3 Ways to Decolonize Your Wellness
3 Ways to Decolonize Your Wellness
Written by Bethany Leal, Social Media Ambassador
BIPOC have been dealing with colonization for hundreds of years.
As we experience the diasporic push and pull between our homelands to Western society, there is another simultaneous push and pull between our traditional healing practices and colonized healing practices that might leave us feeling jaded on what to do about our mental health and well-being. On Therapinxy Thursdays, I connected with three of our directory members–two therapists and a coach and consultant–who demonstrated how we can decolonize our wellness.
1. Listen to Your Body
Scan your body from head-to-toe with a somatic awareness exercise.
There are a handful of practitioners on the Therapin*y directory who offer somatic treatments. This can be done by visiting our directory and clicking on the “Treatment” filter. As you scroll down the list, select “Somatic Therapy (Body-Centered Therapy)” and you will find a list of practitioners in your area offering somatic treatment. On Therapinxy Thursdays Instagram Live, we recently met with therapist and practice owner Monica Ramil, who opened up our session with this somatic awareness exercise–feel free to try it for yourself:
Get into a comfortable position and close your eyes or lower your gaze.
Notice where you are holding tension.
Think about a sad moment.
Notice where the tension is held. What comes up for you here?
Now, think about a happy moment.
Observe the changes in your body. What moment or feeling is evoked?
Reflect on your experience doing this exercise.
Our body knows its triggers and its needs– where the physical and the spiritual and the emotional intersect.
In just seven minutes, I learned so much from this exercise. At first, it was difficult to sit still. When thinking about a sad moment, I felt pressure and heaviness - explaining that the heavy weight on my shoulders reminds me of the pressure I feel as a second-generation Filipina/x/o-Canadian. The idea that I need to be successful in order to satisfy expectations from my elders and validate the sacrifices they made for me to “live a better life.” Because of this pressure, I find myself overworked to the point of burnout and wish I could spend more time with my loved ones, intentionally and with a clear mind that isn’t just thinking about “work, work, work” all the time.
When shifting to a happy memory, my shoulders instantly dropped and my head allowed itself to fall where it needed to be. This is because I thought about quality time with my loved ones–particularly in childhood–where the pressure to achieve wasn’t so heavy and life was all about being grounded in the present. I came to an epiphany that in order to feel rest in my body and groundedness, I needed to make time to ground myself in good company and unplug from work–even if it was just for a few moments by engaging in a quick exercise.
“Capitalism, patriarchy, and colonization: these systems serve to disconnect our body and name another population or demographic as the authorities of us.” Ramil continues that “somatic wisdom and connecting to the body is a way to decolonize.” After scanning my body from head-to-toe, I was able to feel where I was holding tension as we did this scan; mostly a clenching in my jaw and a heavy weight on my shoulders. However, I was also able to identify what lightens tension in my body; groundedness, moments of stillness, and time with my loved ones.
“I might not know that I’m stressed and feel like I’m in a good mood but my jaw will be clenching and telling me something else is happening for me and to be curious about that.” – Monica Ramil
2. Observe Nature as a Tool for Healing & Justice
Connect your emotions with the elements
To explore nature as a tool for healing and justice in greater depth, I highly recommend that you connect with Raynelle Rino on the Therapin*y directory. “Healing Hikes”, founded by Rino, are private and intentional opportunities to heal through nature using a Radical Nature Framework.
“Colonization is something that humans have created so that they can take land and its people and control it so they can do whatever they want with the resources. That’s not something that happens naturally. When we say we need to decolonize, we’re talking about all those ways that we use our water, the way we consume our resources are not in balance, and there is some connection to a person or entity that is doing that because they want to control that resource.” Bay Area nature coach and consultant Raynelle Rino broke down colonization with regards to nature and our bodies; our bodies are exploited similar to how natural resources are exploited.
“In nature, everything is available to everyone and nobody owns anything. That’s the only way to keep the systems in balance and keep them running in the ways that they were before humans were here. We have to connect that to how we’re feeling now, especially when we’re feeling so exploited.”
