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“Johnson’s scholarship on embodied social justice has been leading the field
for over a decade. Their cycle of embodied critical learning has become
the cornerstone for social justice education in somatic psychology. The
revised edition updates their integrative approach to social justice through
compelling personal disclosure combined with case examples and practice
models to help practitioners everywhere. This second edition is so very
timely and is an essential read for somatic practitioners and mental health
professionals alike.”
Chris Walling, Former President, United States
Association of Body Psychotherapy

“Ground-breaking and indispensable for critical and feminist theory,

this book provides important new ways of thinking about how bodies
are shaped, influenced, and colonized within unequal societies. In a time
of growing social inequality, the author offers real insights into how we
might resist the social, political, and cultural changes that are lived through
our bodies.”
Sherry Shapiro, Professor Emerita of Dance Education,
Meredith College, USA

“Oppression spares no body. The injustices we craft our lives within are
both systemic and intimate, taking root in the flesh. Rather than pit the
political against the body, Embodied Social Justice reveals their interpen-
etration, opening up mindful awareness of the life of the political within
our very tissues and movements.”
Mary Watkins, Professor Emerita of Community, Liberation,
Indigenous and Ecopsychologies, Pacifica Graduate Institute, USA

“A much needed, well-written, and profoundly useful book that will help
change the course of somatics and social justice work. Through research
and first-hand stories, the author shows us the effects of oppression on all
bodies, then follows up with practical, powerful, and progressive practices
that can bring us back home to ourselves.”
Christine Caldwell, Professor Emerita of Somatic Counseling
Psychology, Naropa University, USA
EMBODIED SOCIAL JUSTICE

Embodied Social Justice introduces an embodied approach to working with oppres-

sion. Grounded in current research, the book integrates key findings from edu-
cation, psychology, sociology, and somatic studies while addressing critical gaps
in how these fields have addressed pervasive patterns of social injustice.
At the heart of the book, a series of embodied narratives bring to life every-
day experiences of oppression through evocative descriptions of how power
implicitly shapes body image, interpersonal space, eye contact, gestures, and
the use of touch. This second edition includes two new “body stories” from
research participants living and working in the global South. Supplemental
guidelines for practice, updated references, and new community resources have
also been added.
Designed for social workers, counselors, educators, and other human ­service
professionals working with members of disenfranchised and marginalized com-
munities, Embodied Social Justice offers a conceptual framework and model of
practice to assist in identifying, unpacking, and transforming embodied experi-
ences of oppression from the inside out.

Rae Johnson is a social worker, somatic movement therapist, and scholar-­

activist working at the intersections of embodiment and social justice. They are
the author of Elemental Movement (2000), Knowing in our Bones (2011), and Embod-
ied Activism (2023). They teach internationally on embodied activism, nonverbal
expressions of implicit bias, and the poetic body.
EMBODIED SOCIAL
JUSTICE
Second Edition

Rae Johnson
Designed cover image: Claire Weismann Wilks
Second edition published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Rae Johnson
The right of Rae Johnson to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2017
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, Rae, author.
Title: Embodied social justice/Rae Johnson.
Description: Second edition. | Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon;
New York, NY: Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022026562 (print) | LCCN 2022026563 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032139395 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032139388 (paperback) |
ISBN 9781003231585 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Body language. | Nonverbal communication. |
Social justice.
Classification: LCC BF637.N66 J65 2023 (print) | LCC BF637.N66
(ebook) |
DDC 303.3/72–dc23/eng/20220624
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026562
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022026563

ISBN: 978-1-032-13939-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-13938-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-23158-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585

Typeset in Bembo
by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
CONTENTS

Figuresix
Preface to the Second Edition x

1 Introduction 1

SECTION I
Body Stories 9

2 Embodied Inquiry 11

3 Crissy’s Body Story 17

4 Alex’s Body Story 23

5 Pat’s Body Story 28

6 Bani’s Body Story 36

7 Natalie’s Body Story 42

8 Zaylie’s Body Story 49

9 Rae’s Body Story 56

10 Learning from the Body Stories66

viii Contents

SECTION II
Oppression and Embodiment91

11 (Un)Learning Oppression93

12 Learning Through the Body103

SECTION III
Grasping and Transforming the Embodied
Experience of Oppression 119

13 The Cycle of Embodied Critical Learning

and Transformation121

14 Implications and Applications143

15 Community Resources158

Bibliography164
Index172
FIGURES

13.1 Cycle of Embodied Critical Learning and Transformation124

13.2 Facilitating the Cycle of Embodied Critical Learning
and Transformation135
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

In the years since I wrote Embodied Social Justice, the world has changed several
times over. The largely unchecked power disparities that undergird our global
economy are fueling a cascade of environmental and public health disasters,
state-sponsored violence, political corruption, and social unrest. We’ve seen the
rise of authoritarian forms of government, weathered a devastating global pan-
demic that exposed appalling disparities in healthcare access across lines of race
and class, and witnessed in our own backyards the increasingly dire effects of
climate change.
As power becomes even more concentrated in the hands of an elite few, mem-
bers of subordinated social groups bear the brunt of an escalating crisis rooted in
pervasive, enduring structures and patterns of inequity. In practical terms, this
means that women, children, immigrants, people of color, religious and sexual
minorities, and the disabled (to name just a few) live progressively harsher and
more precarious lives. The need for action – in all its forms and at all levels – has
never been greater or more pressing.
Thankfully, these past few years have seen a corresponding rise in collective
resistance across the spectrum of human experience – including the movement
for Black lives, transgender rights, disability justice, indigenous land reclama-
tion efforts, and the prison abolition movement. Within educational institutions,
social service agencies, and community organizations, human services profes-
sionals are undertaking initiatives to raise awareness and develop more skills in
working with members of disenfranchised groups.
Increasingly – in social justice spaces and in the social services – attention
is also being paid to how our bodies, in all their complex sensitivity and resil-
ience, are key to the work that needs to be done. More than ever, people who
work with others are recognizing how oppression lives in our bones and tissues,
and how politics are enacted through our embodied relationships with others.
 Preface to the Second Edition xi

There has been a profusion of scholarship, publications, and educational materi-

als on the topic of embodied social justice. In recognition and celebration of the
innovative work being done in this area, the second edition references dozens of
new books and articles and expands the community resources section to include
several new training programs.
At the heart of Embodied Social Justice, a series of embodied narratives bring
to life the everyday experience of oppression, through description and analysis
of how power implicitly shapes the navigation of interpersonal personal space,
eye contact, gestures, body image, and the use of touch. This second edition
expands upon the embodied narratives presented in the previous book, adding
two new “body stories” from research participants living and working in the
global South.
Finally, the second edition concludes with some reflections on possible future
directions for what is now clearly a field of inquiry and practice in its own right.
The necessary integration of embodiment and social justice has been made, and all
that remains is to see what creative and transformative applications will emerge.
1
INTRODUCTION

The lived experience of the body – that is, our bodily sensations, perceptions,
and behaviors – is the essential ground of human identity. Developmentally,
our visceral impulses serve as the foundation for personal agency, guiding us as
we move through the world, reaching for some things and refusing others. Our
bodily encounters with the physical environment shape and reshape our under-
standing of the world; we learn about gravity by falling and discover how our
point of view changes when we walk around and encounter new perspectives.
Language, often considered a function of our cognitive capacity for abstraction,
is laden with meaningful references to the body that hints at its sensorial roots.
Indeed, cognition itself is increasingly understood as deeply intertwined with
bodily feeling.1
When applied to our understanding of the social world, our embodied expe-
rience plays an equally important role. As we navigate interpersonal relationships
and learn about the characteristics associated with different groups of people, our
bodies help to create and maintain the power dynamics that can arise between
us – for instance, by signaling dominance or submission through our gestures and
eye contact.2 We are categorized into sociocultural groups according to physical
traits that are marked as desirable or deficient based on their appearance and
functioning. Depending on our social identifications, we may learn to treat our
bodies as sexual objects or as instruments of labor. In short, our nonverbal com-
munication patterns, beliefs about body norms, and feelings of connection and
identification with our bodies are all deeply affected by our assigned membership
in different social groups and the privileges associated with that membership.3
However, despite the research evidence supporting these ideas, existing mod-
els of social justice have not been particularly attentive to the body’s role in
reproducing oppression in everyday life.4 Neither have approaches that special-
ize in working with the felt sense of the body (often grouped into a field called

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585-1
2 Introduction

“somatics”) offered many strategies for resolving the tension between the infor-
mation available to us through bodily explorations of sensation and movement
and the data grounded in social power and authority.5 However, it is possible to
address the singular experience of the body in a way that does not bypass the
political. Conversely, it is possible to work collectively to transform oppressive
social structures while fully recognizing the micro-sociological building blocks
that maintain those structures.
An embodied approach to social justice – one that recognizes the degree to
which our bodies are implicated in the reproduction of social power – should
not be considered a replacement for working on the macro-sociological level to
make structural and ideological changes in social institutions such as education
or healthcare, or as a substitute for legislative reform. Rather, it works to support
change in the relational fabric of our lives so that structural shifts correspond
with authentic transformations in attitude, and where legal rights and freedoms
are experienced at the core of our beings and manifested in our everyday inter-
actions with others.

