India Harville

Founder, Embraced Body & Disability Justice Activist
she/her/hers

India Harville, Founder of Embraced Body is a young Black woman. She has long black braids and is smiling joyfully as she poses in her purple blouse.

As a Disability Justice consultant, public speaker, somatics practitioner, and performance artist, India Harville has made it her mission to open people's minds to the wonder of their own bodies. She works diligently to foster a sense of the body as a vehicle for growth and transformation, both personal and collective. An African American, queer, Disabled/chronically ill, femme, cis woman, she has experienced health issues since infancy. It was only in 2011, however, that she embraced her Disabled identity in a political sense. That was a major move forward for her, coalescing her identity into its form today—an identity that informs all of her work, each of its components shaping her voice and her message.

“Dancing feels like my first language, my most primal way of communicating. As an artist, I strive to encourage everyone, especially people living at the intersections of multiple oppressed identities, to reconnect to the dancer within them. I believe dancing is our birthright. My choreographic process is one part connecting to the music, one part excavating what is inside of me, one part allowing the piece to inform me of what it wants to be, and one part magical surrender.”

—INDIA HARVILLE

Advancing Equity and Access

India Harville, Founder of Embraced Body is sitting at a desk while working on her computer. She is wearing an orange sweater.

For more than twenty years, India has equipped non-profits, corporations, and universities with the tools and insights that they need to move into a wider and fuller concept of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). In addition, she has developed meaningful Disability Justice practices for workplaces, striving to make the professional environment more socially just and more equitably accessible. Time and again, she has enabled others to see their implicit biases and to make real progress toward change. Her former clients include the Pacific Center for Human Growth, the Northwest Health Foundation, Water Has No Enemy, Creative Growth, the New College of Florida, Bay Area Legal, and Color of Change. While she tailors her message to every group with which she collaborates, she is also steadfast and unwavering in her devotion to social justice, the words and the approach that she takes uniformly impactful.

Amplifying DiSability Justice

India Harville, Founder of Embraced Body is standing in a room full of people. She is giving a speech and receiving engagement from the audience.

As a public speaker, India has been equally unwavering in her devotion to social justice, engineering keynote addresses and workshops about themes such as Disability Justice, DanceAbility, and the Access-Centered Movement, among others. She has spoken to audiences at UC Davis, the University of Oregon, De Anza College, Mills College, the University of Northern Colorado, the University of San Francisco, UC Fullerton, and Mental Health at the Intersections.

INCORPORATING integral TRAINING

A group photo of diverse people engaging in a stretch exersize on a studio floor.

Not only a speaker but a somatics practitioner as well, India has spent more than two decades developing her skills and expertise in massage, somatics, and dance. Her massage and somatics training has touched on several different schools of thought, including Swedish Massage, Deep Tissue, Neuromuscular Therapy, Shiatsu, Thai, and Rosen Method Bodywork. In dance, she has studied NIA, Zumba, KiVo, Dancing Freedom, DanceAbility, and American DanceWheels wheelchair ballroom dance. India earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at the New College of Florida and her Master of Arts in Integrative Health Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies.

CERTIFICATIONS

Living by example

India Harville, Founder of Embraced Body is wearing a white traditional gown with gold accents.

Her performance art is unabashed in its connection to her disability journey, both antagonizing her and informing her every step of the way. Through her dance, she intends to love herself more day in and day out—one more way that her philosophy of radical acceptance is leading to lifelong transcendence.

Whatever she is doing—practicing, performing, teaching—she is setting forth an example, that however our bodies show up the world, they are perfect, worthy of existence, and capable of magic.

“India is an intuitive, powerful, knowledgeable, and skillful healer. I am so grateful to India for the combination of skill and compassion she brings to her work.”

—SHALEECE HAAS

“I am deeply grateful to India for her capacity to lift up each person’s experience with compassion.  She invites us all to be our very best selves.”

—VICTORIA MARKS

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