Racial Healing Workshop: Antiracism for the Love of It
Rev. Lorren Buck joined us on our February 14th Community Call to facilitate a racial healing workshop grounded in Resmaa Menakem’s The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning.
On a day we were reminded about the power of love, we held space for emergent discussion and somatic sensing while engaging antiracist healing practices. We came together, from a place of connection and fierce loving accountability, to name the patterns and embodied lineages of harm we have inherited from white body supremacy.
View the full meeting video by clicking above.
Or scroll down for takeaways from the workshop.
What is Somatic Abolitionism?
Resmaa Menakem defines somatic abolitionism as a living, embodied philosophy that requires endurance, stamina, and discernment. By engaging with this process, we’re resourcing our bodies, our breath, to ground us as we dive deep.
“Soma” comes from the Greek, meaning “with or of the living body.”
Somatic healing is a practice that brings us into dialogue with our bodies. This is an integral part in the process of healing and managing our body, especially when we’re doing anti-racism work. Our bodies have been defined in racial categories and it affects how our bodies are treated and how they’re viewed. These practices are meant to explore our bodies and how our bodies give birth to our experiences.
Our bodies can help us transform our experiences and process our emotions. Healing moves us from numbness to full function.
Clean pain - Be aware that numbness may move to pain and irritation before moving to function. This is clean pain.
Dirty pain - There is another kind of pain: the pain of denial and avoidance. In the moment, it may feel better not to speak, not to do, but dirty pain will keep you from moving to full function.
Who is Racial Healing For?
Often the assumption is racial healing is something that I do for other people, but racial healing first begins with self.
We need to identify our wounding and numbness and how we project that onto others. Doing the work of removing the numbness, moving through the clean pain and into healing, gives us a greater capacity to show up in loving ways. This is the beginning of awakening oneself to develop deeper bonds, connections, and intimacy with others.
Settling In
Before you get started, grab something to write with and something to write on.
Then find something significant to ground you. You can select an object and keep it close, or write about something that grounds you and visualize it.
Tuning Into Your Senses
Start by tuning into your body’s sensations—take note of any warming, coldness, tingling, or numbness. Just tune into what your body is feeling without judgment.
If you notice a change in what you’re sensing, place your hand on your body where you feel a charge or a need for grounding.
Journaling - Part One
Emotional Inventory: There’s an array of different emotions you might be feeling in this moment (refer to The Center for Nonviolent Communication’s “Feelings Inventory” chart). Note your feelings down without judgment.
Meditation Practice
From the Institute of Authentic Tantra:
To begin: Align your spine, tilt your chin slightly, place your hands on your lap, with your tongue on the roof of your mouth, and keep your eyes open in a soft gaze.
Begin with deep breaths in through the nose, then out through the nose.
Notice the sensations in your body as air enters and exits.
Allow emotions and thoughts that are arising to be just as they are.
Count your breath for 21 counts.
After 21 counts, move on to the next step.
Three-part breath:
Breathe in, pause, and hold your breath before exhaling. Do this three times.
Then repeat while visualizing:
Breathe in and imagine white light filling your lungs.
Pause, then imagine red light flashing, filling your body (emanating from the body).
Then exhale, seeing a blue light.
Repeat again, adding three phrases to your breathing and visualization:
Breathe in and imagine white light filling your lungs (thinking: “positive thoughts”).
Pause, then imagine red light flashing, filling your body (emanating from the body) (thinking: “positive speech”).
Then exhale, seeing a blue light (thinking: “positive action”).
Come back to your normal breathing.
Journaling - Part Two
Emotional Inventory: What did you feel during the practice? What are you feeling now? Refer back to the emotional inventory list.
Reflect: Numbness is a response to trauma. How is our culture numb? How does our culture encourage numbness?
Community Responses
Doing the breathing exercises helped community members realize how much we rush through things without really stopping and slowing down. The media constantly bombards us with bad news with no time to process; while the marketing and consumerism machine pushes numbing things at us. We felt gratitude for this deep, meditative space. It felt good to BE, not just DO.
Journaling - Part Three
Reflect: What ways have you personally repressed or suppressed your body’s expressions? How has the culture of numbness affected you personally? How have you internalized that message?
Reading
Take note of how your body is responding (what you’re feeling, what’s arising) as you read the rules of white body supremacy listed below:
The white body deems itself the supreme standard against which the humanity of all other bodies is measured and judged, both structurally and philosophically.
