Walking with Whiteness
Module Three: The Somatics of Racial Guilt and Shame
Racism is about bodies. Mainstream anti-racism efforts often intellectualize a violent system that bypasses this reality. Module Three introduces a somatic approach for understanding why white folx need to engage with racism at an embodied level, especially in confronting racialized guilt and shame.
Vocabulary:
Energetic Weather
Feel & Process Pain Bodies
Shadow Self Somatic Abolitionism
Virtue Signaling White Guilt White Saviorism
White Tears White Comfort
Somatic Practices Recordings: Feel and Process Practice
Microaggression Somatic Practice
Concepts:
What is Somatics?
Somatics refers to the processing of embodied experiences and sensations arising in the physical body. Somatic therapy is an alternative therapy approach stemming from Peter Levine that challenges the Cartesian dualism of the mind/body split in Western culture. Whereas mindfocused psychology privileges the mind over the body, somatic processing asserts that there is powerful information being offered up by our bodies if we take the time to listen and learn how they speak to us. Recent work in trauma studies such as Bessel van der Kolk’s TheBodyKeepsthe Scoreaddresses how intergenerational codes are stored in the body, a concept that reflects back what Indigenous wisdom has always held as true.
What is a Pain Body?
A pain body is a term coined by Eckhart Tolle in his book ANewEarth to reference any dense emotion or vibration (i.e. trauma) that is not fully acknowledged and witnessed. Somatic therapy works to address these unprocessed emotions to bring them into consciousness so they can be released from our bodies and energy fields.
The basic idea continues to live in the body until it is processed and released. Our reason for stuffing these emotions down often dates back to childhood traumas when we were vulnerable and unsafe and didn’t have the awareness or tools to healthily process what was happening to us. Sometimes these pain bodies are inherited. They are intergenerational and/or karmic, meaning that they have been passed down to us through our lineage, or through other lifetimes.
As we age, we continue this practice because it’s hardwired into the body as what feels “safe.” But the truth is that we ARE safe, most of the time— our fear responses are simply lying to us in most circumstances. By learning how to witness and sit with—and even befriend and send some gratitude and compassion into our pain bodies—we allow for the
possibility of overriding our hardwired fear responses and to move into more heart centered living. We also allow ourselves to enter into deeper relationship with our own discernment about what is an actual threat and what is simply a perceived threat based upon previous unprocessed traumas.
And we want this, right? We want to grow into trusting ourselves and trusting that we can handle what the body is asking us to acknowledge. We owe it to ourselves and to our bodies to learn to listen. Our pain bodies will keep getting louder and louder until we do. They will continue to want to feed.
Because our unworthiness stories are rooted in fears of being unlovable, “bad,” or “not enough” (which is also “too much”), when we experience emotions that are not readily recognized as “happy” we stuff them down because we are afraid of what we will find out about ourselves. Our “pain bodies” are simply a result of all of that excess of unprocessed, low, dense vibrations in the body. By bringing them into the light they lose their power over us (fear→love).
What is Energetic Weather?
Energetic Weather is a concept in Kimberly Beekman’s Inner Alignment method for understanding that all emotions are experientially valuable and important, and that when we allow ourselves to ride the energetic waves that coincide with allowing ourselves to feel the fully emotional spectrum, we realize that all emotions are temporary, and as we simply witness them without judgment or attachment, they flow through us like a passing storm.
Emotions are simply a cliff notes version we give to vibrations we experience in our bodies around certain life experiences and cultural events. When we can stay curious with the full range of emotions we are experiencing without judgement, we can simply witness ourselves and make room for these emotions without being afraid of them. From there
we can ask ourselves what emotions are productive, in what context, and to what extent.
It’s important to remember that emotions are not “good” or “bad,” they just are. They are the body’s attempt to communicate that something is not in alignment with our heart and the truth of who we are. When we are able to witness and get curious about what the material is beneath our triggers and reactions, we allow ourselves an opportunity to bring them into awareness and override our hardwired responses to uncomfortable and challenging life experiences.
The Somatics of Racialized Guilt and Shame
Shame and Guilt are two very low, dense vibrations. In the physical body, they reside in the Sacral Chakra area, which is the lower belly/back area, and which represents the basement of the body. This is also where we store ancestral-based trauma and unprocessed/unwitnessed experiences, or inherited pain bodies.
You have likely heard the phrase “white guilt,” which references how often white liberals do and give to BIPOC focused initiatives in an effort to be absolved from the harm that many of our ancestors have perpetrated against BIPOC people, and from the ways that we continue to benefit from white supremacist systems whether we want to or not.
While white guilt can be “productively” mobilized to raise funds for BIPOC initiatives, at the end of the day it will never lead to collective liberation. Why? Because white guilt is premised on internalized shame and self-negation it is always seeking absolution and outside validation for self-worth.
