November 2, 2023 • 30 mins
Ms.Iya Affo is a Historical Trauma Specialist and is a descendant of a long line of traditional healers from Benin Republic, West Africa. She joins Host Ramses Ja on today's podcast to discuss the topic of generational trauma and how she works to bring healing to those families impacted by it. Part 2 of a 3 part series.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
And now part two of our three part conversation with
ea Appo, culturalist and historical trauma specialist as well as
descendant of a long line of traditional healers from the
nin Republic, West Africa. Stay tuned as we discuss historical traumas,
how they're passed on from one generation to the next,
and what we can do to heal them. This is
(00:34):
the Black Information Network Daily Podcast. Now I'm your host,
Ramsa's Ja. If we feel like maybe we might find
ourselves regretting some of the things that we've done with
some frequency, I wish I didn't do that. That wasn't
(00:54):
the wrong thing I got. I let my emotions get
away from me, or I don't let me. I'm gathering
this from your story, and I don't know if it's accurate,
but I feel sad and I don't know why. I
feel like I got that from your story and maybe
(01:15):
I'm connecting with another story. Okay, good, because I have
a story with someone, my first fiance. Believe it or not,
I was engaged once upon a time. I know I
was engaged twice actually, but my first fiance, she said
she said something similar to me. This was back in
six We had so many problems, so many problems, and
(01:37):
it was kind of like an arranged sort of thing.
So I was like, I was there for better or worse, right,
And I was like, why are you so mad? Are
you so angry? And she was like, I wake up angry,
I go to sleep angry. I'm angry all the time,
and I don't know why. And I'm like, so does
it have anything to do with me? She has has
nothing to do with anybody. I don't know why. And
(01:58):
so when I read a bit about your story when
you were young, a little girl and you were angry,
I believe it was because and you didn't know why,
and you started to research generational trauma. I felt like
that was the language that I could use to articulate
what it was you were experiencing. But for those of
us who might find ourselves in one or more of
(02:20):
these predicaments where we feel like we're still working on
becoming our best self emotionally, mentally, et cetera, how does
one again this is the broad question, how does one
work with themselves to heal themselves?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So, first I want to say that somebody can be
experiencing some of these things and not necessarily have experienced
what we would think would be a big trauma, something
that is major, a fire, sexual abuse, physical abuse, use
not necessarily right, we also have what we call toxic stress.
(03:05):
This is a more insidious process. Right. I'm struggling socioeconomically.
We currently have the pandemic happening. We're not sure if
my husband's job is going to continue during the pandemic.
I don't know how we're getting the kids to school
because the car broke down and now I can't get
(03:25):
it fixed. Right, This is toxic stress. The more of
these things that pile on, the more stress hormones that
you're living with in your system on a regular basis.
And it's not natural for us to have that all
the time. As a black woman, when you talk about
(03:47):
your first fiance, right, I relate to that. Right, as
a black woman raising black sons, I might wake up
if we say on a scale of one to ten,
I might wake up every day at a five. Right,
because I'm having to code switch all the time, Right,
I have depending on which audience I'm in, I had
to change. You know who I am and how you
(04:08):
know how I interact, how I communicate. I'm worried about
my sons. How is the school treating my sons? Which
has been a big boy one for us? Right? You
know the danger all of these things. Right, So I
may wake up every day to five. Well, now I
have to get my kids out of bed, right, and
(04:29):
we know that our teenagers, I know somebody else in
the room has an eighteen year old that would be okay, yeah,
and sometimes our teenagers are not getting up in the morning. Right,
And now that adds Now, maybe we're at a six
or a seven, and then we check that first email
from work and it's something that's passive aggressive. Right now,
we're maybe at an eight or nine. And then we
(04:49):
go to have a conversation with you that might be
slightly annoying, right, Like this might be a little something.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
That gets me agitated.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Right, you left the towel on the floor in the bathroom.
That that pushed me out of my window of tolerance.
And now you're seeing this big behavior that you don't understand.
Now I'm aggressive, in hostile and controlling, and I don't
have empathy in all of these things. I've gone out
of my window of tolerance because I have this accumulation
(05:18):
of toxic stress that's pouring more and more chemicals into
my system.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
But I think that when you said you started at
a five, I think there's something there. Because life happens
to everyone. So let's look about the starting at a
five and then how to heal that part. Right, So
what does it mean to start at five?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Starting at a five?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That means that I have so many things that I'm
dealing with and trying to manage on a regular basis.
We live in Arizona, there's a housing crisis. How many
families are already or every day wondering are we going
to be able to pay that six hundred dollars increase? Right?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
That contributes to the five?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
You know, all of those types of things that we
just talked about contributes to the five. Okay, Traditionally, our
ancestors knew how to manage adversity. Adversity is not new,
that's not the problem. Adversity has existed since time in memorial.
But our ancestors had tools for managing adversity, and we
(06:12):
had things in our life that helped us manage adversity.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Adversity. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Before COVID, I spoke at a conference up in Flagstaff
at lunchtime, they brought in Apache dancers, dancers from the
Apache tribe, and they came in and they performed this
powerful dance and they sang these songs and it emotionally.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Moved me.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And I said, well, what was this like? I know
this is not entertainment. This is something and I need
to know what it is. And one of the dancers
said to me, when the Apache used to go to war, right,
we would go out to war, we would experience traumatic things,
we would have to do things that are unnatural for
a human being to want to do. We have to
(06:58):
have a flood of stress hormones our system in order
to do this. Right, we're in our brains that we're
trying to survive. Right, we're out to war. We're in
survival brain. So we have a flood of adrenaline, noor, adrenaline,
cortisol in our system because that's going to make us fight,
or that's going to make us be able to run
and do all the things that we need to do
in order to be in war. When they came back
(07:19):
from war, before they could rejoin the community, before they
could rejoin their families, they performed that dance and sang
that song really because that was like the debriefing that
we do in psychology now. Right, we bring our men home,
you know, from the army or from you know, one
of our armed forces, and they go through debriefing. Well,
(07:41):
our current day, twenty first century debriefing is ineffective.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Right, We've got all of our soldiers running around with PTSD.