“That’s a function of colonization on our bodies, so we have to roll it back and ask, ‘how do we not exploit?’ We have to find restorative strategies.” – Raynelle Rino
Rino’s approach of using nature as a tool for healing and justice does exactly that. Her practice of wellness is holistic, multidimensional, and blended with the ability to reconnect people with the nature within themselves. Rino highlights that “if we are nature, we have it all the time in our bodies. Nature mirrors our own capacity to self heal or find solutions to things that are unsustainable or imbalance. We have to understand and look at natural systems to find our way back home.” She referenced the elements: fire, water, air, earth, and how we can use these to describe the sensations in our bodies and how they relate to our emotions. For instance, fire as an expression of passion and sometimes, deep emotions like anger. Reflect: when you feel a certain emotion, what element comes to the forefront?
Not only does Rino’s practice connect clients with their emotions, but it also asks for permission and strengthens our connection to the land and the people who are the Indigenous, ancestral keepers of the land. In this process, our ancestors can come through with messages and guide us through the healing journey. She reminds us that traditional Filipina/x/o belief systems are animistic, meaning our ancestors can come through to us and bring us messages through animals. This reminder made me think about how loved ones and important messages have come through to me and my family through crows and moths; sometimes, to let us know that they are watching over us, and other times–to pave the way and light the path. The best way to connect with this animistic belief that we share with our ancestors is by observing them through nature. Reflect on your observations of nature and how animism shows up in your life, what animals or observances in nature have brought you ancestral messages?
3. Trust Your Intuition
Take your time and trust your gut in the healing process
Having a therapist like Robelle Church to help you identify, unpack, and dig deeper is critical to overcoming barriers to mental health and well-being. Connect with Church or her group practice, Wild Sage Therapy, via the Therapin*y directory, for an intuitive and understanding approach, or for services like EMDR & Brainspotting that can help identify what needs attention in your life.
As therapist and practice owner Robelle Church points out, “over generations, we have developed this intuition in order to be able to get water while we’re thirsty, hunt for food, sleep when we’re sleepy, so why wouldn’t we listen to our intuition in other aspects of our life?” She takes an intuitive approach to healing in tandem with therapeutic treatments like EMDR and Brainspotting as people know what’s best for them, “at the end of the day, you’ve known yourself longer than I’ll ever know you.” As a therapist, she works on clearing out surface-level stressors and then going deeper as a client finds stability.
“Over generations, we have developed this intuition in order to be able to get water while we’re thirsty, hunt for food, sleep when we’re sleepy, so why wouldn’t we listen to our intuition in other aspects of our life?” – Robelle Church LMFT
Western psychologists have colonized the idea of intuition in a way that leads us to believe that our innate knowing or feeling about a situation is entirely a negative emotional response; that we must always think rationally and ignore our instincts. While acting rationally can be very important in finding healthy solutions to an issue, it is equally important to acknowledge our intuition and where these responses are stemming from; as Church mentioned above, our intuition–which is harboured in the limbic system–is where our survival instincts live; the same instincts we share with our ancestors who knew not just the how and what, but when it was time to harvest, rest, gather with community, et cetera.
Trusting your intuition helps us not only understand what we need, but how long it will take us to heal from something, especially when it might be traumatic and require more time than other issues in our lives. There is a phenomenon among mental health and wellness “gurus” that we need to heal right now and fast. Do this [insert one-size-fits-all-solution here] and start living your best life today! Not only is this unsustainable, but it’s unrealistic. Sometimes, our trauma and stressors have been compounded over years and years, sometimes even our whole lives, so a quick fix just isn’t going to cut it. By using our intuition, we are able to come face-to-face with what our bodies, minds, and/or spirit needs in order to overcome challenges.
The Bottom-Line
Try different modalities of healing beyond western practices
What makes the Therapinxy community really special is how authentic it is; we’re not a community that tries to profit off of you in some neo-colonial way. Every Therapinxy practitioner I’ve had the pleasure of meeting really stresses the importance of finding what works best for you, even if it’s not with them in particular, unlike some “wellness gurus” who just want to sell you an expensive program that will claim to heal you entirely. Nah, we’re not about that life. We want you to take as much time as you need to heal and be mindful in reflecting on what does and doesn’t work for you. As Filipina/x/os, we know what it’s like to just not vibe with someone, despite their credentials, because they don’t see or understand the whole you. We also know what it’s like to feel stuck because we don’t have access to practitioners who will see and understand us. That’s why our directory offers so much variety and so many different modalities that can serve alone or complement each other in providing you with the care you need.