Racial Transparency in the Embodied Therapeutic Encounter

This presentation – existential and experiential – addresses the persistence of race in the therapeutic encounter. The intention is to examine tensions between the following somatic time-spaces: 1) the resonant, intimate, reciprocating field that is a focus in embodied therapeutic work; and 2) the broader, historic colonial field within which such resonant intimacy exists. Drawing from Frantz Fanon’s understanding of race as hierarchical recognition that roots the colonial dynamic, and Judith Butler’s treatment of gender as a norming process brought to life through repeated interactions, we consider the danger in neglecting sanctioned, racialized binds/dependencies that occur between/among same and different identities in therapy. To this end, addressed is the importance of continuous, relational tracking of the ‘decontextualized’ projections that make-up "the water", as Menakem highlights, the effects of which repeatedly center white supremacy in the therapeutic narrative. Explored is a layered, somatic practice that can track, in real time, 1) racisms that are expressed and embodied in the therapeutic relational field, and 2) beatific, somatic states of connection that dialogue with what is unspoken in the therapeutic field. This practice presupposes mature, secure attachment in the therapeutic relationship and racial discomfort capacity experience by both practitioner/therapist and client, alike. The presentation shares tools with social justice-informed workers that can support transparent, responsible, spacious holding of our violent histories, as well as our somatic participation in their slow, messy unfolding. And, we not only consider the practice of reciprocal historic repair, but the therapeutic field becomes a space for imagining and enacting the potentiality in mutual unboundedness.