Don’t Sweep the Ocean:
Somatic Strategies that Can Help Us Act with Discernment
I’ve told my story of being held as a political hostage in Iran at least 1,000 times, but last week, featured on a podcast called This Is Actually Happening, might have been the most intimate interview I’ve ever done. It dives deep into my spiritual, political, and healing journey over the last four and a half decades—from birth to the present.
I realized that certain lessons from my life might be instructive in the context of what we’re facing in this country today. Here’s my attempt to draw them out.
Losing Power
In some ways, the way I felt in prison reminds me of how it feels to lose power.
“I was definitely being broken open, and there was a fundamental reorganization going on: How did I end up here? Did I do something to deserve this? Is the universe inherently cruel? And the grief and the loss are unbearable.”
The reality is that Americans have far less power today than we did before Trump was elected, and this loss is going to increase. What is not true is that we are powerless.
Somatically speaking, when we feel threatened, we go into survival mode. Our survival strategies (fight, flight, freeze, appease, and dissociate) have an intelligence that served us at some point in our lives and should be honored—but under pressure, they can throw us into a closed, reactive state instead of an open-hearted, responsive one.
My personal survival strategy has always been to fight. Generally, this doesn't mean with my fists but with my pushing and over-efforting. It can look like caretaking others and denying their agency, controlling, confronting, protecting, running in circles—anything but allowing myself to feeling helpless and scared.
Somatic Practice. If you’re like me and find yourself overdoing and under-feeling, try this. Set a timer for 15 minutes, lie flat on the floor and place weighted bean bags or books on your chest and hips. Close your eyes and focus on the areas where the weighted objects are placed your body. Do you notice any sensations? If so, can you let yourself just be with them, without trying to change anything? Rest your curiosity and attention on one area for a while, then notice what happens next. Does the sensation change? Is there an emotion attached to it? What quality does it have?
The reality is that we can’t undo what has already been done. There’s a tsunami of harm being unleashed by this government. Our democracy was already fundamentally unequal before this election, and now we face losing it completely. This is new terrain, and we can’t solve what we don’t even fully understand yet.
We can’t sweep the ocean.
Pacing and Discernment
This new form of government—a populist tech-oligarchy with authoritarian ambitions—was elected because they succeeded in controlling enough of the country’s attention to win the vote.
Now, they want all of it.
In solitary confinement, my captors psychologically controlled me by cutting me off from nearly all information from the outside world. No phone calls, no visits from my lawyer—even the handful of letters I received were redacted. They didn’t want me to know that people on the outside were fighting for me; they didn’t want me to know I had power.
As a country, we’re facing the opposite strategy: a total inundation of information. They want us driven to exhaustion by confusion and fear. My friend Brandon Brown’s media strategy is to“consume news for practical reasons, but avoid anything algorithmically driven by the incentive to keep you engaged.”
Instead of diving into their ocean and drowning, we can try to make space for the extremely uncomfortable thoughts and sensations that arise—or already exist—perhaps after reading an article or hearing something disturbing from a friend.
From the podcast, “We've literally created the conditions, in our country and world, that are killing us. We need to limit our participation in those conditions as much as possible, and create new ones. In order to create the conditions externally, we have to create them internally.”
In order to preserve the power and integrity we have, some of us are going to need to build our muscle for inaction. This may sound like a privileged position, but we must observe this new regime in order to strategically look for ways to hang onto and leverage our collective power—because a lot less power is going to have to go a lot further.
The Human Story
What does it mean to go underground but not be silenced? Many of our lineages of liberation still exist today because they were able to survive underground for long periods of time. The impulse of hibernation and protection has a real wisdom, it’s what you do to protect you capacity under threat.
From the podcast, “The experience of separation and loss is a universal human experience, not limited to prison. The feeling that your soul’s expression is being dominated and blocked is itself a form of captivity. It connects you to the human story.”
Somatic Practice. One exercise you can try when you’re feeling stuck or complacent is creative joint play. Set your timer for 10 minutes. Begin to move your feet and ankles in free, unscripted ways. Slow it down, speed it up, and enjoy creative joint play. To the extent possible, don’t think about what you’re going to do next. Let your ankles move themselves. Next, try moving your arms and wrists in a similar fashion. Enjoy the natural flow of your body, not knowing what will happen next.
Strength—both spiritual and material—can be built underground, but in order to do this we must not become avoidant or complacent. Some aspects of this regime may become appealing. It may do things you even agree with, such as pulling out of foreign conflicts. You might benefit financially.
Throwing up your hands and choosing self-preservation over the collective can feel like all you have the capacity to do, “but it’s fundamentally not true that we are separate from one another. It’s a misunderstanding of reality. Even in solitary confinement, I was not alone; my ancestors were there with me.”
Please care for yourself, disengage from social media if that's right for you, but don’t disengage from the real web: community.
Strengthening the Web
How can we discern the difference between false hope and real hope?
We have less power than we did before, and we will continue to lose more in the coming months and years; that’s indisputable. This new government might feel permanent, unmovable, but history will continue to change rapidly and on a dime.
What in your life already brings you hope? Keep doing that. The acts of hope you need already exist; now is the time to feed them, water them, embody them. May these pressures awaken in you a longing that’s laid dormant, and builds real hope for all of us.
Being All In
“Though prison left me with the knowledge that liberation is possible, it also left me understanding how fucking hard it is. You have to be ‘all in’ to stand a chance, however that might look for you.”
As painful and scary as it is, the political reality we’re facing is an escalation of what been unfolding long before this election. For some of us, it may be wise to send our energy underground; for others, it might be time to extend out and get big.
Either way, cut no one off. In order to make changes in this country, we’re going to have to tolerate differences and make more friends. To reach beyond your own limited experience and understand another’s is the impulse of every storyteller, every person on a healing journey, anyone committed to social change and anyone capable of love.
Apparently democracy is not a linear path, has no guarantee, and being a good human takes work. We’re all part of this massive unfolding of the human drama–let’s pray that the stars haven’t abandoned us yet, that they’ll help us find a new path through this, and let’s use the time we have to push the envelope of liberation as far as we can.
Need support integrating these lessons and practices?
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Join my upcoming webinar—Building the World We Want: Getting Beyond Survival and Reclaiming Agency in Times of Crisis—on Sunday, February 16th, 10-11:30am PST. Cost is a sliding scale of $20-$40. If you need a discount code or a free pass, email shourdsomatics@gmail.com, and I’ll send you one, no questions asked. The number of participants will cap at 20 to ensure everyone can participate.
I will also be leading an Embodied Practice Group for White Women, dates TBD. It’s called, “White Women, Let’s Reclaim Our Power: A Call to Accountability and Collective Healing.” If you are interested and want to be on my mailing list, email me at shourdsomatics.com.
I needed this today. So needed.
I resonate with this a whole lot. In prison, my goal was to make sure the system didn't take my humanity. I thought that maybe if I achieved that there, I'd achieve it on the outside. Now I've been home for over 7 months and finding that your fight doesn't get any easier. You will be smacked into the face by prejudice and stigma and second-guessing and everything else. Finding my power without rushing to retreat the minute something throws me off balance is still something I am learning.