I am learning from Resmaa Menakem, author of The Quaking of Am erica: an Embodied Guide To Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval And Racial Reckoning. The book is a guide to creating an embodied antiracist culture, but in this post, I am interested in what it has to say about the body.
Working with it has increased my connection with my body. The book includes what Menakem calls “body practices.” Our bodies are constantly sending us messages that communicate how we are feeling. If I ask, “what are my body’s sensations?” I learn about how my body processes the world. I learn what strong emotions like anger and fear feel like in my body.
From Resmaa Menakem:
“Your body comes from—and is an expression of—creation itself. It’s an ever-emergent, ever-unfolding process. Ask any physicist. Your body is also an ongoing source of great resilience, resource, and wisdom, even during the worst of times or your darkest of moods. Ask any somatic therapist. Your body is also a brilliantly organized system of interacting bells, bowls, diaphragms, and antennae. Ask any physiologist. Your body, like all human bodies, is fundamentally good and lovable. You might have a hearing loss or a missing hand or chronic illness or a heart defect. But you are not defective. Just ask someone who loves you. Or ask me.”*
Folks like me, with significant illnesses, may breathe a sigh of relief with those words.
One example of what I’ve learned is to pause and notice. Several times throughout my day, I stop doing what I’m doing, close my eyes, and notice my body’s sensations. Am I tight or relaxed, warm or cold? How is my heart rate? I accept and stay present with my body. Then I shake it off (literally) and go back to whatever I was doing. It relaxes me and connects me to my body.
Practicing Menakem’s techniques have helped me connect with my body, learn new tools for dealing with upset, and been part of my inner work for racial justice.
*Menakem, MSW, LICSW, Resmaa . The Quaking of America: An Embodied Guide to Navigating Our Nation’s Upheaval and Racial Reckoning (p. 92). Central Recovery Press, LLC. Kindle Edition.
In your journal:
- Feel through your body’s emotions (anger, sadness, fear, happiness, etc.). Write about what they feel like in your body.
- Write your response to the idea that you are not defective.
- What other notions or sentences in the post above spark you to write?