Revolutionising Breathwork: Dismantling White Wellness Norms
Breathwork Practitioners in the modern context of the white wellness industry are forced into boxes and categories not of our own making. We are not taught any different. Our training does little to address institutional oppression and we are invited to join in without question.
What if that didn’t need to be the way?
The white wellness industry is telling us that wellness is a luxury only afforded to certain few. It dictates who can and can’t be healthy, it dictates who deserves peace and who doesn’t. We know this is a form of gatekeeping, it is a process of of perpetuation. It is an allegiance to colonialism.
When all business and sales models within the 21st Century are predicated on systems and values of capitalism, colonialism and white body supremacy, medicine folk or people who are trying to offer health oriented tools as a sustainable business on social media, online or in-person have to sell their ‘product’ within some certain rubrics of productivity, goal orientated sales or consumerism.
We know that this isn't how or what the process of healing is.
For us to be able to fully identify what it is we are contemplating, let’s lean on Tema Okun’s work on the characteristics of White Body Supremacy as a starting point. These characteristics are not exhaustive, yet gives us a good platform on which to stand on when we start with this work.
Some key characteristics are:
entitlement, perfectionism, urgency, either/or thinking, paternalism, disembodiment, saviourism, competition, scarcity thinking, hierarchy, fear of conflict, closure and certainty.
Healers in the modern context need two deeply rooted values in their systems. One is that they are here to bear witness to the unfolding that is to come within the current cultural context, and two that they are aware of the ways in which they slow that unfolding by upholding these characteristics.
What is the distinction between a colonial therapist and a medicine person?
Colonial therapists who ascribe and reveal their allegiance to colonial somatics are those who wish to see their clients participate more fully within the systems in which they live, they aid them into productivity, into assimilation, into aligning themselves back into the uncomfortable boxes made for them since before they were born. These are people who want to numb, to quieten back down, to no longer feel the way their body is speaking to them in deep resistance.
Our souls did not come here to colonise, our souls did not come to be colonised. - Dra. Rocio
For white bodied folks:
We don’t know how many ways we perpetuate harm, we don’t know the ways in which we gatekeep health, knowledge, access to power because it is the water we swim in.
We did our best with what we knew and now we know better, so we need to do better. Inheriting white bodies isn’t the extent of whiteness, but our bodies afford us the privilege of not knowing and not understanding, which means we have a little more work to catch up. And the work is hard and it hurts, but it is necessary.
When we discuss race and white body supremacy, we have learned to shut down, to numb out and to not think it has anything to do with us at all. This is a very effective survival strategy, it has been the way our ancestors have survived the ways we have caused harm and violence toward our fellow humans. But, we no longer need to do that to survive. We have been given the gift of these somatic tools to be able to handle the charge, the discomfort of what it means to be alive in this modern time. We are not alone, not in our healing or in our work. This is the time.
For folks of the global majority:
We have been told in every moment that our bodies are too sensitive, that they are too reactive and we have to fix them. We need to feel safe in society and it is our fault that we don’t. This is a colonial lie.
Our bodies are perfect and they are reacting perfectly appropriately to our current cultural climate. No, we don’t have lions and tigers attacking us, but we have streets to walk in, social structures and dynamics to navigate, racism in all forms to battle, we have rent to pay and jobs to attain or protect. These are all viable reasons for the ways in which our bodies are reacting. We are tired and exhausted and all those healing spaces that are created, make us more tired.
There are still so many moments we have to hide parts of ourselves, we have to censor what our fights are in order to keep the room ‘safe’.
Inspire Breathwork Facilitator Training and The Forest Garden are initiatives that decentre whiteness in the wellness industry.
Yes, we have a lot of work to tend to our pain, to attend to our daily grind and yet, let us come together.
Healers in the modern context are those who want to serve the new world, to fully understand the inherited wisdom and wounds of our recent generations and break those cycles in order to reclaim what was once ours. The modern day healer looks to the ways the body speaks through pain and anguish as deep whispers of rebellion and acts on them and walks the path with their client to uncover what freedom really means to them - making the shifts necessary for change.
So what does resistance to the characteristics of white body supremacy look like? What can we do in this effort?
This is what The Forest Garden is. It is an initiative for folks to get involved in decolonising their practice, decolonising their minds, bodies and spirits, in decolonising their business and decolonising the ways in which you are called to heal.
We cannot have unity consciousness without decolonisation. Join us to learn more.
