I want to share something with you in this article that I, as an Asian person and somatics practitioner, believes is critical for us students of modern/Western somatics understand the work we do. I often refrain from speaking from my specific racial-cultural position as I understand how often that can mean usurping the power of…
A SPECIAL NOTE ON ‘WHITENESS’: This article refers a lot to whiteness. Heck, its in the title. If I am honest with you, I have lately been developing a lot of weariness around how language such as whiteness or (toxic) masculinity can imply a person’s body is the source of violence. As a somatic therapist, I…
NOTE: If you need a little biology brush up, mitochondria are organelles in our cells. Their main purpose is to convert food into energy. They have their own DNA and are theorized to originate as bacteria. There is a lot of discussion within our activist community these days about subjects like emergence, call-out culture, slowing down, healing,…
My ancestors came to me and told me: No is sacred. It is important for our No to be witnessed. We deserve for it to be upheld. And they also told me that some ways of saying No can end up traumatizing us in ways we don’t intend. This isn’t our fault. This is because colonialism and patriarchy…
For a long time I have asked myself: what does it mean to decolonize activism itself? The answer I have come to is: it means building my understanding of ‘social justice’ on top of practices that are ancestral to me, rather than constantly refer to dominant activist discourse, which is inevitably informed by patriarchy, capitalism…
Cultural complex trauma Resourcing the immense amount of emergent learning from members of the Authentic Allyship Coaching Group and the work of my many colleagues*, I want to conceptualize Whiteness, a set of internalized unconscious behavioral patterns that violently upholds White supremacy, as something born from what we might call cultural complex trauma, a product of painful…
The problem with Heart-centredness Heart-centred has become quite a popular word, especially embraced by communities devoted to social change. No doubt, having empathy allows us to relate to people we don’t share the similar life experiences with. Its especially important to be able to relate to those who we have more privilege than. Yet, we…
NOTE: When I say ‘white’ this doesn’t equal European. I understand that there are long and unique histories of European peoples that I can’t speak to as I am not the expert. For me white begins in the ‘enlightenment’ era where reason came to the forefront of European society. From this understanding, I believe that…