A Practical Example
A brief anecdote may help illustrate these ideas. About twenty years ago, I was
facilitating a movement therapy group for survivors of childhood trauma. One
of the participants brought an intriguing combination of willingness and reti-
cence to the work of the group; she struggled with group dynamics and finding
her voice in group discussions, but there was often a quiet smile on her face and
a shy yearning in her eyes. One session we were improvising music using large
chiffon scarves, imagining that our bodies were expressing the qualities of air.
As the sound of harp strings floated through the room, I noticed that Cindy6 was
moving with more freedom and ease.
When the group sat down together afterward to discuss our experiences, the
grin on her face was impossible not to notice. Beaming with pride, she confided
that she had put her arms over her head. I think we were all a little nonplussed
by that statement at first, until she explained that her childhood experiences with
a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic father had so stifled her ability to
feel free in her own body that she became unable to raise her arms over her head
without feeling completely exposed and vulnerable. She had been taught not to
take up space, not to reach or strive or rejoice. She had also learned not to expose
the vulnerable core of her body to possible physical attack. Although she was
now well into her forties, she couldn’t remember ever feeling comfortable raising
her arms over her head in the presence of others.
It struck me then just how critical the relational dimension of embodiment
is, and how the ways we engage with others are so much about the body. From
my perspective, there were incredible forces preventing Cindy from being in her
body, in her own way. That morning, Cindy named her father’s abuse as one of
those forces, but in the course of our continuing work together I heard her name,
 Introduction 3

many others – being a street kid, a lesbian, a drug addict, and a psychiatric sur-
vivor. On the streets, she learned quickly that being invisible (small movements
and hunched posture) meant being less likely to become a target for the random
violence of strangers and the unwanted attention of the police. On the locked
ward of the psychiatric hospital where she was taken after each suicide attempt,
she learned that smiling and nodding led to increased privileges and quicker
release. As a young lesbian coming of age in the 1970s, she discovered that there
is no room for large, expressive movements in a closet. Street drugs helped to
ease the pain by disconnecting her from the scarred and vulnerable body that
she had come to hate. Taken together, these life experiences resulted in a tightly
restricted movement repertoire overlaid with gestures of passive compliance and
a prevailing sense of absence – of not really being present. In the evocative words
of Mahershala Ali in describing the bodily impact of unrelenting persecution,
Cindy had “folded in” on herself.
In a way, Cindy’s whole life history of oppression was held in her body –
readable in her posture and palpable to others. After that first morning where she
risked change by reaching her arms into the air, however, the group dynamic
slowly evolved. Cindy continued to take more space in the room (physically at
first, and then verbally) and she became more expressive (beginning with facial
expression and expanding to verbal expression). Eventually, she was able to hold
her ground in disagreements with other members of the group. While these
transitions were not always smooth, they always contributed to a more engaged,
cohesive, and functional group. Over time, Cindy and the other group members
were able to see their group as a microcosm of the larger world, and to under-
stand their progress within it as also possible outside it.
For Cindy, the changes in her nonverbal communication translated to
increased agency and presence in her personal and professional life. She har-
nessed the calm authority of her own bodily sense of right and wrong, and
stood up to an exploitative landlord and stubbornly pursued the reinstatement
of a lapsed healthcare practitioner’s license. She dared to express her attrac-
tion to a woman she met in her neighborhood, and they happily married.
Although Cindy’s current life is modestly ordinary in many respects – she
works two jobs, co-parents three kids, and co-owns a home in a quiet resi-
dential neighborhood – it is worlds away from what it was. More importantly,
Cindy feels different inside herself. She is no longer afraid to breathe, to reach,
to be seen, or to push back. These changes show up in how she carries herself,
and she conveys them implicitly to those who now look to her for example
and inspiration – her children, the students in the healthcare program at the
college where she teaches, and the street kids at the inner-city youth center
where she volunteers.
Cindy’s story offers one example of how becoming more attuned to the felt
experience of the body can reconnect us to a source of knowledge and strength
beyond the social power we are accorded by others. It illustrates how being
supported to experiment with bodily expressions of grace and freedom can
4 Introduction

transform painful and limiting movement patterns. It reveals the social and polit-
ical dimensions of these patterns, and how behaviors that might otherwise be
ascribed to individual weakness are perhaps better understood as an adaptive
response to relational threat. Finally, Cindy’s story suggests how the relational
nature of embodiment – that we are always responding to the bodily signals of
others and they to ours – can work for social good as well as ill.
In the years since that movement therapy group with Cindy, I have con-
tinued to develop and refine the insights offered by that single potent gesture
of hers. Intrigued by the apparent relationship between trauma, oppression,
and the body, I grew more attuned to the possible somatic manifestations of
oppression in myself and others and listened more carefully for connections
between what clients told me about their bodies and the social contexts in
which they lived.
I also became increasingly interested in how education (both social justice
education and somatic education) might bring the embodied dimensions of
oppression into a larger conversation. My motives for broadening the discussion
beyond the psychotherapeutic context in which I typically worked included my
awareness of how social stigma around mental health (not to mention the limited
provision of service) restricts psychotherapy’s scope of impact. A related tendency
(by the public and professionals alike) to pathologize and individualize any issue
addressed by psychotherapy was also problematic; I certainly didn’t want this
discussion framed as something that was “wrong” with “some individuals” who
have experienced oppression. Lastly, I hoped that a learning focus, rather than a
therapeutic focus, would allow a broader range of practitioners to apply whatever
useful knowledge emerged from my research.

Framing the Issues

The scholarly work being done in the areas of experiential and anti-oppressive
education provided me with important theoretical and practical foundations,
especially when integrated with insights and research findings from the fields of
nonverbal communication and traumatology. Gradually, the interlocking and
intersecting ideas I gathered from many disciplinary areas began to form a rough
conceptual framework. While this framework seemed to lend support to my
developing theories about the connections between oppression and the body, it
also highlighted some gaps in current knowledge, and pointed to some questions
that could usefully be asked as part of a formal study.
The conceptual framework outlined below is the result of a strategic review of
the literature in educational theory and practice (especially anti-oppressive and
somatic education), anthropology (embodiment theories and nonverbal commu-
nication research, in particular), and traumatology. Although a more detailed
review is provided in subsequent chapters, here I outline some key findings in
a sequence that articulates the underlying rationale that anchored my study and
from which my research questions eventually emerged.
 Introduction 5

In short, anti-oppressive educational theories suggest that:

1. we learn oppression through daily lived experience of social and political

life, and
2. it is possible to transform that experience of oppression (and collectively,
oppressive social systems) through a process of anti-oppressive education
that supports (often through a form of literacy work) the development of a
degree of critical consciousness.

Somatic embodiment theories argue that:

1. we learn through our bodies (not just our minds),

2. our lived experience is significantly an embodied experience,
3. our lived experience is necessarily also a social experience, and
4. it might be possible to transform embodied experience through a process of
somatic education that supports (often through a form of somatic literacy)
the development of a degree of embodied consciousness.

Research into nonverbal communication proposes that:

1. we learn about social systems through patterns of interpersonal nonverbal

communication,
2. these patterns of communication can be grouped into categories that assist in
recognizing, assessing, and understanding how we communicate (and learn)
through our bodies, and
3. the nonverbal component of social interaction (rather than institutional
structure) is the locus for the most common means of social control.

And lastly, research findings in traumatology suggest that:

1. trauma is mediated through the body and manifested in embodied

experience,
2. oppression is traumatic, and
3. the effects of trauma can be categorized in ways that assist in recognizing,
assessing, and understanding how trauma (and perhaps thereby oppression)
impacts embodied experience.

After several years combing through the accumulated knowledge of numerous

experts, however, I had still not encountered a comprehensive description of
how oppression manifests in and through embodied experience. Nor had I found
specific tools, strategies, or approaches for identifying, unpacking, and trans-
forming the somatic impact of oppression. I was left wondering just exactly how
oppression is experienced in the body, and how we bring our bodies to the navi-
gation of power differentials in our social interactions. I was also curious whether
6 Introduction

education could resolve some of the negative effects of oppression and provide a
means for becoming more conscious and skilled in the way we embody power.
The multi-year study I undertook to help answer these questions represents
a preliminary foray into a rich and complex area and offered the beginnings of
new knowledge. It introduced embodied experience both as an analytic tool
and a means of scholarly inquiry and started to articulate how people experienc-
ing oppression relate to their bodies and the bodies of others. It also provided
insights from their lived experience suggesting that our embodied knowledge is
critically important to our understanding of social justice. After publishing the
initial findings of my research, a colleague and I embarked on a second phase of
the study that included additional participants, refined the questions being asked,
and explored new methodological strategies.
Based on the findings of this research and drawing on two decades of clin-
ical practice with members of marginalized and subordinated social groups,
I developed a preliminary model of embodied critical learning designed to
address the somatic impact of oppression. I began working with this model with
clients and in the graduate courses I taught in counseling psychology, refining it
over a period of many years based on my own experience of using the model and
on extensive feedback from students and colleagues.
After fielding requests to train people in the model so they could use it in their
professional work, I realized there was a need for a more comprehensive docu-
ment on the subject, beyond the journal articles and research report I had already
published. This book represents the culmination of my wide-ranging efforts to
better understand how social injustice affects our bodily selves in destructive
and painful ways, and how we might unlearn the embodied patterns that keep
oppression in place.

Overview of the Book

Embodied Social Justice introduces an approach to anti-oppression work designed
for use by social workers, counselors, educators, and other human service pro-
fessionals. The book explores the somatic impact of oppression – that is, how we
embody oppressive social conditions through our nonverbal interactions, and
how oppression affects our relationship with our own bodies. In document-
ing the embodied experiences and understandings of people who identify as
oppressed, it offers clear descriptions of how oppression is experienced as a bodily
“felt sense” and illuminates mostly the unconscious behaviors that perpetuate
inequitable social relations. It then frames this knowledge in an interdisciplinary
context and describes how the embodied knowledge of oppression can con-
tribute to the development of a model of embodied social justice. Consisting
of a conceptual framework, case examples, and a model of practice, the book
integrates key findings from education, psychology, anthropology, and somatic
studies while addressing critical gaps in how these fields have understood and
responded to real-life issues of social justice.
 Introduction 7

Embodied Social Justice is organized into three sections. Section I offers a series
of narratives drawn from my research into the embodied experience of oppres-
sion. These “body stories” illustrate how racism, sexism, classism, ableism, and
cisheterosexism are experienced in and through the body. The narratives use
language that reflects the vivid and visceral qualities of embodied experience
and employ direct quotes from participants to provide a real-life context for the
model of embodied social justice described in Section III. The final chapter of
this section articulates the five themes that emerge from the narrative data and
links the material from the body stories to the research literature in nonverbal
communication and traumatology.
Section II reviews the topic of embodied social justice and some of the schol-
arly literature in which this book is grounded. This section walks the reader
through key findings in anti-oppression education and somatic studies and
further articulates the problems and gaps in knowledge that served as the con-
ceptual grounding and impetus for my research into the somatic experience of
oppression. It also orients the reader to key information that will support their
understanding of the model presented in the next section.
Section III introduces a model of transformative learning that privileges body
knowledge (e.g., bodily sensation, body image, and nonverbal communication)
in exploring issues of social justice. In addition to detailed descriptions of each
phase of the cycle, strategies are provided for facilitating and assessing use of the
cycle in clinical, educational, and community settings. The final chapter offers
suggestions for readers wishing to explore further on the topic of embodied
social justice, and includes a recommended reading list, links to professional
associations and trainings, and websites devoted to the topics of embodiment
and social justice.

