Unwinding the Body of Racism
Since restrictions are slowly, systematically lifting in Australia three weeks ago, I have received exactly three massages. Yes, nearly a massage a week. Spoiled. Spoiled. Spoiled. And 100% okay with it.
This past Sunday, when Hymy was working on my lower back and butt, she noticed something, something that I had never really paid attention to...
As a former Pilates instructor, I know you’ve got a lot of muscles in your butt. You’ve got the big bad boys that everyone knows about - gluteus maximus, medius, and minimus.
But then, underneath those, there are five other smaller muscles, like your piriformis, and obturator externus, and other funny-sounding Latin ones that make you sound like a smarty-pants when you say them.
It’s these smaller, lesser-known muscles that sometimes get so tense you don’t even notice them anymore...
...Until you do.
They’re so deep and so used to being wound so tight, that you don’t even realize you’ve got an annoying ache in your ass.
It isn’t until you slowly, deeply get a good massage - like neuromuscular therapy or acupressure - that you realize just how deep and how tight these muscles are, like a violin string that’s about to snap.
It’s grown numb to the pressure.
It’s grown numb to its own lack of blood flow.
It’s grown numb to the pain.
You don’t intend to go numb to it.
You don’t even realize it when you do.
But as you go about your day, forging ahead, you’re not really paying attention to those deep muscles below the layer of solid surface muscles.
As you slowly allow them to release - I figure I’ve got about 3 more massages before they do - they can be achy sore, and they remind you constantly, daily, of that pain that you didn’t know you had in your butt.
...Until you did know. And then you can’t unknow what you know and know you are aware of until you know something new, you know?
COVID was like a massage for the pace of the world.
Suddenly we were thrown on the table without a place to be, “Stay there.”
For some, it threw us on the table of focus - hunkered down, with laser intention on purpose.
For others, it threw us into awareness of all the things that we’d grown numb to - marriages that weren’t working, businesses partners that were out of alignment, paths that were no longer on purpose, beliefs that we’d tried to blaze past without taking a moment to acknowledge them
...or question why they were there in the first place?
Who put them there? And how are they serving us to move forward?
All the tightness we’d grown numb to carrying around was there, being massaged out in the worldwide two months of stillness.
Personally.
Relationally.
Country-wide.
Worldwide.
It’s no wonder as a world we were awakened to the aches of systemic racism and of Victorian-age educational systems that are no longer serving the empathic, creative, empowered, freedom-seeking awakening of the world.
Now is the time to sit in the discomfort of change as a culture.
Because even when it’s a good change, like a tight muscle unwinding and releasing from years of numbness, there is ache, there is discomfort, there is course-correction.
In the body, when one muscle has been so wound tight, it’s usually causing overcompensation - meaning it’s not allowing for other muscles in the body to do their job. So other muscles, that should be able to support the tight-muscle, have been stretched, and ignored and have not had the opportunity to strengthen to keep the body aligned.
We haven’t built them up. They haven’t CONSCIOUSLY been strengthened.
To fully release and realign it’s a two-step process…
One letting go requires keeping yourself at the table, digging in,, and holding the space for new solutions to arise through the knotted fibers. The muscle that has been wound so tight, trying to dominate the others, needs to chill the eff out and relax.
It still will have a job to do - just like all the other muscles in the body - but it needs to stop thinking it needs to compensate for the other muscles. It doesn’t.
We must do the work to unwind generations of overly-taught muscles that have gone numb to the pain they are causing to the rest of the body.
This is what has been happening now - an awakening to the overcompensation of certain white “muscles.”
Unwinding 400+ years of a muscle that has been wound too tight and dominating for so long will take time.
Simultaneously, we also need to focus on strengthening the other muscles of the body.
CONSCIOUSLY building them up, supporting them, and making them stronger.
This is black lives matter. This is people of color.
These are the “muscles” of our human body that have been discounted, ignored, rejected, and left strained and overly stretched at the expense of the overcompensating muscle.
Strengthen the muscles of our human body by buying from BIPOC businesses.
Work out your muscle of voting for people who support BIPOC equality.
Stretch your muscle by stretching your dollar to donate to BIPOC charities and causes.
A body realigns when all the muscles are working in collaboration with each other to strengthen and support the structure of the body as a whole.
A body is able to lithely move when ALL the muscles are both flexible and strong.
Change will make us sore.
But it will also make us strong and aligned as a human race.
Remember, your reign is now.
P.S. If you didn’t catch our live podcast interview with my friend and fellow Queen, Lia Valencia Key inside our Crown Yourself community on racism, holding space for tough conversations, and leading with light and joy. PERIOD.
This is the second time I’ve had Lia on the podcast, and the first time we’ve done it live, and I am so honored to have had this conversation with such a strong, confident, joyful human.
I cannot wait to hear your thoughts inside our community.