The Collective & Political Realms of the Body

Throughout history ritual, music, dance, and theatre have brought people together to explore a larger sense of community and consciousness. Creativity and imagination enable dreamland, an altered state of consciousness rich with metaphor and symbols which allows us to traverse previously unconscious or unexplored terrain. This working on the edge of consciousness is a catalyst for personal and collective growth. Somatic practices such as focusing, authentic movement, somatic experiencing, breathwork and bioenergetics can support individuals in accessing and processing these edge of awareness discoveries. However working somatically involves confronting fear of the body, known as, somataphobia. The marginalisation of the soma has roots in the work of French Philosopher, Descartes, who privileged rationalisation and influenced the scientific revolution. Descartes and his colleagues favoured mind, matter and science and the church claimed spirit and religion, this may have been the beginning of the western mind-body-spirit split. As a society we are profoundly threatened by the return of messy emotion, mysterious intuition, unmeasurable paradox, and the pleasure of the body. Science has objectified the soma to a functional machine which we can control and use to our advantage much like we have done with our collective body, mother earth. Furthermore, religion has long encouraged the transcendence of nature, matter, and body creating a collective fear and shame which has led to the objectification of all life, human, soil, animal, air, and tree. Trauma and the objectification of the soma can encourage us to numb, separate and dissociate from life, ‘re-membering’ the soma can reconnect us to the wider fabric of life including the political, economic, historical, and cultural, helping us to heal and transform personally and collectively.

The current westernised, capitalised normative body is white European, cis-male, heterosexual, able-bodied, wealthy, and thin. This paradigm reinforces rationality, maleness, and whiteness as the ‘right’ people to lead. Those who are associated with the soma and feeling realms such as women, transgender, people of colour, disabled, indigenous and nature are seen as sinful and irrational. Therapies that honour the wisdom of the soma are not only effective in healing and transforming individual trauma but also invite collective healing of the mind-body-spirit split; returning us to a greater connection with ourselves, each other, life, and land. To go within to receive knowledge eradicates orthodoxy encouraging radical self-agency, authenticity and belonging which challenges political hierarches. Embodiment enables choice, increases our ability to grow and develop in the here-and-now and become more individually and collectively whole. Muscles have memory and they are shaped by social conditions through our beliefs, resilience, survival strategies, habits, and actions. These can become automatic however bridging our awareness and capacity to feel into the soma helps us to sustainably shift to a new shape, a new paradigm and way of being.

References

HAINES, S., 2019. The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing and Social Justice. California, USA: North Atlantic Press.

HOFFMAN, P., 1952. Essays on Descartes. New York, USA: Oxford University Press.

JOHNSON, W., 2012. Breathing through the Whole Body: The Buddha’s Instructions on Integrating Mind, Body and Breath. Kent, UK: Healing Arts Press.

MACY, J., 2021. World as Love, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Planetary Awakening. California, USA: Parallax Press.

MINDELL, A., 2007. Worldwork and the Politics of ‘’Dreaming’’ or Why ‘’Dreaming’’ is Crucial for World Process (online), Process Work Institute.