I was listening to an interview with Resmaa Menakem today. He’s a therapist and trauma specialist, and he’s talking about how we -- no matter what color we are -- carry racial trauma in our bodies. That may sound strange.
This is what he says in his book, My Grandmother’s Hands: “The white body sees itself as fragile and vulnerable, and it...sees Black bodies as dangerous and needing to be controlled, yet also as potential sources of service and comfort. The Black body sees the white body as privileged, controlling, and dangerous.”
Whether you agree with him or not, we all likely agree that we carry some sort of preconception in our bodies. Maybe you feel comfortable in your body; probably you don’t feel completely comfortable in your body. However you feel, it’s a core part of how you interact with the world. And yet, there’s a tradition of splitting the body from the mind, and then elevating the importance of mind. White-collar work and blue-collar work.
But the body is literally the vessel for all of our experiences. Even if you’re not a professional athlete, you may have experienced a time when you entered “the zone,” when your consciousness dissolved into the physical experience you were having. Or maybe you’ve experienced such pain that your consciousness dissolved into that. Either way, your body has the ability to ground you entirely in the moment. And that’s why so many mindfulness practices are rooted in the body. Breathing. Yoga. Posture.
It almost seems too simplistic at first. If I’m trying to reach “peace of mind,” why am I spending so much time on my body? There’s this presumption that if I’m going to have a transcendental experience, I need to escape the earthiness of the body. Yet so much of our experience starts subconsciously in our bodies. And if you really tune into it, you may notice what you’re feeling before you’re aware of it. Butterflies in your stomach. Sweaty palms. Constricted chest.
Menakem talks about the vagus nerve, and how it’s also called the “wandering nerve” because it connects so many parts of the body, including the brain and the gut. Did you ever have a “gut feeling”? That’s the vagus nerve at work, translating physical sensations into emotions, or vice versa.
And because of these connections, understanding doesn’t just happen in our brain. It happens on a visceral level, and the more we can open to those physical sensations, the more authentic our experience will be. What does that mean? It means I can’t intellectualize anti-racism and assume that I’ve done the necessary work. I can’t just go to a workshop or three and understand why a Black person’s heart races when they get pulled over. I have to let racism get into my body. Last summer, at a gathering in memory of George Floyd, I was invited to lie down on the ground for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. It was a 90-degree day and I laid down on blacktop. Immediately, my cheeks and arms burned; when I stood up after the exercise, the ground was wet with sweat in the shape of my body. I say this not to prove my credentials as an anti-racist; no one alive can understand what George Floyd endured. I say it because whatever I understood after that exercise, I understood with my body.
Over time, as we continue to dive deeper into our mindfulness practice, we begin to understand ourselves not just as a mind -- sometimes scattered, sometimes focused -- but also as an embodied mind. As a collection of thoughts and sensations and perceptions all firmly rooted in this corporeal bundle of blood and bones that connects us to time and space. And that’s why mindfulness practice so often focuses us on the body. That’s where we enter this moment, this place, this here and now.
If you’d like to experiment with anchoring yourself in your body, try this practice.
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