We're not taking care of them.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
We don't have the tools anymore, we don't know how
to really take care of them. But our in black,
indigenous people of color and other cultures knew how to
manage trauma. They had things in place in order to
do that.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, I do want to I do want to get
back to because dancing and debriefing, those are two things
that I believe we should earmark. If you're taking notes,
write those down because those are ways that we can
heal ourselves as But I do want to mention something
I learned something very similar and this might be easier
to research. It's called the hakka. I believe it's called hka.
(08:23):
It's a very similar thing that happens. It sounds like
you're familiar with it Zealand not dance yep yep. So
if you if you check out a hakka online. It
is another one of those emotional things. And I believe
it's a war dance and from New Zealand, so it's
it's very very powerful.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Do it at the beginning of all the all black
rugby games, okay they play.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, so hawk okay, So that you know whether we're
trying to get hyped and get ready to do rugby right,
or whether we're trying to regulate our nervous system so
we can make the right decisions right. The hakka is
gonna either is going to do get us one of
those things.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Okay, So let me I want to add this too,
because remember I asked about us starting or really specifically
black women starting at a five. Yes, which feels very unfair. Yes,
because in theory, you should start with a zero in
terms of like how angry you are. You should really
start negative. You should wake up happy, you should learn
(09:20):
like a negative four, like I'm so happy when I
wake up, but zero. Just for the sake of this conversation.
So and this isn't for you to really go into
any detail unless you want to. But I read a tweet.
I know I don't like how that sounds on the
(09:42):
radio or on this podcast. But I believe that this
gives some insight. And it occurred to me when you
were talking. When I asked, after I asked a question,
what does it mean to start at a five? I
recalled this tweet and it said individuals saying, I recall
being in college and wanting to take a stress class,
(10:05):
a class on stress, and I thought the class was
going to be about meditation and about yoga and you know,
all these sorts of things. And it turns out that
the whole class was how being poor and being a
minority in the United States will stress you into an
(10:26):
early grade. That is effectually what was communicated in the tweet. Right,
So I think that somewhere in there is a truth
that is an objective shared truth. That is I say
objective because data would suggest, you know, healthcare outcomes and
political outcomes would suggest that your reality can certainly dictate
(10:52):
a black woman of all people, waking up at a five.
And so back to the healing. We know that dancing,
in particular tribal dancing, and I believe maybe there might
be something Again, Doctor Westernberg has she's my teacher. She's
(11:19):
been on the show plenty of times. So check out
any episode with her and you'll get a kick out
of her. But she told me about the first time
she went to Africa how as a teacher, as a
school teacher, she would have to instruct little girls and
young women not to dance in inappropriate ways, not to
move certain parts of their bodies, because this was a
(11:41):
very Eurocentric standard that was sort of given to her.
And then when she touched down in Africa and she
saw that this is really where dancing comes from, this
is where music comes from. The first instrument was a drum,
and it was based off of the rhythm that sounds
most familiar with us, is based off of our heartbeat,
(12:01):
that four over four account that feels like it moves
our bodies. So naturally, she learned all of this stuff
firsthand by being on the ground in Africa. And so
the reason I'm saying all this is because while we're
talking about tribal dances right here, I believe there might
be I keep using this term connective tissue, but there
might be some connective tissue to dancing just regular dancing.
(12:23):
And what would in theory be our natural tribal dancing
in the tribes that we would I don't know what
tribe I belong to, but the tribes we might be
connected with in Africa. And so I want to start
with in terms of healing dancing, and then the other
part was debriefing, and then I want us to get
back to some more healing. You can of course react
(12:45):
to that, but I want us to continue with the
healing part of the conversation. So if you want to
respond to that, and I know you wrote something down too,
so we'll get to times.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yes, and that is very much true. So we have
science that shows us and maybe I can send you
a link or send something so you can put it
on the website and where people can look up some
of these things later. But we have science that shows
us that when we dance collectively, it has an impact
(13:12):
on us biological collective collective dancing for people, especially people
from collectivist communities cultures, we have a neurological response to dancing.
Dancing is part of what regulates our nervous system, calms
our brain down and allows us to have a release
(13:34):
of those feel good chemicals that let us feel safe,
pleasure and interconnected with one another. So it's a very
important part of healing. So if we have people out
there that are wanting to heal, or people out there
that have control over programming and funding programming. How do
we create programming that allows communities to get together and
(13:58):
dance together, because this is very much a form of
healing the neurobiology.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Okay, I want to add something here. So I don't
know how often I've shared this. I suspect this is
my first time actually sharing it. But I am the
owner of two night clubs in Phoenix, Arizona. So if
you ever find yourself in Phoenix, come on down to
Monarch Theater or Barsmith. You might even catch me in person.
(14:24):
If it's a Saturday, I might be there. I have
staffed it running for me, of course. But on the
rooftop we play deep house music of bar Smith and
I have a business partner. He's a deep house DJ.
