Summary of Staci Haines's The Politics of Trauma

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Somatics is the art of listening to your body and understanding what you feel. It helps you understand what you want and need, and it helps you develop self-knowledge and change.

#2 Somatics is a holistic methodology and theory of change that understands both personal and collective transformation through a radically different paradigm. It differs from approaches that say a change in your thinking will change your life, or a change in your language and framing will change everything.

#3 Somatics is the study of how our bodies interact with our experiences and environments. It understands people as a compilation of practices, which are mostly unconscious to us. We can’t not practice something, and we have an incredible capacity for change.

#4 The key aspects of somatic methodology include: somatic awareness, somatic opening, and somatic practices, within a social context and connected to land and spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669398950

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Insights on Staci Haines's The Politics of Trauma

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Somatics is the art of listening to your body and understanding what you feel. It helps you understand what you want and need, and it helps you develop self-knowledge and change.

#2

Somatics is a holistic methodology and theory of change that understands both personal and collective transformation through a radically different paradigm. It differs from approaches that say a change in your thinking will change your life, or a change in your language and framing will change everything.

#3

Somatics is the study of how our bodies interact with our experiences and environments. It understands people as a compilation of practices, which are mostly unconscious to us. We can’t not practice something, and we have an incredible capacity for change.

#4

The key aspects of somatic methodology include: somatic awareness, somatic opening, and somatic practices, within a social context and connected to land and spirit.

#5

Somatic awareness is the process of paying attention to and living inside of your sensations and aliveness. It allows you to connect with sensations and feel what you care about and want. It also allows you to perceive others and the environment around you.

#6

Dissociation, minimization, and numbing are normal responses to trauma, oppression, and difficult life experiences. They help us get away from something unpleasant or uncomfortable. Increasing our ability to allow for sensations and emotions helps us connect with ourselves and what matters most.

#7

Somatic opening is the process of deconstructing and transforming your habits and reactions. It allows you to access and transform your survival reactions, experiences, and emotions. It allows you to become more alive, purposeful, and powerful.

#8

There are many somatic processes that support somatic opening. The principles are: supporting the contraction, or blending; connecting more resilient places in the soma with more stressed or numb places; and allowing more aliveness to flow through the soma.

#9

Somatic bodywork is a powerful process for somatic opening. It allows us to work directly with the places in the soma that have held traumatic experiences or patterns for safety or are hypervigilant or numb.

#10

Somatic practices help build new skills and competencies that are relevant to what we care about. These practices allow these new skills to become embodied, so that we can count on them even under pressure.

#11

Somatic practices help develop new skills that become natural actions and habits. They allow us to begin to build a new shape aligned with our values and purpose.

#12

When we are talking about transformation, we are always talking about change within a social context. The social conditions we live under are shaping us, just as we are shaping them.

#13

Land and spirit are two forces that are beyond humans, and they shape us deeply. They are more lasting than what humans can do or create.

#14

Somatics helps us see the methodology of somatics as a whole. It helps us understand that any one of these components alone or separated from the others does not allow for embodied transformation. When integrated, these components support deep and actionable change that lasts.

#15

Somatics is the study of the body and how it functions. It is fascinated by embodiment, and believes that all bodies have aliveness, form, and the impulses to live, connect, and make sense of their world.

#16

The 10 Principles of Disability Justice are as follows: