MADELANNE RUST-D’EYE

Cultural Somatics and Body-Informed Leadership

  • Home
  • Body-Informed Leadership
  • One-to-One
  • Movement in Relationship
  • Events
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Contact

The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies: Part 4

The Oldest Story

 

 

July 2020

(NOTE: If you have not yet read the previous parts of this series, they can also be found on this page. Part 3 can be read here). 

Dominance is a nightmare. It is founded in a dysregulation and distortion of our neurobiological, psychological, and spiritual design as human beings. It perpetuates disconnection when the very thing we are most fundamentally wired up to do is to connect.

So how do we white folks collectively reorient towards a better way of being? How do we restore our capacity for connection?

Riane Eisler, who articulated the concept of Dominance in her paradigm-shifting work, “The Chalice and the Blade,” identified a second primary way that we organise as humans. She called it Partnership: a cultural system in which power arises through the bonds of mutual benefit. In this system, power is negotiated via connection. According to Eisler’s research, Partnership systems have predominated throughout human history; it is only in the past 3,000 years that Dominance has become widespread on the human scene, and it is only since the colonisation of the formerly indigenous nations of Europe by the Romans (and then, of course the colonisation of much of the rest of the world by the Europeans) that it has taken such a hold in what we now call “the West.”

Partnership is profoundly resonant with our neurobiological design. Our human neurobiology primes us to develop our sense of self and relationship within an attuned matrix of embodied connection.[1] It is this very matrix that allows us to attach to our caregivers and our cultures; that supports our brains and bodies to fully and robustly develop; and which allows us to have authentic, fulfilling and meaningful relationships with others. Along with other mammals, our Nervous System is designed to function in this state of Social Engagement (see Stephen Porges’ “Polyvagal Theory”) most of the time. States of defensive activation are meant to last only for short periods – just long enough to save our lives.  Only in Social Engagement can we rest and restore our bodies, create new memories, and connect empathetically with others.

I believe that we white-bodied people can invoke this notion of Partnership, and the neurobiology that supports it, as an anchoring framework for a restored cultural somatics. In proposing this, I want to emphasise that I don’t believe that Partnership was “invented” by Eisler, or that white people will be blazing new trails by adopting it. The benefit of Eisler’s work is that she articulates a concept that is very ancient (our human connectedness to the world and to the beings we share it with is at the heart of many if not all indigenous traditions) in a way that brings it (restores it?) into the European language, conceptual framework, and lineage. I would say the same for Neuroscience. Both are telling an old, familiar story of humanity – possibly the oldest story in existence – only this time using words and concepts that can be integrated within the psyche of contemporary Europe and her diaspora without appropriating from other lineages.

Having an anchoring framework, however, is not enough. Dominance is sneaky, and it is entirely possible to be speaking and believing Partnership while embodying and enacting something very different. And so, I believe that the very first, critical step we can take to move away from Dominance is to start to notice our bodies’ sensory experiences and responses to the world on a moment-by-moment basis. And this is where the rubber really hits the road, because when we do this, many of us will likely discover an entire universe of experience, memory, and unconscious patterning that we never even knew existed. This could be delightful and empowering, or like the lid has been taken off a very large can of worms. Likely both. Either way, in order to keep our collective focus in the somatic realm long enough to pull out the roots of Dominance that are embedded there, we need more than concepts – we need some sensory, experiential guideposts. We need some landmarks in the cultural somatic landscape of Partnership.

The landmarks I will describe here are drawn from my training and lineage in somatic psychology. This is a lineage with diverse cultural origins and applications, both white-identified and Black/Indigenous/People of Colour (BIPOC). Some of these same landmarks and practices are being engaged for healing in BIPOC communities; they are no way unique to the white-bodied context. However, I feel confident to recommend them here, for white-bodied people, because I have seen first-hand their  restorative impacts in my work as a somatic and trauma-oriented psychotherapist and group facilitator working with mostly white-bodied folks in the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK. I have come to perceive that these are the key somatic skills which, when developed, enable my white-bodied clients to safely integrate the intensity of personal trauma and restore their capacity for connection.

Developing these skills – and unwinding the pain of past experience – is never a linear or predictable process; it is an intensely personal journey with many turns in the road and detours along the way. However, I believe that these skills themselves are effective guideposts for the cultural somatic reorientation we white-identified folk as a whole are attempting to make. I believe that they are the very same skills we require as a collective to process a very deep well of dysregulation, and to turn the tides towards a more connection-oriented future.

 

 

The Story of Interbeing as Told by the Body

So, what does Partnership feel like? How does it live in our bodies and our cultural somas?

It begins by kindling a sense of safety in our bodies. This is not about creating safety in the outer world – that we cannot control. Kindling safety within ourselves involves noticing the sensory cues that tell us the Nervous System has become mobilised for defence and using simple, body-based practices that help our brains and bodies to relax and return to a state that is available for connection. I call this establishing “Somatic Safety” (you can find resources on Somatic Safety here or here). This is not always possible, of course – there are some situations of very real danger (experiencing an assault, for example) in which the Nervous System will unavoidably take the reins for a period of time. But on a day-to-day basis, it can be extremely powerful – even paradigm-shifting – for many people to start to build a more conscious and satisfying relationship with their Nervous System, and in some cases, to gain access to states of calm connection they may never have experienced.

We restore our relationship to sensation. Once we’ve created internal pathways to Somatic Safety, our bodies become able to “hold” an increasingly wide range of sensory experience without reacting to it (with mind or body). This “holding” is not like “holding your breath.” It’s more like how a parent might hold a newborn baby. It is a porous inner state of receptivity, of unconditional presence with whatever sensory experience is arising. Many of us must consciously work to expand the range of both positive and challenging sensations we can allow to happen within our bodies – and of course, to notice when an experience is triggering a defensive Nervous System pattern and go back to the basics of re-establishing Somatic Safety (it is no use trying to “hold” sensation in a body that is mobilised for defence, it will only increase the trigger). And repeat.

This back-and-forth between states of intensity (sensation) and restoration (Somatic Safety) is called titration. Over time and many repetitions, it creates a wider “window of tolerance” within ourselves, which enables us to receive and connect with more of our life experiences. Take a moment and drink in that possibility. A further gift we receive when we get really good at holding sensation is that we discover
sensations shift and change of their own accord, opening up and informing us with new, often unexpected, information about ourselves and the world around us.

We reconnect to the Inner Witness. The part of the brain immediately behind the forehead, the
Prefrontal Cortex, gives rise to some of our most precious human abilities (including empathy, but that’s for another article). One of the key things it enables us to do is notice and reflect on what’s happening inside us – both sensory and cognitive – and to make choices about what action to take. It’s like having a clutch that allows us to shift gears internally; to notice, for example, the early signs of Nervous System activation (an increased heart rate, or shallow breathing) and to take the necessary steps (such as shaking out the body, or taking a pause in the conversation) to return to Somatic Safety. Or, to notice an arising sensation and choose to hold it and stay curious rather than react.