I'm a hip hop DJ, so I'm usually in the
room with the hip hop turntables and on the mic
(14:46):
doing my thing, and he's upstairs with people that are
there to collective dance. Right, And he said things that
sounded very much like what you just said for many years,
and I think in this moment I now realize what
he was trying to say. I mean, I knew it.
I knew there was something special, and I've been up there.
I danced with the people, of course, under the rain,
(15:07):
under the stars. It's a rooftop open concept, but collective
dancing and healing, that connection, I think is more solidified now.
So that's one best practice.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
That's one best practice. There's science it chills how it
impacts our brain.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Okay, now, real quick, Leanna, I noticed you make and
made a note. I want to make sure that we
tag you in if you had something here.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Oh you know, I was just really thinking. So I
work in nonprofit and my you know, my team are
social workers, and I just wanted to I was thinking
about the toxic stress and for you know, your listeners
outside of Arizona, the geography won't really make sense, but
it's true in every single community. If you look at
(15:53):
the average lifespan in Scottsdale, it's eighty.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Four years old.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Scottsdale's fancy Scottsdales fan.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
It is predominantly white, it is very upper upper class.
You travel down to South Phoenix, the lifespan is seventy four. Yeah,
it is a distance of twenty miles, but it makes
a huge difference where you live, how you're raised, what
your socioeconomic factors are, and you know your race and ethnicity.
(16:25):
So South Phoenix is a predominantly black and brown community,
low income, ten year life difference.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
And if we step on Hila River Indian community or
Salt River Indean community, then numbers are going to go
down even lower.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Seven. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So there's also a conversation to have about environmental racism
that exists in terms of which communities are polluted and
which you cannot pollute in and how that shapes healthcare
outcomes as well, A very very important conversation that I've
been really wanting to have for some time now. And
(17:02):
I just need to get all my data points in
a row, but stay tuned for that one. Okay, back
to best practices. Yes, I feel like once upon a
time you said something about you said group dance. Is
that how you said it? Collective collective dance? Okay? Yes, so,
(17:24):
and maybe I'm misheard, but I feel like there might
be something like collective laughter. Is that a thing?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Laughter is a thing People that are from collectivist communities
collectivist cultures have a special gene that scientists call the
funny bone gene, and there are structures in our brain
that are a little bit different than in other individualist communities,
and it gives us this connection to laughter and this
(17:57):
you know, almost ability to be funny and to laugh
and enjoy laughing, and that impacts our neurobiology. So I
know we've heard stuff like this before. Oh, watch the
comedy show, and you know it'll be funny and it'll
make you feel better. But there's science that backs there's
neurological science that backs that, especially people from collectivist communities.
(18:20):
When they laugh, that's part of and especially laughing together
is part of one of the ways that you decrease
the impact of your toxic stress.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I feel like there is a very special, almost divine
truth there. One of the things I've noticed in my life.
I like to be around many people. My father had
(18:53):
lots of children. I would go crazy if I lived alone.
Whenever I watch a comedy, it could be the funniest
thing in the world, and I might laugh out loud,
(19:17):
hear my laughter in my ears, hear the laughter once twice.
If I'm with a person, we might laugh ten times.
I'm with two people might be twenty times. Three people
might be fifty times, you know what I mean. So
(19:38):
when I say I feel like there might be a
divine truth there, I and then when I'm thinking about
the dancing too, you know what I mean. It's very,
very tough to dance on your own. There are people
who can do it. I do it now. I don't
have pro I'm doing it now, but it's so much
easier to dance in a room full of people who
(19:58):
are dancing to the same song. And I had no
idea that these things had additional health benefits that would
help people dealing with traumas that they may not even
know that they have unexplored traumas. You know, if I
was if there was a time machine and I found
myself back in two thousand and six with my first fiance,
(20:23):
I might be able to say, Hey, you know what,
let's go do some dancing, or let's get around some
people and have a good laugh. Maybe a little bit
of this might get us on the right track. So
I feel like these are good pieces of advice.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yes, well, you know, as human beings were wired for relationship,
we're wired for interconnected lists.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
That's right, And it's funny.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I was just having this conversation with my friend earlier,
and we talked about we're so inclined to be introverted
and to be by ourselves, and we think in our
mind like, I really love when it's two o'clock in
the morning and I have a couple cupcakes and I'm
by myself and no one's bothering me, and I feel like,
this is, oh, such a great time, right. But in reality,
(21:08):
if I stay isolated for long periods of time, my
anxiety kicks in more, my depression kicks in more. Because
we're wired to have connectedness. So another strategy for managing
this toxic stresses are you utilizing and exercising your friendships
(21:33):
and your relationships. Can you go out for coffee more often?
Can you go out for lunch with your friends? Can you,
you know, schedule a time to you know, whatever you do,
go hiking together, go walking together, whatever you do, but
get together so you can have that relationship. Because really,
at the top of healing trauma is relationships. Any of
(21:54):
our trauma experts specialists will say the very most important
thing to healing trauma having healthy, positive relationships. Over therapy,
we think that if we have trauma or we have
toxic stress, we need to see a therapist. Therapists are great, wonderful.
I'm not knocking therapists. We have a place for therapists,
of course.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
But we are people that are innately aware.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
We're wired, and our body is set up to manage
adversity and to be able to heal ourselves, right, and
so when we put ourselves in a position to exercise
these relationships and have relationship, we're healing trauma.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Trauma's not healed in a therapist office. Trauma is healed
in our day to day interaction. WHOA, that's a bar
social isolation.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I mean, they've done a lot of studies on this
right where they now say that being isolated and lonely
is the equivalent of smoking to packs of cigarettes a day.
