Facilitating Wellness

“In America, I was free only in battle, never free to rest—and he who finds no way to rest cannot long survive the battle.” — James Baldwin

We know that our bodies bear the brunt of systemic oppression and racism. Data since the late 90s in social epidemiology have shown that adverse health outcomes are directly linked to stress experienced from racism. These outcomes of weathering racism have created the preconditions that make black and brown people more susceptible to COVID-19. There are ways to alleviate this stress and trauma and it is a core part of both racial healing and racial equity work.

The fight for racial justice needs many hands and hearts working together. We must build our resiliency so that we can sustain the movement needed to end racism in this country. Penumbra’s center for racial healing will offer a robust wellness program featuring a full fleet of holistic, culturally specific healing services designed to detoxify bodies from the stresses of living in a racially stratified society. Services will include:

• Meditation
• Yoga
• Acupuncture
• Massage
• Healing movement
• Coaching and more

We are already working with licensed therapists and healers to develop specialized curricular tracks designed to promote healing from the embodied racial trauma embedded in our shared national history. Curricular tracks will be designed to attend to black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) clients and white clients, all of whom need healing, but differently.