we are what we practice // Thoughts on lineage, Knowledge transmission + whiteness in somatics

Traditionally those who administered access to Otherworlds, those who provoked altered states, who took people on journeys of prolonged rapturous attention in which they surrendered control and went into the vision space — traditionally they were ritualists, shamans, priestesses, who understood the responsibilities, the protocols, the reciprocal exchange and the deep context necessary. The journey into the Otherworld was treated with extreme care, and the purpose of it was always individual and societal renewal. — Joshua Michael Shrei, The Body is the Metaverse.

Appropriation occurs when someone else speaks for, tells, defines, describes, represents, uses, or recruits the images, stories, experiences, dreams, of others for their own. Appropriation also occurs when someone else becomes the expert on your experience and is deemed more knowledgeable about who you are than yourself. — Loretta Todd, Notes on Appropriation.

I want to start by saying that I do my very best to share my work from a place of curiosity. I am in an ongoing practice of becoming more comfortable with uncertainty, which for me is one of the most important feelings I can increase my capacity for as a white-bodied practitioner of somatics. I don’t claim to offer any absolute truths, or have answers that don’t already live in the wisdom of the collective. I do my best to name and acknowledge my sources, and I also believe that culture is built through relationship, collaboration, and alchemy.

Indigenous wisdom teaches us that knowledge transmission is a sacred and relational practice, and vital to how worldviews are shaped and continued.

To disrupt the processes through which knowledge is shared is one of the most powerful ways to alter a worldview. How we approach the sharing of knowledge should matter to us if we wish to be thoughtful about our work in a political and cultural context. We are by the very nature of our role, transmitters of knowledge and carriers of lineage.

The field of somatics offers a patchwork of methodologies and practices which are often removed from their context and history, including the cultural and spiritual origins from which they emerged. This kind of decontextualized and ahistorical knowledge transmission is reflective of white supremacy culture, and its transactional, anti-relational worldview. This way of knowing, or epistemic frame — is central to the replication and continuation of white supremacy.

Lineages are always embedded inside of culture and cosmology, whether we acknowledge this or not.

As practitioners and therapists who work with bodies, we pay a lot of attention to how we are shaped by and embody our life histories through gestures, sensations, urges, emotions. Our bodies carry the stories of our people, of our kin — both chosen and inherited. Our bodies tell the stories of how our people learned connection and protection, what felt necessary for our survival, and what had to be sacrificed or lost.

We learn to understand that bodies hold stories, and our work lies in listening for the subtle (and not so subtle) domains of experience through which our bodies speak. Slowness and deep listening can reveal these stories, held in our tissues, nerves, and bones, sometimes for generations. Only when the injustice and harm are witnessed can the body begin to unwind its protective shaping. The body is not separate from its’ environment, and the same is true of lineage. Lineages are living, breathing entities, carrying whole worlds inside of them — carrying the stories of our field, the gifts and the injustices that have been passed down.

It matters that so much of the history and knowledge that has shaped our work remains unspoken. It keeps us (especially those of us who are white) from being in reciprocal and respectful relationship with the peoples and cultures through which so much of our work has emerged.

The erasure of sources and lineage disconnects us from the teachers on whose shoulders we stand, in particular BIPOC, Jewish, queer, disabled, and anti-fascist teachers who helped to shape this field.

This decontextualization keeps our field of work in a place of isolation and severance from dignity and belonging. It also keeps us from connecting with the dignity and wisdom of our own cultural traditions as European descended people, often many generations away from any memory of the body-based wisdom of our ancestors.

Whether we are a students or practitioners, there is powerful potential to shift the currents of harm inside of this work through both acknowledging lineage, and exploring the practices of our peoples. My fellow white people, we have a particular responsibility to repair, through both practicing reciprocity and reconnection with our own ancestral wisdom. 

Acknowledgement is a Practice

I’ve been facilitating a workshop over the past year that brings together somatic practitioners to explore a practice of honouring lineage. Being in conversation around lineage and appropriation with so many practitioners has offered me insight into the dynamics that often show up when we make attempts at repair and accountability as white folks. We are compelled to “get things right” when it comes to addressing issues of power and oppression. We can be drawn to following instructions, believing if we simply apply them correctly we will be absolved or innocent of harm.

