Noticing our shame is painful. It becomes a tremendous opportunity when we can use it to create what we need.
In the recent years, I took several deep dives (deep dives don’t even begin to describe it actually, more like deep flailing) into various socially constructed identities (the race and the giftedness and the sensitivity and the trauma and the neurodivergence and the queerness). I read books on the topics. I listened to podcasts. I deconstructed all of my life experiences and how they were shaped by the needs I had that weren’t met based on these identities. I deconstructed all of my life experiences and how my suffering was shaped by my “differences” – and how I was treated based on those differences.
And I found myself flailing in a hole of shame. Why? Because when we focus singularly on the socially constructed identity and how society has managed yet again to forget our people and can’t meet the needs of any group we are a part of, we feel powerless. In this culture and indeed any hierarchical culture, systems that dominate deflect the cause of problems onto individuals or select groups. In our cases, every group is blamed. We are told implicitly that our problems are the result of our lack of action. We internalize being the complete cause of our suffering because we believe that we have the responsibility to change it. In other words, when our brain thinks that we are responsible for changing our situation, sometimes it can assume that we are also the cause of the problem and should be ashamed for not being able to fix it.
The problem with reading so much about the poor outcomes or the suffering of people within our various “identities” is that this eschews focus on the conditions that were overwhelming. It does not point to what I call the “default toxicity” of our early microsystems, our daily interpersonal settings. These stats and reports often don’t remind us that there was never anything wrong with us, but with the way spaces (these microsystems) did not meet our needs.
In addition, statistics and facts about the poor outcomes of our groups don’t point to the future, but that is what our brain does. Psychologists and statisticians encourage us to predict the future based on the past. They encourage us to believe that things must stay the same because they rely on linear thinking. Statistics and facts actually do not point to the inevitable suffering of any group, but they point to the systematic fact that environments aren’t meeting our groups’ needs— and therefore we must create new environments. When we read about the current state of affairs, we must remember that we are reading about perhaps the past and possibly the present. We are not reading about the future. When we read the words of a misguided psychologist, demographic, or sociologist, we can elect not to believe that their observation of the past reflects the future. The responsible observer does not predict the future. The observer who is powerful might also couch their observation in what is by framing their observation – that statistics and facts about our suffering are not a fate or sentencing. They are an observation of unmet needs that we can be grateful for, because then we can respond to our needs. We can redirect our energy away from learning about the inherent and inevitable suffering of our groups and use that knowledge to actually create the contexts, environments, and relationships that meet people’s needs.
That which we are most ashamed of, powerless about, provides an opening – a place that we can create spaces where we feel powerful.
Rather than only focusing on the past or present outcomes of our groups, we can also focus on the aspects of the spaces we’ve grown up in (our microsystems) that actually produced these outcomes. In doing so, we can become rigorous observers of that which we must change as we redesign our spaces.
So, many of us are understanding that we have gone so much of our lives believing that there was something wrong with us – when in reality, it was our spaces that were not meeting our needs. When we enter spaces that are not a fit for our needs, spaces where our body is overwhelmed, we can call that space toxic to our body. Because systems of disconnection and conditioning pervade our society, many spaces have “by default” not met our needs and, therefore, have been toxic to us. Taking on the toxicities of all spaces we have inhabited through our lives, these toxicities “clog up” our bodies, often leading us to be “chronically overwhelmed”. This process of recounting the toxicities of our spaces is critical. Collectively and rigorously seeing the “default toxicity” within our past spaces (what I call “microsystems of disconnection”) provides us with intimate understandings of space elements that we can use to design or redesign our spaces of deep connection.
And there is so much more that we are learning we must unravel. What we often overlook in our spaces when we talk about designing spaces of deep connection where our needs are met is that which is much less obvious, the energetic space. To see all toxicities contributing to our spaces, we must be able to “see” and measure all of the energy of spaces (e.g., mental toxins created by racism, patriarchy; toxicities in our light, sound, air; patterns of disconnection that individuals bring with them). Fully seeing all toxicities, we can begin to understand where exactly our spaces (and our bodies) have been “clogged up”. Then, we can begin to experiment with moving that energy and unclogging our spaces (and our bodies).
Collective (movement) practice, which focuses on how we collectively move energy, then, is a powerful approach to designing spaces of deep connection. It is an often-hidden, ancient approach that many of us are seeking, studying, or drawn to, though we call it different things. I define collective (movement) practice as the collective practice of moving physical energy in a space to create the energetic conditions necessary for deep connection to be possible. I believe there is gold in the rigorous study of collective (movement) practice and these ancient wisdoms are here to teach us how to do our Work of designing spaces of deep connection. As we step into our full power to build spaces of deep connection that meet our needs, as we slowly uncover ancient wisdoms of collective (movement) practice, we all deserve the opportunity to learn the truth and the power of collective (movement) practice. Zooming out, we can see that, within this study of collective (movement) practice, there are thousands and thousands of years of ancient science, art, design, culture, and medicine guiding us as we build our spaces of deep connection. May we find each other, study together, learn together. May we fully step into our power as builders of spaces of deep connection. Join us at our Open House to collectively practice seeing the “default toxicity” of the microsystems of (dis)connection we’ve left behind and to co-learn, reflect, and share about how we use collective (movement) practice to design/redesign spaces of deep connection.
These ideas and questions are central to Raw Movement, an approach to inquiring about and experimenting with co-creating spaces of deep connection through collective (movement) practice. If you’re in the practice of creating grounding, deep connection, home, family, and desire to experiment with co-creating spaces of deep connection, find out more about Raw Movement at: www.rawmovement.org.
This writing is a part of my Conversations on Deep Connection series. If you’re also in the practice of creating grounding, deep connection, home, family and would like to get notified of new conversations, click here to get notified of new conversations.