Tai CK: Somatic works helps us be with our messy human-ness

This post is part of a Grief Care series, featuring BIPOC healers across multiple traditions and modalities. Each week will spotlight a different healer, sharing their work, how they’re meeting these deeply challenging times, the grief they’re carrying and how they’re tending to it, and what it means to hold space for their communities at the intersections of healing and justice.

Today, I talk with Tai CK, a biodynamic craniosacral therapist based in New York City.

Tai CK was drawn to biodynamic craniosacral therapy as a means of helping herself and others, while trusting her internal wisdom.

I love that you describe craniosacral therapy as a deep listening through the heart and hands…how would you explain this type of therapy to someone who’s not familiar with it? And why is it an act of such deep listening and compassion? 

I’d tell someone to listen, and yet say it’s more of an experience than something that can be described with words and intellectually understood. It goes beyond that. Being with another person’s being while being aware of both their physical structures like bones and muscles, and their emotional/spiritual history, what they hold within their body, is revolutionary within itself. Acknowledging the wisdom and stories of the body helps people feel witnessed, which is a human need!

What’s the difference between craniosacral therapy and biodynamic CST, which is what you practice?

Honestly, I haven’t been so focused on discourse about the modality itself lately. I think the reason is that these are stolen medicines that white people have taken from Indigenous people and cover up, and another expression of colonization. I think anti-oppressive trainings will be the future, and I can’t in good faith recommend craniosacral trainings especially to other BIPOC anymore, for that reason. 

At a time when it’s struggle for many of us to feel at home in our bodies, and in society, how can this somatic work help?

Somatic work can help us connect to a sense of joy, sadness, grounding and connection. That said, it simply helps us be with all of our messy human-ness in a compassionate and non-intellectualized container.

What has it taught you about grief in the body?

I’ve always been very close to grief within my body and the world, always very in tune with it. My studies have only taught me how to create a container to be with grief specifically, in a focused way, and sense into where it is within the body.

Would you agree that many of us walk around with unresolved or unmetabolized grief in our bodies?

Yes. American society and many other colonized euro-centric societies have a fear of death. There is an unresolved sense of grief in that we learn to be afraid of it, afraid to process both alone and within community. Other societies aren’t like that and have grief rituals and traditions, alone and with other — not just for death but for grief of changes in the world.

What are some of the symptoms of unprocessed grief, from the physiological to the spiritual,  that you see in your practice?

Deep physical, persistent pain. Emotional pain. Almost feeling haunted by these things. Stuckness. Isolation, no sense of being connected to other life forms such as non-human animals, ancestors, Earth, etc.

Is any of that presenting differently in this year of acute stress and trauma?

I see much more consistent nervous system level freeze, which means our bodies are physiologically numbing themselves to not have to be fully present to the pain of the world.

We have been affected by the world, on a physical level and on many holistic levels. This effect has been the product of stress and panic, as well as having an accumulated impact over time, and so of course unprocessed grief is going to sit within our body. It’s a given.

What does the body need to feel safe in processing grief?

A sense of connection beyond isolation, both to the internal and external world — so, to a sense of peace and comfort within the self, and a sense of being witnessed or understood by community.

In our grief-averse culture, it can be challenging for people to even recognize what they’re feeling as grief. How do you facilitate that kind of acknowledgment and awareness?

Well, it can likewise be difficult for people to feel connected to their bodies. We start from square one, tuning into “what is this temperature in my body?” “What is this sensation in my body?” “What am I sensing and where?” And then I’m very practiced in creating an attuned container of session space in which more layers can unfold.

One of the deepest callings of this time seems to be the call to do our intergenerational trauma healing work: do you believe that is foundational for moving forward in other areas of healing in our lives?

Yes. We need to realize we aren’t just alone in the world. There are those who came before us and those who will become after us, whether directly connected by bloodline or not. It’s that simple. If we don’t learn about these beings or at least set an intention to feel connection with them, we are fooling ourselves. 

Can you share a little about your Somatic Sits and how they are holding space for this type of work?

They are exactly what I’ve been talking about. That compassionate space where I understand your nervous system, facial expressions, wobbles in your voice, cues that might say you are overwhelmed, and guide you accordingly to sit with difficult things causing stagnant grief within the body, such as racism, yet making sure you don’t get too overwhelmed, by helping you tune into peace and comfort in the body as well. That peace and comfort is based on connection to other beings and getting an embodied sense of our relational connection to them. It’s the idea that it’s not just us, alone in the world. These sits are 30 minutes and over video. I rely on my lived experience as a black Craniosacral and somatic practitioner, to hold the space, and was never trained specifically in somatic sits.

Why does cultural somatic work feel like the most vital part of your healing practice right now?

Because it’s anti-oppressive healing work. We can’t be centering whiteness and intellectualization, unless we want the apocalypse to continue. Period.

You’ve always been committed to decolonizing the wellness model: what did that look like for you when you first began your healing work, and how has that evolved since then, especially in these last few months of 2020?

That’s a big question. It’s not really a choice for me since my spirit wouldn’t have let me do healing work in oppressive ways that completely exclude the experiences of many with marginalized identities. It wasn’t a choice I made as much as it was a calling, and obviously this calling is intensified by the increased pain of those with marginalized identities during the pandemics of racism and Covid. 

You’ve centered the healing of the Black LGBTQ community, especially trans folks, as essential to collective healing: what is the ripple impact of that work?

It’s a benefit for all of society. We have short periods of holding space for those with deep deep pain, who are told they shouldn’t exist by society. Social pain causes a deep pain just like physical pain. Being able to provide space for people who are often social outcasts or who feel societally unwanted actually is a way of processing collective grief in a way that is directly beneficial to the collective. 

Can you share some of the griefs you’ve been holding this year and how you’re processing them?

I’ve held grief about how the organizations that dominate the healing field right now are often ageist, racist and oppressive. It sucks trying to help others and having to climb so many personal hurdles even when I have already done 700 hours of training and countless hours of practice.

What does holistic grief care look like for you?

Holistic grief care is somatic grief care. Community grief care. Eating fruits and crying. Watching whatever Netflix show for hours on end. Eating whatever you want. It’s so many things but mostly it’s just being with how messy and intense the human experience can be. And remembering or connecting to a sense of the other than human, when possible. Grief support groups for BIPOC that I’ve seen have looked amazing. It’s about tuning into that internal witnessing place and inner awareness, and being in that with others, honoring each other’s processes and however long the processes may be, even if they are or feel like forever.

At 22, you are one of the youngest healers I’ve encountered. What has been most empowering and transformative for you working as a craniosacral therapist in a society that is so often critical or dismissive of youth? 

I’ve been able to see the true colors of what social conditioning has done to those who are older than me and believe youth are not wise at all. I feel bad for them. They aren’t connected to spirit, to the wisdom that flows through young babies. I pity people who can’t see past my age. They’re missing out on so much.

If there’s one piece of wisdom or medicine you can offer to others from your own path to healing and journey as a healer, what would it be?

Just do research about different healers and types of healing. Whether you want to practice something for others or just gain a calming form of sound meditation, there is so much out there that can add some relief to your life. We have to connect to these practices as much as we can, in a society that tells us to act like machines. We need to connect to flow, to life, to that which is present beneath all of the social conditioning.

BIO

Tai CK centers LGBTQ and POC communities in her work. She is a young activist and passionate somatic practitioner (trained in craniosacral) who sees individual bodily systems as inseparable from collective systems of trauma, fulcrums and healing. She does virtual somatic work during the pandemic and was trained in in-person work. She offers work focused on having an anti-racist somatic practice as a practitioner. Learn more about her work here.