What does the “embodied” part of Embodied Antiracism mean?

The following quotations are pulled from Resmaa Menakem’s book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. 

“Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous. The body is where we fear, hope, and react where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee, or freeze. If we are to upend the status quo of white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies.”

It is painfully evident that, despite the desire of most white Americans not to be racist, the white collective is largely immobilized and/or ineffective as contributors to racial justice movements of our time. One reason for this is the way in which inherited behavioral and relational patterns of our white bodies remain untouched even by intentional learning and unlearning about race. These patterns live in our bodies, connecting even to our survival response system, making them especially resistant to change. 

“In addition, trauma and healing aren’t just private experiences. Sometimes trauma is a collective experience, in which case our approaches for mending must be collective and communal as well.” 

And because these patterns are collective patterns, not caused by any individual but by what our people lived and experienced before us, they cannot be healed individually with a book on the couch! We need culture and community strong enough to hold and support this kind of transformation and this means coming together around new ways of being, not just the ones we’re familiar and comfortable with.

“The body, not the thinking brain, is where we experience most of our pain, pleasure, and joy, and where we process most of what happens to us. It is where we do most of our healing… and it is where we experience resilience and a sense of flow.”

As part of this group, we’ll be practicing a variety of somatic skills and body-based practices (basically noticing how our bodies are responding to different experiences/ideas and developing embodied practices that support those patterns to shift). Due to our socialization, many of us experience a fair amount of discomfort bringing any amount of awareness to our body’s sensations, let alone doing this among other people. This does get much easier over time and becomes a great source of grounding and strength, but we want you to come ready to embrace all of the awkwardness that you may experience along the way! Feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns about what this looks like. Rachel is also available for 1:1 somatic coaching sessions with folks who are interested in individual support around embodied processing, or learning to tune in to the body’s wisdom. 

Why would white folks get together, just white folks?

It can be easy to focus on cross-racial relationships as the site of racist harm, which makes sense. But often what determines how resiliently white folks are able to show up in multiracial community, is our capacity (or lack thereof!) to both hold each other accountable with compassion, and help each other move through the discomfort and shame of whiteness. Together we will practice building those kinds of relationships and culture that can resource us for the daily work of undoing white body supremacy in and around us.  

Surely, some of this work can be done in multi-racial spaces. However, for white bodies to build up our often-underdeveloped resilience without expecting colleagues of color to make us feel okay or always be our teachers, it is valuable to have devoted space to do this work among white bodies. Our work together will focus on the particular role that white bodies must play in undoing white supremacy, and also tending to the histories of relationship betrayal between us (Jewish/Christian-lineage, gender + sexuality, class, etc) and how those impede our ability to do our shared work.

How “safe” will this space be? 

Although this is a space of welcome and belonging, it is not intended to be comfortable. With the support of our peers, we will intentionally lean into moments of discomfort that we might otherwise like to brush past, avoid, or wipe away, letting ourselves experience and stay engaged with the unsettling nature of the racist reality that we swim in. Our working assumption is that we all cause racist harm, so we don’t need to be so caught up on proving that we don’t - but rather focus on building capacity to notice it, receive feedback and seek repair. Instead of working so hard to prove our wokeness/righteousness to each other - say the right things, demonstrate our knowledge, give evidence of our positive actions - we will build loving, accountable community where we can “mess up” and stay connected to each other through it.