Twerking to ascend trauma
Originally published 2/10/21
by mage moxxie + 2 min read
Place a hand on your low belly, below your navel.
What do you notice?
Ideally, you can feel your breath inflating your stomach. If this isn’t the case for you, don’t worry. Although this kind of full, deep breathing is our natural respiratory pattern, only 5% of us do it.
Healthy, robust breath requires an uninhibited engagement of the pelvic floor. Trouble is, most of us are packing down there— in more ways than one.
The hips, and everything in between, are hotspots for unprocessed trauma, especially of the sexual nature. This region is over-stimulated from the incessant clenching and hyperarousal associated with trauma, and under-stimulated from trauma’s dissociative effects.
Journalistic prudence dictates that I bombard you with statistics like the exorbitant rates of sexual violence, improper mental health care, and transgenerational trauma affecting the Black community. But, alas, I have no interest in adding to the ubiquitous mass of trauma porn that has been plaguing the internet since, the early 2000’s, but certainly the murders of innocent Black American citizens. Chances are, you’re depressed enough as it is so, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go straight into the solution.
We need something that both strengthens and relaxes the pelvic area, so that we can accentuate our breathing while warding off pelvic floor dysfunction and other stress-related diseases. Why not opt for our African ancestors' tried and true embodied healing practice? Dance.
Although they didn’t call it twerking, African tribes busted it down in a way not so different from the way we do up in the club— except they were even more wild. Their erratic yet synergistic movements were life-affirming, even when they danced to mourn the dead.
Dancing has always been about freedom from, and celebration of, the physical form. Sangomas (African shamans) use dance to enter into altered state of consciousness, also known as trance states.
These clinically described “non-ordinary states of consciousness” give us access into our ever-elusive subconscious, trauma’s domain. From here, we can process and express our emotions on a more visceral level, without any of the usual inhibitions and distractions.
Trance states are a quick way to shed the weight of socialization, which we need— desperately. All of the controlling, shame-based messages we’ve internalized are blocking our body’s ability to heal itself. For example, the natural way we release stress hormones is by shaking— but that's not socially acceptable so, instead, we let trauma accumulate in our bodies.
But not anymore! There are groups gathering intentionally all over the globe to twerk as a way to heal, together. Practitioners of more formal systems, like the Tension & Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) and The Resilience Toolkit, have taught thousands of people how to activate the body’s involuntary shaking reflex, the “therapeutic tremor”. Other healing modalities that incorporate shaking, like Kundalini Yoga and Qi Gong, are also gaining clout.
As the trailblazers of shaking as healing, African Americans will continue sustaining our power, health, and independence by throwing it in a circle. And the haters can stay mad.