White-bodied folx operating from a place of white guilt are usually motivated by the need to be “good” or “on the right side of history,” which necessitates someone outside of ourselves validating our actions and decisions around racial justice efforts. Intentionally or not, we are often acting from a place of Ego, wanting recognition for being “good
white people,” which often takes the form of virtue signaling and public performative activism (i.e. social media posts).
Below this need to be “good” is often an old unworthiness story telling us that we are really “bad.” This is why “good intentioned” white folx often unproductively redirect conversations around race and unintentionally recenter whiteness, whether through “white tears,” claims to innocence, or refusing to acknowledge harm. Unchecked, it also leads to white saviorism which is based in false humility and the sense that somehow it falls on the shoulders of white-bodied people to “save” and “liberate” BIPOC people.
In reality, the realwork for white-bodied people is to liberate ourselves from the cultural patterning, programming, and belief systems we have internalized that have taught us we are somehow racially and culturally superior. These belief systems ultimately cut us off from our own humanity, and keep us from fully accessing our own hearts.
In the highly charged landscape of racial politics, there can be major reluctance to take full accountability for ourselves. We all have habits, belief systems, and behaviors that we cannot and do not want to see. We can think about these aspects as our Shadow Self. Our Shadow Self isn’t bad—these are simply the unintegrated aspects of ourselves. What we have been taught to deny, or judge as wrong. Guilt and shame are often entangled with these stories. The more we deny our shadows, the larger they loom.
And here’s the thing these aren’t just ideas. These are vibrations, or energetic signatures, that are in our energy fields. We literally carry them in our bodies. And many of us are carrying intergenerational vibrations of hate, entitlement, and superiority that we are afraid to look at.
What is Somatic Abolitionism?
While somatic therapy is an approach for processing out trauma-related stress in the body, somatic therapist Resmaa Menakem has coined the
term and created the method of “Somatic Abolitionism” to name a process in which we can draw upon somatic therapy to heal from white supremacy by understanding it as a form of cultural trauma. When we begin to understand white supremacy and colonialism as institutionalized forms of cultural trauma, we can understand why attending to unprocessed emotions in the body around race is imperative to shifting vibrational patterns of white supremacy at individual and collective levels.
Vocabulary:
Energetic Weather: Energetic Weather is a concept in Kimberly Beekman’s Inner Alignment method for healing childhood trauma that recognizes all emotions as experientially valuable and important. When we allow ourselves to ride the energetic waves that coincide with allowing ourselves to feel the full emotional spectrum, we realize that all emotions are temporary, and as we simply witness them without judgment or attachment they flow through us like a passing storm.
Pain Body: A pain body is a term coined by Eckhart Tolle in his book A NewEarthto reference any dense emotion or vibration (i.e. trauma) that is not fully acknowledged and witnessed. Somatic therapy works to address these unprocessed emotions to bring them into consciousness so they can be released from our bodies and energy fields.
Somatic Abolitionism: A process of drawing upon somatic therapy to collectively heal from white supremacy by attending to unprocessed racialized trauma, hatred, prejudice, fear, and wounds we store in our bodies. If we begin to understand white supremacy and colonialism as institutionalized forms of cultural trauma, we can understand why attending to unprocessed emotions in the body around race is imperative to shifting vibrational patterns of white supremacy at individual and collective levels.
White Guilt: Internalized guilt and shame held by white-bodied people for the acts of harm perpetrated against BIPOC people by our ancestors and our own continued implication in white supremacist structures.
White guilt is often accompanied by the need to be absolved and/or recognized for being a “good white” person. It tends to be accompanied by Ego-based forms of activism and acts of giving from a place of shame rather than shared humanity and open-heartedness.
White Saviorism: A white-centered notion of white-folx being integral to the rescuing and liberation of BIPOC people that operates in a logic of paternalism with roots in colonialism. This logic once again places whitefolx at the center as “heroes” charged with “saving” BIPOC people, instead of taking a back seat and following the lead of those most impacted by racialized harm, white supremacist, and colonialist systems.
White Tears: A conscious or unconscious form of weaponized emotion to manipulate, control, and re-center whiteness at the center of a racially charged interaction. White tears are utilized tactically and performatively to maintain power as a defense mechanism against feeling vulnerable and taking accountability for harm. “White tears” are often public and attention seeking. They are very different from behind the scenes reckoning and processing of hate, internalized superiority, and perpetrated harm.
White Comfort: A belief system that in order for racism to be addressed, white-bodied folx have the right to remain comfortable and to ultimately control the terms and tone of the dialogue or interaction. This “right to comfort” is a way of maintaining the status quo and power differentials, regardless of what is being discussed. By controlling the terms and the “how,” no actual relinquishing of power is accomplished.
Practices:
Feel&Process
The “Feel and Process” method is a way of intentionally working with body scanning when we are triggered. This practice is a foundational tool in Kimberly Beekman’s Inner Alignment method that builds upon the body scanning techniques we have been doing to bring direct awareness to
our pain bodies and strong emotions as they arise within the body. It provides a working tool to process emotional turbulence in real time and has roots in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT).
