Diverse Bodies, Diverse Practices: Toward an Inclusive Somatics

A secondary motivation in Gandhi’s somatic thinking was to discipline the hard edges of emotional reactions that fragment the revolutionary community and keep it from harmonious and effective action, activities which he thought of as purging the body of the effects of colonization.

monographs are confined mainly to what Le Guin (1986) refers to as “the father tongue,” a high-minded mode of expression that embraces objectivity. Spoken from above, the father tongue runs the risk of distancing the writer from the reader, creating a gap between self and other. What is

both shared the notion that the body and its sensibilities are central factors in social change.

When the multiple layers of bodily movements, impulses, and perceptions are not creatively transformed into creative movements in the directions of freedom, feelings for others, and purpose, people become easily subject to mass media and ideologues who foment populist movements fueled by fear and disorientation.

“mind” from “body,” a virus that was harmful not only to infected individuals but to larger communities when it became a weapon used to justify colonialism, slavery, displacement of tribal peoples, and ravaging the earth. We always knew that different viruses were alive in other parts of the world, and that wise people were crafting other ways to d

Nearly fifty years ago, a handful of us joined in using the Greek-rooted term somatics as an umbrella designed to coax together a fragmented community of innovative and revolutionary teachers who had managed to craft methods of sensory awareness, touch, breathing, sounding, and moving to address the healing of old and widespread traumas, and to enh

As people drawn to healing work, we want to support others and we are (hopefully) trying to do the opposite of causing harm. Because of that desire, it is perhaps even more painful when we hurt others without meaning to, because our intentions feel so clear to us. But it is inevitable that through our differences in experience and understanding tha

have feared slowing down because I have always been on the move. My body feared stillness because of the vulnerability I would encounter. I slowly began to trust the feeling of letting go in my physical body, as well as my mental and spiritual bodies as well. Thich Nhat Hanh says that when we let go we are letting go of something. What was it that

Despite over 130 tribal nations already having language to describe gender and sexual orientation that falls outside Eurocentric heteronormative perspectives, berdache continues to be used