That's how bad it gets that in your health. It's
really significant.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yes, I sorry, I know this is going to sound
super weird, but I watched this movie a long time ago,
I think to both of you, guys's point. I watched
this movie it's called Castaway, and there's a guy in
the movie and he keeps a plane crash or something.
(23:17):
He ends up on an island and a bunch of
like wreckage ends up on the island with him, and
he's there by himself. It's a little tiny island. And
after a while he like starts talking to a ball
and the ball said Wilson on it, so he named
(23:38):
the ball Wilson. Yes. Right. So I know this is
an old movie, so a lot of you might not
remember this, but there's a part in the movie where
the ball ends up getting blown away into the sea,
into the ocean, and he was weeping inconsolably because this
ball that he had been talking to for years on
(23:59):
this island or however long you've been there, what's gone.
It was like he was mourning the loss of a
like a friend. And I think that speaks to again
to both of you guys's point that we long for
connection between other people. It's a part of our biology.
I think this is what we're saying, part of our biolid.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
That's the most important part, because I think people think
that it's like, why don't really like being around people?
So that doesn't apply to me, No, it does apply
to you because you're human and we're wired that way.
We're wired for interconnectiveness. We're wired to be in collectivist communities.
This is part of why we're having such a disease
in the America and in Western countries because we start
(24:40):
operating as if we are individualists.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Right. We're very individualist here, especially Arizona.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Right, it's hot outside, you push the button, your garage
door goes up, you pull your car in, you push
the button again, the garage door goes down, you go
into your house. You never interact with neighbors, right, So
we're operating as individualists. If we're operating all the time
as individualists, the stress hormones in our system, right, it's
going to be more than if we're collecting interacting with Yeah, interacting,
(25:07):
we're not going to have as many of the feel
good hormones, the dopamine and this oxytocin and the serotonin
and things that make us feel good and feel safe
and feel regulated. So there's no wonder that people's behaviors
are increasing, Right, We're getting more and more people are
more and more angry and divisive and fighting and ugly,
afraid and afraid.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
And if your people that you're surrounded with aren't filling
your cup, find new people.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yes, right, No, that's absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
They're an introvert and the relationships are draining. They're just
not the right ones for you to find.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
And I don't want to pretend like these things are
easy for people. They might require a Google search, they
might require some effort, they might require you know what
I mean. But it is these are approachable and critically
they don't need to cost money. Now. I don't know
if I'm shifting gears here, okay, but I'm thinking of
(26:04):
what's called the seven circles of wellness, yes, okay. And
I don't know if the three things that we talked
about now exist in the seven or they are among
the seven. But so far we've talked about dancing slash debriefing. Yes,
We've talked about collective laughter, and we've talked about friendships
and relationships. So those are some best practices. I want
(26:29):
to move into the seven circles of wellness, and you
kind of give us educate us on what that means.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So if we talk about wellness, right, sometimes we think
that the definition of wellness is the absence of disease.
And so if we're talking about wellness, we really have
to be looking at balance and equilibrium, right. The body
is always looking for balance and equilibrium. We need balance
and equilibrium within nature in order to really have harmony.
(26:59):
And we have to balance this different aspects of our
lives really in order to have wellness and experience wellness.
So each of the things that we talked about, right,
are part of those seven circles of wellness. So those
seven circles are the seven seven aspects of our life
that we need to balance in order to feel well.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So one of them is movement. And this will be
a very.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Pan indigenous perspective, right, So this perspective is not for
one particular culture, but really a perspective that will be
experienced by most indigenous people. And when I say indigenous,
I'm not just referring to First Nation people, but I'm
referring to black indigenous people of color, you know, that
(27:50):
are native to whichever country they come from. Movement, we
are wired for movement. We had to be hunter gatherers, right,
We used to. There was a time when we would
have to go out and seek our food. And so
we have now been colonized not to have to seek
out food. Right, If we're hungry, or we're bored, or
(28:14):
we just feel like it, or there's something we like
to eat, we walk.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Over to the refrigerator. We open up the refrigerator and we.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Eat, so even in getting our food, we're not required
to move. This is going to impact our wellness movement, right,
if we're running or dancing or doing any type of movement,
it balances our neurobiology. Let's look at one example. Right,
(28:41):
if we are women, and often women, and we live
in Africa, it is often the woman's job to go
and get water. So we have women, and we have
our young daughters with us, perhaps and maybe we're walking
five miles to get water. The act of walking is
neurologically regulating what's happening while we walk. We're having interaction,
(29:05):
we're having relationship, we're sharing stories, we're doing all of
these things that are going to help us to neurologically regulate.
This used to be embedded within the culture, and it
no longer is right because we're going to drive the
car somewhere, or we don't have to walk up to
the refs, or we don't have to go out and
gather our food. We just walk up to the refrigerator.
(29:26):
So this is a part of if we want to
experience wellness. This is a part of the decolonization process.
