Disgust is a VITAL emotion that serves as a protective and helpful force for our personal transformation. Disgust can transform our views and beliefs, affect our digestive tract, cause shame when turned toward the self, and often blocks us from working with past...
Power, Privilege and Systems of Oppression
How do we make collective changes to heal traumatized brains, to serve social justice and collective liberation?
What is the connection between interpersonal neurobiology, trauma healing, and creating emancipatory spaces for bridge building and healing?
Below are some resources that begin to apply what we know about how individuals’ brains are impacted by trauma to systemic patterns of oppression and injustice, in order to serve peace, collective well-being and trauma healing at a planetary level.
Understanding Systemic and Collective Trauma
Once we understand how individual nervous systems respond to trauma, we can apply those understandings to larger bodies (family systems, cultural systems, political systems). When we allow ourselves to zoom out and think systemically, we can take steps toward...
Reclaiming our Bodies from Patriarchy and Inner Oppression
I spoke recently with Kris Steinnes on her Voices of Women podcast about patriarchy and the inner oppression we experience as we are socialized into systems of western culture. Patriarchy is not something that only impacts women. In cultures where patriarchy is the...
White Supremacy, Shame and Unconscious Contracts
We believe we enter into healing our trauma as individuals. But trauma is not individual, it is collective. Similarly, our healing is collective. As a part of my work healing trauma, I speak about both the personal and the systemic.We are living in strange times....
The Neuroscience of Privilege, Power and Status
Understanding how our brains operate in relation to power, privilege and status is important if we wish to build a world that works for all. This article gives an overview of the brain tendencies we have in relationship to groups, and provides remedies to counteract the automatic labor-saving devices of our human brains (which often prevent us from seeing the fullness of others, and our own, humanity).