Written by Jenny Xie and Judy Fasone
Over the past 10 months of this pandemic, the world has been sheltering in place for safety and consideration of our fellow humans. During this great big PAUSE, Judy and I have connected around the injustices that BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) and other marginalized groups are facing. Like most non-BIPOC who were awakening to the magnitude of the injustices that are still happening, we were in shock , flooded with a range of emotions, and wanted to take action.
In order to understand the roles we play within these injustices, we did what most people we knew were doing: joined white affinity groups to create a culture of support and accountability and unpacked articles and books together. Our aspiration was to educate ourselves about something important while not burdening our BIPOC siblings to contribute their emotional labor to our desire for a more justice and peaceful society. We talked about Ahmaud Aubury, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and others too many to name, who were murdered unjustly by police officers. Individually, we both had conversations with friends and family about what we could do politically to help. Some of our contacts acted by writing our senators about qualified immunity that broadly protects the police force from being prosecuted.
The journey of educating ourselves about the experiences that BIPOC have to face far more frequently than they should also called us to confront the idea that we may have unknowingly held some racist ideas and beliefs within ourselves. We had never considered that WE could be part of the problem. We realized that big systemic structures like real estate, employment, academia and our beloved wellness and holistic community are just a few of the communities and structures that have so many invisible and unspoken barriers in place to make it significantly more difficult for BIPOC people to succeed in the ways that many of us take for granted. The existence of those barriers also make it extremely difficult for BIPOC to feel included in spaces that are of mixed culture and also cause trauma due to ACE (Adverse Community Experiences). We started talking about the Trager community at this point and decided to open the conversation to our peers.
We know others in our community are discussing this and also taking action. We are committed to Milton’s legacy “creating peace in the world, one person at a time”. We want to explore and bring to light how racial inequality affects us as practitioners in the Trager community. How might we work together to find a way of being in the world that can transform the sad reality we find ourselves in.
We decided we didn’t want to be a part of perpetuating the problem and sought to find a way to bring attention to solutions, for us and the communities we work within. The Trager International Education Symposium that was recently announced is looking for proposals, and Theme 3 caught our eye:
“Theme 3: Social ‘justice’/activism (level playing-field) through personal self-development / inequities in our society...”
Please join us in an international conversation on a zoom call February 28, 2021, 6:00-7:30 PM (free registration), to discuss how this relates to the Trager community. Here are some key points we may address, and we may need more than one call:
addressing our clients, recruiting students, with ACE’s,
joining the global movement toward social equity, body-centered practices and their role in providing resilience for and healing the social injustices of our day through “somatic abolitionism”,
explore the possibilities of exclusivity in Trager,
learn to speak in general terms,
and offer our peers and clients possible solutions to course correct.
In our Trager practices, we have become more skilled at recognizing and being aware of our bodies and feelings. As Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands, says: “...there’s something about leaning into something you’re not sure about...there seems to be a straightening of your own spine and you start to get closer to your own developmental edges.” While exploring these edges, he noticed that there’s a seductive calling for comfort in these moments. As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and International facilitator of healing communities, he leads us through centering exercises to calm our central nervous systems as we feel our way into this important subject. We will call on his wisdom in our Zoom meeting.
Let us be together, to listen, learn and practice centering ourselves in order to lean into our edges and find true freedom. Not just freedom for ourselves, but freedom for every person.
Please contact Judyfasone@gmail.com or jenny@powertrip.net for more information