12 Somatics & Politics — Sumitra Rajkumar
Published January 16, 2018
Today we’re talking with Sumitra Rajkumar. We discuss what somatics is, the meaning (and common misinterpretation and misuse) of the concepts of trauma and trigger, the reality of this political moment, and holding the seeming contradictions of organizing, healing, head, and heart.
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Read the Transcript
Note: This episode was published under Irresistible’s previous name, Healing Justice Podcast.
About our guest
After twenty years of political education and youth-led documentary work, Sumitra Rajkumar is now a somatics practitioner and teacher under the auspices of generative somatics. She coaches organizers and cultural workers to address the impact of trauma in their lives and step into leadership and collective action. Sumitra works with organized groups to hone shared values and purpose, process conflict, and trust their power to move society towards justice. She believes in the creative, emotional, and intellectual capacities of human beings to become agents of radical, interdependent social movements. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is working on her first novel.
Resources
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk
Genome by Matt Ridley
The Physiology of Racist and Sexist Oppression by Shannon Sullivan
Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine
Healing Sex by Staci Haines
The Anatomy of Change by Richard Strozzi
Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman
The Feeling of What Happens by Anthony Damasio
Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert
And hey… the poem that talks about the “soft animal of the body” IS by Mary Oliver! It’s Wild Geese
Practice: Somatic Centering
Check out the corresponding practice to hear Sumitra guide you through a Somatic Centering practice that can be done anywhere, alone or in a group… and is one of the most fundamental building block tools of somatics, helping you to presence yourself fully in your life and in your work. You’ll need a place you can focus, and no supplies other than yourself for this practice. It can be done alone or in a group.
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