reclaiming the language of sensation for times of polycrisis
We are living in a time of polycrisis characterized by global fascism, the COVID-19 pandemic, genocide and ecocide. Rage rumbles underground, in the currents of the seas, deep within our bones. Demands for liberation pulse through us as we create, dream, imagine. Waves of uprising erupt across fabricated borders in prayer, song and schemes. We resist and revolt until the fall of all empire.
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For the past 160 days, we have demanded all eyes on Gaza, where the US-funded Israeli military continues to carry out a genocide that has killed more than 30,000, injured more than 70,000, and displaced more than 2 million Palestinians.
Let us breathe for the martyrs, their sacred bodies;
breathe for the the resistors, their sacred bodies;
breathe for those standing firmly in solidarity, their sacred bodies;
breathe for the impacted plants, animals, waters, soils, and ecosystems, their sacred bodies.
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The violence of modernity is not new, nor contained. At its core, the Israeli genocide against Palestinians is a white supremacist imperialist project fueled primarily by Christian Zionists. It is intrinsically linked to the rise of incarceration rates, police violence and ableist initiatives meant to eradicate indigenous, Black and disabled people here on Turtle Island and desensitize us to mass death. It is a violence linked to the extractive practices of late stage capitalism and the resulting climate chaos disproportionately impacting the Global South.
It is time to put it all to rest.
And here is the thing: in order to win, we need to feel.
This is not news to the powers fueling systems of domination. For centuries, white supremacist christian imperialists have worked tirelessly to disrupt somatic lineages and make it unsafe, untimely and unfamiliar to feel our sensations. This is because they are threatened when we have fluency in the language of our bodies, just as they are threatened by all indigenous languages. The language of sensation that lives within us demands the end of all colonial violence.
If sensation is language and feeling is listening, then somatic practice is our commitment to reclamation and fluency.
Attuning to the language of sensation has the capacity to move our individual and collective body toward heightened perceptivity, sensitivity, courage, perseverance and discernment. Our cells can relate so widely across time and space, that feeling sensation can root us deeper into secure relationship with our liberatory lineages, interdependence and temporality (the promise of constant change). This relationship to sensation has the power to revolutionize our personal and collective responses to poly/crisis by fortifying our foundations to support our full and relentless presence to liberation struggles.
Breathe. Notice what arises for you.
This is why we practice. We will not be desensitized.
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As enticing as it may sound to embrace the return to feeling sensation for the sake of revolution, I know it can be rather fear-inducing to actually commit to somatic practice. Winds of unyielding pain, horror and sorrow are sweeping through our collective consciousness faster than ever before. Many of us are experiencing some combination of isolation, paralysis, exhaustion, dissociation, outrage, hopelessness and over-extension. Of course, it is scary to consider feeling from this place. I see you, I love you and I deeply respect you. You are experiencing such reasonable responses to a world on fire.
Rooted in this shared experience, I often hear questions like: Can we afford to slow down? Will I survive my insecurities? What will we find, but pain, discomfort, grief, shame and terror? Will I be able to maintain my capacity to show up for loved ones and for movement if I feel? What it we don’t find the hope we need? How could I risk diverting my attention from crisis response?
They are so relevant in a world in which the level of devastation and pressures of time scarcity are undeniably crushing. I’m grateful to those of you posing them.
I want you to notice the oscillations between “I” and “we” in those questions. See if you might let it sink in - even just a little more - that you are not alone.
The truth is we cannot bear the trouble of feeling in times of collective pain by our selves, but we can do it together. We have enormous capacity. Similarly, we cannot stop all other action to practice attuning to our individual sensations all at once, but we can trust that it is safe to take turns with frequency. There are enough of us. Feeling for sensation becomes more tenable - dare I say inspiring - in reciprocal relationships that centers the pace of trust and supportive witness. You can build this with your human and more-than-human kin. Finding a group or practitioner can be a wonderful way to start, as can finding a beloved tree or creek.
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In Ode to Your Body
The body you inhabit is a momentary vehicle. As sacred and temporary as any other life on Earth.
Might you slow, breathe, and notice your dignity. Contact the place in your core where your values live, imagine yourself protected by a stand of ancient trees, feel for your own mortality. Breathe again and let dignity move inside of you.
You are here as a fiber in the present thread of our transgenerational and transnational struggle for eco-social liberation; for that I am grateful. I know these months and years have been all but easy. May you re-member that you are - for now - in this sacred body. Perhaps it has been a while.
Feel for the edges of your skin.
The rise and fall of your breath.
The pulse of a greater life force moving through the channels inside of you.
This body of yours has evolved from a single-celled organism suspended in the sea to a sentient land animal with a multiplicity of intelligences. This body is built of a community of symbionts, crafted around the properties of water, moved by the cosmos, trusting of gravity, nourished by soils, attuned to an evolutionary mandate for collectivism. This body contains iron, magnesium and calcium that have built bodies before yours and will build others afterwards. This body has an incredible capacity to sense, adapt, imagine and dream. It is built of cells - storykeepers able to reveal the past, widely relate across species, heal wounds, be held accountable for the perpetration of violence, insist on liberation, and transmit new and old ways of being. This body contains a mysterious and undeniable vital force that weaves through us all and, when unimpeded, reaches towards complexity and richness. This body you inhabit for now - it is not alone and it is nothing short of awe-inducing.
Breathe again. How might you deepen into contact with the sacredness of your body for a moment? Is it with the weight of a hand, the lowering of eyelids, a sinking into the surface beneath you, the release of sound?
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Thank you for meeting me in practice and reflection today. Here is to our liberation!
