Wherever you are reading this, you are invited to pause and notice. To notice where you are, the space you are in. To notice how you are – how you are feeling physically, how you are feeling emotionally. To notice how your breath is moving. As you notice, perhaps you sense a shift you can make to feel more comfort in this moment. That may be choosing to adjust your posture, to draw a deeper breath, or anything else you need.
A navigation of conflict that moves toward the building of peace asks of peacebuilding practitioners the cultivation of different lenses of perception, different ways of seeing and interpreting.i That may be in a micro-level context of an interpersonal conflict or a macro-level context of regional and societal conflict dynamics. Perception is enabled through the body, and yet attending to the body as the site of perception and expression, as well as the container for our experiences is often neglected amidst the urgencies and complexities of peacebuilding. There are many reasons for this neglect – it may, for example, emerge from cultural conditioning that places embodied awareness as secondary to cognitive knowledge, or from experiences of trauma through which attending to the body has come to feel unsafe. Honoring this, I would like to suggest that cultivating embodied awareness is of tremendous value for peacebuilding practitioners, an awareness that emerges from practicing ‘critical embodied (self) reflection.’ This series of terms, which will be explored in reverse order in the paragraphs to follow, offers a pathway through which practitioners can move with greater presence, (self) awareness, and intentionality.
(Self) Reflection
The field of peacebuilding has increasingly come to acknowledge the importance of reflective practice to support individual practitioners as well as initiatives and organizations in their work. In Reflective Peacebuilding: A Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Toolkit, authors Lederach, Neufeldt, and Culbertson offer an exploration into and guidance for reflective practice that allows for peacebuilding practitioners to clarify the theories of change that guide their work. Reflective practice is defined as “building knowledge, understanding and improvement of practice through explicit and disciplined reflection.”ii Such an approach to reflective practice is essential for peacebuilding practitioners to inform the work in which they are involved.
There is another dimension of reflective practice that is less attended to, which I here describe as (self) reflection.iii From a more individualist orientation, this dimension of reflective practice focuses on the qualities of the relationships one has with oneself and with others. It involves being attentive to what is present in your relationships with yourself, others, and the spaces you are in. Such (self) reflection emerges from a space of compassionate curiosity and is enacted through noticing and care.iv It involves both “reflection on practice,” taking time and space apart to reflect, and “reflection in practice,” being present in the midst of a given process as it unfolds.v There are different avenues of noticing you might choose to follow, including noticing the patterns of your thoughts or noticing patterns of emotion. I would like to now turn to our next word within ‘critical embodied (self) reflection’, to explore the value of centering the body in reflective practice.
Embodied
As human beings, we cannot escape our embodiment. Even for people in experiences of deep trauma who sense numbness and disconnection from their bodies and their beings, so long as we are alive, we navigate life through our bodies. Our bodies are the vehicles through which we sense, perceive, and act. There are many different ways embodiment may be understood, particularly so across different cultural contexts. For the purposes of this article, I define embodiment as “attending ‘with’ and attending ‘to’ the body.”vi Embodied (self) reflection thus entails reflection that notices what is present in the body and notices with the body. Honoring the present-moment nature of embodiment, I will focus here on “reflection in practice.”
For example, when I am participating in a discussion, I may perceive a range of dynamics in and with my body. ‘Noticing in’ my body emerges from an attention that is turned inwards. I may sense into a variety of different things, for example my posture or the sensations and emotions I am experiencing.
| Posture | Am I seated or standing? Is my posture open or closed? Is my back hunched or am I sitting tall? |
| Sensation / Feeling | What sensations am I feeling (e.g., do I feel tingling, tightness, warmth, coolness, etc.) Where am I feeling these sensations in my body? (e.g., do I feel tingling in my stomach, tightness in my shoulders, coolness in my hands, etc.) |
| Emotion | What emotions am I experiencing? Where am I feeling these emotions in my body? |
Noticing with my body emerges from an attention that bridges the inner and the outer, particularly through the senses.
| Seeing | What am I seeing in the space? How are the people in the space holding themselves? (e.g., their posture or level of engagement) What is the quality of light in the space? |
| Touching / Sensation | What energy do I feel in this space generally? (e.g., is there tension, is there engagement and alertness, is there tiredness, etc.) What energy do I feel from each person in the space? How am I receiving this energy? Where do I feel this energy in my body? How is the energy shifting over time? |
| Hearing | What sounds do I hear in this space? What is being said? What is not being said? Who is speaking? Who is not speaking? What are the qualities of the silences (e.g., are they reflective, spacious, tense, or anticipatory)? |
Noticing in and with the body enables present moment awareness to what your current experience is, informed by your internal and external environments. This awareness, in turn, enables you to move with greater attention and intention to respond to what is arising in a given circumstance. Additionally, it is said that “what you pay attention to grows.”vii In attending with and to the body, the breadth, depth, and nuance of your awareness grows. Sensitivity to subtle cues felt through the body is an invaluable capacity for peacebuilding practitioners to sense and notice what might be overlooked by others and may hold the key to transforming a conflict dynamic, whether at the micro level of interpersonal relationships or the macro level of society.viii
An element of embodiment that is important to acknowledge is the ways in which our bodies hold the echoes of our pasts, lived, and inherited. What we sense and the meaning we make of that sensory information is shaped by our interpersonal relationships, cultural upbringing, and intergenerational trauma and resilience. In working across division, real and perceived, it is important to remember that not only is your perception and embodied experience shaped by these forces, so too are the perceptions and embodied experiences of those you are working alongside. This brings us to the final word of ‘critical embodied (self) reflection’ and dynamics of power and identity expressed through the body and in our relationships.
