Why Black Healing Needs to be different: creating spaces that truly support us
Estimated reading time 7 minutes | Song: Umi Says by Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def)
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Tonight, I am heading with my dear Sister friend to a gathering created for Black women in mind, led by the Minister of Rest herself, Tricia Hersey . Tricia is the author of Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto and her latest, We Will Rest! And tonight she is here in Charleston sharing her work with us. Community and healing look different for Black folks. Our shared history and experiences have shaped us and our path to liberation doesn’t align with mainstream narratives because we are usually considered an afterthought. This is evident in the recent ways that Walmart has decided to not only support and fund Project 2025, while rolling back DEI Initiatives while playing in our faces by offering our nostalgic love for Black culture and movies (make sure you read the comments) as the bandaid invitation to come back and spend our Black dollars there. In fact, Assata Shakur told us, “To be included in the mainstream fight or struggle we often have to water down our messages and shape-shift it for narratives that aren’t ours, often removing the very unique struggle we are fighting for.” Our lived experiences, our traumas and our ways and methods of addressing both historical and ongoing oppression are unique to us and require healing spaces without the white gaze.
“To be included in the mainstream fight or struggle we often have to water down our messages and shape-shift it for narratives that aren’t ours, often removing the very unique struggle we are fighting for.””
I am not new to the work of creating spaces centered on the lived Black experience, when I started out teaching yoga this was always my focus. To create spaces and classes that invited more people that look like me, not to do things or experience healing in the ways dominant culture has commodified, but in an authentic way that resonates for us culturally. When I created Transformation Yoga, it was with Black people, my people, my community in mind. Now that I have pivoted my work, I am still serving our needs as a community, just in a different way and no longer afraid to own who I am and take up the much needed space Black people need in healing and wellness. We need spaces rooted in cultural understanding, ancestral practices and mutual support.
When I became a yoga teacher, there were 22 people in my first 200-hour training with me and only 2 of us were Black women. This never prohibited me from practicing because growing up in Colorado, I was used to being the only or the rare second chocolate drop in a yoga class. This propelled me more because I knew it was time for me to share this practice with my community but even challenge the idea that Black people do not practice yoga. When I completed my yoga teacher training, I knew I was moving back to the mainland and in particular the very religious Bible-belt of the South, South Carolina. I knew it would not be an easy feat to share this practice but something I would do anyway. In fact, I made a list of every studio in Charleston and called each one asking if they were seeking any new yoga teachers and I didn’t make any mention of being Black. Of the 33 I called, only one even was interested in listening to me long enough to learn my story and offer the opportunity to try out. 1. ONE. That was not going to stop me from what I know I’ve been called to do but it is why I stay true to what my work is, serving my BLACK community. This does not mean other people of various lived experiences and identities are not welcomed in classes and spaces I create, they just are not created to center their lived experience. You can hear more about this in my video in The Village: White Women Taking Over for 2020.
Here is why mainstream spaces for wellness and healing miss the mark for Black people: there is a lack of cultural competence, the harmful toxic positivity and/or spiritual bypassing that ignores racial trauma and stress, the promotion of dominant cultures wellness, beauty, fitness and spiritual trends and the failure to address communal care.
Cultural Competence
First, if you haven’t I encourage you to check out this video of my dear friend and licensed therapist, Gabrielle Morton. In this conversation which was the first part of my series ‘Waking Up Wellness 2020,’ we discussed the history of mental health and the DSM-5 and their outlook and outcomes on diagnosing mental health overall but also within the Black community. It is not merely enough, to offer Black folks to ‘Get Therapy”, when there are very few providers of color and even less providers that have the cultural competence and understanding that translates into their work in mental health spaces.
