Activities for groups with trusted others include humming, singing, rocking, folk dancing, massaging hands or feet, breathing deeply together in silence. A grown-up response to trauma is to heal it, not to blow it through other bodies—or blow holes in other bodies” (Menakem, p. In offering these, I drew on the collective wisdom of my teachers, elders, colleagues, and fellow activists. Unlocking the Genius of your Body: Why your logic isn’t adequate when it comes to the violence of race:, Psychology Today, December 2020. He provides a concise history of trauma in Europe, focusing on methods of corporeal punishment in the Middle Ages, to explain that trauma in America predates slavery.

Menakem: Plagues — [ laughs] all of this stuff happened for a thousand years, and then that body came here. Her most recent offering of fresh insight to our life together brings “caste” into the light — a recurrent, instinctive pattern of human societies across the centuries, though far more malignant in some times and places. Almost everyone can benefit, because almost all of us have trauma—including race-related trauma—embedded in our bodies. Menakem: So one of the things about the animal part of the body is that even though me and you are in this room — this nice place— there’s a part of the body that’s saying, “Yeah, but what else is gonna happen? Tippett: So some of the ways we’re trying to work forward, we’re actually making ourselves unsafe again?

The author also discusses why white Americans must lead the transformation for growing out of white-body supremacy. And it hits in the face, it hits in the pharynx, it hits in the chest, it hits in the gut — it wanders the whole body. Video interview on the Connectfulness Practice Podcast—Mending Racialized Trauma, A Body-Centered Approach.

Shalom, my name is Ellen Hoffenberg-Serfaty, an American-Israeli living this last half of my life in Israel. What’s new are some of the practical strategies that individuals and groups can use to address their trauma, day by day. Sign Up and receive notification when new issues of the Deep Times Journal are available as well as updates on the Work That Reconnects Network. Trauma manifests itself as some combination of pain, fear, anxiety, dread, reactive behaviors and constriction, rooted in our flight-fight-freeze-faint stress response system (e.The poignancy of the author’s discussion of his childhood, as well as how he raises his own son, who doesn’t understand the dangers waiting for him in the world, is captured in this quote: “(The) paradox of creating a loving home: parents raise kids whose bodies are unprepared to protect themselves from all the evils they will eventually will face. Menakem uses the term Somatic Abolitionism for the groups that he currently offers, a term that for the first time incorporates the foundational principle in dealing with white supremacy, racial injustice and other forms of discrimination. He addresses racialized trauma in people with white skin, those with dark skin, as well as police officers, directing material toward each group as well as toward all Americans, all of whom, he says, suffer from racialized trauma. And for law enforcement, the stress that has been lodged within their bodies as a result of white-body supremacy.

If you’re a white person, go someplace where there are gonna be a lot of Black bodies, and just feel what happens in your body. Guided Imagery: Body work guided imagery exercises of safe, secure situations, as well as threatening ones. As well, the author leads us to examine intergenerational trauma—traumatic events that affected parents and grandparents. Each person needs to metabolize their trauma, to work through it and out of it with their bodies, not just with their conscious thinking mind. And so what I’ve been talking to people about is, how do we begin to get the reps in with those pieces?This part’s opening chapters address all readers, while later ones focus on the bodies of specific groups, namely, Blacks, whites, and the police. And then, when it becomes too much, back out of it, leave it alone, and then come back to it again later. In addition to seeing black bodies as a source of service, they view black bodies as “impervious to pain” and needing control , and the whole range of nonverbal sensations which result in fear, hate and constriction. But you have this radical statement that “While we see anger and violence in the streets of our country, the real battlefield is inside our bodies” — in all of our — I mean, I’m saying this — all of our bodies, of every color. A more pinpointed scan is shared in the chapter on clean pain and anchors: Check Your Body’s Checkpoints , or physical sensations that signal a “not right” situation—one that is unfair, frightening, dangerous.