When the Nervous System mobilises for defence, one of the first things that happens is that this Prefrontal area shuts down. By decreasing the reactivity of the Nervous System (by widening our window of tolerance), we regain access to this part of our brain and our consciousness. This has critical implications for our ability to connect with our fellow humans – particularly across difference – in a way that does not unconsciously impose Dominance-oriented interpretations or categories on them (or on ourselves). Having the capacity to internally witness ourselves allows us to “mind the gap”: to hold at all times internal “space” for the possibility that the sensate responses we are having in our bodies are not necessarily representative of how other people and the world actually are.

The Inner Witness allows us to be 100% in connection with our sensory and cognitive experience of the world
and other people while withholding the violence of (even subtly) imposing our interpretations, reactions, or past experiences onto them. It allows us to “see” our implicit/conditioned somatic responses as they arise and to instead choose more authentic and connective relational moves.

We create new rituals. Once a critical mass of people are embodying themselves in these ways, our cultural values and identity will radically change. We will start to feel connected to our fellow human and non-human beings in an ever-shifting, emergent way that utterly defies Dominance-based logic. We will start to experience a completely different kind of power arising from that very connectedness itself: a self-evident, meaningful kind of power that doesn’t need to do anything to anybody else in order to exist. This might at times be strange or overwhelming. It might awaken strong feelings in acknowledgment of what we lost – of what we destroyed – in the name of Dominance. At this point, we need to hold on to the tools and practices we have collected so far, so that we do not revert, in fear, to our previous ways. And, we need to develop new personal and cultural practices that link consciousness to sensation, power to connection in every aspect of our lives, in order to support us to sustain our capacity for Partnership into the future.

Some of these practices will involve reclaiming our capacity to express life experience with and through the body and voice. Our bodies and our voices are designed to help us hold and move our sensory experience of life. We are not meant to bottle it all up inside. Imagine, for example, the way joyfulness feels in your body. Perhaps your chest naturally lifts and expands, or your arms outstretch, or your voice wants to sing, or whatever else happens for you. Similarly, the feeling of great sadness can invoke its own range of movements and sounds. Our bodies and voices are designed to support our partnership with sensation and hence, with our life experiences and with each other. When we restrict our sound and our movement, our song and our dance, our capacity to feel and connect with life diminishes; by restoring them, we can expand the range of feeling – and hence, connection – we are able to have.

Some of these practices will involve connecting to Nature. The language of sensation, movement, and vocal sound that our bodies speak is our shared language with Nature. The rustling of a tree’s waxy leaves, the song of a bird, these things touch us and convey information to us via our sensory circuits. Not “information” in the way we (from our Dominance-based perspective) have come to understand the word, but as a kind of un-worded meaningful-ness that somehow touches, informs, and changes us when we encounter it. We are primed for exactly this kind of information; our bodymind and spirit thirst for it. By building practices that link us to Nature, our sensory systems will integrate all the more deeply, and we will access the cyclical blueprints for culture and community that it continuously makes available to us.

Some of these practices will involve restoring our engagement with difference and conflict. Only in Domination is difference something to be feared. Only in Domination does difference lead to yet another trip around the Drama Triangle, to the inevitability of lost connection, to (even subtle) acts of violence. The cultural soma of Partnership, rooted as it is in unconditional presence and Inner Witnessing, approaches difference as simply another shade or texture of information to be greeted and received. This does not mean that Partnership is without boundaries or difference; healthy and authentic boundaries support connection, support the enrichment of life, whereas the reactive defence of limited relational categories destroys it. Residing in a connected internal space will support us to communicate and receive boundaries and difference in a more respectful and co-creative way, which will allow the full truth and potential of any interaction to be revealed.

Some of these practices will involve grief-tending. Restoring our sensory relationship to the world and ourselves does not mean that we will walk around in a state of bliss every day. Many of the sensory experiences we have will feel challenging, will evoke infinite shades of grief, outrage, as well as joy and everything else. Particularly in this transitional moment, when so much damage and loss has not been fully felt or integrated (particularly by white-bodied people, as per this series), creating or learning practices to collectively feel, titrate, express, and integrate painful feelings will support us to welcome and fully receive the gifts of what we might call suffering (integrity and accountability, joy and restoration, and of course, connection) – which is an intimate and indispensable part of life – within the sphere of our collective reality.

 

Conclusion

Although I have presented these guideposts as if they happen one at a time, it is more often the case that they co-arise as folks learn to safely and fully connect with their somatic experience of themselves and their culture. This process is often highly non-linear, deeply personal as well as collective, and at times may require individual support (as from a somatic psychotherapist, bodywork practitioner, or other experienced healer) alongside group practices like Body-Informed Leadership. And, in addition to the guideposts I have listed here, there are undoubtedly countless other key features in the cultural somatic landscape of Partnership – relevant to white-bodied people and to BIPOC alike – which I hope that we can explore together.

I believe that our human story is one of distinct but inter-woven strands. In this series of articles, I have teased out one thread of this bigger story – the cultural somatic lineage which gave rise to white supremacy – so that people who identify as white can better understand and acknowledge where we have come from and the often invisible dynamics which shape us, and to hold ourselves accountable for the damage we as a collective have caused. I also hope this series will support us to hold ourselves deeply accountable to the cultural somatic healing and restoration that I believe we are capable of, and which must accompany broader systemic change. And finally, I hope that it offers some cultural somatic reference points to support the restoration of relationship with our BIPOC comrades, and with the beautiful braid of life we are all a part of.

[1] This phenomenon is well researched in the fields of infant attachment and interpersonal neurobiology.

 

Filed Under: Part 4: The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies

The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies: Part 3

Breaking the Trance

July 2020

The emergent field of Cultural Somatics[1] looks at how particular mind-body states (such as defensive Nervous System activation, dissociation, or calm presence) are encouraged – even embodied – by human cultures. And conversely, it looks at the way that individual mind-body states generate or reinforce those very cultures that perpetuate them.

To briefly illustrate what this means:

If my culture does not provide opportunities and support to calm my Nervous System – and simultaneously puts me in situations that overwhelm my Nervous System – I will most likely develop a dysregulated Nervous System. This will impact my mind, body, and actions in ways that might be typical of my culture (as other people sharing my context and life experiences will be impacted in similar or related ways). On the flip side, if I myself have a dysregulated Nervous System, then I will engage in behaviours and relational patterns that express this (perhaps favouring extremely high- or low- intensity interactions or avoiding certain types of relational intimacy or connection). If many people with similar dysregulation hang out together over time, we will create a culture that enables or accommodates our dysregulation. 

Each of these scenarios might give rise to the other, and/or be mutually-reinforcing. This interrelationship is called “cultural somatics.”

