in an open area. Take a few deep, slow breaths.
Using the string, create a circle on the ground. Adjust its size so that when you stand in its center and you imagine someone else standing on the circle’s edge, you are a comfortable distance from them.
Once the circle is the right size, take your place at its center. Breathe in and out a few more times.
Think of someone you know who is caring and supportive. This can be a friend, a relative, a neighbor, a partner, or a friendly acquaintance. Visualize this person walking slowly in your direction toward the circle.
As he or she crosses the circle’s edge, pay attention to what your body experiences. Does it relax or constrict? Does it want to move forward or backward? Does it want to reach out, or protect itself, or move in some other way?
Now clear your mind. Take three or four more slow breaths.
Now visualize someone else you know, someone who is not particularly caring and supportive. This shouldn’t be someone who is outright violent or dangerous, who has threatened you, or who is your sworn enemy. Instead, it might be a boss or coworker with whom you have some friction, or a slightly standoffish neighbor, or perhaps a relative who disagrees with you on several political or social issues.
Visualize this person walking slowly in your direction toward the circle. As he or she crosses the circle’s edge, again pay attention to what your body experiences. Does it relax or constrict? Does it want to move forward or backward? Does it want to reach out, or protect itself, or move in some other way?
Notice what images, sensations, emotions, impulses, and thoughts arise in you. Don’t do anything about those images—simply take note of them.
As part of your healing from the trauma of white-body supremacy, you’ll learn to tell when your body is open and when it is constricted; when it is settled and when it is activated; and where and when it is in pain or discomfort. This will take some practice, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice in the chapters to come.
In Chapters Ten, Eleven, and Twelve, you’ll learn a wide range of ways to settle your body, especially when you’re under stress or duress. These skills will prove essential to healing and to creating more room for growth in your nervous system. They will also help you stay in your body, rather than fight, flee, or freeze and go numb when you experience discomfort or pain.
Being able to settle into your body is a crucial skill. But settling your body is not the best response in every situation. There will be times when you need to activate your body and act constructively. In fact, when settling is a reflexive response rather than a mindful one, it can be a form of avoiding or overriding an opportunity to serve or heal.
Some people can become extremely—almost scarily—calm and low key under stress. Instead of settling their body in order to tolerate discomfort and fully engage in the situation, they use their body-settling skills to disengage and disassociate. We’ve all seen some white Americans and police do this, particularly in discussions about race. (We’ve also all watched some African Americans do this.)
The keys to healing are staying with your body; discerning what you need to do next; and then settling or mobilizing your body, based on the situation. Of course, learning to stay with your body is just the first step. Unraveling racialized trauma takes time, practice, and attention. You may need to ask for help from one, or more, caring person—perhaps a friend, therapist, or other counselor.12 Or you may not. As you practice the activities in Part III with others, you may discover you are naturally helping each other heal.
—BODY PRACTICE—
Find a quiet, private, comfortable place. Sit down. Put one hand on your knee or in your lap. Place the other on your belly.
Now hum. Not from your throat or chest, but from the bottom of your belly.
Hum strong and steady. Push the air out of your belly firmly, not gently.
Stop to breathe in, but return to the hum with each new breath.
Experience the hum in your belly. Then sense it in the rest of your body.
Continue humming for two minutes.
When you’re done, reach your arms upward. Then, slowly and gently, feel your body with your hands, starting from the top of your head. Move slowly down your neck and along your chest, then below your waist, then past your knees, until your arms are fully extended downward. What do you notice?
In the chapters to come, you’ll return to your body over and over. With practice, you’ll get better and better at noticing its many signals—some of them strong, others subtle.
You’ll also learn more about the Black body, the white body, and the police body. You’ll briefly explore the history of each one and understand how each one got to be the way it is today.
In addition, in at least one of these histories, you’ll likely recognize your body and the racialized trauma it holds deep inside.
RE-MEMBERINGS
• Whether or not white-body supremacy is formally and explicitly taught to us, it’s in the air we breathe, the culture we share, and the bodies we inhabit.
• Because of white-body supremacy, here is how white, Black, and police bodies see each other:
• There is a way out of all this. It begins with your body.
• You will not just read this book. You will experience it in your body—the only place where the mending of racialized (or any) trauma can happen.
11 Dr. David Rosenbloom, Professor of Health Policy and Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, sums it up succinctly: “Blacks have been undertreated for pain for decades.” A 2016 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (113, no. 16, 4296–4301) by psychologist Kelly M. Hoffman, et al. at the University of Virginia found that 58 percent of laypeople, 40 percent of first-year medical students, and 42 percent of second-year medical students believed
