An Embodied Approach to Healing

The Racial Healing Initiative’s approach to healing values embodiment, reciprocity, internal transformation, being open to change, kinship, relationship with the land, accountability, repair, and emergence.

Unlike DEI training and racial equity workshops that focus on education and compliance, the Racial Healing Initiative’s focus is healing. As such, the initiative draws on support and resources for healing that exist beyond systems and structures – in the more-than-human realm of faith, spirit, land, ancestors, and intuition.

The RHI team is grounded in fluid and responsive ways of holding and exploring how generational harm and trauma live within the body, are passed down through our lineages and institutions, and perpetuate themselves. The initiative supports participants in shifting away from white supremacy and toward healing the wounding that white supremacy

inflicts on everyone, inclusive of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPoC) and white people.

The Racial Healing Initiative is not meant to support retreat centers in changing the optics of their marketing or creating recruiting strategies to gain more BIPoC customers. The work of RHI is not performative or transactional, and not a short-term ‘fix’ or bandage. This work moves at the speed of trust, in relationships, and with attention to history. 

In its expanding understanding and reckoning with embodied experience, personal ancestry, organizational culture, land stewardship, financial management, and the visions and missions of retreat centers, the RHI is deep medicine to heal the harmful patterns that exist within retreat center cultures. These harmful patterns have created barriers for BIPoC people to participate fully and authentically, and require healing for all people to flourish.