Healing Moves

“Until we are able to do healing for ourselves and each other I don’t think we can come together and talk about environmental justice.  I’m not sure if some of us can event be in the room right now!” Said Terre from PODER during a climate justice meeting.  We were discussing energy democracy – but more frequently the idea of activists needing to heal has come up. 

Activist that worked for healing justice during the US Social Forum in Detroit in 2010 express healing justice as entering work through an anti-oppression framework that seeks to transform and politicize the role of healing inside of our movements and communities. We are learning and creating this political framework about a legacy of healing and liberation that is meeting a particular moment in history inside of our movements that seeks to: regenerate traditions that have been lost; to mindfully hold contradictions in our practices; and to be conscious of the conditions we are living and working inside of as healers and organizers in our communities and movements.

Interestingly I have each of my ‘How I Love Thee’ around what I would call expressions of environmental justice (my main theme):  Food Justice (with the sense of taste), Cultural Justice (with abstraction), and now I am being drawn to the idea healing justice - as it can be expressed through the body and feeling.  I went through the process of somatic healing after a series of traumatizing events.  Somatic experiencing (SE) is a form of therapy aimed at relieving and resolving the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental and physical trauma-related health problems by focusing on the client's perceived body sensations (Levine 1997).

In sparks of genius body learning and understanding was expressed through Helen Keller’s delight in understanding “jump”.  She immediately translated the movement expression to how we learn – or jump from one idea to another

Even though it was only briefly mentioned in Sparks of Genius Charlie Chaplin is a master of expression just using his body.  In art and expression sometime we can only “think” through doing a movement.  We have to “try it out” and learn by doing.  If we don’t move we may stay stuck in our heads.

Last week I had my Community Organizing Students that are part of the Semester in Detroit program at the University of Michigan try out exercise around healing from oppression.  I called out different words and the students had to work together to create a sculpture of that word expression.  Below are their collective sculptures.

After these warm up we moved on to creating sculptures around different expressions of power and privilege:  power within, power together and power over.  This was the most I have had my students move around.  The energy was so high at the end of the session.

References:

Levine, Peter A. with Frederick, Ann: Waking the Tiger. Healing Trauma. North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, CA, 1997

Sparks of Genius