Body-Informed Leadership is particularly interested in how, by making both cultural changes and individual changes, we can shift the whole equation in the West. We can transform our cultures to support more balanced and life-affirming ways of inhabiting our neurobiology, and we can integrate the paradigms and practices that shift our neurobiology so that we become capable of more balanced and life-affirming cultures.

In this series, I foreground perspectives about the white “cultural soma” (I use this phrase to refer to the culture-body interface of a particular group of people, whether a family, a community, etc) and how I believe it has evolved to generate the toxic phenomenon of white supremacy. My hope is that by knowing ourselves better, we will be better equipped to truly and deeply release the distortions of our past, to hold ourselves more accountable, and to become more able – at the cultural somatic level – to contribute to a better human future in relationship to our fellow human and non-human beings.

In Part 2, I described some of the cultural somatic wounding that I believe is carried by white-bodied people of European descent. In this current writing, I’d like to spend just a little bit more time looking at the damaged cultural soma I believe we have evolved as a result of that wounding.

Please note that I use “we” at many points to bring my white-bodied readers along with me on an experiential journey. This may feel uncomfortable at times, as you may not always identify or agree with what I describe. However, I invite you to try on what it’s like to include yourself in the “we” – to find and claim the cultural soma I describe within yourself and the groups you are a part of. Because although it may not be true for all of us all of the time, it is ours to heal.

And so in that spirit, if you are willing, let us inhabit this “white-body cultural soma” together. Let us name and feel its features so that we can better notice when it becomes active within our bodies and our cultures and break the trance that binds us to it.

 

White Bodies and Domination

To understand the white cultural soma at this moment in time, we must understand a disease called Domination.[2]Domination is something that can (and does) infect human bodies and cultures of all kinds. It involves the conscious or unconscious belief that power is something that must be taken and sustained by force, or the threat of force. That for one to be powerful another must be less so. It involves a somatics of dysregulation in the Nervous System, and personal and cultural rituals that separate body from mind, consciousness from sensation. It manifests in social systems that privilege some and oppress others. It is not in any way intrinsic to white bodies and white cultures; however (and this is a BIG “but”), it has been the defining motif of the cultures (and cultural somas) that white-bodied people have embodied, expressed, imposed, and defended for the past several thousands of years.

I believe that Domination is a disorder which took root under the severely compromised cultural and somatic
conditions I described in Part 2 of this series, and which has since perpetuated itself within the individual and cultural bodies of its host. It has become so deeply ingrained into white bodies, minds, and cultures that it now (to many of us) simply feels “normal.” We look at ourselves and our social systems and we know something is wrong – we may even resist or act to dismantle the status quo – but when we try to find the root cause of the suffering we seem to perpetuate we can’t quite put our finger on what exactly it is.

 

The Story of Separation as Told by the Body

So, what does Domination feel like? How does it live in our bodies and our cultural somas?

It begins with a bodily mobilisation towards defence. Our Nervous Systems are designed to radically transform our brains and bodies depending on whether they perceive safety or danger in the environment. When, due to inherited trauma, the Nervous System is consistently flooded by danger signals, we lose the capacity to be in the restful, connected state of perceived safety. We become chronically hyper- or hypo- activated. This means states of anxiety, angry adrenalized outbursts, or lethargy, dissociation, and depression. We may alternate endlessly between all of the above. Over thousands of years and across millions of bodies, once we have collectively forgotten that there ever existed another way of being within ourselves, this kind of activation takes on its own logic. It writes the script for how we see and understand ourselves, each other, and the world. It gives rise to our sense of power, our social organising and social rituals. It becomes culture.

We develop a fear of sensation. When our bodies are the site of chronic dysregulation, they are very painful places to spend time. Sensation, the body’s messenger, could signal yet another round of dysregulated activation or inescapable lethargy. Or – perhaps even worse – it could signal a painful memory of whatever trauma short-circuited our Nervous System (or more likely, our distant ancestor’s Nervous System) to begin with. When humans don’t fully feel, process and integrate painful experiences they are literally stored away in the body and passed along through the generations until they can be healed; however, a chronically activated Nervous System will block the healing process from happening.[3]

And so it can be that when we inherit unprocessed trauma along with chronic Nervous System activation we are impelled to unknowingly run from the ghosts of the past within our own bodies. We unconsciously develop defences and barriers within ourselves and learn to avoid or control our body’s sensory experience so that it cannot overwhelm us. We start to deeply fear it – along with anything that represents or relates to it (in the European lineage, this fear often constellates around nature, and things feminine/female). Once again, over thousands of years and across millions of bodies, this becomes culture.

We disconnect. True connection – connection with ourselves, with other people, with the world around us – is an intimately sensory experience. It is perhaps the most precious gift of being human, to receive the many textures and shades of feeling evoked within us by our life experiences and relationships. Think of how you might feel touched when someone you love makes a characteristic movement of their body, or a characteristic inflection of their voice. Or how you might be somehow informed by the delicacy of a moth’s wing, feeling the papery tickle of its light, chaotic movements. This is the invisible, sensory web that connects us to our fellow beings. When the realm of sensation goes off-limits, we lose this capacity to feel connected to the world around us. And once again, over thousands of years and across millions of bodies, this becomes culture.

We find substitutes, we create inequality. When sensory “connection” channels are off-limits, we naturally look for alternative means of navigating the world around us. We may find we require a few handy categories to make sense of it all – because without the ability to sense and feel connection, we must find external signposts with which to carry out our lives. This is an inherently fragile navigational system. It’s like losing a compass and so having to navigate by a handful of sketchy – even invented – landmarks.

And it doesn’t help that we have our hyper- or hypo- activated Nervous Systems in the background, giving us suggestions about other people and the nature of things. Its dysregulated perspective – being obsessively oriented towards defence – resonates most strongly with social categories involving the degree of threat posed by others to one’s physical survival. These categories are inherently imbalanced; they involve people’s perceived likelihood of overpowering or being overpowered by oneself (see my description of Karpman’s “Drama Triangle” in “Body-Informed Leadership: A Somatic Allyship Practice”). There is no meeting in the middle. And if we add in the fear of the feminine and of nature (which in the European lineage symbolise the connection to the sensate, to the body) we have the perfect somatic recipe for the Dominance formula as it plays out today on the world stage today via patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy.[4]

We protect our fragile sense of order with violence. Somehow we know that our categories don’t make sense. Somehow we know that there used to be a better way to navigate the world. Sometimes, whether because we meet a person or have an experience that does not fit our categories, or because we are actively challenged by those who disagree with them, we feel disoriented within the system we ourselves have created. And this disorientation exposes us to the very thing we are unconsciously avoiding at all costs. The unknown will always bring us back to our oldest and most wired-in method for coming into relationship with life: sensation. Our sensory systems are the only part of us capable of truly greeting and receiving the unknown. Despite millennia of suppression, our sensory systems still call to us, still beckon from the cracks between the stereotypes we hold on to.

For example, I might not know what gender that person is, but I know that I feel settled and soft when I am around them. This allows me to feel connected to them, despite not having a category to frame them with.

