Shadow Work For Racial Justice - Insight Timer Live

In this recording of an Insight Timer Live event from June 2021, Catherine explains how we may empathically tend to the racialized trauma in our own bodies so that we can unfreeze paralysis, ease defensiveness, and create space for deepening compassion and equity in our world. Offered with gratitude for the work of Resmaa Menakem, which inspired much of what Catherine shares here.

Transcript

So we are here to talk about the deepest shadow that exists and that is racism and My invitation for you Right now is to just drop into your body and I say just drop in like it's easy But it's not So get curious now about what is happening in your body?

As we begin this live today that is about racism racial justice What does that bring up in your body?

If you like if it feels comfortable for you you might close your eyes Notice what's happening in your throat Your heart rate Your belly And your belly the Space around your heart When I say the word racism You know,

I'm not trying to change anything we're just noticing here When I tune into myself,

I feel this immense weight around my heart space and this gripping around my throat I feel this immense weight around my heart space and this gripping around my throat And a lot of nervousness in my belly and some kind of fidgeting in my hands like That word brings up a very strong reaction in my body And I'd love to hear in the comments if you feel like sharing what you notice in your body right now And if you're just joining us now what we did is We got still and we noticed what sensations were arising in our bodies When we hear the term racism just breathing and noticing You might find your body wanting to move in a certain way And go ahead and move if that's the case or look around the room as you come out of this now So Renee says a deep sadness which feels like it's in my overall energetic field a depressed energy.