Notes
1 The assertions in this paragraph are supported by the work of several scholars across
a range of fields. The work of Thomas Csordas (1994) helped me more fully appre-
ciate the fundamental role of the body in experience, and the neuroscience research
undertaken by Antonio Damasio (1999) and others undergirds my statement that the
body plays a fundamental role in emotion and cognition. I am also indebted to Carrie
Noland’s (2015) work on embodiment and agency and the developmental movement
work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen (2012).
2 See the nonverbal communication research on issues of social power, in particular,
John Dovidio and Steve Ellyson’s (1985) work on power, dominance, and nonverbal
behavior.
3 I understand these aspects of embodied experience as the visceral expressions of social
constructions of power and identity, not as manifestations of natural, absolute truths
about bodies or selves. Although I believe that we construct the social realities that
generate such experiences, my research suggests that we respond to these ideas about
the body as if they were real.
4 I define oppression as the unjust use of socially assigned power. Systemically,
oppression is often enacted through laws and norms that subjugate members of a
subordinated social group to benefit members of the dominant group. According
to anti-oppressive educator Kevin Kumashiro (2000, p. 25), “oppression refers to a
8 Introduction

social dynamic in which certain ways of being in this world – including certain ways
of identifying or being identified – are normalized or privileged while other ways are
disadvantaged or marginalized”. Allan Johnson (2001, p.20) notes that “Oppression is
a social phenomenon that happens between different groups in a society; it is a system
of social inequality through which one group is positioned to dominate and benefit
from the exploitation and subordination of another”. He argues that it is through
our implicit values and unconscious behavior that we most effectively collude with
a system of oppression, and thereby contribute to its maintenance in a society. Par-
ticipation in oppressive systems is not optional, but how we participate is. Accepting
privilege is a path of least resistance in an oppressive system. According to Johnson,
oppression requires no malicious intent, simply a refusal to resist.
5 Somatics is a term coined by existential phenomenologist Thomas Hanna, who used
it to refer to ways of working with individuals and groups that privilege the first-­
person subjective experience of the body (Hanna, 1970). It is an umbrella term that
encompasses a diverse range of body work, movement approaches, and mind/body
practices. A discussion of somatic perspectives and practices is offered in Chapter 10.
6 Cindy’s real name is used at her request, although some identifying details have been
changed to protect her privacy.

References
Ali, M. (2017). Screen Actors Guild award acceptance speech. Retrieved from http://
www.gq.com/story/mahershala-ali-sag-acceptance-speech.
Cohen, B. B. (2012). Sensing, feeling, and action: The experiential anatomy of body-mind cen-
tering. L. Nelson, & N. S. Smith (Eds.). Contact Editions.
Csordas, T. (Ed). (1994). Embodiment and experience: The existential ground of culture and self.
Cambridge University Press.
Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of conscious-
ness. Harcourt Brace.
Dovidio, J., & Ellyson, S. (1985). Power, dominance, and nonverbal behavior. Springer-Verlag.
Hanna, T. (1970). Bodies in revolt: A primer in somatic thinking. Freeperson Press.
Johnson, A. (2001). Power, privilege, and difference. Mayfield Publishing.
Kumashiro, K. (2000). Toward a theory of anti-oppressive education. Review of Educational
Research, 70(1), 25–53.
Noland, C. (2010). Agency and embodiment: Performing gestures/producing culture. Harvard
University Press.
SECTION I

Body Stories
2
EMBODIED INQUIRY

The position of those who carry the burdens of social inequality is a better start-
ing point for understanding the totality of the social world than is the position of
those who enjoy its advantages.
(Connell, 1993, p. 39)

As suggested by the epigraph above, understanding how oppressive social sys-

tems function (as a necessary precondition of dismantling them) requires a direct
understanding of the everyday lives of the oppressed. As I worked to identify
and unpack the particular role of the body in oppression, it became increasingly
clear to me that any formal or systematic exploration of the topic needed to begin
with the stories of those who navigated the embodied dimensions of oppression
on a daily basis. From this experiential ground, conceptual frameworks, and
models of practice might then emerge that could suggest strategies for embodied
social change.
The introductory chapter refers to a multi-phase study that a colleague and
I conducted into the embodied experience of oppression. Carried out over a ten-
year period in multiple locations, this qualitative study employed a methodology
that drew on somatic approaches to research, narrative inquiry, and performed
ethnography. The first phase of the study1 involved in-depth semi-structured
interviews with twenty individuals who had personal experiences of oppression
as well as professional expertise in diversity and equity issues (e.g., community
activists, anti-oppression educators, and multicultural counselors). We intention-
ally recruited individuals from a variety of social categories of difference (e.g.,
race, class, ethnicity, ability, gender identity, age, and sexual orientation) as well
as an identified capacity to articulate their somatic experience. In the second
phase of the study, a team of researchers2 crafted the transcribed qualitative data

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585-3
12 Body Stories

into body-centered narratives that were then performed on stage as interactive

movement-based, spoken-word performance pieces. By communicating the data
as performance, we were able to capture the nonverbal nuances of embodied
experiences of oppression and incorporate audience response into our under-
standing of the phenomenon.
In the chapters that follow, I present five of the original body-centered nar-
ratives from the study. These narratives, or “body stories”, describe the lived
embodied experiences and understandings of research participants and are based
on their responses to a set of interview questions.3 To help orient the reader to
these stories, I first want to highlight some of the uniquely somatic features of
the methodology.
For example, believing that a traditional research interview would likely not
bring the richness of somatic experience into the process (lots of talking and sit-
ting, not much moving or attending to the body), I decided to expand the data
collection strategy to include a few brief somatic exercises. These “experiments”
were designed to help elicit certain dimensions of somatic experience that might
not be immediately accessible to the participants through verbal questioning alone.
These optional experiential components included a guided focusing exercise, as
well as an interactive boundary exercise to explore issues and patterns in the use
of personal space. Both exercises were described to participants before they agreed
to participate in the study, and again directly prior to the exercises themselves.
By incorporating interoceptive-focused exercises into the interview process,
participants were able to access present moment embodied experience that related
to the domains I was curious about. These exercises also served to deepen the
engagement between us, as they required the participant to allow me to witness
them in spontaneous bodily sensation and in movement interaction. In keeping
with Behnke’s (1995) approach to somatic inquiry, I have included descriptions
of the exercises in the end notes of this chapter,4 to provide interested readers
with an opportunity to feel in their own body what was being discussed and
experienced in the interview.
Also, as a somatic researcher, I understand my own body as an instrument of
exploration and meaning making. I attempted to maintain an awareness of this
throughout the interviews; that the body of the researcher in relation to the body
of the participant shapes the data being shared, with our bodies as both transmit-
ters and receivers of such data. My nonverbal responses (a brief clench of my jaw,
an audible sigh, an encouraging smile) were part of the intercorporeal field; my
bodily presence affected how participants engaged with the research, including
what they said and how they communicated it.
Because of the engaged, embodied, and interactive nature of the interviews,
my analysis of the data needed to shift to accommodate the presence of my
own body and to recognize the existence of nonverbal information. One of the
ways I accomplished this was to take extensive notes to articulate my embodied
responses to the interviews and to engage in a process of critical reflexivity, as
 Embodied Inquiry 13

advocated by Finlay (2005) and Hein (2004). I was also careful to describe (rather
than interpret) any nonverbal data.
An embodied approach to data analysis also recognizes that listening to the
data with a poet’s ear may better illuminate and distill subjective nonverbal
material than more literal, mathematical, and/or structured approaches to quali-
tative data analysis. Chadwick (2012) constructed poems from the transcripts to
help her make meaning of women’s experiences of childbirth, and I did the same
when analyzing the data in this study:

How do I tell the story of my body?

How do I bring coherence and transparency
to random scraps of emotion, sensation, and impulse?
The wordless knowledge within my cells
remembers everything, analyzes nothing
Is it possible to unravel the deeply knotted
strands of memory and meaning
that live in the muscles along my spine
flicker in the synapses at the base of my skull
linger in the touch receptors long after my brush with reality?
The stories of my body lie buried in my bones
waiting for the pull of muscle and sinew
and the tickle of a deep, deep breath
to float them to the surface of my skin.

Rather than code the data into small chunks of information (typical in the first
stages of qualitative data analysis), I tended to parse out longer phrases and sen-
tences to preserve as much contextual meaning as possible. In keeping with my
somatic orientation, I then engaged in a process of embodied reflection5 on each
of these content strings, allowing possible meanings to emerge through a process
of implicit embodied knowing. I then looked across all five narratives to create
links between them, and to develop overarching themes.
Lastly, for the research to be genuinely reflective of a somatic approach, the
body must be present in the writing of the research text. Rosemarie Anderson
asserts that traditional scientific and academic writing is “parched of the body’s
lived experience” (2002a, p.40). To redress this absence, she suggests that research
into somatic experience can only be represented through embodied writing and
describes what she considers to be its distinctive features:

1. First, embodied writing offers vivid depictions of experience intended to

invite a somatic response in the reader.
2. Embodied writing is inclusive of internal and external data but is written
from the inside out, letting the soma’s “perceptual matrix guide the words,
impulse by impulse, sensation by sensation” (2002b, p.43). This does not
mean writing that is self-indulgent or meandering; it simply means that the
writer needs to be in their body when they write.
14 Body Stories

3. Embodied writing is descriptive of the rich array of sensory and perceptual

material available through somatic experience, and attuned to the deeper
layers of sensual, emotional, and psychological associations, memories, and
undercurrents that attend such experience.
4. Lastly, embodied writing privileges the subjective experience of the body
over other elements of writing style or content. Although poetic or artistic
depictions can often illuminate somatic experience, they are used in the
service of lived experience.

Therefore, one of the challenges of creating these body stories was to offer an
example of embodied writing that spoke as clearly and deeply as possible without
attempting to assert universal truths or establish objective realities about bodies.
More importantly, these narratives needed to be more than just clear and accu-
rate; they ought to be evocative. I wanted the reader to have a visceral response
to the words on the page, not just an intellectual understanding of their meaning.
With respect to crafting narratives that emerge from experiences of oppres-
sion, feminist theorist bell hooks (2014) reminded me to write in a way that pro-
moted the accessibility of anti-oppression theory and research. She argues that
because most feminist thinkers and theorists do their work in the elite setting of
the university, their work is written in highly academic language that is not eas-
ily understood by those outside academe (indeed, it could be argued that some of
it is not easily understood within it either). hooks endorsed, and I have attempted
to emulate, a writing style that returns feminism to its grassroots by making its
knowledge more broadly accessible.
As a final check of these criteria, a draft of the narrative of each participant’s
participation was made available for their review and feedback after the first
interview, and again prior to the creation of a final draft. In each case, partici-
pants noted that their body story not only felt real and authentic to their experi-
ence, reading their narrative evoked for them some of the same bodily sensations
they experienced during the interview. I hope that readers are able to use these
body stories as a catalyst for their own embodied reflections on the intersecting
nature of power and embodiment.

