My Grappling Styles

My Grappling Styles — Learning for Liberation

My Grappling Styles

Adult Form

You’ve taken a meaningful step by committing to this work and we don’t take that lightly.

This form is about you sharing what you want us to know about ways you’ve worked through difficult things in the past. Think family dynamics, healthcare issues, job loss. This is valuable information as we tailor our support as much as possible to each person.

You may recognize places where you struggled or dropped off in the past. For purposes of this form, it is all important information about where you might need a little more support or some extra resource ideas.

How to Use This Form

Check everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you might be willing to try. You can select as many as you like in each section. If a section does not apply to you, check N/A and move on. If something is missing, use the notes field. There are no wrong answers.

1. What Your Body Knows

Racial learning lives in the body before it lives in the mind. White supremacy is designed to make us flee, freeze, fight, or fawn when this work gets hard; those are our physical responses. The same body that gets you through a hard run or a rough week at work can help you stay in this learning instead of running from it.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Take a walk, go for a jog or run; play tennis, pickleball, or go bowling
  • Do neck rolls, shoulder shrugs, or arm stretches
  • Dance — seated or standing — like nobody’s watching
  • Stretch, shake it out, or do seated torso twists
  • Enjoy yoga, adaptive or otherwise
  • Tap hands or feet rhythmically
  • Swim, kayak, or row; take a bike ride or go rock climbing
  • Lift weights, use a punching bag, jump rope, or shoot some hoops
N/A — This section does not apply to me

2. Ground Yourself

Discomfort is a feature of this work, not a flaw in you. White supremacy engineered that discomfort to keep white people from going deeper. Grounding practices that help move us through grief, anxiety, and conflict also allow us to process through newly-learned historical truths and racial learning.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Get near water if you can; take a warm shower or cool bath
  • Engage in deep breathing or intentional breath work
  • Commune with nature; enact a healing ritual
  • Sit, kneel, or lay down on the ground, if your body allows
  • Get out into the sun, sit in fresh air; rock gently or rhythmically
  • Mow the lawn, dig in the dirt, plant something, or pull some weeds
  • Hold a crystal; breathe in lavender or your preferred grounding scent
N/A — This section does not apply to me

3. Create Art from Emotion

This work will stir feelings in us, including shame, grief, anger, and revelation. Our emotions need somewhere to go, and creative expression is one of the most honest ways to move feeling through our bodies and into something true, with meaning personal to us.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Write, paint, or draw your feelings into a symbol
  • Sing, hum, yodel, or recite something out loud
  • Play your instrument
  • Take photographs or collect something meaningful
  • Cook or bake with intention
  • Make something with your hands
N/A — This section does not apply to me

4. Release and Let Go

Guilt and shame are two of white supremacy’s most reliable stall tactics. It might feel like progress, but most often it comes back to centering our whiteness. Release is about moving through and experiencing the feelings to take action rather than perform remorse.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Laugh, cry, scream, yell, howl, or let your body respond however needed
  • Clench and release, shake out your muscles
  • Do self-massage on your arms, hands, or neck
  • Write or journal through the feeling
  • Channel energy into purposeful action
N/A — This section does not apply to me

5. Rest and Restore

Racial learning asks you to sit with hard truths about history, identity, and harm, including harmful impact we may have caused without intent. This isn’t light or easy work and there’s no defined end point. Rest is not a reward for finishing. It is part of the work itself.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Rest your body and mind
  • Listen to soothing music
  • Revisit the comfort of your favorite movie, show, or book
  • Explore a different place or style of learning
  • Make time away from technology
  • Sit quietly without an agenda
  • Be still in nature, however that looks for you
  • Spend time with an animal, walk the dog, feed the fish, pet the cat
N/A — This section does not apply to me

6. Connect with Others

This work needs an intentionally supportive community who will challenge you, hold you, and move together through the processing. Connecting with others is critical to avoid the isolation that can derail our movement through racial learning.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Talk it out by going deeper with your mentor or accountability group
  • Make a meal with a supportive peer and talk it out
  • Call someone you trust for reflection and encouragement
  • Share something vulnerable with someone you trust
  • Intentionally enlarge your social circle
  • Connect with your spiritual or faith community
N/A — This section does not apply to me

7. Unlearn From the Inside

Most of what white people are taught about race is either incomplete, distorted, or outright false, yet we absorb it as normal. Unlearning and re-learning isn’t self-punishment; it’s how we strengthen our racial bones and develop our tolerance for getting it wrong. This is how we grow.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Think it out, plan it out, or talk it through with yourself
  • Journal, pray, meditate, be curious
  • Read or listen to something that challenges your thinking
  • Do something you are not an expert at
  • Sit with a hard truth without rushing to resolve it
  • Replay new ideas and go deeper within each time
  • Seek out an experience of awe
N/A — This section does not apply to me

8. Anger, Grief, and Beyond

There is profound, unresolved collective grief at the center of this work. Anger is one of the first feelings we experience. Messy emotions can move us toward growth; we just have to be willing to explore. This section is for those willing to feel the full weight of what this learning asks, and stay anyway.

Select everything that resonates — what you already do and anything you’re open to trying.

  • Activate yourself — let a hard emotion move you toward something
  • Be inspired by where your angry thoughts take you
  • Lean into the grief that is core to this learning
  • Express outrage through social action or discussion
  • Give yourself affirmation and praise
  • Reward yourself for depth with something connected to the work, like a book or a workshop
N/A — This section does not apply to me

Your honesty here isn’t a risk, it is a guide,
and we are honored to follow it.


This form will shape the way we work with you.
We will return to it together as you grow.

Unlearn. Relearn. Repeat.

Submit to share your responses with Ten of Cups Consulting, or print a copy for yourself — or both.