Yeah Yeah Nancy says my boyfriend is African-American so it makes me feel very defensive And gray when people show racism Anybody else want to share what you feel in your body also knowing that you might not want to be In your body about this if it feels like too much for you right now maybe you don't want to and that's okay So those of you who know my work know that I do my very best to be trauma informed in everything That I do everything that I teach so that means that it's possible to be trauma informed So that means that it's very very dear to my heart for each and every one of you to caretake yourself During this live or during you're listening to the replay and just really assess your readiness to do Any of the practices that we do today knowing that this isn't about forcing anything and this is a Topic that brings up a lot of triggers for people and so that makes it even more important for each And every one of you to be really loving and present with yourselves where you are right now In your own state in your own body Yeah and Judy says a very good point that I was going next to say resource some safety for yourself Or have nearby yeah yes so let's do that right now so what I always do these days for before my Shadow work practices is to anchor in safety and in the body or around the body so that we have Somewhere to go to that isn't overwhelmed that isn't emotional intensity and so what that will Look like is this I'll explain it a little bit and then we'll feel into it in ourselves so what I'll Be inviting you to do if you feel called is to close your eyes if you like and to get curious About is there a place in your body that brings up a sensation where you feel a sensation that feels Safe neutral or less bad and we're going to hang out there and explore that sensation a little bit Amplify it and what that could be might be something like for a lot of people it's like a Warmth or a feeling of aliveness or tingling in the hands or maybe I had someone say excuse me I Had someone say it's their hair something that feels neutral or your left toe someone I was Working with had it be their left toe and it's very possible for you too that maybe finding Safety or neutrality in your own body feels very inaccessible and if that's the case you can look For something in your environment that brings up feelings of pleasantness safety or neutrality such As like I have this glass of water right here and I could look at it and when I feel into my body Like I can feel a kind of freshness refreshing nurturing that that entails for me or maybe you Have some flowers somewhere or some art in your room that you could focus your gaze on and then Really land in how do I feel in my body when I look at that pleasant or safe or neutral object In the room okay so let's do this now so if you feel called to you can close your eyes and we're Going to just get curious here about is there somewhere right now in your body where your felt Sense the sensation feels pleasant neutral or just less bad And if that feels accessible to you where is that in your body And can you name the sensations that you feel there And again if it feels inaccessible to locate this place of safety or neutrality within your body You can focus your gaze on something in your environment that brings up pleasant Or safe or neutral feelings in you Naming what you notice here maybe it's warmth maybe a pulsing or tingling sensation Maybe it's the feeling of contact that your body has to the surface you're on Feeling of being solid or grounded or having mass might be comforting for you or not So wherever you are breathing now into this feeling this felt sense And inviting it to amplify a bit so if I'm anchored in this sensation of warmth in my hands for example Can I invite that now to spread as far as it wants to spread just take up more space Or if I'm looking at a piece of art in my room Can I really feel all the way how I feel when I look at that beautiful art I'm really allowing now these sensations to land to amplify And see if you can anchor yourself there see if you can hold this feeling of pleasantness or safety or neutrality like Hold it now for a few breaths Because our minds tend to want to think about what's negative or a problem right They just kind of flip there so see if you can bring it back and hold it Breathing on again into that feeling of pleasant safe or just neutral And for those of you who are joining now what we're doing is we're going to be doing a little bit of a Now what we're doing before we go further about talking about racism racial injustice and compassion empathy and what we can do We're establishing this anchor this refuge in our own bodies so that when things get overwhelming for us or too intense we can return here As a place to go so that we can pendulate And I'll explain what that means in just a second but as you're ready you can open your eyes if they were closed and just bring yourself back now and look around the room or take any movement that feels needed So many of you who follow my work know this concept of pendulation or maybe maybe you follow other somatic trauma healing Teachers and if you do this will be familiar but the concept of pendulation and titration is really important to doing trauma healing of any kind I use trauma in a general sense to mean things that overwhelm our system right things that overwhelm us and things that feel too much too fast too soon for example And we're going to be talking today about racism as trauma Different kinds of trauma depending on what kind of body you're in right and what it is for you to move through the world in that body But so bringing the wisdom of trauma healing and somatic trauma healing to the discussion of race and racism is incredibly iota And so I look forward to exploring that with you all today it also can be incredibly intense work because this is one of I think no it is the deepest shadow in the western world And it's incredibly deeply triggering and so it's vital to have this place within or around you that you can resource that you can access a place where you feel more anchored in And this is the concept of pendulation that in somatic trauma healing and nervous system repair work in general we know that we heal in other words we increase the capacity of our nervous system to hold charge Or in spiritual terms we open our hearts not by plowing into what's hard and trying hard and doing the hard work and diving into the shadow work and just going into the pain right That's not actually how we sustainably effectively heal what we know now from nervous system research from the fields for example of neurophysiology Is that we increase our capacity through this pendulation of feeling what's harder and then going back to what feels safer and then feeling what's harder and then going back to what feels safer And then the concept of titration is also vital to trauma healing and to I think emotional healing and healing in general and that is that again we heal best not when we plow into something and work hard and do it efficiently quote unquote you know like we like to do in the western world Just like do the hard thing no or feel it all at once no like healing doesn't work best that way healing works by the principle of titration where we we just do one step at a time one drop at a time Titration comes from chemistry where you're combining two different substances and you titrate you drop drop drop just the right amount of the substance and the other substance to create the chemical reaction that you want and too much more would create a different reaction that you don't want right so it's just that right amount so just a little bit at a time one step at a time So just all tune into how your bodies are feeling right now,

Just take some deep breaths And I want to talk just a little bit about my own background with anti racist work.

So,

As you all know I am a shadow work practitioner.

I first got interested in social justice and anti racism work.

It's a African American family of dances.

I was really passionate about the importance of racism in this country.

Came out from a black dancer to the community of white blues dance teachers that asked us to stop dancing blues because of the history and blues dancing has a particular history of being appropriated,

Right?

Not to go into that,

But basically I read her letter and every single bone in my body said yes,

She's right.

She's right.

It's not my particular tradition.

It's not mine to profit from.

And so I started really diving deep into why that made sense in my body and then I went to,

Gosh,

What happened first?

I went to school for counseling psychology and this is a super vulnerable story.

I know you all like my vulnerable stories.

This is a super vulnerable story.

So I was in school for counseling psychology.

It was 2016 and we were in a class about how to be a culturally competent practitioner,

Right?

So how to work with people of different ethnic backgrounds,

Different heritage,

Different races than us.

And we had a very mixed cohort,

Like a diverse cohort.

There were some black students.

We were mostly white women in the program.

There were some Asian students and some Latino students.

And so we were all here together taking this class about how to be culturally competent and we were learning about white privilege and white supremacy.