Notes
1 Institutional Review Board approval was obtained from the home institutions of the
principal investigators prior to embarking on the study and written and/or oral con-
sent was obtained from participants for both phases of the study.
2 My deepest thanks and appreciation to Dr. Christine Caldwell, co-researcher and
principal collaborator during the second phase of the study, and to a remarkable
research team drawn from graduate students in the somatic counseling program
at Naropa University: Nora Ahmed-Kamal, Erin Flynn, Chelsea Gregory, Masha
Mikulinski, Stefanie Raccuglia, Leah Raulerson, and Cynthia St. Clair.
3 The interviews focused on their personal experiences of oppression, and how these
experiences have affected (a) their relationship to their own body and the bodies of
others, and (b) their nonverbal communication patterns. Although I provided some
 Embodied Inquiry 15

initial questions for consideration, the process was intended to be an interactive dia-
logue rather than a formal question-and-answer interview. Some of the interview
questions I asked included the following:
1. What are some of your experiences of oppression?
2. How do you relate those experiences to social categories of oppression (e.g., do
you understand them as experiences of racism, sexism, or some other form of
oppression)?
3. How have your experiences of oppression affected how you relate to your own
body? This might include how you view your relationship to your body, how you
understand your own body image, or the degree to which you experience a kines-
thetic awareness of your body?
4. How have your experiences of oppression affected how you believe others relate to
(or read) your body?
5. How have your experiences affected how you relate to (or read) the bodies of others?
6. What role has nonverbal communication – for example, the navigation of personal
space, the use of gesture, touch, or eye contact – played in your experiences of
oppression? For example, are you aware of modifying your nonverbal communica-
tion according to whether you feel oppressed in a particular situation? What have
you observed in the nonverbal communication of others in these situations?
4 Somatic Exercises Used in the Interviews
1. Sensing and Navigating Boundaries
a. The research participant and I stood facing one another, about ten feet apart.
I began slowly moving toward the participant, while asking them to attend
to their inner somatic experience, and to notice when they become aware of
signals indicating that their personal boundaries have been reached. At that
point, they were to tell me to stop advancing. When I stopped moving forward,
participants had the opportunity to ask me to retreat a half step to ensure I was
not inside their personal boundary.
b. After the exercise, we discussed the experience of having me approach them to
the limits of their personal space. Some of the questions I asked included: What
were the somatic indicators that a boundary had been reached? How was your
relationship with space and boundaries related to breath? To eye contact? What
were some of the implications of your personal experience of boundaries? To
what extent might they be affected by personal or familial traits or attitudes,
your experience of oppression, or your response to me as the interviewer?
2. Focusing – Following the six steps of Focusing as outlined by Eugene Gendlin
(1981), I asked participants to focus on and describe the embodied felt experience
of oppression.
5 I used Focusing, an embodied method of accessing and understanding implicit
material developed by Eugene Gendlin (1981) as my primary strategy for distilling
­meaning from the code strings taken from transcripts.

References
Anderson, R. (2002a). Embodied writing: Presencing the body in somatic research, Part
I, What is embodied writing. Somatics: Magazine/Journal of the Mind/body Arts and
Sciences, 13(4), 40–44.
Anderson, R. (2002b). Embodied writing: Presencing the body in somatic research, Part
II, Research applications. Somatics: Magazine/Journal of the Mind/Body Arts and Sciences,
14(1), 40–44.
16 Body Stories

Behnke, E. A. (1995). Matching. In D. H. Johnson (Ed.), Bone, breath, and gesture: Practices
of embodiment, pp. 317–337. North Atlantic Books.
Chadwick, R. J. (2012). Fleshy enough? Notes towards an embodied analysis in critical
qualitative research. Gay and Lesbian Issues and Psychology Review, 8/2, 82–97.
Connell, R. W. (1993). Schools and social justice. Temple University Press.
Finlay, L. (2005). Reflexive embodied empathy: A phenomenology of participant-­
researcher intersubjectivity. The Humanistic Psychologist, 33(4), 271–292.
Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. Random House.
Hein, S. F. (2004). Embodied reflexivity: The disclosive capacity of the lived body. In
Serge p. Sholov (Ed.) Advances in Psychology Research, 30, 57–74.
hooks, b. (2014). Teaching to transgress. Routledge.
3
CRISSY’S BODY STORY

Crissy grew up in a small town in northern Ontario of mixed racial and eth-
nic background; her mother is aboriginal, and her father was White French
Canadian. She notes that although her physical appearance does not noticeably
mark her as aboriginal, she distinctly recalls the racist teasing she endured in
grade school by her young friends and classmates, and the shame that it engen-
dered. For Crissy, racial oppression always seemed to be inextricably intertwined
with gender oppression, and the schoolyard taunts often targeted her as both
aboriginal and female.
Almost all of the prejudice directed toward Crissy during her early years was
also connected in some way to her body. For example, Crissy has vivid mem-
ories of being called “squaw” and “longback” by boys at school (“longback” is
a derogatory term for aboriginal women designed to draw attention to some
aboriginal women’s “characteristically” flat buttocks). She recalls how ashamed
she used to be of her darker skin; in the summer months, she would get so deeply
tanned in the sun that she used to dust baby powder on her arms and legs to
make them seem whiter. She also relates the first time she took gym class in a
school with a shared girl’s shower and change room. The other girls noticed that
her nipples were brown, rather than pink like theirs, and made snide comments.
As she grew into adolescence, much of the body shame Crissy experienced
focused on her weight. She explains that one of the prevailing prejudices in
her community of peers was that aboriginal women tended to be large, and
she inferred that having a big stomach was considered a manifestation of her
“Native side”. When she began to put on some weight, Crissy made the link
between body size and her aboriginal heritage and began to direct her energies
to losing weight.
Crissy’s attempts to make herself less noticeably aboriginal by staying thin
gradually became more desperate, and increasingly dangerous. When she was in

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585-4
18 Body Stories

ninth grade, she developed bulimia, and began using over-the-counter laxatives
as a weight-loss method. Eventually, her reliance on them grew to the point that
they actually became a form of currency for her. To illustrate, Crissy tells the
story of her interactions with a young woman she babysat for (who was “prob-
ably still a teenager herself ”, Crissy notes). This young woman was sympathetic
to Crissy’s desire to lose weight and colluded with her bulimia to the point that
she would pay Crissy’s babysitting wages in chocolate-flavored laxatives. Her
attempts to lose weight evolved into an ongoing battle with her body, as her
physical appearance came to represent the primary source of “what was wrong”
with her. Over time, Crissy’s hatred of her body grew to the point where she
would hit herself in the stomach as an expression of her frustration and rage.
Although, Crissy eventually realized that her body was becoming dependent
on laxatives and began to limit her usage, she notes that the pattern of body
hatred and substance abuse that developed during her experience with bulimia
was to set the stage for her life as a young adult. When Crissy moved to Toronto
at the age of eighteen, she quickly slipped into a lifestyle of drug and alco-
hol abuse. She notes the continuing connection between drug use and diet and
remembers having conversations with other young women about how effective
street drugs were at keeping you thin.
During this time in her life, Crissy also cut her hair very short. In explaining
the impulse that motivated this drastic change in her bodily appearance, she notes
that in many First Nations cultures hair is considered a manifestation of spirit and
is traditionally left long for that reason. She observes that cutting aboriginal chil-
dren’s hair was common practice by White adults in authority on reserves and in
residential schools, in direct disregard for the cultural and spiritual significance
of long hair. Crissy then relates a childhood story of how her French-Canadian
grandmother used to wait until Crissy’s aboriginal mother was out of the house
before giving Crissy and her young sister short haircuts. As a young woman in
Toronto, however, Crissy describes the impulse to cut her hair as one of wanting
to clean herself; she was feeling dirty and ashamed of what she was doing to her
body with the drugs and alcohol and cutting her hair off was both an expression
of how powerless she felt, and an attempt at bodily decontamination.
Eventually, Crissy’s lifestyle of drug and alcohol use shifted, and she began
working at a bank, where she quickly began to rise within the institutional
ranks. By the age of twenty-one, she was one of the youngest assistant team lead-
ers at her bank. Despite her success, Crissy continued to experience discrimina-
tion and harassment based on her race and gender and began to see her relatively
young age being used as an excuse for patronizing remarks. In one example, she
describes how a male colleague would hassle her by repeatedly commenting to
others that he and Crissy were going to get married. When she called him on
his remarks and warned that she would report this behavior to their supervisor
if he didn’t stop, her co-worker got angry and claimed that she “couldn’t take
a joke”. One of her team leaders repeatedly used terms like “pow-wow” and
“totem pole” when speaking to Crissy. Others called her “kiddo” and patted her
 Crissy’s Body Story 19

on the head. In each case, any attempt by Crissy to address the behavior was met
with anger and denial, and with the insistence that Crissy was over-reacting to
an innocent remark.
The confusion and frustration that resulted from this denial by others that she
was being oppressed have affected Crissy on a very visceral level. When asked to
describe the impact of these experiences on her body, Crissy talks about feeling
as though her body is being violently shaken by an external force. She feels a
“jolt of fear” course through her body and is unable to focus to see anything.
The sensation of being shaken leaves her feeling confused, helpless, and “very
emotional”. She also feels frozen, as if “stuck between fight and flight”. For
Crissy, the resulting impulse in these situations of persecution and denial has
been to “curl up and endure”; to withdraw on some level while also remaining
immobile. As she describes this sensation of being shaken, Crissy comments that
this feeling is very familiar to her, as her body reacts to the disruption and diso-
rientation of the assault of oppression.
When it comes to body image, Crissy describes the complex effects of racial
oppression as a mixed woman. She talks about having an internal dialogue about
her skin color in which she says, “I know that I’m not dark enough”, and notes
that she often compares her skin color to other Native people. She notes that
both Aboriginal and White people express surprise when she identifies herself as
aboriginal, saying “Really…? You don’t look it!”.
When she was younger, she admits she had a lot of shame about being part
aboriginal. Now she feels proud of her native roots but recognizes that her people
have gone through a lot, despite the current popularity of aboriginal culture and
traditions among Whites. She cites the commodification of aboriginal ceremo-
nies and the persistent myth of “the noble savage” to acknowledge that some
Native people may feel that her claiming of her aboriginal heritage merely takes
advantage of recent popular appeal – “Everyone wants to be Indian, right?” For
example, as a student in an Aboriginal Studies program at a large university,
Crissy now encounters prejudice based on her skin color that is the complete
inverse of the racial discrimination she experienced as a child:

I was sitting between two White non-Native people in my Indigenous

Health class, and one of the very visible Native men in the class was sitting
across from me, and he goes, “Hey, I barely recognized you, Crissy, you
blend in so well”. And then he starts to laugh.