It is true that our world is a microcosm and our smaller social groups and organizations are bit sized macrocosms that have a tendency to duplicate the systems in large, dominant culture. What does all of that even mean? Let’s continue with the example of mental healthcare because it is an easy example to paint parallels to yoga or wellness. Before the ability to receive mental health support, many are unable to pay out of pocket or do not have adequate health insurance that covers mental health care. This is merely one of the first obstacles to Black people receiving the mental healthcare they deserve. Then image getting through the red tape many insurance companies require and the paperwork process, taking time off from work or rearranging family schedules to make sure you can be there, only to sit before a licensed therapist, social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist, only for them to misdiagnose you with paranoia because in your lived experience, you are used to becoming tense about being followed or even pulled-over by police. A provider that has cultural competency and understand may identify that for Black people in America, the history of the police and police violence is not an expression of paranoia or schizophrenia but a history of violence and terrorism due to their race.
Remembering that healthcare or mental healthcare is but a macro of the micro, we can see how Black people will be measured and treated based on the overall systemic oppression weaved into dominant culture, especially within the U.S. Before even stepping into wellness or holistic spaces, what picture comes to mind? Perhaps the overly marketed able-bodied, thin figured, white or racially ambiguous woman wearing yoga clothing and standing in tree pose effortlessly with her foot placed on her thigh? The messaging in marketing, yes even in wellness spaces reminds us often of who IS or who is NOT welcome in those spaces. This is not as easy as adding Black people to marketing pictures versus actually having them on staff as leaders to contribute more than diversity hires but to ensure these spaces are actually welcoming to Black (and other people of various racial identities).
Culturally competency in wellness spaces for Black people looks like our cultural customs, norms and understanding being welcomed and understood. It means honoring we are a deeply spiritual and religious people AND often we have experienced religious trauma and harm so inviting us to chant something we do not understand in a language we cannot interpret may not come across as welcoming or trauma-informed as it is thought to be. Having an understanding of this may actually offer the ability to get creative with how and what ways to share mantra, Bhakti or other wellness practices.
Spiritual Bypassing + Toxic Positivity Around Racial Trauma
Raise your hand if you’ve ever walked into a wellness or yoga space and saw something mentioning ‘leave all the negativity or BS at the door”? Yeah, me too. Except for many Black people coming into wellness spaces addressing the ways dominant culture racializes and causes harm to Black people is not ‘being negative’ it is literally our lived experience. There is no positive way to address or acknowledge being stopped by police yet again for ‘fitting the description’ or the microaggressions we receive when someone says, “YOU, do yoga?”
In fact Taisa Lih, challenges the birthplace of those sentiments addressing white privilege and spiritual bypassing in yoga spaces. As recent as this article may be, in my experience (I’ve practiced yoga since high school for 20+ years now) these same sentiments were expressed to me before the use of social media for representation.
Dominant Culture Ideologies
You may or may not like this thought process, however I have to acknowledge and address this here. As we have seen with the recent election and the push back surrounding Kamala Harris, it is liberation focused to understand the nuance that Black faces in high spaces will not save us. Black faces in high places will not get us free or give us the collective liberation we are seeking. This means even in some Black created and led spaces, it does not guarantee our safety or freedom.
Why?
The same reason stated above. No one that is a healer is expected to be 100% permanently and total healed, healing does not work like that BUT just because it is a life-long journey, it does not give healers, leaders, teachers and facilitators permission to carry forward the ways they have been harmed, traumatized and indoctrinated into dominant culture beliefs. It is not healing to be in a Black led space that practices erasure of First Nations and Indigenous people to uplift Black people. It is not healing to be led by Black professionals that utilize classism to create a separation between those that can have and share the knowledge versus those that are ‘poor’ and in need of ‘saving’. Those are still dominant culture ideologies wrapped in diashki, smudged in sage and aligning its misaligned chakras.
We deserve more and deeper from our leaders and teachers that encourage us to return to the essence of who we are, of who our people and lineages were before colonization. Our ancestors didn’t need the degree or certification to know what herbs, rest and the laying of hands could benefit our people. They didn’t ask for social media likes or followers to determine if their work, werked or not. It was accessible because we all had access to it, it came naturally and was found in our connection to stillness and nature.