What we miss when we take this approach is how this way way of thinking and being is a part of the very logic of white supremacy itself. When we try to name each and every teacher meticulously, policing ourselves and each other, we lose a sense of the layered and complex dynamics that are part of any cultural practice over time. We also fail to show up as our whole selves, desperate to be seen as “good”, with no roots in our own histories, nothing to offer in gratitude or reciprocity for these practices.

When I offer this workshop I don’t provide a list of rules or instructions to doing an acknowledgement “correctly”. This is often met with responses ranging from relief, to confusion, to anger.

I would like to propose a different approach the ethics of acknowledgment: that we can only be in right-relationship to lineage, that we can only truly chip away at the harms of appropriation, though a deep remembering and reconnection practice with our own histories, and a willingness to be with uncertainty and imperfection. That we relinquish purity and perfection, turn toward the discomfort and ask questions of ourselves and each other from these places. This is one way that we might have the chance to unlearn the embodiment of whiteness through our work.

shared principles to be in practice with together:

Talk to your teachers

One of the ways that white supremacy replicates itself is through silencing. We can help to bring our lineages into relief by beginning to ask questions. Who are your teachers? Who were their teachers? What was happening in the political/ social landscape around them when they were developing their practices? Do they name or acknowledge Black, Indigenous, or People of Colour teachers/ sources of their learning? Can you learn more about those people, how they engaged with their practices, and the ways in which their descendants do or do not have access to those traditions now?

Practice reciprocity

Being in right-relationship with a practice/ teaching is a form of relationship, and therefor involves reciprocity: offering something in return. If we are disconnected from our lineages what do we have to offer in exchange? How are we in reciprocal relationship if we are seeking only to fill a void? Even if we take the most ethical, consent based approach to practices from other cultures, if we aren't connected to anything about our own people, we are missing a crucial part of being in relationship.

Reciprocity is also about economic justice. How are we redistributing access to healing for BIPOC? If we have access to, or have earned wealth through this work, we owe a debt that can be addressed through implementing mutual aid, sliding scale, and trades as a place to start.

Seek Consent

Each lineage is a living, breathing, entity - how do you wish to be in relationship? We can seek consent from elders and knowledge keepers of certain traditions, but are we also connecting with the lineage itself? Herbalists will often introduce themselves to a plant before harvesting or working with it. How can we introduce ourselves to our lineages? How do we learn to be in relationship with the lands and peoples that shaped it, which we may have no direct connection with now? As we begin to explore our own ancestral teachings, we are also entering into a delicate relationship. Paying attention, offering gratitude, deep listening for instructions rather than rushing in with our minds, all of these are ways to enter into a mutual, consensual relationship. We are also much more likely to feel a deeper connection with our practices when we build this kind of intimacy.

Learn about your ancestors' relationship with embodiment

Appropriation feeds off of spiritual emptiness and hunger. One of the ways that we can shift those conditions is to anchor into a sense of belonging with our own ancestors and ways of life that existed before/ beyond whiteness. We often want a set of instructions for how to do this, but it is much more of a non-linear process of research and recovery. The ways we understand the body are shaped by culture and cosmology, so we may not find a list of directions about how to be embodied. But if we explore the myths and practices of our ancestors, much can be revealed about relationships with the body/ land/ spirit. We all come from people who at one time lived in deep relationship and reciprocity with the more-than-human world. Recovering a felt connection to our ancestors can help us show up with more integrity to face the present conditions we seek to change.

Make a commitment to attribution and acknowledgement

Think of documenting your lineages as a living process. As we ask questions and name our sources, more and more is revealed. Uplift and celebrate the wisdom traditions and teachers who have shaped you, place yourself inside the webs of relationships and time that have helped to make you who you are. This might look like a page on your website if you're a practitioner, or personal archival research you do as part of your practice.

learn more:

I offer a workshop on lineage acknowledgement called Reverence + Repair. The next one is on September 23rd — you can learn more about it here.

I’m also offering a course on Embodied Ancestral Inquiry this fall, a series for white somatic practitioners who want to develop skills in understanding and working with intergenerational trauma and white supremacy through somatic practice. You can learn more about that here.

And, I highly recommend the work of The Embodiment Institute and Energetic Ecology as offerings rooted in deep integrity and reverence for lineage. 

*With gratitude to Robin Wall Kimmerer, Susan Raffo, Sharon Blackie, Joshua Michael Shrei, Prentis Hemphill, Lesley Greco, and Alexis Shotwell (along with many others) whose work has helped me to develop the ideas explored in this writing.