Crissy has also had derogatory comments directed to her in Ojibwe about being
“White”, on the assumption that Crissy won’t understand what they’re saying
(although she does). What really hurts is when these comments are made by abo-
riginal people who come from the same geographical area as she does.
Acknowledging the complexity of race and culture with respect to social
hierarchies, Crissy describes the power and allure of being able to clearly pres-
ent herself as simply and completely aboriginal, rather than mixed. She cites
20 Body Stories

an example in a play she has written about her experience of racism, in which she
chronicles her experience of coming from a mixed racial background. In it, the
main character talks about “dying my hair black and wearing feather earrings”
to demonstrate a body image that unambiguously communicates an aboriginal
heritage. Later in the play, that character removes her earrings and gives them to
an audience member to signal that although this body image may offer clearly
readable signals, it does not represent the full truth of her experience.
When asked if there are other areas where she feels oppression and embodi-
ment intersect for her, Crissy talks about her struggle with acne. Crissy teaches
movement classes that draw on an ancient cultural tradition emphasizing a holis-
tic approach to human experience and well-being and finds that having acne
complicates her body image as a teacher. For example, she is concerned that her
students will assume there’s something wrong with her, and that her acne is an
outward sign that she’s not internally healthy or energetically balanced. When
I ask about the relationship between her body image, her acne, and social power,
Crissy notes that when she experiences an interpersonal situation in which she
feels disempowered, she also often feels an impulse to pick at her pimples. She
also talks about the extreme social pressure that she feels as a woman to have
clear, beautiful skin – so much so that she is now taking the birth control pill
even though she has strong philosophical and political objections to them. As she
tries to find some solutions to the body image problems that the social censure
of acne creates, Crissy describes feeling as though she is going against her own
beliefs and values just to experience some improvement in the appearance of her
skin. Even though acne is not a medically serious condition, Crissy acknowledges
that she feels such internalized social pressure to treat her acne that she is willing
to take a medication known to put her at risk of blood clots and possible stroke.
As we speak further about the implications of her acne, and the pressure to do
something to clear her skin, Crissy describes being caught between the dismay
that she is risking harm to her body with the medication she is taking to treat
her acne, and what she initially describes as her own “vanity”. She notes that
on some level, she is “willingly buying into” a cultural imperative for women
to have clear skin, and then calls herself vain when she attempts to address the
problem. As we talk, the double bind that makes gender oppression so effective
and easy to perpetuate becomes more visible. Like all women, Crissy is implic-
itly taught the gender imperative to be beautiful, and then convinced that this
imperative is self-generated.
Crissy and I then turn our attention to the ways in which experiences of
oppression may have informed how she navigates interpersonal space. When
Crissy and I engage in a proxemics personal space boundary exercise together,
she is struck by how uncomfortable she feels as I advance toward her. At my first
step toward her, she is aware of feeling a bit nervous and fluttery, and her limbs
shift involuntarily. As I keep coming, she feels her gut sink a bit. She then laughs
involuntarily a few steps before she asks me to stop. When I move one step inside
the boundary where she had asked me to stop, she is suddenly very much more
 Crissy’s Body Story 21

aware of her face, as though sensation and attention had flooded into that area of
her body. I then take one step outside her boundary, and Crissy visibly relaxes.
In discussing this exercise afterward, Crissy expresses surprise at how threat-
ening it was to have me move toward her so intentionally. She notes that when
she laughed, she knew that I had reached her comfort boundary, although she
allowed me to advance a few more steps before actually asking me to stop. She
admits that when people come really close to her, she becomes uncomfortable
that they are looking at her face (specifically her acne) and feels vulnerable and
exposed. When I moved one step outside her stated boundary, Crissy observes
that she was aware that her body relaxed, and she perceived me as more respect-
ful. When I had invaded her space, she had alternately read my body behavior
as threatening. We noted that she experienced the corresponding emotions of
being threatened or respected quite strongly, even though we were engaging in
a mutually agreed upon, predetermined exercise in which my actual intentions
were neither threatening nor respectful.
Extending this experience into other situations in her life, Crissy talks about
experiences in which men have invaded her personal space under the guise of
necessity, and where men situated themselves or moved against her in ways that
were unnecessarily intimate. She cites an example on a crowded subway car in
which a man pressed his pelvis into her buttocks, and another in a supermarket
where a male shopper made full body contact as he pushed past her in line. For
Crissy, it was clear that neither man needed to be so close but used the situation
as an opportunity to enact a covert form of sexual assault that could probably
never be proven as such.
Crissy also spoke about invasions of her space less related to her body but
connected to a sense of personal territory. For example, her younger sister reg-
ularly goes into her bedroom without taking permission (sometimes taking per-
sonal belongings), and Crissy finds that this bothers her quite a bit. In a context
in which her sister consistently disregards Crissy’s privacy and personal space,
Crissy questions how the power relationship between them is manifesting in
spatial terms, even though it has been shaped by forces other than oppression.
She also spoke about how she uses space in other ways that signal or suggest cer-
tain power dynamics. For example, she teaches her movement classes in a circle
whenever she can, so that she can be part of the circle, rather than the expert
standing at the front.
With respect to body language and gesture, Crissy notes that she is highly
sensitive to the nonverbal signals that others give out – whether someone smiles
or makes eye contact, for example. In talking about some of her childhood expe-
riences of abuse, Crissy relates how she learned to navigate around her mother’s
anger. She notes that it was the nonverbal expressions of her mother’s anger – the
angry movements, the look in her eye – that have most affected Crissy.
In terms of how Crissy understands the ways in which her experiences of
oppression have influenced her own style of movement, she finds that she has
learned how she wants to be in nonverbal relationship with others by knowing
22 Body Stories

what she doesn’t want. She notes that she is especially sensitive to issues of inva-
sion. For example, she always asks before she touches the bodies of others. She
patted someone on the head once, and still regrets it; she recalls how this was
done to her when she was a young woman, and how disempowered and infanti-
lized it made her feel. Crissy observes that she is very hesitant to touch other peo-
ple’s hair, and very sensitive to having someone touch her own hair. For instance,
she describes how she was at a First Nations event recently and someone behind
her reached out and touched her hair, and that she found herself wondering later
if they had taken a strand.
Clearly, the relationship between power and the body is very much in evi-
dence in the preceding examples, as it has been throughout my conversations
with Crissy. Her narrative elaborates on several key ideas with respect to oppres-
sion and embodiment. She notes the intersecting dimensions of racism and gen-
der oppression, and how they both worked together to engender a sense of body
shame that resulted in addictive and destructive patterns of behavior directed at
her body. She vividly describes the embodied traumatic impact of oppression,
including the arousal, constriction, and dissociation that result. As she provides
compelling accounts of how her body has been the locus of both the wound-
ing and conflict that oppression creates, she also describes how it is the site of
­potential healing and reclamation.
4
ALEX’S BODY STORY

Alex’s experiences of oppression started when she was very young and many of
them centered on the objectification and sexualization of her body by men. For
example, the dress code at Alex’s school required that all the girls wear skirts. In
the fourth grade, a boy in her class placed a mirror on his shoe so that he could
surreptitiously peer under his female classmates’ skirts. When Alex told the pro-
fessor, the teacher didn’t discipline the boy, but instead simply asked him, “What
color was her underwear?” Alex realized then that her male teachers accepted the
pervasive cultural norm of men having access to women’s bodies, and that even
as a child they would not protect her.
Alex’s body image was an area of concern from an early age. Her breasts began
developing around the age of ten, and Alex shares a memory of attending bal-
let class and feeling uncomfortable and self-conscious that her breasts were too
conspicuous underneath her leotard. “I always had this idea that they were just
so big”. Alex adjusted her posture to minimize the size of her breasts, slouching
and walking hunched over.
When Alex was a little older, perhaps twelve or thirteen, she was at her aunt’s
house getting ready to go out to a party. Alex’s aunt was helping her get dressed
up, and when she was finished, Alex’s uncle stood in the doorway looking at her.
Alex explains that “he put his hand in the door, so I couldn’t go. He was a little bit
drunk. And he was like, ‘You look so nice. Where are you going?’ And I remem-
ber making myself small and slippery, so that I could go underneath his arm and
go fast out of there, like danger, slip away fast”. When Alex’s mother told her that
she was too tired to drive Alex to the party, her uncle offered to take her instead.
“And I was like, no, no, no. And she was like, yes, let him take you. And I was like,
no. I grabbed her arm really strong and said, ‘Don’t let him take me. You are going
to take me’”. Her mother relented and drove Alex to the party, much to Alex’s
relief – “Otherwise I don’t think nothing good was gonna happen that night”.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585-5
24 Body Stories

Around the time she became sexually active, Alex admits that she began to
resign herself to prevailing cultural norms around her femininity and the objec-
tification of her body. “I always had a lot of boys trying to hit on me or talk to
me or take me out or kiss me or touch me. It was constant. So, this feeling that
everybody’s wanting to touch my body is really alive for me”.
When Alex had her first child at the age of twenty-one, she found the expe-
rience of being a single parent remarkably liberating. She had her parents to
support her, but no partner to worry about. She was simply free to be the best
parent she knew how to be. With her second child, however, she was in part-
nership with a man, and Alex found being part of a couple very challenging. She
felt pressure to start being “this kind of female that I had never been before – we
were not married, but I turned out being the wife and the mother. It was horri-
ble”. Over time, however, Alex has found the restrictions of female gender roles
has eased up.

