A Decolonial Approach to Breathwork
Moving Beyond Creating a Safe Space
There have been so many times when the concept of safety has come up in healing spaces, whether it's in ceremony, in a drop-in yoga session or any other embodied modality experience. The word is used and I often get stumped when I hear it - like, what do you mean? What does it mean that this place is 'safe'? Safe for who and 'safe' for what?
Having been in the wellness space for nearly a decade now, I know that these spaces aren't necessarily designed for a body of colour, or a body of culture. There have been moments where I have had to ignore appropriation, microaggressions, or uninformed and privileged language within a space that I have actually felt my body recoil at some of the things said and done and in most cases, I have had to brush those away in order to benefit from the experience (I am very good at that now and I have also learned that it is no fault of the facilitator, they just didn't know... - so this is why I am here saying these things and trying to shed some light on the ways we can make the healing space address some of the ways in might perpetuate the very things they are trying to heal.)
So, what do I mean when I say moving beyond colonial safety?
Oftentimes, when I think of the way we think about society, trauma and safety, we talk about the way our nervous systems have been broken or disrupted by trauma (personal trauma, nothing else...) and it is our responsibility to re-regulate ourselves so that we can feel safe in society again.
There are a couple of assumptions in this that I would like to unpack:
**Society is safe and we must re-learn that.**In most of the healing spaces I have been in, I have been told that we have nervous systems that are designed to respond to life-threatening sabre-tooth tigers, that we have well adapted systems for life threatening moments and we no longer need these responses any more. It is shared ubiquitously that our nervous systems are now over-reacting inappropriately, that it is an adaptation that we have to train ourselves out of.This perspective on society reveals that the people that are writing and leading this work, have little to no experience of some of the hardships that a lot of people face. It may no longer be a sabre tooth tiger but it is rent, illness, loneliness, bills or toxic relationships.This lens and perspective reveals to us that somatic theories and education have no relationship with what is life-threatening in our now modern cultural context.And this is further made worse when we think of those who are most marginalised in society, those who are on the frontiers of our societal oppressions. It tells us that our responses are inappropriate and it is our problem.
**And secondly, neutrality is the goal.**Somatics and modern psychology and all our education seems to be rooted in training our body to regulate and return to states of neutrality. That charge in any way is a system overreaction. This perspective gives people the responsibility to dampen down their reaction, their visceral body sensations to atrocities, to numb down just a little bit so that we can tolerate the pain, to tolerate atrocities, to tolerate injustice and return quietly back to work, or to our dysfunctional families.
I have started to think about these frameworks as colonial frameworks, and there are many ways we can interpret the term 'colonial' but in my case and what it seems to represent for me right now is the systems in place that will ensure we maintain the status quo: capitalism, misogyny, sexism, racism, homophobia etc.
So, with these two points, it reveals itself that the way that somatics and modern psychology share their frameworks often supports a colonial narrative, one that will help us tolerate pain and return us to work without creating too much trouble.
A decolonial lens on somatics invites us to remember that our bodies are working perfectly well. They are reacting appropriately to the stimuli around us. The way your body is reacting is a direct and appropriate way to respond. Oppressed and marginalised people are responding accurately. The precise nuance we perceive danger is what has kept us alive, here, present and surviving.
Our nervous systems are responding appropriately to the environment that we are in - the dissociation, numbing, fawning, appeasing, this is what allowed us to be breathing today and I am so grateful for them.
Treating our bodies as if there were something wrong with them and that we must learn to hack the networks is a manifestation of colonial thought - control, power-over, manipulation, trick. There are so many frameworks of domination within the western wellness industry which we will explore; however, we need to be careful not to perpetuate those onto our own bodies.
So what does 'safety' mean in the Breathwork Space?
With this lens, it is not a stretch to say that the concept of safety is one created out of colonial thought, out of white body centrism and un-informed on the levels of trauma that people face everyday.
We cannot guarantee safety in breathwork space, we cannot say that there is no one there to threaten your existence for we do not know each and everyone's politics. For most people of the global majority (BIPOC), it is highly likely that there are people there who have not worked on embodied antiracism, and so this is unfortunately a truth that exists. And for those who have traumatised bodies know that there will be people in the space that are unconscious to the ways they can cause harm through thought structures around gender, sexuality, ability etc.
Trauma is caused by people, mostly hurt people and there could be some of those in the room. To tell people that a space is safe is a disservice to their healing.
Note: as a practitioner, it is important to acknowledge that you are also not a 'safe' person for everyone for: We know that safety is built, it is cultivated, it is developed by the individual within the confines of their own body.
As communities and space holders, there are ways in which we can reduce harm and offer ways that our breathwork spaces can serve those who need this healing modality. Traumatised people have the right to be angry, to feel rage, to grieve, to want spaces of reprieve, to demand a space where whiteness does not infiltrate their bodies. As practitioners and healers within the modern context, we know better and can serve them for the necessary healing that is to come within this new earth of healing and consciousness.
So, my proposal for the moment is to move beyond creating 'safe spaces' and towards collective responsibility of safety. We need spaces that are not sterilised by the idea that neutrality is the goal and reaction is a problem. To invite people to feel the charge, feel and share the passion and the anger. Notice how that feels to share and be witnessed and work together.
We need to prepare our bodies for an accurate observation of society, we are preparing the body not for safety, because that's not the environment we live in. We need to prepare the body for struggle, for pain - to learn how to maintain strength and peace while the waters rise, to remember our bodies' inherited wisdom of survival and tap into their power, to know their history, and to acknowledge our cultural context.
If you would like to learn more, become a breathwork therapist with a decolonial lens or would like to decolonise your practice, then please consider joining Inspire Breathwork’s Breathwork Training starting in April 2024.