Critical
A critical lens in embodied (self) reflection draws on the notion of critical consciousness developed by Paolo Freire, which invites an analysis of power dynamics within and across relationships from the micro level of interpersonal relationships to the macro level of societal relationships.ix It also invites a turn inwards, to identify the ways in which we internalize the systems and structures of power that shape the societies in which we live. These power dynamics inform our intersectional identities and relationships across all forms of identity such as race, class, gender, (dis)ability, sexual orientation, religion, and language, in other words, our positionality.x, xi Our positionality is therefore dictated by the identities our bodies express, and our bodies, in turn, are shaped by the power dynamics in the societies we live in.xii
For example, I identify as a white-bodied woman. Living in the highly racialized society of the United States where white-bodied people are highly privileged, I embody dimensions of this privilege that I must be attuned to so as to navigate them with honesty and respect with each person I encounter.xiii As a woman living in a patriarchal society, I also embody dimensions of marginalization that I similarly must be attuned to so as to navigate them with compassion and dignity. Thus, the critical lens of embodied (self) reflection invites a consideration of the dynamics of power, privilege, and marginalization that we hold and express in our bodies, and how they shape our relationships.
This awareness is particularly important for peacebuilding practitioners who seek to transform structural violence, but also embody dimensions of the very violence they seek to transform. Critical embodied (self) reflection is a practice of sensing into and making visible the invisible and internalized patterns of violence we hold in our bodies. For people who are particularly marginalized, an early cultivation of this awareness is a function of survival. For people who are particularly privileged, their privilege affords an ignorance to and distancing of this awareness. For practitioners, it is important to hold this awareness in body and in mind in relationship with oneself and in relationships with others so as to navigate these relationships in a way that furthers the building of peace.
Integrating the Threads: Critical Embodied (Self) Reflection
In the paragraphs above, we have explored the elements of critical embodied (self) reflection in reverse order, considering the value of each element for peacebuilding practitioners. ‘(Self) reflection,’ centered in compassionate curiosity, is practiced through noticing with care. ‘Embodied’ directs the practice of the noticing to and through the body. ‘Critical’ contextualizes what we notice in and with the body within our respective social, political, and historical contexts, and particularly how we are positioned within them. These elements are unified through the threads of presence, (self) awareness, and intentionality. Through cultivating caring presence, we are able to become more aware (of ourselves, others, the contexts we are in), and thus we can move with greater intention in our relationships. These subtle qualities are invaluable for peacebuilding practitioners to cultivate so as to enhance support for themselves, their relationships, and their visionary work of building peace in a fractured world.
Before clicking away to a new page, you are invited to pause and notice. To notice where you are, the space you are in. To notice how you are – how you are feeling physically, how you are feeling emotionally. To notice how your breath is moving. Do you notice something differently from what you noticed before? From what you are sensing and feeling, you are invited to make any adjustments to experience a bit more comfort, just for this moment. May you go well.
References
Acarón Rios, Thania. “The Practitioner’s Body of Knowledge: Dance/movement in Training Programmes that Address Violence, Conflict and Peace.” Master’s thesis, University of Aberdeen, 2015.
Caldwell, Christine, and Lucia Bennett Leighton. Oppression and the Body: Roots, Resistance, and Resolutions. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2018.
Fogel, Alan. Body Sense: The Science and Practice of Embodied Self-Awareness. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. Gray, Amber. “Staying Present: The Body
i John Paul Lederach, The Little Book of Conflict Transformation: Clear Articulation of the Guiding Principles by a Pioneer in the Field (Intercourse, PA: Good Books, 2003), 7.
ii John Paul Lederach, Reina Neufeldt, and Hal Culbertson, Reflective Peacebuilding: A Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Toolkit (Notre Dame, IN: Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, 2007), 2.
iii I place self in parentheses to honor the ways in which different cultures and traditions hold different understandings of the ‘self’ in relation to worldviews that span from more individual to more collective in orientation.
iv John Paul Lederach has referred to such a practice as the ‘innerworks’ of peacebuilding. For examples of his elaboration into the innerworks, please see ‘Thoughts on a Penny – Challenges to Creative Conflict in the Public Square’ or ‘Compassionate Presence: Fait-based Peacebuilding in the Face of Violence.’
v Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action. New York: Basic Books, 1983.
vi Thomas J. Csordas, “Somatic Modes of Attention,” Cultural Anthropology 8, no. 2 (1993): 138.
vii adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), 42.
viii Nadja Alexander and Michelle LeBaron, “Embodied Conflict Resolution: Resurrecting Roleplay-based Curricula through Dance,” in Educating Negotiators for a Connected World (St. Paul, MN: DRI Press, 2013).
ix Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).
x The term ‘intersectionality’ was originally coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe multiple burden of marginalization and discrimination of Black women who experience both racism and sexism, whose “intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism.” Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989, no. 1 (1989): 139-67.
xi Monisha Bajaj and Edward J. Brantmeier, “The Politics, Praxis, and Possibilities of Critical Peace Education,” Journal of Peace Education 8, no. 3 (2011).
xii For more on this theme of embodiment, power, and oppression please see My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies; Oppression and the Body: Roots, Resistance, and Resolutions; and The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice.
xiii Rae Johnson, “Grasping and Transforming the Embodied Experience of Oppression,” International Body Psychotherapy Journal 14, no. 1 (2015).
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