversations you can enter on your own time, pause when you need to, and return to while they are available.
SELECTED EXPERIENTIAL OFFERINGS.
The Summit is not only something to think about. Some offerings invite you into practice, reflection, movement, embodiment, or another way of knowing.
LIVE OPENING + CLOSING GATHERINGS.
We begin and end together, creating communal bookends around the individual experience of moving through the Summit.
48 HOURS WITH EACH PRERECORDED OFFERING.
You do not have to consume everything at once. Each offering remains available for 48 hours after it is released.
MOVE ACCORDING TO YOUR CAPACITY.
Watch one conversation or many. Pause. Step away. Come back. Your capacity is part of how you participate
FREE SUMMIT ACCESS
The Black Exhale Summit is free to attend.
Prerecorded Summit conversations and experiential offerings
Live opening and closing gatherings
48 hours of access to each prerecorded offering after release
Free registration with your name + email
Move through the Summit at your own pace during each access window
ALL-ACCESS PASS
More space. More time. More ways to return. After you register, you’ll have the option to upgrade your free ticket with:
12 months of Summit access
Audio versions
Inner Terrain Guide
Black Exhale Summit 2026 Offerings Guidebook
Bonus resources from Summit speakers
Help fund future Black Exhale gatherings and programs
THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS
We are grateful to the people and organizations helping resource the inaugural Black Exhale Summit.
FAQ
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No. You do not need previous training or specialized language to participate. The Summit brings together ideas from many fields, but it is designed so Black community leaders can enter the conversation from their own work and lived experience.
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The Summit intentionally centers Black people and our lived experience across the diaspora. People who are not part of the Black diaspora are welcome to register with the understanding that this is a Black-centered space. We ask that you receive what you encounter with cultural and ancestral humility, without expecting the gathering or its speakers to decenter the Black experience.
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You can still participate in the Summit. The primary conversations and experiential offerings are prerecorded and available within their 48-hour access windows. The live Opening and Closing are communal bookends to the three-day experience. If you can’t join them live, you won’t miss the core Summit offerings.
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Not for the 2026 Summit. We hope to offer scholarship access in future years as Black Exhale grows its capacity and infrastructure.
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Yes. Black Exhale welcomes donations in support of the Summit and our broader work. Your contribution helps sustain the technology, production, administration, and organizational infrastructure that make gatherings like this possible.
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Reach us at support@blackexhale.org. We’re a very small team, so please allow us time to respond.