To ask someone to drop into their body without asking whether it has ever been safe to live there is not trauma-informed—it’s trauma-oblivious. To teach “grounding” without acknowledging displacement, “stillness” without naming surveillance, “safety” without confronting whose bodies have historically been denied it—is not healing. It is harm, repackaged as wellness.

Embodiment is not a lifestyle brand. It is not a curated ritual or a ten-step method for personal peace. It is not something you earn with time, money, or the right therapeutic vocabulary. Embodiment is a birthright—but one that many have been systematically stripped of.

So we must ask: Who has been allowed to feel? Whose bodies are seen as expressive—and whose are seen as dangerous? Who is taught that the sensations of their skin are sacred—and who is taught to numb, shrink, and endure? Who is offered space for healing—and who is told to toughen up, quiet down, or push through?

True somatic work does not seek to perfect your nervous system response. It makes space for the full truth of your body in relationship to the world that body lives in. It asks not just what you feel, but why it was never safe to feel it.

Somatics is a practice of reclamation, not refinement. Of remembering, not erasing.

Because if your somatic practice is only created to support the already-safe, the well-resourced, and the socially affirmed— It’s not embodiment. It’s privilege, performing as presence.