The Intersection of Race, Trauma, and Embodiment

When we talk about trauma and the body, it is essential that we do not leave race out of the conversation. For Black, Indigenous, and racialized people, trauma is not only individual or relational — it is also systemic, historical, and ongoing. It lives not only in the nervous system, but also in the social body: in institutions, policing, medical systems, media, and everyday interactions.

This trauma can shape how racialized people experience their bodies — not just in terms of pain or stress, but also in visibility, survival, resistance, and power. In this article, we’ll explore how race-based trauma intersects with embodiment, and what it means to reconnect with the body as an act of healing, sovereignty, and reclamation.

Racial Trauma Is Body Trauma

Racial trauma is often misunderstood as something that happens only through obvious acts of violence or hate. But for many racialized individuals, trauma is cumulative — a slow burn of daily microaggressions, coded language, institutional barriers, and being perceived as a threat for simply existing.

These experiences trigger real physiological responses in the body, including:

• Hypervigilance (always scanning for safety)

• Shallow breathing and muscle tension

• Gastrointestinal issues

• Chronic inflammation and fatigue

• Sleep disruption

• Numbness or dissociation

Research shows that chronic exposure to racism directly impacts health outcomes. Black women in particular face higher rates of hypertension, autoimmune disease, and maternal mortality — not due to biology, but due to weathering: the cumulative toll of racism on the body over time.

The Body as a Site of Surveillance and Resistance

For racialized folks, the body is often both hyper-visible and hyper-regulated. Black and Brown bodies are policed, exoticized, dehumanized, and pathologized. This affects how individuals move through public space, how they express emotion, and even how they breathe or hold themselves.

This creates a painful contradiction:

• You are told you are too much — too angry, too loud, too visible.

• And you are told you are not enough — not professional enough, not safe enough, not human enough.

Over time, this conditioning leads to body shame, self-erasure, and internalized oppression. But the body can also be a site of resistance — a place where ancestral wisdom, cultural practice, movement, voice, and rest reclaim space in a world that tries to deny it.

Intergenerational and Ancestral Trauma

Racial trauma is not just personal — it is often generational. The impacts of colonization, slavery, displacement, war, and genocide don’t end when the event ends. They echo through the nervous systems, behaviours, and bodies of those who survive.

Epigenetics research has begun to show that trauma can even alter gene expression — meaning that what our ancestors experienced can shape how we respond to stress today.

But so can ancestral resilience: storytelling, rhythm, food, ritual, spirituality, music, and dance. These are also stored in the body, and they are powerful tools for reconnection and reclamation.

Embodiment as a Political and Healing Practice

In a world that tells racialized people to shrink, assimilate, or perform in order to survive, being in your body — fully and unapologetically — is radical. Embodiment becomes a political act. It says:

My body is not a problem to fix.My breath matters.My pace matters.My pleasure matters.My rest matters.

This isn’t always easy. For many survivors of racial trauma, returning to the body means returning to pain. It can feel unsafe to slow down or feel. That’s why embodiment work for racialized folks must be:

• Consent-based

• Culturally affirming

• Trauma-informed

• Collectively supported

We heal through bodywork, but also through community, ritual, and spaces where our bodies are safe to just be.

Practices for Reclaiming the Body

For racialized individuals, body-based healing might include:

• Grounding in nature — connecting with land, water, or ancestry

• Cultural movement — dance, martial arts, drumming, walking

• Breathwork — not as a performance of calm, but as a return to self

• Rest — honouring exhaustion as legitimate and real

• Touch — with consent, through massage, self-touch, or community rituals

• Collective healing — group circles, story sharing, or art

• Joy — cultivating pleasure without justification

Embodiment doesn’t have to look like stillness or mindfulness. Sometimes it looks like rage. Sometimes it looks like rhythm. Sometimes it looks like laughing so hard your whole body shakes. That is embodiment, too.

Final Thoughts

The conversation about trauma and the body cannot be complete without a conversation about race. Racialized trauma is not just emotional — it’s embodied. And healing requires more than individual tools. It requires community, justice, and space for the body to be held in its full complexity.

You are not too much. You are not broken. Your body is a survivor. And it is worthy of care, slowness, and liberation — always.

Ardine Bondonga is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) at Catharsis Psychology and Psychotherapy.