Colonization is not a political process as much as it
is a social process. You have to change how people
think and the way they live in order to control
them politically.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So all of these.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Processes that have impacted our health and our mental and
behavioral health are often tied to the process of colonization.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Okay, this concludes Part two of our three part conversation
with Iao culturalist and historical trauma specialists. Be sure to
check back in with us for Part three as we
discuss more ways to heal from historical traumas. Right here
on the Black Information Network Daily podcast, I'm your host,
(30:19):
ramses Jab
And now part two of our three part conversation with
ea Appo, culturalist and historical trauma specialist as well as
descendant of a long line of traditional healers from the
nin Republic, West Africa. Stay tuned as we discuss historical traumas,
how they're passed on from one generation to the next,
and what we can do to heal them. This is
(00:34):
the Black Information Network Daily Podcast. Now I'm your host,
Ramsa's Ja. If we feel like maybe we might find
ourselves regretting some of the things that we've done with
some frequency, I wish I didn't do that. That wasn't
(00:54):
the wrong thing I got. I let my emotions get
away from me, or I don't let me. I'm gathering
this from your story, and I don't know if it's accurate,
but I feel sad and I don't know why. I
feel like I got that from your story and maybe
(01:15):
I'm connecting with another story. Okay, good, because I have
a story with someone, my first fiance. Believe it or not,
I was engaged once upon a time. I know I
was engaged twice actually, but my first fiance, she said
she said something similar to me. This was back in
six We had so many problems, so many problems, and
(01:37):
it was kind of like an arranged sort of thing.
So I was like, I was there for better or worse, right,
And I was like, why are you so mad? Are
you so angry? And she was like, I wake up angry,
I go to sleep angry. I'm angry all the time,
and I don't know why. And I'm like, so does
it have anything to do with me? She has has
nothing to do with anybody. I don't know why. And
(01:58):
so when I read a bit about your story when
you were young, a little girl and you were angry,
I believe it was because and you didn't know why,
and you started to research generational trauma. I felt like
that was the language that I could use to articulate
what it was you were experiencing. But for those of
us who might find ourselves in one or more of
(02:20):
these predicaments where we feel like we're still working on
becoming our best self emotionally, mentally, et cetera, how does
one again this is the broad question, how does one
work with themselves to heal themselves?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So, first I want to say that somebody can be
experiencing some of these things and not necessarily have experienced
what we would think would be a big trauma, something
that is major, a fire, sexual abuse, physical abuse, use
not necessarily right, we also have what we call toxic stress.
(03:05):
This is a more insidious process. Right. I'm struggling socioeconomically.
We currently have the pandemic happening. We're not sure if
my husband's job is going to continue during the pandemic.
I don't know how we're getting the kids to school
because the car broke down and now I can't get
(03:25):
it fixed. Right, This is toxic stress. The more of
these things that pile on, the more stress hormones that
you're living with in your system on a regular basis.
And it's not natural for us to have that all
the time. As a black woman, when you talk about
(03:47):
your first fiance, right, I relate to that. Right, as
a black woman raising black sons, I might wake up
if we say on a scale of one to ten,
I might wake up every day at a five. Right,
because I'm having to code switch all the time, Right,
I have depending on which audience I'm in, I had
to change. You know who I am and how you
(04:08):
know how I interact, how I communicate. I'm worried about
my sons. How is the school treating my sons? Which
has been a big boy one for us? Right? You
know the danger all of these things. Right, So I
may wake up every day to five. Well, now I
have to get my kids out of bed, right, and
(04:29):
we know that our teenagers, I know somebody else in
the room has an eighteen year old that would be okay, yeah,
and sometimes our teenagers are not getting up in the morning. Right,
And now that adds Now, maybe we're at a six
or a seven, and then we check that first email
from work and it's something that's passive aggressive. Right now,
we're maybe at an eight or nine. And then we
(04:49):
go to have a conversation with you that might be
slightly annoying, right, Like this might be a little something.
Speaker 3 (04:56):
That gets me agitated.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Right, you left the towel on the floor in the bathroom.
That that pushed me out of my window of tolerance.
And now you're seeing this big behavior that you don't understand.
Now I'm aggressive, in hostile and controlling, and I don't
have empathy in all of these things. I've gone out
of my window of tolerance because I have this accumulation
(05:18):
of toxic stress that's pouring more and more chemicals into
my system.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
But I think that when you said you started at
a five, I think there's something there. Because life happens
to everyone. So let's look about the starting at a
five and then how to heal that part. Right, So
what does it mean to start at five?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Starting at a five?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
That means that I have so many things that I'm
dealing with and trying to manage on a regular basis.
We live in Arizona, there's a housing crisis. How many
families are already or every day wondering are we going
to be able to pay that six hundred dollars increase? Right?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
That contributes to the five?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
You know, all of those types of things that we
just talked about contributes to the five. Okay, Traditionally, our
ancestors knew how to manage adversity. Adversity is not new,
that's not the problem. Adversity has existed since time in memorial.
But our ancestors had tools for managing adversity, and we
(06:12):
had things in our life that helped us manage adversity.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Adversity. Let me give you an example.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Before COVID, I spoke at a conference up in Flagstaff
at lunchtime, they brought in Apache dancers, dancers from the
Apache tribe, and they came in and they performed this
powerful dance and they sang these songs and it emotionally.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Moved me.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
And I said, well, what was this like? I know
this is not entertainment. This is something and I need
to know what it is. And one of the dancers
said to me, when the Apache used to go to war, right,
we would go out to war, we would experience traumatic things,
we would have to do things that are unnatural for
a human being to want to do. We have to
(06:58):
have a flood of stress hormones our system in order
to do this. Right, we're in our brains that we're
trying to survive. Right, we're out to war. We're in
survival brain. So we have a flood of adrenaline, noor, adrenaline,
cortisol in our system because that's going to make us fight,
or that's going to make us be able to run
and do all the things that we need to do
in order to be in war. When they came back
(07:19):
from war, before they could rejoin the community, before they
could rejoin their families, they performed that dance and sang
that song really because that was like the debriefing that
we do in psychology now. Right, we bring our men home,
you know, from the army or from you know, one
of our armed forces, and they go through debriefing. Well,
(07:41):
our current day, twenty first century debriefing is ineffective.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
Right, We've got all of our soldiers running around with PTSD.