Only the white body is fully human. All other bodies, or bodies of culture, are lesser primates—deviants from the human standard.
The white body—and only the white body—is inherently pure and virtuous.
The many different bodies of culture can be ranked on a vertical continuum. At the bottom are Black and Indigenous bodies.
Only white bodies get to define who is human and who is not.
White bodies get to change this definition whenever they please—which they do constantly.
White body supremacy is a pigmentocracy. Body pigmentation is primary—not identity.
From The Quaking of America by Resmaa Menakem.
Journaling - Part Four
Reflect: How do you see the idea of white-body supremacy reflected in society? How does it function? How is it operating around you?
Community Responses
White-body community members expressed feeling sensations of tightness in the chest, constriction around the heart, discomfort, agitation, and the heaviness of grief and shame. Some members expressed further insight:
Accepting the truth of this inhumanity is part of the work. Going through this racial healing process can help this truth become less true over time. Accepting this, the constriction starts to release.
The initial breathing exercise helped open us up to this reading and body awareness more than we might have been without it.
Movement Exercise
Trauma sits in the midsection; we discharge that energy through movement. Start with the head and move downward to discharge the blocked energy.
Move your head and neck side-to-side, or roll your neck as your body calls you to.
Make room for the shoulders—roll, stretch, lift.
Move down to the torso—twist, stretch, expand, contract.
Move next to the hips—roll your hips in a circle as you’re seated.
Use your hands to reconnect with your body—expand and contract your fingers and your toes. Stomp if you can lift your feet.
Take note of how your body is feeling.
Journaling - Part Five
Emotional Inventory: How do you feel in this moment? What’s changed after the movement practice?
Movement is an act of resistance, especially when bodies have been restricted—told when, where, how far they can move. Movement can re-engage you with spirit, wholeness, spirituality.
Reflect: What messages does your body hold regarding its sacredness and brokenness?
Community Responses
Community members expressed their frustrations as well as their love for their bodies. Illness, aging, physical limitations, physical differences, and other aspects of embodied existence are ongoing challenges; but people also connected to the sacredness of their bodies in moments of meditation, experiences with the elements, or in enjoying the company of others.
Ocean Breath Practice
Most of our breathing is very shallow. Shallow breathing uses a tenth of our lung capacity, and it indicates too much mental activity, a lack of body-centered awareness. Breathing deeply assures better relaxation and blood flow.
We regulate our nervous system through the vibration of sound. Sound helps us to realign our vagus nerve and sends the message to our brain that we are safe.
The Ocean Breath practice was developed by Carla Tara and evolved by Devi Ward Erikson for healing trauma and enhancing pleasure:
Lean back in your chair, or lay back on the floor if you’d like to. Place one hand on your heart, one hand on your belly.
Take an open-mouthed breath. Inhale and exhale through your mouth. Allow the breath to travel through your belly. Feel your stomach rising and falling as your hand is on your abdomen.
Pay attention to your physical and emotional responses.
Open your mouth wide, relax your jaw, inhale and exhale. As you exhale — make a sound traveling from a high tone to a low tone. The register goes lower as sound presses out air.
Repeat several times and notice how you’re feeling.
When you feel full, return back.
Journaling - Part Six
Emotional Inventory: How did you feel during the practice? How do you feel now?
“Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” —Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Journaling - Part Seven
Through the lens of racial healing, ask yourself: What are the demands of justice you are implementing and how are you using your power to correct what stands against love?
Reflect: What does the quote mean for you? How are you interpreting it? What does this mean for you, your retreat center, and the future of all living beings?
Community Responses
Community members shared that they’ve experienced a learning curve around their relationship with power. They’re asking questions about how to use their power appropriately, and how to inhabit a more heart-centered power—power as an element of love. One member expressed that the demand of justice is for their retreat center to be a place where all people feel welcome. This means advocating in the community for education and participation in racial healing. This work will help centers hold a better place for all people.
Closing Thoughts
Racial healing is something we give ourselves; we liberate our bodies from the ways we hold ourselves back from engaging and responding.
This healing work allows you to be more present for others. That liberating power is for you and for those you are in community with. It’s power with instead of power over.
Aftercare
Be mindful to care for yourself after this session—be gentle with yourself. Drink plenty of water, hydrate, eat nutritious foods, rest tonight. Extend yourself that care. Engage the five senses and any type of movement. Take a walk, connect in nature. Journal.
Join the Discussion
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Notes and Audio
Follow the link below to access PDFs, audio, and additional meeting notes.
