ISAAC – Healing Whiteness through Somatics Practice
ISAAC 2023 Body of Work
Please find the registration form here: HEALING WHITENESS REGISTRATION FORM 2023
Why:
“White-body supremacy trauma” is a trauma that we all – including white identified individuals, communities and systems – integrate into our bodies and structures. We need to address this trauma directly in our bodies – not just in our minds. – Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
“In my workshops I often ask people of color, ‘What would it be like if you could simply give us feedback, have us graciously receive it, reflect, and work to change the behavior?’ Recently a young man of color sighed and said, ‘It would be revolutionary.”
– Robin DiAngelo, author of White Fragility
Who:
This practice space is for white people committed to racial justice and racial healing work who wish to understand how white supremacy affects and lives in our bodies and how it shows up in our common spaces and work. It is for white people who desire to engage in self work to become stronger, more self-aware, accountable and resilient allies.
Requirement: For those who are interested in participating and have not been through the Understanding Racial Justice course with Title Track Michigan OR previously participated in the Healing Whiteness Circles with Simon Wolff, we require that participants attend a 3-hour Orienting to Embodied Anti-Racism Workshop. We will work with participants to schedule a time for this workshop in June.
What:
This series of somatics coaching and practice sessions will draw upon:
- Somatic Awareness practices
- Centering Practice
- Nervous system regulation practices
- Storytelling
- Antiracistidentity development reflection, developing embodied awareness and practice noticing what our bodies teach us about white supremacy culture in us (and practicing the antidotes)
- Embodied Resource Distribution
- Capacity building around holding contradictions
How:
In a small group atmosphere, we will hold a six-month white-affinity group convened for members of ISAAC to deepen their embodied anti-racism practice while working in a multiracial space as racialized white people. Repetition is key in embodiment practice, so we ask that participants commit to all six sessions. The group will meet monthly for 1.5 hours via Zoom. We will also offer an additional 30 minute practice group monthly where both practice groups will meet together for optional practice. Through the practices listed above, this work will counter white fragility and dominance, and grow our capacity to be self-aware, accountable, and resilient leaders in the movement for racial justice and collective liberation. Support you in becoming more congruent and aligning your embodiment, words and actions, with your longings for racial justice.
Themes include:
- Aligning our embodiment (words, actions, behavior) with our commitments to racial justice.
- Reflecting on how we are complicit in WS culture and how we have resisted it. Feeling both for the sake of accountability, healing shame and standing in resilience for the journey ahead.
- Internalized values of white dominant culture (ie: secrecy, competitive individualism, perfectionism, either/or thinking, urgency)
- Developing Self Compassion
- Who we are in connection to People of Color
- White body supremacy as a violent system of dominance
- Trustworthy solidarity
Facilitators:
Tess Waechter Smith (she/her) and Lucy Waechter Webb (she/her) are sisters who have both found their way to embodied anti-racism practice via community organizing.
Tess is a politicized somatic practitioner-in-training grounded in the lineages of generative somatics and the Strozzi Institute with a former background of social work. She is committed to building cultures of healing and connection and support movements that win liberation in our lifetime. She is dedicated to supporting white people in learning what it means to be anti-racist and to choose a path of recovery from white supremacy culture for the sake of collective liberation.
Lucy is a politicized faith leader & organizer, a healer, writer and ritualist working at
the intersections of spirit, body and anti-oppression to support the emergence of our collective liberation. She believes the work of engaging our spiritual life is not so very different from engaging in our shared public (political) life. After ten years as a pastor, her ministry is now focused on engaging other racialized-white people in anti-racism practice, as she is always deepening her own.