Depending on the degree of activation within a person’s body, and depending on the extent to which the social systems around them entrench Dominance, this could either be a moment of healing and restored connection … or a cue for the distorted logic of buried pain to reassert itself with a vengeance and impose its categories even more strongly onto the world. In this case force and even violence (whether enacted ourselves or projected onto others when we turn ourselves into victims) feels necessary. Feels appropriate, in order to re-establish the familiar (im)balance we’ve been habituated to recognise as “normal.”

Remember, our Nervous Systems are telling us we are in mortal danger against which we must fight or submit. And there is perhaps even a breath of relief when the world, for just a moment, seems to obey the fragile order we’ve learned to bend it into.

 

Closing This Chapter

The cultural soma I have described is not inhabited 100% of the time by 100% of white-identified people. Many of us are very loving, and have resourcing practices (such as song, dance, or nature connection) that enhance our Somatic Safety and open us naturally to sensation and connection. Many of us enjoy the ambiguities and mysteries of life and are capable of relating authentically across difference. There are also broad differences in the way that this cultural soma is inhabited by genderqueer, transgender, female and male people.

I am not proposing this description as a one-size-fits-all formula; however, I do believe that it is crucial that we understand the formula – more than understand it, that we can feel it and own it whenever and wherever it comes alive in our bodies and our cultures. This way, together, and in relationship to our fellow human and non-human beings, we can regenerate what has become so badly distorted.

Now, I invite you to take a moment to breathe, and look gently around the space you are in. Notice what sensations are present in your body, what thoughts are in your mind, after reading these words I have shared. Perhaps there is grief, perhaps there is anger, apathy, or something else. Perhaps my writing has struck a chord, or perhaps you disagree with it entirely. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to feel about these ideas I have proposed, but whatever it is that you do feel, please acknowledge it, even only to yourself. Don’t just skim it over and carry on with your day. Because – and this I say specifically to my white-bodied readers – that is the only way to authentically engage with this story, and with this topic in a good way that will bring about change.

And then please join me for the final instalment of this series, which I hope will offer a ray of hope: The Oldest Story.

 

[1] I give thanks and credit for this excellent term to Resmaa Menakem and Tadaaki Hozumi

[2] I give thanks and credit to Riane Eisler for her portrayal of Domination in her landmark book “The Chalice and the Blade”.

[3] These phenomena are well researched in the fields of epigenetics, somatic trauma healing (Somatic Experiencing or Sensorimotor Psychotherapy), interpersonal neurobiology, and infant attachment.

[4] I want to emphasise that I am not suggesting that people with PTSD are personally “to blame” for white supremacy. What I am pointing to – and I hope that this is already obvious – are the cultural patterns that have evolved as a result of many people having PTSD and forming actions and beliefs from that place.

 

Filed Under: Part 3: The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies

Identity and Accountability Statement

June 2020

Because I am a white-bodied person and I hold space from the perspective of my own life experience as such, some aspects of Body-Informed Leadership centralise the white body experience. I currently live in the UK, and am on a journey to befriend and understand the land and heritage of my ancestors, and my practice of holding BIL reflects that. And fundamentally, by seeking to address the root disorders of the “Western” somatic landscape, BIL is in some ways a somatic ancestral healing process for the European and Euro-diaspora lineages who’s historic wounding gave rise to many of those root disorders in the first place.

This aspect of BIL is held with a deep spirit of allyship, and with the explicit intention to re-weave – at the Somatic level – a sense of cultural identity which enables white-bodied folks to step back into good relationship with the rest of creation (both human and non-human). This includes cultivating the Somatic capacity for accountability, authenticity, and collaborative reciprocity, as well as critically analysing – and reimagining – the social systems white-bodied people contribute to from a disordered vs. healthy cultural somatic place.

At the same time, Body-Informed Leadership invites and honours multiple perspectives in its collective sense-making process. BIL is held with an intersectional awareness that the root somatic disorders of European/Euro-diaspora culture (for example, Domination) have profoundly impacted and shaped the lives (and Somas) of many non-European people via colonisation, globalisation, and white supremacy. That, in turn, these non-European people have embodied and expressed their own cultural somatic resources and histories within and as part of the Western cultural soma. And, that these intersecting cultural somatic motifs are themselves experienced and embodied differently based on gender identity, sexual orientation, and class, and differently again in the United Kingdom vs the United States vs Europe vs Australia and so on. It is this diverse cultural somatic field that comprises “the West.”

Body-Informed Leadership aims to provide a respectful space where the multiple somatic lineages of “the West” can be shared and expressed with courage, kindness and solidarity and together, make strides, leaps, and shimmies toward right relationship within and among the human and other-than-human world.

Filed Under: Identity and Accountability Statement

Body-Informed Leadership: A Somatic Allyship Practice

July 2019

At its heart, I see Body-Informed Leadership as a somatic Allyship practice; that is, as a practice that enables those of us who are conditioned by Domination Dynamics to release them at the somatic level, and to cultivate instead the somatic skills and practices that enable collaborative interconnection – with ourselves, and with each other. In this article I will unpack this process, and will describe the somatic landscape that I believe underpins Dominance-based social systems, along with the more Partnership-oriented somatic landscape Body-Informed Leadership (BIL) promotes.

Domination vs. Partnership

The renowned writer and social systems scientist Riane Eisler divides human social systems into two categories, as being oriented towards either Domination or Partnership. Partnership-oriented societies, she argues, were favoured by our oldest ancestors. In such systems, power is seen as something which arises in relationship, and is reinforced by the mutual benefit it brings. In contrast, Domination-oriented societies understand power as something that is taken by one at the expense of another, and sustained by violence or the threat of violence. Domination-oriented societies first appeared in Europe between 3,000-4,000 BCE, and gradually moved Westward, ultimately colonising Western Europe (the Romans), and then much of the world.

Domination Dynamics and the Body

The evolution of Domination dynamics among human communities begs the question: where did they come from? Eisler points to collective trauma as being their likely originator. She describes years of drought and famine which plagued Eastern Europe around the same time the first Domination-oriented cultures appeared in that area. She points to the cultural changes that arose from this trauma (which included learning to see animals, and then women, and then other peoples as property to be controlled for personal gain) to explain the massive shift towards Dominance which ensued. Contemporary proponents of Cultural Somatics are picking up this same thread, and taking an even deeper look at the cultural dynamics – and specifically, their somatic substrates – which underlie unequal, or Domination-oriented societies to this day.

Many such writers describe the dysregulation of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) which results from traumatic experience, along with the phenomenon of intergenerational trauma (dysregulation of the ANS which is passed unknowingly from parents to their offspring), as being a core mechanism by which unequal cultures are reinforced at the somatic (body-based) level. In this article, I will touch on this phenomenon and link it to the dynamics of Stephen Karpman’s “Drama Triangle,” which I believe extend and entrench the somatic states of ANS dysregulation into an inter-linking set of separation-oriented psychological categories, which are the anchoring social formula for the current Dominance system in the West.