Now that I’m getting a little bit older, I’m no longer on the market for the
attention of men. You know, the appetite of men. And I adore that. I really
love it and I’m not going to dye my gray hair, not ever. Right now, I have
this belly that keeps on growing. And I’m like, yes, keep on growing belly.
I don’t care. Like, finally I’m off their radar.

Alex has also eventually made peace with her breasts. As she describes it, they
eventually became a source of pleasure rather than shame, especially as she
breastfed her children. “I’m like, okay, you’re not so bad. You can be part of my
body. That’s okay. I won’t keep on thinking that I wish you were not there”.
For Alex, moving through her world as female is not simply a matter of emo-
tional or psychological discomfort – it has very real safety issues attached. As
Alex explains it, there is a lot of delinquency where she lives. “Whenever you go
out, if you’re dressed nice or if you’re in a car with your window down, you most
certainly will get robbed. You really must be aware, because people want to take
your stuff – they want to take your phone and they want to touch your body. You
really need to be on the defensive all the time”. Alex describes what it’s like to
travel at night where she lives. “It’s a mixed ghetto, and at night it’s dangerous.
You don’t want to be walking alone at night. But it’s also very alive, especially
6th Avenue, which is a pedestrian street, so there are a lot of businesses and lights
and it’s really beautiful”. Alex explains that it’s safer if she walks where it’s busier,
but a lot depends on the time of day and the day of the week. Getting home after
martial arts lessons was often risky, so Alex developed strategies for changing her
physical appearance to look more masculine or androgynous.

I try to inspire a little bit of fear in others, so nobody approaches me.

I wear my hoodie for the street that’s really old and super big and I have
this chicote – it’s like a big leather stick used to hit horses. I bought it to walk
in the streets at night. Every female friend I have, I’m like, buy your chicote
 Alex’s Body Story 25

right away. You only have to buy it and walk with it. I mean, be willing
to use it, I guess, if somebody approaches you, but they wouldn’t approach
you if they see you have this stick in your hand – it’s really long. And it
inspires respect. I walk with that in my hand at night. I’m also aware to
hide my breasts. I crunch down a little bit and try to widen my stance and
my shoulders. And I walk really rigidly. Sometimes, I notice other women
on the street walking away from me. I’m like, “Aah, I am being scary to
them”. Whenever this happens, I change to the other side of the street, so
I am not inducing fear in them.

When I comment on the martial arts training that Alex mentioned, she agrees
that not only has she felt as though she needed combat training to survive being
out in the world where she lives, but she also felt the need for her daughters to
have similar training. However, this training has been a mixed blessing in terms
of how it has shaped her relationships with her daughters.

As you name it, I start feeling a lot of emotions arise and immediately
I start thinking about the way I relate physically with my daughters. I’m
not proud of this and it feels a little bit of shameful, but it’s also very uncon-
scious, I think. I love to wrestle with them and tickle them and get them to
submit. They are becoming so strong that I can no longer make the older
one submit to me anymore. She’s really strong and I do not tickle her any-
more. Otherwise, I’ll get beaten. The other day, we were practicing mar-
tial arts together and my older daughter was so sweet. She said, “Mommy,
you should put the (protective) helmet on”. And as soon as I put it on, she
threw this big kick at my head, and I landed on the floor.

Alex explains that her daughter resented being asked to defend herself against her
mother’s playful attacks.

My daughter told me that I really, really went over the line. She holds
a big grudge against me for that. But I feel safe knowing that she can
give a fight – that she would not submit to anyone. If she doesn’t have
any restraint in kicking her own mother, she would kick anyone. And
that’s very good. I went over the line, and I have not been able to further
explain why I did it. So now with the small one, I am a little bit more
conscious, and I allow her to tickle me as well. With the big one when
I get too close and she starts like feeling uncomfortable, she starts tickling
me instantly and very hard. And I allow the payback, letting it be mutual.
I feel like this is good training for the kind of environment we live in, to be
able to really become active and embrace the strength that you have. Being
able to give strength to your body, to your fists, and to lose the fear of being
harmed. I would love to take away the fear of being harmed and just be so
bold and brave and willing to take a punch. I love the feeling after a Kung
26 Body Stories

Fu class. Going out into the street, I feel my stance and my posture, and my
body feels awakened and alive and strong.

When Alex went to the United States to study, she was struck by the difference
in how safe she felt on the streets. For example, the first time Alex was out late
at night in the city where she attended graduate school, she got very nervous.
Alex describes that initially she experienced a lot of vigilance – wide open eyes,
breathing constriction, and trying to be invisible – “Just a pair of eyes. But then
I got onto the bus and there were people – ladies and women and everybody –
carrying bags from the supermarket. There was like, life going on. I started
breathing more deeply, you know, and loosening up a little bit. I was like, ‘Okay,
so I guess not everybody here goes to bed as early as they do in Guatemala’. In
Guatemala, after seven o’clock the streets are empty.”
Eventually, Alex adapted to the safer environment, riding her bike to friend’s
places, and picking up snacks at the 24/7 corner market after going out for
drinks. The possibilities of exploring expanded the more she started feeling safer
and more comfortable. At the same time as tapping into this newfound freedom,
Alex encountered oppression in the United States that she hadn’t experienced in
the country where she was born.

I am White here in Guatemala. My whole life, I have never had to consider

the color of my skin or the accent that I have when speaking my language.
But when I came to the USA two years ago, it was a game changer. Just
because I moved locations, suddenly I became this other racialized person –
different from the norm. It was a lot to process, but also a good way to
grow. Now that I’m back in Guatemala, I have this conscious awareness of
what it means to have this oppression based on the way you speak and the
color of your skin. My body hasn’t changed, but whether you experience
racism depends on your location. It’s so culturally and socially dependent.

When I ask Alex how she copes with the stressors of racism and sexism in her life,
she describes how her movement practices help keep her resilient and provide a
source of physical, emotional, and spiritual sustenance. She describes her home
as a safe haven where she can light a candle, put on her favorite music, and allow
herself to move however she wants. She has learned to trust her body’s impulses
to move in ways that are healing and liberating.

I can completely let go of this armor and this strength and just go into
the painful places in my body. When I find like a place where there’s
pain, I rock and sway back and forth. I engage in small movements, small
­a lterations – left and right, up and down, back and forth – and just wait
for my body to do whatever it needs to. I have this way of making contact
with myself. I know when my body’s speaking, and I try to listen. I want
to understand the pain, I want to understand what’s going on in with
 Alex’s Body Story 27

a particular situation, or I want to understand where to go next. It’s always

me wanting to understand and tapping into this embodied unconscious,
this comfortable and pleasurable place.

Alex explains that the healing she does for herself through movement is not just
for herself. She also feels a deep commitment to offer her skills to others.

There’s a lot going on specifically in Guatemala related to the govern-

ment – things that no one will really be able to solve. Every day you have
constant news of government corruption. It has been challenging because
I perceive other Guatemalans being sad and apathetic but at the same time
craving contact. Feeling hopeless because of social distancing and a lot of
isolation. I feel I have a part to play in this scenario, but it affects me as
well. So, I constantly go back to my sacred movements. I light the candle
and I ask for advice and wisdom. I tap into these practices whenever I am
tired or confused.

Alex’s narrative illustrates the visceral immediacy of the relationship between

social power and the body, and illuminates how this relationship changes over
time and across social contexts. For example, as Alex grows older, the implica-
tions of living in a female body in a patriarchal culture have gradually shifted
from her body being a sexualized object that is vulnerable to the demands and
appetites of men to being a source of nurturance for her children. Even so, the
impact of that early vulnerability has now been transmitted to the next genera-
tion, with complex consequences. Alex is glad that her female children are better
equipped to defend themselves from the threat of unwanted male attention and
violence (Guatemala currently has the highest rate of violent crime in Latin
America), but she has paid the price of protecting her daughters by compromis-
ing the closeness of her own relationship with them.
Alex’s story also exemplifies how notions of race are more open to interpre-
tation than might ordinarily be assumed – in her case, because of moving from
a cultural location in which her body held White privilege to a setting in which
it did not. This experience of being newly “othered” due to the color of her
skin and the way she spoke has opened Alex’s eyes to the oppression that many
in her home country experience and has prompted her to begin working with
members of indigenous communities in rural areas of Guatemala to support their
embodied liberation.
Despite all the ways in which Alex’s body has made her a target for intolerance
and harassment, she remains committed to protecting and healing it. Her martial
art and sacred movement practices serve as touchstones for affirming her identity
in a world that has its own ideas about who she is and where she belongs.
5
PAT’S BODY STORY

This next “body story” explores the embodied experiences and insights of a
woman named Pat, who describes herself as a “sixty-something lesbian” born
and raised in the relative comfort of a White, middle-class family. She has a pro-
fessional background in body-centered feminist psychotherapy and comes to the
interview with me having already explored and transformed many of the somatic
effects of oppression she has encountered in her life. Pat’s body story is significant
to the overall purpose of these stories in several ways; in it, she speaks to issues
of the aging body, to the intergenerational transmission of body shame, and how
oppressive power dynamics can surface even in “peer” relationships. Her story
also offers an illustration of how somatic psychoeducation can support a person’s
capacity of articulate the depths and nuances of bodily experience.
When I ask her to describe the ways in which she has experienced oppres-
sion, Pat responds by saying, “I’m thinking that there are three ways that I have
known oppression; one is through sexual abuse, one is through being lesbian,
and the other is through psychological or interpersonal oppression, as in the use
or misuse of personal power and how that gets visited on the marginalized – the
dyke, the youngest or the weakest”. When I inquire whether she understands
these three forms of oppression as separate and distinct, Pat goes on to explain
that her experience of oppression has been “multifaceted and not compartmen-
talized. There’s a lot of crossover and bleed through”.
She also notes that although she has been the victim of the misuse of power
along several dimensions, the ways in which oppressive interpersonal strategies
can affect her has changed, and says:

It’s taken me a lot of years of work to develop my own strength, wisdom,

and responsibility in an experience of interpersonal oppression. The capac-
ity to recognize it is the first thing. One of the legacies of oppression is

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585-6
 Pat’s Body Story 29

the robbing of clear vision. I think that’s the worst crime – the robbing of
one’s own knowing.