We're not taking care of them.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
We don't have the tools anymore, we don't know how
to really take care of them. But our in black,
indigenous people of color and other cultures knew how to
manage trauma. They had things in place in order to
do that.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, I do want to I do want to get
back to because dancing and debriefing, those are two things
that I believe we should earmark. If you're taking notes,
write those down because those are ways that we can
heal ourselves as But I do want to mention something
I learned something very similar and this might be easier
to research. It's called the hakka. I believe it's called hka.
(08:23):
It's a very similar thing that happens. It sounds like
you're familiar with it Zealand not dance yep yep. So
if you if you check out a hakka online. It
is another one of those emotional things. And I believe
it's a war dance and from New Zealand, so it's
it's very very powerful.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
Do it at the beginning of all the all black
rugby games, okay they play.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, so hawk okay, So that you know whether we're
trying to get hyped and get ready to do rugby right,
or whether we're trying to regulate our nervous system so
we can make the right decisions right. The hakka is
gonna either is going to do get us one of
those things.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Okay, So let me I want to add this too,
because remember I asked about us starting or really specifically
black women starting at a five. Yes, which feels very unfair. Yes,
because in theory, you should start with a zero in
terms of like how angry you are. You should really
start negative. You should wake up happy, you should learn
(09:20):
like a negative four, like I'm so happy when I
wake up, but zero. Just for the sake of this conversation.
So and this isn't for you to really go into
any detail unless you want to. But I read a tweet.
I know I don't like how that sounds on the
(09:42):
radio or on this podcast. But I believe that this
gives some insight. And it occurred to me when you
were talking. When I asked, after I asked a question,
what does it mean to start at a five? I
recalled this tweet and it said individuals saying, I recall
being in college and wanting to take a stress class,
(10:05):
a class on stress, and I thought the class was
going to be about meditation and about yoga and you know,
all these sorts of things. And it turns out that
the whole class was how being poor and being a
minority in the United States will stress you into an
(10:26):
early grade. That is effectually what was communicated in the tweet. Right,
So I think that somewhere in there is a truth
that is an objective shared truth. That is I say
objective because data would suggest, you know, healthcare outcomes and
political outcomes would suggest that your reality can certainly dictate
(10:52):
a black woman of all people, waking up at a five.
And so back to the healing. We know that dancing,
in particular tribal dancing, and I believe maybe there might
be something Again, Doctor Westernberg has she's my teacher. She's
(11:19):
been on the show plenty of times. So check out
any episode with her and you'll get a kick out
of her. But she told me about the first time
she went to Africa how as a teacher, as a
school teacher, she would have to instruct little girls and
young women not to dance in inappropriate ways, not to
move certain parts of their bodies, because this was a
(11:41):
very Eurocentric standard that was sort of given to her.
And then when she touched down in Africa and she
saw that this is really where dancing comes from, this
is where music comes from. The first instrument was a drum,
and it was based off of the rhythm that sounds
most familiar with us, is based off of our heartbeat,
(12:01):
that four over four account that feels like it moves
our bodies. So naturally, she learned all of this stuff
firsthand by being on the ground in Africa. And so
the reason I'm saying all this is because while we're
talking about tribal dances right here, I believe there might
be I keep using this term connective tissue, but there
might be some connective tissue to dancing just regular dancing.
(12:23):
And what would in theory be our natural tribal dancing
in the tribes that we would I don't know what
tribe I belong to, but the tribes we might be
connected with in Africa. And so I want to start
with in terms of healing dancing, and then the other
part was debriefing, and then I want us to get
back to some more healing. You can of course react
(12:45):
to that, but I want us to continue with the
healing part of the conversation. So if you want to
respond to that, and I know you wrote something down too,
so we'll get to times.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yes, and that is very much true. So we have
science that shows us and maybe I can send you
a link or send something so you can put it
on the website and where people can look up some
of these things later. But we have science that shows
us that when we dance collectively, it has an impact
(13:12):
on us biological collective collective dancing for people, especially people
from collectivist communities cultures, we have a neurological response to dancing.
Dancing is part of what regulates our nervous system, calms
our brain down and allows us to have a release
(13:34):
of those feel good chemicals that let us feel safe,
pleasure and interconnected with one another. So it's a very
important part of healing. So if we have people out
there that are wanting to heal, or people out there
that have control over programming and funding programming. How do
we create programming that allows communities to get together and
(13:58):
dance together, because this is very much a form of
healing the neurobiology.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Okay, I want to add something here. So I don't
know how often I've shared this. I suspect this is
my first time actually sharing it. But I am the
owner of two night clubs in Phoenix, Arizona. So if
you ever find yourself in Phoenix, come on down to
Monarch Theater or Barsmith. You might even catch me in person.
(14:24):
If it's a Saturday, I might be there. I have
staffed it running for me, of course. But on the
rooftop we play deep house music of bar Smith and
I have a business partner. He's a deep house DJ.