And the thing is,

Is that at the time I thought that I had figured that out,

Right?

Like I thought that I was not,

That I wasn't racist.

You know,

Like my husband is Mexican American.

I had like studied,

You know,

African American history to some extent.

Like I had an idea that I was one of the good white people and I had done a little bit of work around this,

But I did something in that class that really woke me up from,

I'm going to say the matrix of the good white person.

And this is going,

So here's my vulnerable story.

So we were in the class and you know,

Like I considered myself a good white person.

I considered myself an ally,

You know.

And yet here I am sitting in class next to a cohort member,

Like one of my fellow students who is black and from the south of the United States.

And I'm sitting next to her and I notice that my body feels really uncomfortable.

And so here was a disconnect between my mind and my body,

Right?

So my mind is thinking I'm a good white person,

You know,

I'm not racist.

I know some things about African American history,

Right?

I'm educating myself,

You know,

I'm not racist,

Whatever.

And so my mind is thinking these things,

But the experience of my body sitting next to this black student is one of discomfort.

And I wasn't super aware of this at the time,

But in retrospect,

I remember what it felt like to sit next to her,

Right?

And that feeling of discomfort,

It was like this,

It was like the weight of history that my body was containing as a white bodied person next to a black bodied person,

Right?

And it was a tension.

And I'm sure that many of you white bodied folks listening to this right now can,

Especially maybe if you're from the United States,

You can relate to this,

Right?

So feeling racial tension,

If you're white in the presence of a black bodied person,

Right?

So my body was feeling this way around her.

And again,

I know this in retrospect,

But what I did at the time is,

And I did not do this consciously,

It was unconsciously.

Because of this tension that I felt,

My body discharged it,

I had to find a way I had not had to,

But my body under the weight of this historical embodied trauma,

Discharge that onto her in the following way.

So I was looking at like she had a necklace,

This is so embarrassing,

Everyone,

But it's true and it's important.

So she had a necklace on with a continent of Africa on it.

And it was like it was a very pretty necklace.

The way that my system discharge my own discomfort onto her is I complimented her necklace.

And those of you who know something about the nervous system know that I was going into a fond state I was engaging my social nervous system because my body felt this historical way of threat,

Being next to a black person.

And my social nervous system kicked in and I discharged it and I I complimented her on her necklace as a way of honestly of fawning of discharging the tension.

And you know,

She said thank you.

I think I said like,

What a beautiful necklace.

And then here's the really stupid thing that I said.

I said,

No,

It wasn't the really stupid thing.

This is the second most stupid thing I said.

I told her,

Or I asked her,

Like,

Do you?

You have a personal connection to any particular place in Africa?

Innocent enough,

Right?

And she said,

She said,

Well,

Actually,

I don't know where my ancestors are from in Africa.

And when she said that,

My it felt like a bowling ball hit me in the chest and the stomach where I recognized the extent of my ignorance that I didn't know that I hadn't occurred to me,

You know,

That,

Of course,

If she's a black American,

And she has ancestors who were slaves,

You know,

She wouldn't know where her ancestors were from in Africa,

Right.

And that level of discomfort that I felt in my body was so intense,

That I discharged it onto her again.

And I said the following really stupid thing.

What I said,

And I said this without thinking,

It was just my body that said it,

Which is which is how I know it was a discharge.

It was a trauma discharge.

What I said to her was,

Like,

Wow,

That must be such an unusual experience.

And and then she,

So she was so patient with me.

I mean,

She should have just she should have just left.

You know,

She should have just been like,

Oh,

Whatever,

White girl,

You don't get it,

You know,

Um,

She was so patient with me,

And she just looked at me and she said,

Well,

You know,

A lot of people I know,

Don't know where their ancestors are from.

So it's really not an unusual experience for me or with the people that I spent time with.

And I felt like the lowest of the low,

Like,

And at the same time,

I knew enough not to make it about me in that moment.

And I just,

I swallowed and I,

I sat with the discomfort in my body.

And that,

You know,

On my own that night,

I just sobbed and I sobbed and I sobbed and it was like I got cracked open.

