“What we need is a culture where the common experience of trauma leads to a normalization of healing. Being able to say I have good reasons to be scared of the dark, of raised voices, of being swallowed up by love, of being alone. And being able to offer each other: I know a healer for you. I'll hold your hand in the dark. Let's begin a meditation practice. Perhaps talk therapy is not enough. We should celebrate love in our community as a measure of healing. The expectation should be -- I know we are all in need of healing -- so how are we doing our healing work?”

Adrienne Maree Brown

Trauma & Cultural Bodies

Trauma & Colonization

  • Forced relocation, resource exploitation, land theft, cultural erasure, genocide, war

  • Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, mass incarceration

  • Police, military, & state violence

  • Cultural, political, religious persecution

  • Suppression of ancestral and cultural healing practices by colonizing culture

  • Disconnection from and erasure of land, rituals, languages, community

  • Reconnection with ancestral healing, wisdom, & ritual practices suppressed by colonization.

  • Rage, shame, fear, loss, grief, anxiety

  • Internalization of and mass exposure to toxic colonial narratives of BIPOC & Immigrant denigration, cultural or racial inferiority

  • Isolation, cultural disconnection, family separation, substance use

  • Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, code-switching, micro-aggressions, cultural erasure

Trauma & the Body

  • Healing cultural wounds of heart, body, & mind

  • Patterns of fear, fight, flight, freeze, feign, or fawn

  • Patters of cultural fragmentation, isolation, shame, self-blame, powerlessness, estrangement

  • Chronic stress, anxiety, worry, rumination

  • Feeling always “on”, guarded, vigilant

  • Abuse, neglect, traumatic loss, violence

  • Chronic constriction of muscle, breath, gesture, movement, particularly in relation to social identity

  • Reconnecting to internal and relational resources to feel safe to shift from surviving to thriving

  • Reconnecting to flow, sensation, ease, merging, spontaneity, “letting go", play

  • Reconnecting to structure, form, firmness, holding, grounding, centering, boundaries

  • Reconnecting to cultural, intergenerational, ancestral resiliences & patterns of embodiment

Trauma & Childhood Attachment

  • Emphasis in treatment on building a safe therapeutic relationship and going at a pace that feels safe

  • Chronic childhood relational harm such as abuse, neglect, chronic criticism, abandonment, gaslighting, domestic violence, parental substance use

  • Chronic unmet developmental needs for love, safety, understanding, empathy, validation, protection, stability, security, structure, & consistency.

  • Childhood trauma & emotionally immature or narcissistic parenting

  • Childhood survival patterns of disconnecting from & invalidating your own experiences, needs, boundaries & very sense of self by merging into & caretake others.

  • Feeling there is no space for you or you have no voice

  • Low self-esteem and internalized self-blame

  • Isolation, disconnection, dislocation, emptiness

  • Building skills to regulate & co-regulate your autonomic nervous system

  • Developing an embodied felt-sense experience of internal and relational safety and care

  • Inner Critic & Inner Child work and reparenting

  • Understanding & working with attachment style within your social, cultural, historical context

  • Building healthy boundaries and relationships

Trauma & Immigration

  • Experiences of loss, danger, transition, impermanence

  • Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, high achievers, cultural-familial pressures to succeed

  • Cultural, familial, and generational tensions regarding career, identity, and role

  • Inner critic, self-blame, shame

  • Caretaking, excessive responsibility, codependency

  • Familial pressures to serve as cultural broker or translator between first generation and new culture

  • 1-3 Generation Immigrant, Migrant, Diaspora, Refugee stories, narratives, experiences, traumas, & resiliencies

  • Exposure to foreign/surrogate colonization, regime change, war, persecution, internal colonization

  • Exile, estrangement, dislocation, displacement separation, isolation, land theft

  • Suppressing of traditional cultural wisdom

  • Citizenship, deportation, family separation

  • Stresses of acculturation and adjusting to shifting, multiple cultural norms, values, and identities

  • Cross-cultural identity: homeland culture and acculturation into united states

Trauma & Cultural Resiliency

  • Exploring experiences of social identity at intersections of race, ethnicity, culture, class, gender, gender identity, tribe, sexuality, sexual orientation, spirituality, & immigration status

  • Navigating cumulative traumatic impacts of of living within systems of racism, sexism, classism, xenophobia, cissexism, ableism.

  • Protective Factor: Developing cultural resiliencies, healing practices, and narratives of cultural & racial worth, respect, & dignity

  • Healing multigenerational patterns of internalized shame, otherness, & oppression

  • Multicultural and/or Multiracial identities: being of or feeling in between multiple cultures, races, ethnicities

  • Self-blame, self-doubt, inner critic, shame

  • Imposter syndrome, perfectionism, high achievers, feeling like “the black sheep”, cultural and generational tensions regarding career, identity, or family role

Trauma & Embodied Creativity

  • Protective Factor: Fun, creativity, spontaneity, & play can be healing ways of being in ones body.

  • Developmental & cultural trauma can rob us of this inner experience of ourselves.

  • Ground mental activity in bodily experience and develop a felt-sense of flow, deeper self expression, feeling, energy, movement, & ease.

  • Dance, mindful movement, storytelling, role-play, art, singing, improv games, drawing, & gestalt parts-work & dialogue to help you reconnect to your inner sense of embodied aliveness, vitality, creativity, and flow.