In terms of the bodily impact of this inability to know her own experience,
Pat then speaks about the inability to fully inhabit her body as one of the core
pieces of traumatic fallout. Although she feels that she knows this in more ways
than she could possibly recall for the purposes of this conversation, she provides
an early example from her elementary school days. When Pat thinks back to
physical education class in school, she remembers that she was often made to
feel a lack of confidence in her body. She notes that the teachers and coaches
were pretty clear in their favoritism of the “natural athletes”, and she was never
assisted in finding her own capacities, or to develop her own knowing of her
body as skillful.
At the same time, Pat acknowledges that she is not inherently un-athletic.
She now recognizes that she has sufficient capacities within herself to be physi-
cally effective in her body. Although she found those capacities later in life – in
horseback riding and archery, for example, her primary sense of her body has
always been that she will fail or look foolish. She believes that this early lack of
encouragement in school may have stemmed from the fact that physical edu-
cation teachers “read” in her body a traumatic disconnection caused by earlier
experiences of oppression and childhood sexual abuse, which these teachers then
“accepted as a kind of truth, rather than facilitated into something else”. She
speculates that there was a “certain state of collapse” in her body that reflected a
similar state of collapse in her psyche. Although she believes that she developed
a strong compensatory structure to cope with the impact of childhood abuse,
there were limits to her resilience. Under any kind of physical demand or threat,
she had no resources available, so that her own reaction of “I can’t do this” got
accepted as truth. Pat further notes that a lot of her life she didn’t know she was
disconnected from herself and her body but observes in retrospect that there was
a strong pattern between her use of various bodily mediated substances and how
she was feeling in relationship to herself and others. For example, she notes that
she started smoking very early, to stuff her emotions down into the “furthest
inaccessible reaches of her body”. She then started drinking alcohol to regain
some sense of vitality. The nicotine and alcohol became strategies for modifying
her experience of her body in a way that helped her to navigate difficult rela-
tionship issues.
As an example, Pat describes a long-term lesbian relationship where her sense
of boundaries was persistently distorted, where she was habitually available to
being used by her partner – being either elevated or diminished according to
their emotional and psychological needs at the time. She explains that if she got
too big, she would get slapped down. Other times, she felt as though she was
being “shored up” so that she could serve as suitably strong and admirable in
order to reflect well on her partner. Pat describes those years as being “very not
in her body”, and notes that although she quit smoking early in this relationship,
30 Body Stories

she immediately took up eating instead. Over the course of the relationship, she
gained about forty or fifty additional pounds.
Pat notes that there was a lot of enmeshments in the relationship, and that
even though she believes that she contributed to the blurring of lines of identity,
she often experienced a sense of being invaded. For Pat, this relationship repro-
duced a pattern of boundary transgression and ambiguity established in earlier
life experiences. She attributes this to her experience of being sexually abused by
her grandfather as a child, and her subsequent inability to set boundaries became
interwoven. She explains that because she learned at a young age to tolerate
being touched in ways she didn’t want to be touched – “to be a good little girl” –
she grew up feeling that she didn’t have the clarity and capacity to set boundaries
with her partner. Pat consequently used her body weight to create some physical
boundaries to compensate for the lack of relational ones. Not surprisingly, their
desire for sexual merger was ambivalent, given the pattern of unwanted psychic
intrusion. Pat didn’t start to lose weight until the relationship was starting to
dissolve and she no longer needed the “body armor” to protect herself from
invasion by her partner.
After completing that relationship, Pat slowly began to dismantle some of
those embodied boundaries. For example, while exploring her body experience
in the context of a subsequent lesbian relationship, she discovered her belly, and
then her breath. She learned how much she stores tension in her jaw, and how she
holds old patterns of tension in the muscles of her vagina and rectum. Through
psychotherapy, her spiritual practice, and increasingly healthy relationships, Pat
has gradually retrieved awareness of and connection to her body, and learned
how to release some of that tension.
Pat also feels that she learned how to reconnect with her body through a recent
experience of having a Bartholin cyst. To provide some context, she relates that
she grew up very close to her older brother. Although he was her “adored older
brother”, she has concluded in retrospect that he was also a bully who usually
insisted on his own way. When Pat refused to comply with his wishes, he would
punish her by cutting off connection with him, employing a tactic of “freezing
her out” with emotional inaccessibility. Although no physical or sexual abuse
occurred in the context of this relationship, she recalls that his use of power over
her felt “very male and gendered” in its nature. For Pat, it was the energetically
sexual nature of his abuse of power over her as a young child that she connects
with the later experience of the Bartholin cyst. Not until the cyst demanded her
attention to the point where it required surgery was the memory of the oppres-
sive nature of her relationship with her brother brought to the surface, so that
she was able to understand the cyst as a symbolic somatic manifestation of an
earlier wounding. The sense of intrusion she experienced during the surgery Pat
describes as being akin to an “internal psychic rape”. She now feels that reclaim-
ing her body through this process of reflection and retrospection is a common
pattern for her; that there is always a present-day catalyst that prompts her to
uncover how disconnected from her body she has been.
 Pat’s Body Story 31

When I ask Pat to talk about how her experiences of oppression have affected
her body image, she relates growing up having felt that her body didn’t meas-
ure up – that it somehow wasn’t good enough. Interestingly, she connects these
messages back to the same older brother, and to her mother. In the case of her
mother, she believes that this sense of inadequacy directly relates to her mother’s
lack of confidence in her own body appearance. As a young girl, Pat constantly
received messages about grooming, dressing, and appearance that related only to
social expectations, and remembers feeling these injunctions had almost nothing
to do with who she really was. Pat’s own sense of style and creativity around
personal image were imperceptibly but persistently discouraged. As a young
woman, Pat intuitively knew there was something “wrong” with her body in
terms of gender presentation. Even before she came to know that she was lesbian,
she knew the word “tomboy”, and felt that she was caught between impossible
demands. She was “never going to be a good enough boy”, and she was “never
going to be a good enough girl”.
Despite this, she learned how to “accentuate my good features” and comply
with expectations about how females present their bodies in social situations.
Her mother died when Pat was thirty, and Pat began to notice how much her
personal style had been influenced by her, but she still dressed to conform to
social norms of femininity (via high heels and pantyhose, for instance) until she
left her last corporate job in her late thirties.
Pat also explained how the social and familial pressures to appear feminine
have affected her masculine side. In retrospect, she now recognizes how much
she grieved the loss of her “boy” side that occurred when she began to menstru-
ate. In coming to terms with this loss, and beginning to reclaim her body image
for herself, Pat now feels more comfortable to experiment with body image and
gender in playful ways. For example, she humorously notes that “sometimes
I paint my toenails in the summer, and sometimes I don’t”. She is also beginning
to recognize the ways in which others may be reading her body with respect to
sexual identity and erotic energy. When others find her body erotic, it comes as
something of a pleasant surprise to Pat, and yet is now something she can own.
Given the work she has done to reclaim her body, she wonders if others are read-
ing not only the external markers of socially sanctioned sexual attractiveness but
are also picking up (and responding to) Pat’s increased connection with her own
body through subtle nonverbal signals.
In a related way, Pat notes that she tends to feel pressure “not to look” at the
bodies of others. She suspects that some of this is related to being lesbian; that
she has picked up the heterosexist message that she should not subject others to
her gaze as it would make them uncomfortable, and that looking at others might
reveal her own sexual orientation in unwelcomed ways. She offers an example of
when bisexual woman with whom she had been having a relationship told Pat
that she no longer thought she could have a sexual connection with her. Pat notes
that she experienced this rejection almost as an assault. She then felt angry and
ashamed that she had let someone in too close. At the same time, she was aware
32 Body Stories

that an erotic energy still existed between the two of them. So, while Pat was
feeling disempowered by the shame of being refused (and not just refused, but
refused on the grounds of her gender), she was simultaneously empowered by the
knowledge that she was still sexually and erotically powerful. Pat recognized that
the more powerful she feels, the more she feels a right to look at others. She also
notes that when she feels really comfortable about being lesbian, she feels bigger in
her body (and as she says this, Pat takes a deep breath and puts her shoulders back).
With respect to the overall impact of oppression on her body image, Pat
describes the challenges of working through a feeling of internalized shame in
which her body is never going to be “okay”. For example, Pat went through most
of her young adulthood believing that she was overweight, when a recent review
of old photographs revealed that her weight was well within normal range. Now
in her early sixties, Pat also talks about getting older, and how her body is begin-
ning to change in ways she is not entirely comfortable with. For example, she is
starting to look more like her mother, and despite all the success she has had in
reclaiming her body and body image, Pat notes with regret that there doesn’t seem
to be any age at which a woman is free of the social pressures to look a certain
way. She is aware that she now judges her aging body in yet another critical way
and admires older women who conform to the slim and muscular ideal currently
in vogue. Complicating this issue, there are ways in which her body appearance
intersects with her felt experience of the body, so that Pat is aware of feeling better
in terms of health and energy when she’s slimmer. Given that, Pat’s aspiration for
the rest of her life is to come to terms with her body, and to feel comfortable in her
own skin; not as a far-away ideal, but as an in-the-moment experience.
Pat’s experiences of oppression have also influenced the ways in which she uses
and reads nonverbal communication, and she notes that she is especially attentive
to this dimension of interpersonal interaction. She relates a recent example of
sitting with her brother in his backyard and reaching out and touching him on
the knee as part of the conversation. She says, it felt like a natural extension of
their verbal exchange, but says she noticed the gesture particularly because it was
one of the first times she didn’t feel like a “little sister”. Pat also relates examples
of nonverbal communication where power imbalance was very much part of the
message. For example, when a waiter repeatedly touched her shoulder during a
recent meal at a restaurant, she noticed that she reacted negatively to what she
perceived as inappropriately familiar use of touch.
Pat also spoke about how she uses eye contact as way to regulate degrees of
intimacy in relationship to others, and notes that she feels more vulnerable here
than in other areas of our discussion. She reveals that making eye contact can be
a way to let someone see that she is developing a connection, and that she looks
away when the connection feels risky. Avoiding eye contact also becomes a way
to limit the degree to which Pat feels “seen” by others. Although she controls
access to herself through her gaze, she also acknowledges that sometimes those
relational boundaries are set by unnecessary fear, and her nonverbal signals cut
her off from something she wants.
 Pat’s Body Story 33

