“The body is significant, because unlike our mind, the body is always in the present. It does not have our mind’s ability to be in the past or future, and when we are really fortunate, to be here in the present. It does not get distracted. Despite all of this, the body can still be confused. When I say confused, I mean that experiences of trauma can disrupt how our bodies can be in tune with the things happening around us. Trauma disrupts the body’s equilibrium. For example, have you ever been in a conversation with someone, and you realize that for a while you both have been talking about different things, and then one of you goes, “Wait, what are you talking about?!” Or have you ever heard thunder and wind blowing outside, and it never ends up raining? This is how the body may respond to trauma: by expressing sensations that are responding to or pointing toward something we don’t understand.
As someone descended from slaves, I acknowledge that my disembodiment is largely an expression of transhistorical trauma originating with my ancestors’ initial emotional injury of being kidnapped, enduring the brutality of the Middle Passage, and landing in this country to be enslaved and further brutalized by systematic racism for centuries. Slavery disrupted my ancestors’ right to their bodies, while physical and emotional violence took root in both the mind and the body as trauma that kept us from reclaiming an awareness of our bodies. So many Black folks today are walking around haunting themselves by occupying a psychic distance outside of their bodies because racial trauma has made their bodies unsafe for them to occupy.
The body tells the truth regardless of if we can speak its language or not. My body tells the truth of transhistorical trauma, most often experienced as a distrust of my body as well as a belief that I do not have a right to my body. Often my practice has focused on trying to meet my body where it is, instead of constantly trying to get it to meet me where I am. Meeting my body where it is has meant meeting it at a woundedness that I inherited and that has been exacerbated by a disembodiment that I am just learning how to address."
Excerpt From Love and Rage by Lama Rod Owens