States of ANS Activation

When we humans experience an event we perceive as being life threatening, our bodies automatically activate in-built defense strategies run by our Autonomic Nervous Systems. They are designed to save our lives: the intense adrenaline rush of “fight-or-flight” activation makes us capable of otherwise impossible survival feats (I’ve heard of parents who are able to lift cars off of trapped children); the sleepy lethargy of “faint” numbs us to pain. These defense strategies become activated completely outside of our conscious awareness or control. This is the key to their effectiveness: they are designed to take over in situations when thinking would simply take too long.

These defensive strategies – and the brain/body states they invoke – are usually temporary. They are meant to complete when a threat has ended, returning our bodies to a healthy resting state. In some cases, however, our bodies do not get the message that the threat has passed, and the activated states persist despite our best efforts to return to “normal.” This is the case in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). With PTSD, a person’s brain and body is chronically oriented towards danger (despite the fact that the threat has passed), and is continuously over- (as in the case of the “fight-or-flight” response) or under- (as in the case of the “faint” response) stimulated as a result. As I mentioned previously, this type of ANS dysregulation can be unknowingly passed from parent to child, and on through the generations.

This dysregulation is intensely uncomfortable for our bodies. Digesting food, regenerating tissues, creating new memories, and practicing self-awareness are just a few of the important functions which are inhibited in such states. Connection with our fellow humans – which under normal circumstances is enjoyable and calming to the ANS – is also inhibited, as we are more likely to perceive other people’s behaviour as indicating threat. The pain of living under such conditions can be very great indeed.

As a result, many people who experience PTSD and/or its intergenerational effects turn to substance use and other addictive behaviours in an attempt to ease their suffering. In one sense, this is an understandable, even intelligent strategy, as the feel-good chemical compounds contained in some drugs and released by addictive activities (which are naturally produced by our bodies but inhibited by ANS dysregulation) can bring a temporary sense of relief. This relief is short-lived, however – and all too often comes with a host of devastating side-effects – and does nothing to resolve the underlying ANS dysregulation.

The ANS and the Drama Triangle

When a critical mass of the population is dysregulated at the level of the ANS, this brain-body phenomenon becomes more than a personal experience: it starts to shape the wider culture. At the inception of the first Domination societies, I believe that such a critical mass was reached. What was initially a disorder transmitted or inflicted at the individual level became a consciousness which transformed our sense of self and other. I believe we learned from our dysregulated nervous systems to collectively relate to life experience – and hence, to our fellow human beings and the world around us – in an imbalanced way, from the vantage point of either hyper- or hypo- aroused, or addicted, neurophysiology. Rather than something to partner with for the sake of personal and collective benefit, our life experience became at the sensory levela threat to overcome, either by dominating it, submitting to it, or avoiding the anticipated pain of it. And so the psychological and social roles described by Karpman’s Drama Triangle –the Persecutor, the Victim, and the Rescuer – were born.

In Karpman’s formulation, each of the three roles both invokes and reinforces the other two; hence, their inter-linking, “triangular” relationship. They can be described in the following way:

  1. The Victim

The Victim’s perspective is “poor me.” They feel oppressed, powerless, hopeless, and are unable to take initiative or decisive action. The Victim is identified with being harmed, and/or “being done to.”

  1. The Persecutor

The Persecutor’s belief is “it’s all your fault.” They are blaming, rigid, authoritarian, oppressive, and angry. The Persecutor is identified with causing harm, and/or “doing to.”

  1. The Rescuer

The Rescuer says “let me help you.” Their main motivation in helping others is to avoid their own inner issues, pain, or struggle. Their rescuing has further negative effects, as it keeps the Victim dependant, and makes their own sense of power contingent upon other peoples’ actions.

These roles are inherently imbalanced in relation to power, and also impose an unequal power distribution upon each other, so that, like reversed magnets, they never quite connect. In this way, they entrench the stance of separation, somatic fragility and reactivity – originated by our threat-obsessed Nervous Systems – in our psychology and in our societies. And in so doing, they further entrap us into Dominance, for without connection, power cannot be shared and sustained through mutual benefit, and must instead be kept by force.

Learning to Feel, Learning to Heal

These roles and the disconnection they create are so familiar, so woven into dominant Western society that they are almost ubiquitous. Similarly, the ANS dysregulation they intersect with continues to be transmitted through generations, pervading our bodies and our communities. Even those of us who do not experience PTSD or its intergenerational effects directly are impacted by daily phenomena – such as toxic workplace culture, financial stress, and oppressive and unequal social systems – which evoke defensive ANS responses (fight/flight, freeze, or faint) and entrain our brains and bodies into defensive modes for much of our waking lives, mostly beneath our conscious awareness.

This is the prison that many of us carry around internally, entrapping ourselves and others into narrow and unequal categories of experience. The only way out, I believe, is to transform our relationship to our bodies by cultivating what I call “Somatic Safety.” Somatic Safety has two main aspects: 1) learning the tools and practices to generate safety in our individual and collective Nervous Systems, and 2) releasing our sensory experience of life from Drama Triangle dynamics.

Somatic Safety and the ANS

When cultivating Somatic Safety, the first order of business is to learn the characteristic mind-body symptoms of the different ANS states, so that we can start to sense and feel when they become activated. We must then learn to shift between them, returning again and again to a state of “Social Engagement,” which is our Nervous System’s optimal zone for connection and collaboration. Doing so requires an understanding of what sensory and body-based experiences send “safety” signals to the ANS, and allow its defensive programs to switch off.

Please Note: For many, this process brings them into connection with PTSD imprints in their own system. Healing these imprints requires the support of a specialised therapeutic relationship. While I always do my best to help BIL participants find any support they need, this more personal aspect of the healing journey is outside the scope of BIL group practice. BIL is about transforming our group norms and practices in ways that understand and support the ANS, rather than “healing” each participants’ personal experience of PTSD.

Somatic Safety and the Drama Triangle

Once the ANS has relaxed, our bodies become able to relate to arising sensory experience with curiosity, rather than reactivity (and the consequent Drama Triangle dynamics). We learn to welcome – or at least, tolerate– arising sensation in our bodies, in all its many textures, intensities, and unknowns. This allows it to touch us, move us, inform and change us. This aspect of Somatic Safety requires awareness of the mind, which, out of habit and conditioning, will do its best to impose positive, negative, or avoidant (Drama Triangle) evaluations onto sensory experience – which can entrap us back into somatic Dominance from the top-down.

Somatic Safety and Partnership

Somatic Safety is not about protecting ourselves from uncomfortable experience; rather, it is about understanding the brain-body conditions in which we can truly feel– rather than defend against – both the pain and the pleasure of our life experience. It is the key which unlocks the prison of somatic reactivity and Domination Dynamics and allows us to step collectively into a somatic landscape in which we can respond more creatively to, and to be moved, informed, and touched by our sensate experience of life in all of its textures. Only when Somatic Safety is understood and in place in our bodies and our group cultures will we have the necessary somatic foundation to Partner once again with each other, and with the world around us. It is the core skill taught in Body-Informed Leadership Foundations programs.