I'm a hip hop DJ, so I'm usually in the
room with the hip hop turntables and on the mic
(14:46):
doing my thing, and he's upstairs with people that are
there to collective dance. Right, And he said things that
sounded very much like what you just said for many years,
and I think in this moment I now realize what
he was trying to say. I mean, I knew it.
I knew there was something special, and I've been up there.
I danced with the people, of course, under the rain,
(15:07):
under the stars. It's a rooftop open concept, but collective
dancing and healing, that connection, I think is more solidified now.
So that's one best practice.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
That's one best practice. There's science it chills how it
impacts our brain.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
Okay, now, real quick, Leanna, I noticed you make and
made a note. I want to make sure that we
tag you in if you had something here.
Speaker 4 (15:32):
Oh you know, I was just really thinking. So I
work in nonprofit and my you know, my team are
social workers, and I just wanted to I was thinking
about the toxic stress and for you know, your listeners
outside of Arizona, the geography won't really make sense, but
it's true in every single community. If you look at
(15:53):
the average lifespan in Scottsdale, it's eighty.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Four years old.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Scottsdale's fancy Scottsdales fan.
Speaker 4 (16:00):
It is predominantly white, it is very upper upper class.
You travel down to South Phoenix, the lifespan is seventy four. Yeah,
it is a distance of twenty miles, but it makes
a huge difference where you live, how you're raised, what
your socioeconomic factors are, and you know your race and ethnicity.
(16:25):
So South Phoenix is a predominantly black and brown community,
low income, ten year life difference.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
And if we step on Hila River Indian community or
Salt River Indean community, then numbers are going to go
down even lower.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Seven. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So there's also a conversation to have about environmental racism
that exists in terms of which communities are polluted and
which you cannot pollute in and how that shapes healthcare
outcomes as well, A very very important conversation that I've
been really wanting to have for some time now. And
(17:02):
I just need to get all my data points in
a row, but stay tuned for that one. Okay, back
to best practices. Yes, I feel like once upon a
time you said something about you said group dance. Is
that how you said it? Collective collective dance? Okay? Yes, so,
(17:24):
and maybe I'm misheard, but I feel like there might
be something like collective laughter. Is that a thing?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Laughter is a thing People that are from collectivist communities
collectivist cultures have a special gene that scientists call the
funny bone gene, and there are structures in our brain
that are a little bit different than in other individualist communities,
and it gives us this connection to laughter and this
(17:57):
you know, almost ability to be funny and to laugh
and enjoy laughing, and that impacts our neurobiology. So I
know we've heard stuff like this before. Oh, watch the
comedy show, and you know it'll be funny and it'll
make you feel better. But there's science that backs there's
neurological science that backs that, especially people from collectivist communities.
(18:20):
When they laugh, that's part of and especially laughing together
is part of one of the ways that you decrease
the impact of your toxic stress.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
I feel like there is a very special, almost divine
truth there. One of the things I've noticed in my life.
I like to be around many people. My father had
(18:53):
lots of children. I would go crazy if I lived alone.
Whenever I watch a comedy, it could be the funniest
thing in the world, and I might laugh out loud,
(19:17):
hear my laughter in my ears, hear the laughter once twice.
If I'm with a person, we might laugh ten times.
I'm with two people might be twenty times. Three people
might be fifty times, you know what I mean. So
(19:38):
when I say I feel like there might be a
divine truth there, I and then when I'm thinking about
the dancing too, you know what I mean. It's very,
very tough to dance on your own. There are people
who can do it. I do it now. I don't
have pro I'm doing it now, but it's so much
easier to dance in a room full of people who
(19:58):
are dancing to the same song. And I had no
idea that these things had additional health benefits that would
help people dealing with traumas that they may not even
know that they have unexplored traumas. You know, if I
was if there was a time machine and I found
myself back in two thousand and six with my first fiance,
(20:23):
I might be able to say, Hey, you know what,
let's go do some dancing, or let's get around some
people and have a good laugh. Maybe a little bit
of this might get us on the right track. So
I feel like these are good pieces of advice.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yes, well, you know, as human beings were wired for relationship,
we're wired for interconnected lists.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
That's right, And it's funny.
Speaker 2 (20:45):
I was just having this conversation with my friend earlier,
and we talked about we're so inclined to be introverted
and to be by ourselves, and we think in our
mind like, I really love when it's two o'clock in
the morning and I have a couple cupcakes and I'm
by myself and no one's bothering me, and I feel like,
this is, oh, such a great time, right. But in reality,
(21:08):
if I stay isolated for long periods of time, my
anxiety kicks in more, my depression kicks in more. Because
we're wired to have connectedness. So another strategy for managing
this toxic stresses are you utilizing and exercising your friendships
(21:33):
and your relationships. Can you go out for coffee more often?
Can you go out for lunch with your friends? Can you,
you know, schedule a time to you know, whatever you do,
go hiking together, go walking together, whatever you do, but
get together so you can have that relationship. Because really,
at the top of healing trauma is relationships. Any of
(21:54):
our trauma experts specialists will say the very most important
thing to healing trauma having healthy, positive relationships. Over therapy,
we think that if we have trauma or we have
toxic stress, we need to see a therapist. Therapists are great, wonderful.
I'm not knocking therapists. We have a place for therapists,
of course.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
But we are people that are innately aware.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
We're wired, and our body is set up to manage
adversity and to be able to heal ourselves, right, and
so when we put ourselves in a position to exercise
these relationships and have relationship, we're healing trauma.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Trauma's not healed in a therapist office. Trauma is healed
in our day to day interaction. WHOA, that's a bar
social isolation.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I mean, they've done a lot of studies on this
right where they now say that being isolated and lonely
is the equivalent of smoking to packs of cigarettes a day.