My body had cracked open the facade that I had that I was a good white person because what my body had shown me is that there was is that my body contained the systemic trauma of white body,

White body trauma.

I'll talk about that in a second.

But my body contained the what the weight of history,

Right?

Despite what I thought about myself as a good white person.

And my body said that my body said the racist thing,

Right?

My body said it was a reaction of discharge of discomfort.

And we all know this,

If we if we know shadow work,

We know that we do this,

Right?

It's called it's called projection.

For example,

Like when we feel discomfort when a shadow within us is being when this when this threatening invisible element within us threatens to become visible,

Instead of going into it and through it,

Which would be healing,

We tend to discharge it or projected onto someone else,

Right?

That's what my body did under her.

I said that to her my body reflexively just said something to her my my social nervous system to get out of the discomfort that I was feeling.

So the next the next day,

So I had just this experience of being cracked open and like,

I realized there is so much more to this story than I thought there was,

You know,

There is so much more to the story of being good or not good.

And that actually,

There's no,

Like,

Basically,

I realized that I had racism in me that I could not avoid,

That it was part of the fabric that I lived in and grew up in,

That it's the water that I and we all swim in,

Right?

Is white supremacist racist water.

It's just the fabric of our society.

And I'll talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes.

But to have the experience,

Like the lived experience that it was within me was what really cracked me open and led me into doing deeper work.

So I want to say to I did apologize to her the next day.

And she was extremely patient and understanding with me in a way that I just I don't know how she,

But she was she was extremely patient and understanding.

And there were a couple other white women in the class in our,

You know,

This was a class in my counseling psychology graduate school program about cultural competence.

When we were talking about white privilege,

There were a couple white women in the class who could not like they didn't let themselves break open.

And they couldn't they couldn't get their minds around the fact that like that they had racism and them too.

Because their armoring was so their armoring was so impenetrable that I am a good person.

And I'm not those white people.

I'm not the bad white people,

Right.

So this is a lot to say that my so so let me back up just a second.

So what what I what I did after that is I sought out a lot more education.

And because I was like,

Well,

Darn it,

It's in me,

I got it.

Like,

I'm a shadow work practitioner,

You know,

If this like,

This is a big,

Big,

Big shadow in me,

So I have to explore it,

I have to do my best to heal it.

Right.

So I sought out a program from Dr.

Latasha Levy called Black Star Rising.

She's a local university professor at the University of Washington,

But she had this coaching program on black studies and anti racism.

And so I took that program from her and I did a lot of personal one on one coaching with her.

And then I became a really huge fan of Resna Menikem's work.

So do any of you know this book,

My grandmother's hands.

So my grandmother's hands,

Racialized trauma and the pathway to mending our hearts and bodies.

So this book,

Along with Layla F.

Sods,

Me and white supremacy,

Those two books like completely changed and transformed the way I think about racism in myself in the world.

And so,

So I'm a huge fan of Resmaa Menikem's work.

If you read anything about anti racism,

Please read my grandmother's hands.

Because Resmaa Menikem is so he's become like the world sought after expert on embodied racialized trauma.

So he's in all the major publications that he was in the Washington Post today.

It's been you know,

NPR a bunch like he sought after I'm Tara Brock did an amazing interview with him.

So if you want to know more about resume,

Mannequins work,

Go on YouTube and find Tara Brock's interview with him.

Gabor Maté also did an interview with him.

So those are two of my idols,

Right Tara Brock and Gabor Maté.

So listening to them all talk was incredible.

But so he's what what Resmaa Menikem does is he's a licensed clinical social worker.

He's a black American,

He's a somatic experiencing practitioner.

And he lives in Minneapolis.

And he's a veteran,

I believe as well.

And he brings,

He brings the wisdom of embodied trauma healing to race,

Race studies to racialize trauma.

And it is such a deeply,

Deeply compassionate and powerful approach that it just,

It's like,

I can't get enough of it.

I just have to keep learning from him keep reading more and listening to more of what he has to say.

So here's the really,

The really amazing thing for me that has been a game changer with Resmaa Menikem's work is his explanation of what he calls white body trauma,

So that it's not,

It's not only by so he says bodies of culture to refer to black indigenous and other people of color of color.