Filed Under: Body-Informed Leadership: A Somatic Allyship Practice

My Story

My Story

Folks have been asking me how I came to be doing this work … Here’s a bit about my journey thus far. 

June, 2018

I grew up in the big city of Toronto, Canada. I was blessed to have loving parents and a stable home; and yet, from my earliest days, I carried a feeling of disorientation which at times utterly overwhelmed me. I saw in myself and others such potential for joy, creativity, care, and compassion, and yet these very qualities seemed to be suppressed by the human-created world around me: a world in which there was such evident and systemic inequality, and where, despite the best of intentions, people seemed continuously to hurt and be hurt by each other.

I felt profound, inescapable grief – and at times, even outrage – for this disorientation and for the loss of something beautiful I couldn’t quite name. Because this suffering (my own and that of my fellow humans) wouldn’t go away, my only choice was to step directly into it and to involve myself in work that brought me closer to a sense of truth. Over the years I volunteered and worked for a number of First Nation-run organisations campaigning for social and environmental justice and community wellbeing. I completed an immersive Master’s program in Somatic Psychology. And then, several years ago, while working as a trauma-oriented psychotherapist in Canada’s far North, I was invited to support an indigenous community in their process of healing from the intergenerational impacts of Canada’s “Indian Residential Schools.”

The week-long program was one small part of the community’s journey; for me, however, it was a pivotal experience. I was deeply moved by the community’s sense of togetherness and for their apparent acceptance, understanding and care for each other – all of which seemed to create a necessary container in which generations of trauma could be sensitively unpacked, witnessed, and even healed. Somehow, this touched the heart of my own grief. Although theirs is a different culture and lineage than mine (I’m mostly British, ancestrally), I had a strong sense that what they were holding and healing – and how they were holding and healing it – was relevant to the work I felt called to offer to my own people.

And yet, who were my people? This was a complex question. Having been many generations in Canada on both sides of my family, I don’t identify culturally with my British ancestors. I am descended from colonizers, from waves of immigrants desperate for a “new start,” who tried (and as we are now learning, failed) to leave their histories behind them. Simply identifying as “white” also didn’t help to surface the common thread I was searching for … but there was something about “Whiteness” that felt significant; something perhaps symbolized or embodied by white people, but which I sensed ran much deeper. I came to identify this deeper phenomenon in terms of the dynamics of dominance/submission.

“My people,” I realized, are those who, due to inherited, systemic, or more recent trauma and/or due to being conditioned by privilege, have learned to respond to life events by “getting bigger” than them (dominating them) or by “getting smaller” than them (submitting to, or being victimized by them).” 

“My people,” I realized, are those who, due to inherited, systemic, or more recent trauma (from colonization, war, or other widespread violence) and/or due to being conditioned by privilege (both of which, I believe, dysregulate the Autonomic Nervous System) have learned to respond to life events by either “getting bigger” than them (dominating them) or by “getting smaller” than them (submitting to, or being victimized by them). This formulation has been named in many ways by many people. Most comprehensively, the renowned author Riane Eisler describes how the cultural dynamics of dominance/ submission first arrived on the Eastern European scene around 3,500 BCE and crept their way Westward, colonizing previously indigenous societies, and generally transforming Europe’s relationship to power.

As a body-based and trauma-oriented psychotherapist, I became fascinated by the way that dominator dynamics seem to be rooted in particular ways of relating to our bodies’ sensate signals. Disordered Attachment, Complex PTSD, addiction, depression, abuse: all of the themes I encountered so pervasively in my private practice and in the world around me suddenly became the threads of a shared cultural narrative, one which told an ancient story of brutal disconnection, terror, and loss, and which was being transmitted – and re-created – generation by generation at the body-based, non-verbal level – and being continuously reinforced in the outside world by the systems that it generated.

My experience in Canada’s far North gave me an understanding of what community-wide healing and transformation could look like. More specifically, it showed me that some wounds can only be healed and transformed in the context of community: within the understanding that each group member has a responsibility to the other and is part of a shared story. Only then can the past be re-visited and held in such a way that it transforms the present. Once I identified the bond that connects “my people” I was ready to begin the work of creating opportunities to gather those people in community, and to embark together on a healing journey.

“Some wounds can only be healed and transformed in the context of community: within the understanding that each group member has a responsibility to the other and is part of a shared story. Only then can the past be re-visited and held in such a way that it transforms the present.”

The result is “Body-Informed Leadership.” Body-Informed Leadership programs are immersive events in which a strong community container is created in which participants are supported to disentangle domination dynamics from their brain-bodies, and to sense, feel, and physically move their way towards more connective, creative and collaborative ways of relating within themselves, and with each other.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: My Story

The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies, Part 2: The Unthought Known

The Unthought Known

November, 2017

This is the second in a series of articles that explore why practicing embodiment – that is, slowing down and looking at the moment-by-moment ways we experience and relate to our bodies – is such a necessary step towards dismantling White Supremacy (aka. the cultural status quo in the Western world that systematically privileges white people) and creating a more just and equitable world.

______________________________________

*But first, a note on language. In this series of articles, I sometimes use “we” to refer to all of us humans; more frequently, I use it to refer to white people (I do my best to indicate to the reader which I’m doing at any given time). I realize that this centralizes the white experience — as does the entire focus of the article — and that this might be alienating to non-white readers. My intention in centralizing whiteness in these ways is not to exclude People of Colour, or to “take up more space” with white perspectives, but rather is to actively step into my responsibility as a white person to own (and transform) those aspects of my identity (ie. my “Whiteness”) that cause harm, and to invite other white people to do the same. This is the spirit in which I offer this writing.

______________________________________

In Part 1 of this series I suggested that if, as white people, we are going to contribute to cultural change away from white Supremacy, we must explore the ways we relate to the sensations and emotions that arise in our bodies in relation to our life experiences. Only then can we actually learn to notice, and feel, the Implicit Associations — the meanings and associations our bodies make, beneath our conscious awareness — that underlie and result in behaviours and attitudes that marginalize others. We must then learn to tolerate the discomfort of not acting on these associations long enough for alternative (ideally, more collaborative) relational outcomes to arise.

Another dimension of discomfort that I suggested white Allies must learn to welcome is tolerating the discomfort of emotion – and of change, and the unknown – moving through our bodies. Being present to these experiences connects us to our own experience of life in all its textures, and makes us capable of acknowledging and truly caring about the life experiences — in particular, the suffering — of our fellow humans. I shared my belief that this is a requisite energy source for our wholehearted participation in personal and cultural transformation at this time.

In this article, I’d like to look not so much at why it is helpful for white people to practice these things, as to investigate why it is that often times we don’t.

______________________________________

I think it’s safe to say that many cultures include, or have once included, some form of the body-based skills I have mentioned in their cultural practices, spirituality, ethics, or values. It is hard to get along with one another in close and ongoing proximity – which is what our human ancestors have had to do since the dawn of time – without them. I would even go so far as to say that these skills are the foundation of our human capacity for connection, both within ourselves (tolerating our own sensate experience) and with each other (tolerating the sensate experience of relating with other people). So, a culture in which they are absent is … Well, what is it?

To answer this question, we must look back into the history of Western Europe, whose people eventually came to define, export, and impose white culture around the world. Until the Romans invaded, conquered, and colonized Western Europe (starting in roughly 250 BC), the people of those lands were tribal people, whose spiritual and cultural practices supported them to live in close relationship with the Earth and with each other. They were indigenous people. Over several hundreds of years, the Romans violently severed them from their traditional ways. Torture, mass killings, rape, cultural annihilation, all the trappings of colonization were inflicted upon them. Among these too was the subjugation of women.

Although the Roman Empire fell apart by the end of the 5th century AD, its legacy of religious and political institutions continued to work away at whatever foundations were left of Western Europe’s formerly-indigenous ways. The witch hunts of 1250 to 1750, during which 6 to 9 million women (and their male accomplices) were burned at the stake or otherwise tortured and killed on the pretext of practicing witchcraft, are a potent, heart-rending indicator of the cultural transformation at work at that time. The Diné teacher Pat McCabe, Woman Stands Shining, gives a phenomenal account of what she believes the impact of the witch hunts was on the psyche and soul of Europeans – and ultimately on all humans – here. If you can, I recommend you watch the whole video, which speaks to so much more than this one historical event, but for those with limited time, the witch-hunting bit starts at 27:15.

______________________________________

Why is it that, when I tune into it, I can still feel a connection to this long-ago history: a formless, frozen, ragged edge of pain somewhere deep in my body? Didn’t my ancestors leave it all behind when they left Europe and came to North America? My parents are loving people, and I grew up with privilege. What claim can I possibly have to a traumatic history that’s so long-buried?

______________________________________

The answers lie, once again, in understanding the body’s Implicit memory system. Like I said in Part 1, our bodies “remember” things in a non-linear tapestry of sensation and image. These memories are felt rather than consciously recalled; as such, we can be in the middle of an Implicit memory and not even know it; we are simply feeling a certain way.

Christopher Bollas coined the phrase “the unthought known” to describe the particular quality Implicit memories have, of being things we know without knowing we know them.

When a person experiences trauma and develops Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), their painful memories become trapped in their Implicit (body-based) memory systems because they are too overwhelming to integrate consciously (for more about this see here or here). A split develops between the embodied parts of the person that unconsciously remember – and therefore, ongoingly feel – the trauma, and the conscious (or “Explicit”) parts of the person, which not only don’t feel but actively resist and suppress the body’s painful memories.

Does this pattern sound familiar? Because it’s basically the blueprint for Western culture.

But before I go there, here’s one more important point: recent research into neuroscience, embodied psychology, and epigenetics demonstrates that a person’s unresolved PTSD is transmitted to their offspring via genetic mutation as well as via non-verbal, body-based interactions in the first 2 to 3 years of life. Thus, a parent’s (or grandparent’s or great-grandparent’s) overwhelming pain can literally inhabit their children’s Implicit memory systems, invading their bodies and causing their conscious selves to evolve the same traumatized resistance to their body-based experience – without ever knowing why.

______________________________________

I believe that Western culture is the outer manifestation of a traumatized inner state, passed unconsciously through generations of white (and subsequently, non-white) people and – as so often happens with PTSD – recreated again and again, around the world via colonization. In its methodical fetishization of the “rational,” and in its active suppression of body-based, felt-sense experience Western culture protects white people from feeling an ancient agony of cultural loss, of separation from all that was life-sustaining. These are the dynamics upon which its systems of privilege and oppression are founded (in the words of Tada Hozumi, “oppression is trauma itself, institutionalized”), and which underlie its current global politics.

To be “Western” or “Westernized” is to be in some way in relationship with white people’s colonial wounding through the vessel of the culture it gave rise to: this fossilized suffering which does its best to imprint its shape on all who cross its path. People encounter, and experience, and in many cases, resist Westernization in different ways depending on their own lineage and intersectionality; even among white-skinned people, there is a diversity of ways they encounter and relate to whiteness as I’ve described it. Nonetheless, it is the responsibility of those of Western European ancestry, as well as those who are socially constructed and/or self-identified as being white to reawaken this wounding within ourselves – or rather, to reawaken to it — to learn how to feel it in order to become able to transform and heal it, and to step back into good relationship with our fellow beings.

______________________________________

One last piece before I close. If any of you white-skinned folks are reading this and thinking to yourselves “nope, not me, no long-buried trauma here!” I invite you to reflect on the following: have you or anyone you know experienced abuse, physical or sexual, in your family of origin? Physical or sexual assault? Have you or anyone you know been impacted by addiction? Been harassed or worse on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation? Experienced recurring overwhelming panic or anxiety, or chronic physical pain? These experiences are so woven into the fabric of Western culture that they simply seem “normal” to many Westerners; yet, I do not believe that they are the experiences we are designed – in our beautiful human perfection – to have (more about this in Part 3). These are the intergenerational manifestations of the white traumatic legacy – the unthought known – that reverberates in every corner of Western culture.

______________________________________

Madelanne Rust-D’Eye, MA, R-DMT, RSME is a Canadian Somatic Psychotherapist who lives in England. She offers ongoing workshops on Body-Informed Leadership, which draws from the principles of Somatic Psychology to experientially inform and support wider conversations about wellness and culture, to groups worldwide. See her Calendar for Upcoming Events, or visit her website www.BodyIntelligence.ca

Filed Under: Part 2: The Roots of White Supremacy are In Our Bodies

The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

September, 2017

Like so many people, I’m feeling deeply impacted by the recent events in Charlottesville. I am touched and stirred by the voices of People of Colour (like Layla Saad’s in her letter, I Need to Talk to Spiritual White Women About White Supremacy, Part One), urging white people to step forward and take their share of responsibility for changing the status quo. I am a white person. I teach body-based paradigms and practices which I believe have a crucial role to play in transforming Western culture, and in dismantling White Supremacy. In this series of articles, I’d like to share with you why I believe that practicing embodiment — that is, slowing down and looking at how we (white people) experience and relate to our bodies — is such a necessary step towards creating a more just and equitable world.


But before I begin, a few words about embodiment.

The phrase “embodiment practice” has been co-opted by the Female Lifestyle Empowerment Brand as being something privileged (often White, often female) people do in their spare time to feel good. Expensive and colourful Yoga-wear is usually involved. This is a trivialization of something much more ubiquitous, which is deep and powerful and potentially transformational on many levels.

