One of the real mindfucks of trauma is that it leaves its mark deeply within our bodies, but we don't really talk about that.

Some of the most effective grounding techniques for stress often involve coming into our bodies, but that often also means coming back into our trauma.

I've been doing a lot of body-based grounding work lately-- yoga, walking, pranayama, dinacharya-- to help manage the stress of the harassment, violence, and pandemic risk of the past half year or so.

At the same time, that continued discipline of coming back into and rooting my physical sense of being absolutely sets off physical triggers that bring back trauma.

The big one for me right now is the chronic pain of what seems to be a nerve damage injury to my hand/forearm from police leaving me in zipcuffs for an agonizingly long time after I got swept up in a curfew mass arrest during the uprisings.

That brings back a whole lot, not just the memories of gassing and watching my husband get shot by police but the sense of outrage and fear and pain and helplessness of the arrest itself.

It's there right with me every downward dog I do.

Our trauma is there when we brush against ourselves and remember how and where we were or weren't touched.

It's there in the weight many survivors put on in an unconscious effort to insulate ourselves from future attack.

Grounding ourselves in physical reality and our physical presence is one of the most powerful tools we have for breaking stressful loops of anxious thought.

At the same time, we find sometimes that anxious thought was a distraction from other, deeper pain.

I don't think I could lean as deeply into developing a physical grounding practice if I wasn't already working with a therapist I trusted.

As effective as it is for managing anxiety, it takes me back into spaces that are scary to navigate without guidance.

(For what it's worth, for other folks hitting this stumbling block, breath awareness practice is the water that helps erode those blocks in the moment, even as I know I'm going to need to process it more deeply later. For me at least, it's a path through.)

I'm sharing this for a few reasons.

One is, it took me a while to recognize what was happening, exactly.

To understand it wasn't that my practice was *causing* pain, just unearthening it by promoting (needed) body awareness.

The somatic aspects of trauma really aren't something we talk about much, unless it's literal injury.

It's easier to talk about coming into awareness of my zipcuff injury than to talk about sexual trauma-related weight gain.

We're taught to feel shame around somatized trauma.

So, I'm hoping it's useful for folks who feel like they've "failed" at using physical grounding tactics manage this incredibly stressful time we're in to hear that it isn't failure.

Traumatized people have minefields in our bodies.

It's not failure to dodge the bombs.

I'm hoping it's useful for those same folks to hear strategies I've found useful to navigate those minefields-- breath awareness, complementary therapy, awareness of the mines' existence-- as potential ways to find their way to making physical grounding work for them.

Another thing is, I really want folks who aren't consciously managing old traumas to understand why it's important to accomodate a diverse set of stress management techniques in workplaces/communities and not be prescriptivist on physical strategies.

And finally, I want to name that the more oppressed someone is, the more likely it is they've experienced deep and lasting trauma.

I want to name that this is *another* way that oppression compounds and limits access and wellness for those closest to that pain.

So.

Show empathy to yourself.

Show empathy to others.

Don't judge yourself if physically grounding self-care is setting off more than it soothes, and don't assume physical stress management techniques work for everyone.

We are in such a deep mess and it is going to urgently require folks to be locating their capacity and stepping into it, demanding justice with a militancy that's unfamiliar and uncomfortable for most people raised in the United States.

We need to give ourselves and others permission/time/space to figure out which stress management techniques work, to show ourselves and others compassion when it turns out that certain "stress management" techniques can highlight traumatic stress even as it relieves other stress.

Solidarity with everyone else still figuring out their self-care.

It's a process.