That's how bad it gets that in your health. It's
really significant.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yes, I sorry, I know this is going to sound
super weird, but I watched this movie a long time ago,
I think to both of you, guys's point. I watched
this movie it's called Castaway, and there's a guy in
the movie and he keeps a plane crash or something.
(23:17):
He ends up on an island and a bunch of
like wreckage ends up on the island with him, and
he's there by himself. It's a little tiny island. And
after a while he like starts talking to a ball
and the ball said Wilson on it, so he named
(23:38):
the ball Wilson. Yes. Right. So I know this is
an old movie, so a lot of you might not
remember this, but there's a part in the movie where
the ball ends up getting blown away into the sea,
into the ocean, and he was weeping inconsolably because this
ball that he had been talking to for years on
(23:59):
this island or however long you've been there, what's gone.
It was like he was mourning the loss of a
like a friend. And I think that speaks to again
to both of you guys's point that we long for
connection between other people. It's a part of our biology.
I think this is what we're saying, part of our biolid.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
That's the most important part, because I think people think
that it's like, why don't really like being around people?
So that doesn't apply to me, No, it does apply
to you because you're human and we're wired that way.
We're wired for interconnectiveness. We're wired to be in collectivist communities.
This is part of why we're having such a disease
in the America and in Western countries because we start
(24:40):
operating as if we are individualists.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
Right. We're very individualist here, especially Arizona.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Right, it's hot outside, you push the button, your garage
door goes up, you pull your car in, you push
the button again, the garage door goes down, you go
into your house. You never interact with neighbors, right, So
we're operating as individualists. If we're operating all the time
as individualists, the stress hormones in our system, right, it's
going to be more than if we're collecting interacting with Yeah, interacting,
(25:07):
we're not going to have as many of the feel
good hormones, the dopamine and this oxytocin and the serotonin
and things that make us feel good and feel safe
and feel regulated. So there's no wonder that people's behaviors
are increasing, Right, We're getting more and more people are
more and more angry and divisive and fighting and ugly,
afraid and afraid.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
And if your people that you're surrounded with aren't filling
your cup, find new people.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Yes, right, No, that's absolutely yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
They're an introvert and the relationships are draining. They're just
not the right ones for you to find.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
And I don't want to pretend like these things are
easy for people. They might require a Google search, they
might require some effort, they might require you know what
I mean. But it is these are approachable and critically
they don't need to cost money. Now. I don't know
if I'm shifting gears here, okay, but I'm thinking of
(26:04):
what's called the seven circles of wellness, yes, okay. And
I don't know if the three things that we talked
about now exist in the seven or they are among
the seven. But so far we've talked about dancing slash debriefing. Yes,
We've talked about collective laughter, and we've talked about friendships
and relationships. So those are some best practices. I want
(26:29):
to move into the seven circles of wellness, and you
kind of give us educate us on what that means.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So if we talk about wellness, right, sometimes we think
that the definition of wellness is the absence of disease.
And so if we're talking about wellness, we really have
to be looking at balance and equilibrium, right. The body
is always looking for balance and equilibrium. We need balance
and equilibrium within nature in order to really have harmony.
(26:59):
And we have to balance this different aspects of our
lives really in order to have wellness and experience wellness.
So each of the things that we talked about, right,
are part of those seven circles of wellness. So those
seven circles are the seven seven aspects of our life
that we need to balance in order to feel well.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
So one of them is movement. And this will be
a very.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Pan indigenous perspective, right, So this perspective is not for
one particular culture, but really a perspective that will be
experienced by most indigenous people. And when I say indigenous,
I'm not just referring to First Nation people, but I'm
referring to black indigenous people of color, you know, that
(27:50):
are native to whichever country they come from. Movement, we
are wired for movement. We had to be hunter gatherers, right,
We used to. There was a time when we would
have to go out and seek our food. And so
we have now been colonized not to have to seek
out food. Right, If we're hungry, or we're bored, or
(28:14):
we just feel like it, or there's something we like
to eat, we walk.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
Over to the refrigerator. We open up the refrigerator and we.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Eat, so even in getting our food, we're not required
to move. This is going to impact our wellness movement, right,
if we're running or dancing or doing any type of movement,
it balances our neurobiology. Let's look at one example. Right,
(28:41):
if we are women, and often women, and we live
in Africa, it is often the woman's job to go
and get water. So we have women, and we have
our young daughters with us, perhaps and maybe we're walking
five miles to get water. The act of walking is
neurologically regulating what's happening while we walk. We're having interaction,
(29:05):
we're having relationship, we're sharing stories, we're doing all of
these things that are going to help us to neurologically regulate.
This used to be embedded within the culture, and it
no longer is right because we're going to drive the
car somewhere, or we don't have to walk up to
the refs, or we don't have to go out and
gather our food. We just walk up to the refrigerator.
(29:26):
So this is a part of if we want to
experience wellness. This is a part of the decolonization process.
Colonization is not a political process as much as it
is a social process. You have to change how people
think and the way they live in order to control
them politically.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So all of these.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Processes that have impacted our health and our mental and
behavioral health are often tied to the process of colonization.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Okay, this concludes Part two of our three part conversation
with Iao culturalist and historical trauma specialists. Be sure to
check back in with us for Part three as we
discuss more ways to heal from historical traumas. Right here
on the Black Information Network Daily podcast, I'm your host,
(30:19):
ramses Jab
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