“Embodiment” is not actually a practice; it’s a fact.

We all have bodies, which are continuously taking in sensory data — and responding to it — in a complex and ongoing way, most often beneath our conscious awareness. This body-based, sensate substrate is where we actually interpret and respond to the world around us; our conscious minds, which take much longer to process information, frequently just provide the rationale for choices our bodies have already made. For more about how this works, take a look at Antonio Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis. We can choose to bring our attention to this phenomenon – we can practice embodiment – or we can simply allow it to invisibly shape our lives.

And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; our bodies have been elegantly designed over several millions of years to keep us safe, interconnected, and fed with a minimum of conscious input. However, there are some ways that our bodies’ innate design can cause problems in the context of the modern world we live in today. The first way, which I will be speaking to today, involves Implicit Memories and Implicit Associations.


Implicit Memory, Implicit Associations

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Our bodies have their own memory system, called Implicit Memory, via which they “remember” the events of our lives in a non-linear tapestry of sensate experience and image. We don’t know we are having an implicit memory; we simply might feel a certain way in a certain context. For example, if I have a Kindergarten teacher who is very stern, and I feel tense and constricted in her presence, I might feel those same physical sensations (the Implicit Memory) in the future when something in my environment reminds my body of her. This would happen most often beneath my conscious awareness. If she is very tall, for example, I might become tense and constricted around tall people. I have formed an Implicit Association between people being tall and people being stern. I might even start to avoid tall people without knowing why or even noticing I’m doing it, because my body is seeking to avoid situations which, however irrationally, cause it discomfort. The body doesn’t evaluate the credibility, appropriateness, or value of its implicit associations; it just has them.

When the world around us (the media, movies, advertisements, youtube videos, etc) repeatedly associates certain qualities with certain people, we can form Implicit Associations without having had any interaction with the people or qualities in question. In the West, this phenomenon has been widely used to sustain existing systems of privilege and oppression. For example, when the media, etc. persistently associates negative traits with People of Colour, Women, and a host of others, the implicit memory systems of the populace are conditioned to evoke fearful or derogatory felt-sense responses towards those groups.

Implicit Memories and Implicit Associations are very powerful because, even when they directly contradict our conscious beliefs and intentions, they can still influence our behaviour.

Hence, a populace which feels and behaves as though it’s ok to violate some peoples’ human rights – while consciously believing that all people deserve to have their human rights protected.

The Implicit Association Test was developed to measure the implicit associations related to race, gender, and sexual orientation held by Western people. The test’s results to 2013 are published here. Take the IAT yourself, here.


Implicit Memories and Implicit Associations are not new concepts; they are widely understood, in particular, by many marginalized groups and their Allies. What is less understood is the phenomenon of how Implicit Memories actually reveal themselves through patterns of sensation in our bodies, and how, if we learn the practices and paradigms that help us to notice the information our bodies carry (if we practice embodiment) we can bring more choice to how – and if – our Implicit Memories guide our actions in the world. This is a crucial practice for all people who seek to embody their values from the inside out. It is also a crucial practice for white people in particular, and here’s why.

Version 2By learning to notice the sensations in our bodies, we (humans) become familiar with our inner Implicit landscape. The added benefit for white people is that in doing so, we actually get better at tolerating sensation, period. The sensate realm can be uncomfortable; sensations (including emotions) move through us unpredictably, bringing change and transformation in their wake. These are gifts, and yet, many people in the West have learned to clamp down and resist, or even fear, these energies. In particular, I believe that white people have learned to do this; it is a trait of being privileged that one has the social and economic means to continuously distract oneself from things that are uncomfortable, including – or perhaps especially – inner sensate experience. Like all privileges, this also has its own costs. And of course, there are many white people who don’t have this privilege at all. I’m making a generalisation here to point out a cultural motif of avoiding discomfort which is rooted in – and which in turn perpetuates – a body-state that is shut off to inner sensation.

If there is one skill that I believe is crucial for white people to practice in order to participate in truly inclusive group cultures, it is exactly this: to tolerate a host of body sensations, and their attendant discomfort. The phenomenon of White Fragility attests to just how challenging this can be for some white people. It is uncomfortable to be called out (or even to be called in) for a behaviour or remark that was unintentionally hurtful; it is uncomfortable to have one’s viewpoint de-centralized where it has previously been “the norm”; it is uncomfortable to tolerate the grief that arises when one truly opens one’s heart to the reality of pain and suffering in oneself, or in another.

If white people are going to contribute to truly inclusive group cultures, we must actively practice tolerating discomfort in our bodies, so that we can open ourselves to the personal and cultural transformation that discomfort will bring.

After a millennium of culturally avoiding and fearing sensation, we must come home to our bodies, to re-discover and re-commit to the skills and practices by which we can truly invoke and honour interconnection, within ourselves and with each other.


Madelanne Rust-D’Eye, MA, R-DMT, RSME is a Canadian Somatic Psychotherapist who lives in England. She offers ongoing workshops on Body-Informed Leadership, which draws from the principles of Somatic Psychology to experientially inform and support wider conversations about wellness and culture, to groups worldwide. See her Calendar for Upcoming Events, or visit her website www.BodyIntelligence.ca

 

 

Filed Under: Part 1: The Roots of White Supremacy are In Our Bodies

Blog categories

  • Body-Informed Leadership: A Somatic Allyship Practice
  • Identity and Accountability Statement
  • My Story
  • Part 1: The Roots of White Supremacy are In Our Bodies
  • Part 2: The Roots of White Supremacy are In Our Bodies
  • Part 3: The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies
  • Part 4: The Roots of White Supremacy Are In Our Bodies

Upcoming Events

  1. Body-Informed Leadership: Ongoing Co-Mentorship Group for Facilitators

    October 14, 2020 @ 5:00 pm - October 14, 2021 @ 8:00 pm
  2. Body-Informed Leadership: 8-Month Online Introduction (North America)

    October 17, 2020 @ 10:00 am - May 23, 2021 @ 1:30 pm
  3. Body-Informed Leadership: 8-Month Online Introduction (UK and Europe)

    October 17, 2020 @ 1:30 pm - May 23, 2021 @ 4:30 pm
  4. Body-Informed Leadership: 8-Month Online Foundations (Spring 2021)

    January 23 @ 1:30 pm - August 13 @ 4:30 pm

View All Events

View my calendar of events or sign up for my newsletter below and receive updates on upcoming workshops.

Madelanne Rust-D’Eye

  • Home
  • Body-Informed Leadership
  • One-to-One
  • Movement in Relationship
  • Events
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Contact

CONTACT

Contact me for more information:

Phone: 07426 931148
Email: madelanne@icloud.com

Next Event

  1. Body-Informed Leadership: Ongoing Co-Mentorship Group for Facilitators

    October 14, 2020 @ 5:00 pm - October 14, 2021 @ 8:00 pm

View All Events

Copyright © 2021 · All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2021 · madelanne on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in