And so I'll use the terms so he uses the terms white bodies,

Black bodies,

Bodies of culture,

Indigenous bodies,

Right?

Because what he really teaches us is that it's not like racism is not episodic,

Right?

It's not like bad apples.

It's not this,

This bad cop or that bad cop.

Or this bad white person or that bad,

Bad white person.

It is it's not the sharks,

It's the water.

Right?

This is the water that we live in.

And and we as people in white bodies,

We can't see the water until we choose to see the water.

And it's extremely uncomfortable for us to see the water that is white supremacy,

Which is the system that we live in and the system that we benefit from.

And so what is particularly amazing and perspective shifting about Resmaa Menikem's work is that he said yes,

Like,

We live in a white supremacist world.

And white supremacy started like 1000 years ago,

With white body trauma.

And let me go into this a little bit.

So it's not just that Europeans traumatized black and brown bodies,

It's it all started with white body trauma that happened at the fall around the fall of the Roman Empire about 1000 years ago,

When elite white bodies and this is his language,

Right,

So elite white bodies brutalized poor white bodies.

So if you think about elites,

Like lords,

Like people with money in Europe 1000 years ago,

Brutalizing,

Torturing,

Enslaving poor white bodies.

These bodies of the poor white folks then spread around the world in the next centuries,

Right?

It's through things like colonialism.

And that trauma was never dealt with that brutality was never dealt with was never processed was never healed.

And what happens when trauma isn't healed?

It gets passed on to others,

We discharge it,

Like I said before,

It gets discharged on to others.

And so Resmaa Menikem's language is that the trauma of these poor white bodies,

Then got blown into brown and black bodies in the quote unquote,

New world.

And we passed on our white body trauma onto them.

And so take a breath for a moment.

And because that was just a lot.

And notice what your body is doing and feeling right now.

We're talking about swimming in the waters of white supremacy,

We're talking about white body trauma,

What is this bringing up in your own body?

Oh,

Charlotte,

The book is called my grandmother's hands by Resmaa Menikem.

And I also highly recommend Tara Broch's interview with Resmaa Menikem,

Which is available on YouTube.

If you want to really get into this and Resmaa Menikem leads an embodied exercise that's extremely powerful in that interview with Tara Broch as well.

Yeah.

And so another thing that I find so powerful about his work is that it explains why we as white body people have such an enormous block,

And such a huge trigger and defensiveness around the idea that we could contain racism in ourselves.

Because if you notice that what happens like there's,

There's a few things that happened when white body people are asked to consider that,

You know,

And that's rage that comes up a defensiveness rage like no,

It's not me,

It couldn't be me,

Or a paralysis frozen this particularly around the throat,

Around the heart.

And so just tune into your body right now and just get curious about what is happening within you when you consider that.

And of course,

This is for if you're a white bodied person.

And it's really easy to stay in our heads about this,

What I'm asking you,

Like,

I'm actually asking a lot of you to feel into your body about it.

And again,

It might not be time for you to do that right now.

Maybe you want to toggle back to that refuge in your body or around your body.

Maybe what I'm talking about is just bringing up a lot of intensity and you need to go to that refuge for a bit.

So the magic of what happens when we particularly as white bodied people pause

Reviews

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for this excellent talk.

I’m not sure I can put into words how much this live has impacted me. Catherine’s vulnerability with the experience that she shares, with such honesty and humility, really touched me. I connected on a deep level to the purging/projection that takes place when our bodies are experiencing a trauma response. The idea of the nervous system going into the fawn state to try and discharge tension, makes so much sense.
This is indeed the deepest shadow and it feels enormous - I’m glad to have been “cracked open” and I look forward to reading My Grandmother’s Hands.
Thank you for your bravery and honesty Catherine.

Brilliantly, thoughtfully and sensitively executed. A 'must-listen' for all. Listen to the end!☮️💜

This talk is so incredibly necessary. Thank you for your courage to mention your vulnerability and to use it as a teaching tool for the rest of us. I will be listening to this again and sharing with as many people as I can 🙏🏻✨