Reflective Corner

Within the Consciousness Raising stream are pods working to increase self-reflection and decrease isolation and self-doubt.

In trying to become “objective,” Western culture made “objects” of things and people when it distanced itself from them, thereby losing “touch” with them. This dichotomy is the root of all violence.

—GLORIA ANZALDÚA

One way that we can work to dismantle white supremacy and other systems of oppression is to practice experiencing the world in and through our body. For most of us, our connection with our body has been severed—by colonization, capitalism, cis-hetero-patriarchy, ableism, white dominant culture, or the experience of trauma. Prentis Hemphill tells us that the explicit practice of somatics emerged from the break between mind and body that started with the European Enlightenment. 

That break keeps us from fully experiencing our emotions and robs us of the wisdom that is inherent in our bodies. Somatic practices seek to repair this break. 

Somatic practices often start with noticing