Addressing Systems of Racism in America through Empowered Embodiment
Trauma therapists Bessel van der Kolk and Peter Levine have helped us to understand that our history is encoded in our DNA. Trauma and systems of oppression get rooted in our bodies and nervous systems, as do our stories of resiliency and courage. In the words of van der Kolk “our body keeps the score.”
In celebration of Black History Month 2021, let’s take a deep dive into our bodies and the wisdom held within them. For thousands of years, yoga has been used to deepen our experiences as human beings. Through practices of movement, breath work, meditation and prayer, we can become more grounded as individuals, and through Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, we can understand how that ripples out into our communities. When we are feeling as individuals, our family members, friends, neighbors and coworkers can coregulate off of that as well—simple things like a smile or laughter can be contagious. Emerging scientific evidence offers insight into just what is happening in the body when we tap into these ancient tools. In understanding how the practices impact our individual nervous systems, we can then use them to address patterns of trauma, injustice and oppression in our society as a whole.
What’s Happening in the Body?
In the mid 90s Kaiser Permamente and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) launched one of the largest studies to date of how our childhood experiences impact our adulthood. The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES) was a longitudinal study on 17,000 people who filled out confidential surveys, answering questions about their childhood, at primary care visits. The results drastically impacted our understanding of how childhood impacts wellness in our adult life. People with more adverse childhood experiences, compared to those with none, had higher likelihood for health risks such as addiction, depression and suicidal attempt, as well as a correlated, graded relationship to heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease and liver disease.
Our social, economic and environmental conditions and experiences from an early age ultimately impact and determine our health. Adverse childhood experiences disproportionately impact people of color. According to a 2016 study, 61% of black children in America experience at least one adverse childhood experience, compared to 51% of Hispanic children, 40% of white children and 23% of Asian children. People of color tend to have more adverse childhood experiences, leading to more health risks later in life.
Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory helps us to understand on an individual level what is occurring during an adverse childhood experience. The vagus nerve is the largest nerve in the parasympathetic nervous system and is 80% afferent, meaning it mostly functions to send messages from our vital organs such as the gut, heart and lungs, up to our brain. It helps us regulate our organs as we appropriately discern and respond to safety, danger and life threat. When we sense our life is in danger, often in moments of adverse childhood experiences, our body is sending messages up to our brain and our nervous system is mobilizing or freezing. When we feel chronic states of stress, due to racism, marginalization, or social economic status, the body is living in heightened stress, leading to significant health issues. Now that we understand how this is functioning, it also means that we can be using our bodies to change our brains and nervous systems, helping to support more long-term health outcomes.
How do We Apply the Science?
Porges’ Polyvagal Theory demonstrates the biological and evolutionary reasons that regulated nervous systems, and dysregulated systems, are contagious. Our bodies are hardwired for social connection. We are constantly coregulating off each other, reading each other’s facial cues and tone of voice to take in information to know whether or not we are safe. If someone comes into a room screaming, then likely everyone in that room will be looking around, assessing for danger and reacting. Similarly, if someone in a group bursts into authentic laughter, it becomes contagious rippling out through the room.
Ideally our body is designed to be able to appropriately respond to environmental and internal stressors, then return to a regulated state. Ventral vagal tone, or our social engagement system, gets activated when we feel safe. However, when we live in chronic stress, we can get stuck in dysregulation. Our body has several ways that we can intentionally cultivate calm, returning us back to this ventral vagal safe zone in our nervous system.
Diaphragmatic breathing, calm vocal tones, singing, humming, grounding, tremoring, moving, drumming, laughing, dancing are all ways that our bodies are designed to collectively come together and heal. Many black churches in the American South activate this through singing, clapping, swaying, and being together. It can also be fostered through yoga classes, where people are moving together and possibly chanting or omming. True healing on an individual and collective level becomes possible as we tap into our bodies together.
“Try this ancient remedy: When you are tired, rest.” -Dr. Jaiya John in Daughter Drink this Water.
Acts of resting and intentionally cultivating stillness for social change are not new. Even in the wake of danger, the act of sitting has been used by African Americans over the course of the last century as a source of power and resistance. Rosa Parks, who in 1955 famously refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man, wrote in her autobiography, “People always said I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired…but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically…No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” The Greensboro Four, Ezell Blair Jr., David Richmond, Franklin McClain and Joseph McNeil, students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, in 1960 refused to leave a lunch counter at Woolworth’s, where the policy was to only serve whites. This led to a wave of demonstrations across the South, that ultimately led to dining facilities being integrated, ending the racial segregation policy at Woolworths.
“Many Black bodies have proven resilient, in part because, over generations, African Americans have developed a variant of body-centered responses to help settle their bodies and blunt the effects of racialized trauma. These include individual and collective humming, rocking, rhythmic clapping, drumming, singing, grounding touch, wailing circles, and call and response, just to name a few.” -Resmaa Menakem in My Grandmother’s Hands
Resmaa Menakem, a healer and trauma specialist, is making headway on the use of embodiment as a vehicle for social justice change. He established a practice of Somatic Abolitionism, which is “living, embodied anti-racist practice and cultural building—a way of being in the world. It is a return to the age-old wisdom of human bodies respecting, honoring, and resonating with other human bodies...It is the resourcing of energies that are always present in your body, in the collective body, and in the world.” Menakem’s work acknowledges and integrates neuroscience, directly applying it to anti-racism work.
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,” Audre Lorde in A Burst of Light and Other Essays.
For people who have been persecuted, oppressed, marginalized due to the color of their skin there is trauma in the nervous system. There is also deep resiliency and knowing of intuitive embodied practices that bring us back to our humanity. Menakem is not alone in his work of using the body and intentional rest to bring healing to communities as a whole. Tricia Hersey, a theologian, established The Nap Ministry in 2016. She views the power of rest as a radical tool for community healing and as an act of resistance and liberation. Her work invites people to step away from overworking and under resting, or grind culture, where bodies are dispensable. She names sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue, and reminds us, “the more you sleep the more you wake up.”
“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still and his tune is heard on the distant hill for the caged bird sings of freedom.” Maya Angelou in her poem Caged Bird.
Addressing adverse childhood experiences and health disparities will take systemic environmental and social changes. However, as adults, it’s important to feel empowered to have tools to get back into a regulated nervous system state. As we address deeply entrenched patterns of racism, hatred and bigotry, let us meet in our bodies, to shoulder suffering together and to coregulate together. Let us be tender with our nervous systems, consciously cultivating rest. As we root down in our bodies, we can rise up into new ways of being in the world.
