Our Hands
“I loved my grandmother every moment of my life. I still do.
I know she did not invent the racialized trauma that both white and Black people blew threw her. None of these people, or their parents, or their grandparents, or many generations of their ancestors, invented this trauma. It was passed down and passed down and passed down and passed down. It is now up to us — to you and to me and to everyone else who cares about human beings — to put a stop to this cycle of trauma. This means metabolizing trauma in our bodies.” —Resmaa Menakem
When I first came to somatics practice, I had been in talk therapy for most of my life. I could tell you, at great length, all of the things that I was working on. I knew myself very well. Changing my behaviors was still a big struggle. My trauma responses to triggers were so hard to shift. My body had absorbed so much and given me coping mechanisms for survival.
Healing is a physical act. It happens in our soma, our body. Our bodies are incredible at carrying so much pain and trauma and memory for us – until we are ready to release them by moving through them. Research shows that our bodies carry more than even what is ours, though. They carry the pains and joys of our ancestors.
In his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathways to Mending our Hearts and Bodies, therapist, teacher and somatics practitioner Resmaa Menakem lays out a theory of how generational trauma must be healed in order to overcome racism in the United States. He ties the brutalism of early colonizers of what would become the United States to the terror and torture of the Middle Ages, explaining how a whole people could inflict such trauma on another. Deeply hurt people hurt people. He describes the different ways in which white body supremacy impacts BIPOC bodies and white bodies today that must be healed.
Healing the trauma in our bodies is particularly fraught for those of us who have our own trauma history. If you have a history of trauma in your life, take it slow. Give yourself a lot of grace. Do not go it alone, ask a trusted friend or therapist to support you. Take breaks whenever you need to. Embodiment can be risky and scary for those of us who have stored painful memories within ourselves. It is an amazing gift that our bodies have taken this in for us. The process of feeling and releasing it needs to go at the pace that feels right for you.
Central to the practice of somatics in the practice of centering. It is how every somatics class or gathering begins. We can do this practice standing, sitting or lying down.
First, we find our core, just above the belly button. We can place a hand there if it helps us connect. We center from this place.
Next, we center in length or in our dignity. We can lift one arm up and one arm down. We allow our lower body to settle into gravity and our upper body to lift in our full height.
Then, we center in our width or in our connection. Perhaps we reach our arms wide to feel our wideness and our interdependence.
And finally, we center in our depth or in our place in history. We feel the space between our back body and our front body. We feel our ancestry behind us and our future before us.
If you take up this process of healing, it will be uncomfortable. Remember, refusing to heal is always more painful over time than the pain of healing. And remember these words from Resmaa Menakem: “When we heal our own trauma, individually and collectively, we don’t just heal our bodies. By refusing to pass on the trauma we inherited, we help heal the world.”
It is our job to do what we can while we are here. To pass on just a little less to the next generation. To heal as much as we can. We are not either traumatized or healed — it is an ongoing process of healing that we all must engage in to stop the cycle of racial violence from continuing to pass from generation to generation.
Healing is hard work. Embodiment can feel dangerous. And it can awaken within us more joy, more compassion, more resilience. It can build a stronger connection between our mind and our body. It can help us more easily access the power and wonder that lives inside of us. It can bring our actions into alignment with our values. And it heals the world.
Elizabeth ("Elka") serves as the minister of First Parish Dorchester, MA. They have been on the leadership collective of Allies for Racial Equity since 2011. They have served congregations in California, Oklahoma and Indiana. They live on the ocean in Revere, MA with their spouse, their four children and two dogs.