When we allow for the energetic weather of what we are experiencing to flow through us, witnessing and honoring its presence as an attempt to communicate that something is out of alignment, we allow for the possibility of releasing the vibration with ease. One way to consider it is that the quicker we process it, the quicker it leaves our field. The longer we repress it, the longer it stays (sometimes to years—or generations).
Steps:
o Feel in Body (Physical Body): Physically scan the body to notice sensations, note their qualities and where they are living
o Acknowledge (Mental Body): Recognize any accompanying mind stories, limiting belief systems, or self-judgment. Notice if there are any old memories this emotion is attached to.
o Accept (Emotional Body): Witness and honor the emotion and what it is try to communicate. Get the data without merging with it. Grieve and allow any old, repressed emotions and memories to move through you.
o Act (Prana Body): Get curious. Ask what you needed in the context of your original memory to feel safe. Then:
1. Watch yourself decide to do and say what you needed in that moment, knowing that there are no repercussions.
2. Notice how it feels in your body to respond in alignment with what you needed rather than acting from your fear response.
3. Once you have rewritten this memory, turn attention to the more recent trigger and ask yourself how you can meet that same need in the current situation.
4. Watch yourself do and say what you need to stay aligned, rather than playing out an old fear response.
Notice how it feels in your body to respond in a way that honors your truth and personal needs.
o Release (Awareness Body): As you witness these wounds from a more conscious perspective observing and rewriting your responses you begin to allow it to release from you field, neutralizing the charge.
*Thesestepsaretheoretical.ThepracticeisMUCHmessier.Thereareemotions thatfeeltoooverwhelmingandthatwedon’twanttoaccept.Sometimeswecan’t processinthecurrentmoment.Witnesswhatyoucan,getcuriousandreturnlater.
Journaling Personal Self-Reflection Prompts:
• Think of a time when someone called you on your whiteness, or you felt overly aware of your whiteness:
o What was the “data,” or the facts of the event?
o How did it feel in your body?
o What stories swirled around in your mind?
o What were your fears? How did you respond?
• Recall a time when you committed a racial microaggression:
o How did you know?
o When did you know?
o Was your recognition based on hearing yourself say or think something?
o Was it based on how your words or actions were received?
o How did it feel in your body when you realized?
Stay with yourself as you recall this memory in your body. Ask yourself:
o Where did that comment/idea come from?
o Where did I learn this?
o Is this what I want to say/think?
o What did I learn in this situation?
o How can I take responsibility for my words/actions?
o How can I hold myself in compassion and love myself through this misstep and the harm I caused?
Journaling on Module Three Material:
• Nadine Gordimer’s “Comrades” is a short story based during Apartheid in South Africa that predates the language of performative activism, white guilt, and virtue signaling. After reading the story consider:
o What did you notice in your body as you read this story?
o What did you notice about your impression of the main character? Did you find yourself sympathetic? Empathetic? Critical? Judgmental?
o What did you learn about yourself based upon how you viewed the main character’s actions and perspectives?
o The Accapadi and Caver & Livers pieces begin to integrate the somatic tools and practices with real world situations and implications. After reading these pieces consider:
o What did you notice in your body as you read these pieces?
o What did you notice about your impressions of the people/situations named? Did you find yourself sympathetic? Empathetic? Critical? Judgmental? For whom/what/what reason?
o When have you been complicit in “white tears,” minimizing the experience of BIPOC people in your life (workplace or personal), virtue signaling, and/or otherwise acting not in integrity?
• One of the ways that whiteness gets upheld in the workplace is through the language of “professionalism.” This terms often upholds Western, white, middle class cultural values and logics under the assumption of universal cultural norms.
o Has there been a time that you have policed a BIPOC person’s behavior and chalked it up to perceived lack of professionalism?
o Are there ways that you unconsciously uphold white-centered values in your business setting?
o What are some ways that you can rethink what “professionalism” means?
• Susan Raffo’s “On Impact: Memento Mori” begins to look at culturally specific concepts of forgiveness and apology, and frames her historic over-apologizing as a form of situational/emotional manipulation, especially in considering forgiveness as something that is “owed.” Raffo also cites disability and community-care activist Mia Mingus’s concept of the four steps of taking personal accountability in harm done: 1) self-reflection, 2) apology, 3) repair, and 4) behavior change.
Consider Raffo’s reflections on the culturally specific ways you have been groomed to understand apology, forgiveness, and accountability:
o What are your patterns and assumptions? What feels productive and useful? What, if anything, would you like to de-center, become more curious about, or unlearn?
o How do Raffo’s reflections invite us to consider the disconnect that often happens between intentions and impact around racialized harm?
o What questions and possibilities does it open up for considering emotional, cultural, and energetic impasses and means of reparations between white and BIPOC folx?