The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice - Paperback

by Staci Haines (Author), Ai-Jen Poo (Foreword by), Richard Strozzi-Heckler (Afterword by)

An essential tool for healers, therapists, activists, and trauma survivors who are interested in a justice-centered approach to somatic transformation

The Politics of Trauma offers somatics with a social analysis. This book is for therapists and social activists who understand that trauma healing is not just for individuals--and that social change is not just for movement builders. Just as health practitioners need to consider the societal factors underlying trauma, so too must activists understand the physical and mental impacts of trauma on their own lives and the lives of the communities with whom they organize. Trauma healing and social change are, at their best, interdependent.

Somatics has proven to be particularly effective in addressing trauma, but in practice it typically focuses solely on the individual, failing to integrate the social conditions that create trauma in the first place. Staci K. Haines, somatic innovator and cofounder of generative somatics, invites readers to look beyond individual experiences of body and mind to examine the social, political, and economic roots of trauma--including racism, environmental degradation, sexism, and poverty. Haines helps readers identify, understand, and address these sources of trauma to help us bridge individual healing with social transformation.

Author Biography

STACI K. HAINES is the founder of generative somatics, a multiracial social justice organization bringing somatics to social and environmental justice leaders, organizations, and alliances. Staci is a senior teacher in the field of Somatics; she design and leads programs in Somatics and trauma, embodied leadership, and Somatics in organizations, as well as leading teacher training programs. She has a somatic coaching practice that primarily serves social movement leaders and trauma and violence survivors and has been working and teaching in the field of Somatics since 1997.

Haines is also the founder of generationFIVE, a social justice organization whose mission is to end the sexual abuse of children within 5 generations through survivor leadership, community organizing, transformative justice approaches and movement building. Additionally she is the author of Healing Sex: A Mind Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma (Cleis 1999, 2007), a how-to book offering a Somatic approach to recovery from sexual trauma and developing healthy sexual and intimate relationships. Healing Sex has been nationally recognized and translated into German, Japanese and Spanish.