In terms of body gesture, Pat notes that she frequently uses her arms and
hands to mark the boundaries of interpersonal space between herself and others.
She also gestures within the interpersonal space when she’s in conversation and
may occasionally reach into the other person’s space to touch them. This move-
ment pattern becomes more muted when she is in a situation where she doesn’t
feel comfortable and tends to use more gesture, the more empowered she feels.
Pat acknowledges that disempowerment has an inhibiting effect on the size and
scope of her gestures, and notes that she becomes increasingly self-conscious
when she feels that her movements are larger and more expressive than the other
person’s; that is, when she is not met with some degree of kinesthetic empathy.
She also recalls the childhood injunction to not to be “too big” or “too much”,
and how she learned to be gesturally and vocally contained as a crucial part of
being “a good little girl”. She was taught to “hold it all in”, and notes that this
inhibition of movement can still show up in social situations.
Although oppression has clearly had a range of effects on Pat’s experience of
her body, she insists that merely detailing the impact does not convey what she
considers the most important aspect of her experience. On reviewing a draft of
our first interview, she found that reading the material was quite a bit harder
than talking about it had been, even though she was aware during the inter-
view that she disclosed personal and intimate material. She was aware of an
impulse to “massage” and “smooth” her story to make it less stark but says that
she resisted that impulse out of a desire not to dilute the impact of what she’d
said. At the same time, however, she is concerned that the impression left by our
initial conversation was a portrait of her as a victim of oppression, which she says
is an incomplete picture of her full experience.
As an example, Pat cites the physiological and psychological impact of having
a Bartholin cyst, and how the journey of coming to terms with both a past and
current wounding feels very much like a victory; like an achievement worth cel-
ebrating rather than solely a hurt in need of grieving. As Pat speaks further about
uncovering the deeper symbolic layers of what the Bartholin cyst represented
about her childhood experience and the power imbalance in her relationship
with her older brother, she describes her body as the “path to resolution” and a
more conscious wisdom and strength around these issues. She describes how she
is now able to actively access layers of self and experience that were previously
inaccessible to her, and doubts whether she would have been able to reclaim
these important elements of her identity had she not experienced what might
otherwise have been construed only as a medical “problem”. She understands
this process as empowering and takes pains to articulate both the grief and loss
that “gets laid down in the body” as well as the “awesomeness of what the body
can do with that”.
To Pat’s way of thinking, it’s not that her body was damaged and had to “carry
a burden” until it could no longer carry it, so it then became “sick”. Rather,
she feels that her vagina held some material for her that needed to be held, and
the cyst was actually an embodied act of resistance to something relational that
34 Body Stories

needed to be resisted (her brother’s gender-based misuse of power in relationship

to her). The cyst was her body’s way of saying, “Stop right here”, and not let-
ting her brother’s energy past a certain boundary inside her. Interestingly, when
she developed the psychological strength and capacity to look at these issues of
oppression, the physical manifestation (i.e., the cyst) moved from being benign
to urgent in nature. She was then able to use an experience in which both the
physical and emotional dimensions were healed and transformed in a parallel
and inextricably intertwined way. She has emerged from this process stronger
and more aware, so that she can now identify and refuse similarly oppressive
tactics that she encounters in her everyday life. In this way, she is now able to
deal with interpersonal misuses of power directly and immediately on a rela-
tional level, rather than holding these experiences on a somatic or body level.
Facing trauma –whether the current cyst or the buried abuse – shows up the
places where fear has constrained her, and where courage makes her expansive.
Because Pat recognizes this as a gift, she feels especially passionate about making
sure that this aspect of her embodied experiences of oppression is represented as
part of her story. In speaking about this, Pat insists,

I cannot emphasize enough how important the second part is to the first
part of this narrative, because it does not serve me to be a victim of oppres-
sion. I do not like that stance, and I have always resisted it.

In describing her grandfather’s abuse, she acknowledges that she had initially
minimized the scope and seriousness of his behavior but says that the stance of
victim locks her into a polarized dynamic with her abuser as a “big, bad bogey-
man”, and fails to take into account the profound complexity of human beings.
As an example, she speaks about how she has come to realize that although her
grandfather was abusive to her, her own father clearly loved him, and for good
reasons. She acknowledges the dual truths that her own father got tenderness and
gentleness from his father, and that what her grandfather did to her was wrong.
She sees the lesson of her oppression as a process of learning how to stay in con-
nection with people who misuse her.

My task is not to make “the other” not abusive. My task is to develop the
capacities whereby I am not susceptible to that. I want to go through the
painful experiences that my body and psyche put me through in order to
develop that kind of capacity…to be a more dispassionate observer.

In so doing, Pat emphasizes how important it is to recognize the fullness of

others, not just the way in which those individuals relate to her. From this per-
spective, she argues that identifying solely as a victim becomes so simplistic as
to be completely unworkable as a relational strategy. Pat further acknowledges a
parallel between her own journey toward recognizing the limitations of a polar-
ized conceptualization of social oppression (i.e., there two separate and mutually
 Pat’s Body Story 35

exclusive camps: the oppressors and the oppressed). Although she sees the value
in exploring those polarities initially to become more conscious of the differ-
ences in which human beings are treated and valued, she asserts that we as a
society need to conceptualize issues of oppression from a much more complex,
multi-valanced perspective. In that light, Pat now understands her experiences
of oppression as critical to becoming who she is, as they have provided her with
a means to encounter, in a very visceral way, one of the more central paradoxes
of human inter-relationship.
This journey toward a more complex understanding of oppression manifests
in her body in a similar way; she has come to understand that rather than resisting
when “things go wrong” with her body, she can choose to engage with what is
happening in her body, even when what is currently happening is painful. Being
with the embodied effects of oppression has prompted a significant shift in her
relationship to her body in distress; she now tries to relate to her body as “always
already okay”, rather than as something that gets sick and needs to be fixed. “If
I’ve learned to stay connected with my body when it’s in pain…and value what’s
going on even when it’s not what I thought I wanted…”, rather than wonder,
“What have I done wrong now?” then she can be with herself with more com-
passion and less judgment. Additionally, her body becomes a source of wisdom,
its symptoms yielding up valuable information to be used, not suppressed.
By extension, Pat notes that if she can increase her capacity to be present
with and in her body through a wide range and quality of experience, without
disconnection or self-blame, then she can also stay with all kinds of experiences
without abandoning herself. This furthers her capacity to be with others even
when they are relating to her in ways that are less than ideal for her. In essence,
the journey of healing and reclaiming her body has provided a model for being
in relationship with others that addresses abuses of power in a way that Pat feels
has the potential to provide a larger healing for social oppression. Even though
Pat has long been passionate about issues of social justice and concepts of body/
mind unity, it was her own body’s journey that has made these ideas real for her.
Pat’s narrative highlights several somatic features of oppression, as well as how
the body can play a role in resisting and transforming oppressive social interac-
tions. She speaks about how oppression contributed to a disconnection from her
body, and how it has affected her body image as well as her use of body language.
As she relates her embodied experience as a child- abuse survivor and aging
lesbian, she makes meaning of those experiences by employing a multi-faceted
and layered analysis and listening carefully to the messages in her body. Pat has
found that understanding her body in this way has also provided a means of
being in relationship with others that feels more balanced and equitable as well
as empowering.
6
BANI’S BODY STORY

Bani grew up in India in an extended family of thirteen people that included her
parents, paternal grandmother, aunts, uncles, and cousins. The family system was
strongly patriarchal, reflecting the larger culture. The cultural practice of female
infanticide was so prevalent that the government prohibits determining the sex
of an unborn child.

From a very early age, I was in a patriarchal system that was enabled by
the women in my family. Things were done more for the male children
of the family than for the females. For example, strawberries were very
expensive, and they were given to my cousins and brothers before they
were given to me.

Despite being a girl child, Bani benefited from having a mother who was pro-
gressive who tried to protect her from the discrimination that women experi-
enced. For example, Bani recalls the discrimination her older sister faced at the
hands of her grandmother and how her mother made sure that she didn’t get
treated that way.

I’ve been very lucky to have such a strong-headed mother. She was constantly
being criticized for letting me do certain things or letting me get away with
things. But she didn’t let that stop her in terms of her goals for my develop-
ment. She wanted me to be very well-educated, so he and my father saved
up so I could get a better education. I was sent to a whole host of extracur-
ricular activities – drama school, dance school, art school – whatever would
help me become a better person. In my experience, there was an underlying
motivator for my mother being driven in this way, to prevent someone from
turning around and saying a male child would have been better.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003231585-7
 Bani’s Body Story 37

Bani was very energetic as a child, and she believes that her mother deliberately
enrolled her in creative, expressive activities so that she could channel some of
the energy that might otherwise have disrupted her ability to be studious and
productive in school. Whatever the reason, the investment in extracurricular
activities paid off – by the time Bani was in seventh grade, she had won two
hundred dance and art awards at state, national, and international levels. Another
benefit of all this activity in the arts was that she became part of a group of other
artists who would travel to competitions together, and it became an important
community for her. Bani explains that even though it looked like they were
competing against one another, their lived reality was different. Because they
would all get ice cream if even just one member of the group won a prize, an
ethos of celebrating each other evolved among them. To Bani, it was clear that
her real competition was the male children in her family, not her female peers.
Although classical Indian dancing provided important grounding and dis-
cipline for Bani, by the time she was thirteen, she began experiencing herself
(and her body) differently. Previously, she had been cast in male roles or as
demons – typically stiff, aggressive roles that matched her slim, athletic body
build – and now she wanted to cultivate her more feminine side. Folk dance,
with its emphasis on collective synchronized movement, helped her shift out of
a more ­dominating and energetic style of engaging the world.

My aggressive energy was encouraged at an early age, and it eventually

started showing up in my relationships. Maintaining friendships with girls
was a little bit harder for me. I could be better friends with guys. I could
run and play, and I could do all these things the guys were doing, but
I could not sit with the girls and talk about getting my period. When my
breasts started coming out, I remember pushing them back in and wonder-
ing why my chest couldn’t just be like my brother’s chest. My mom asked
me what I was doing and tried to explain that it’s just a part of growing up.
And we had very candid conversations. I knew about menstruation. I knew
about sex. I knew about oral sex. I knew about protection. My mother
and (up to a point) my father were very progressive. Everything had to
be talked about – a sense of “you should know this because you need to
be independent”. Within this patriarchal family, there was this one small
bubble which was very matriarch driven.

Her mother’s influence had a positive impact on Bani’s developing sense of body
image. In fact, both Bani’s parents worked hard to create an environment where
Bani was supported to feel good about her body.

They had this way of making me feel very comfortable with my body. My
skin color was never looked at and my body type was never looked at. I’m
very tiny, but I always have been. My parents never told me that I need to
put on more weight, but I’ve been told that by everyone else around me.
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