Body Rites: A Holistic Healing and Embodiment Workbook for Black Survivors of Sexual Trauma

by Shena J. Young, Shyma El Sayed (Illustrator)

A written companion and workbook for readers seeking to reclaim their bodies as home in healing from sexual trauma

Body rites as a holistic healing journey, anchored in the practice of decolonizing healing and reclaiming body sovereignty, reaches back into indigenous roots and land-based healing. It centers remembering as a means of survival. This workbook is the first of its kind, a resource of rituals divided into four healing journeys for Black women, femmes, and non-binary survivors of sexual assault.

The experiential workbook moves beyond prescriptive self-help models by providing a gentle guide and liaison to explore the impact of sexual trauma on the mind, body, heart, and spirit. It is an invitation to heal holistically, drawing upon psychophysiology, lived body wisdom, trauma-informed embodiment practices, kinship and ancestral connections, and African spiritual practices. Most urgently, it's a series of intimate conversations with your “self” and remembrance that healing lives at the core of your intuition.

Genres: Mental Health, Nonfiction, Book Club, Self Help, Health, Psychology

224 pages, Paperback

Published November 14, 2023

Reviews

[Tasha Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Without a doubt, this is the best sexual trauma workbook for Black women, and women of color. The opening letter to us, the meditations, journal prompts, affirmations, recipes for healing, guidance on breathing, there is so much here. I'll be recommending this one to clients and loved ones.

[⚫㊐✨Heather Mc Erlean❦㈦㊏]

This book may not be for me as it is for a particular audience, but I have a friend whom it would be perfect for. I've entered to win this, not for me, but for her since she doesn't go online. Still, it seems like this would be a great book for people to use to heal. I love the fact it was written to help others.

[Niki Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just got my copy of Dr shena j young's 'body rites: a holistic healing and embodiment workbook for Black survivors of sexual trauma", and I am so excited! This was my FAVORITE birthday gift. I turned 64 last Thursday. I ordered this book on my birthday. Let me explain WHY this is so significant. The incestuous RAPE that I survived at the hands of my mother's youngest and favorite brother was in 1979 right after my only brother died. That was a long time ago, yet the memory and DAMAGE from being drugged to the point of BLACKOUT as an under-aged teenager at a bar in Philadelphia where this serial pedophile predator in my own blood family would take many of his targeted victims does NOT go away. It is LIFE LONG trauma. This sick violent male in the family who was supposed to be stepping UP as a beloved Uncle to help my mom who was then at the point of suicidal grief at the lost of her ONLY son, my brother Eddie, took advantage of my trust and ignorance...and in one fateful night DESTROYED what was left of my faith in my life and purpose on this planet. It was not just the SHOCK of being FORCED awake from a drugged stupor in the midst of the most evil realization I've ever had that harmed me the most...it was the ongoing HELL that the other females in my family, headed by our own blood mother continue to direct toward me so many decades later as they behave in accordance to the "BLAME & SHAME the victim" American ideology of PROTECTING male sexual pedophile predators who have status among the females. So here I am, some 44 years later, after decades of therapy and 13 years sober STILL needing HELP to break this cycle of suffering. Dr shen DELIVERS! She is the ONLY psychologist I have ever experienced who is able to embrace me as a reader by addressing my entire cultural intuitiveness. Dr shen engages me holistically as an African Indigenous American user of this workbook who is enabled to add this as another self-paced TOOL in addition to my ongoing in-person therapy. My therapist and I are able to use the work that I choose to do and when I choose to do it that's found inside this RICH collection of practices Dr shen has compiled. Just reading the opening prayer and then the forward by Aisha Shahidah Simmons had me gasping, sighing, weeping, tearing, and LAUGHING with the sense of HONOR, DIGNITY and Sacred Way of being FAMILY that I have always needed and was never able to receive from my own traumatized and reactive toxic family members who have also suffered from sexual abuse within our blood line, even if indirectly, for far too long. THIS is a MUST for all members of Black American families even if you have NO known history of sexual assault. This book speaks the language of EMPATHY, TRUTH, GENTLENESS and HEALING that is rooted in our CULTURE...a vital and discerning way of speaking and identifying experiences that has been STOLEN and BEAT out of our African American and Indigenous families for over 400 and 500 years that Dr shen j young and Aishah Shahidah Simmons ask us to witness...and see in print...as they invite us to SPEAK and PRACTICE such ways within the very limited scope of this colonizer's American English language that we all now speak as our sole communication language. To add context to the English words, we are offered rituals and acts of healing and reparation. We are invited to practice at our own pace...picking and choosing when, where, what and if...choices rarely given to any American as we all endure being forced and tricked into consuming unending amounts of harmful products, services, ignorance, misinformation, sensation, and distractions that keep us racist, misogynistic, divided, unfocused, apathetic, fogged brained, disembodied, petty, frightened, materialistic, impatient, intolerant, narcissistic, self-centered, competitive, self-destructive, greedy, obsessed, compulsive and "entertained" as trillions are made off our collective suffering. This workbook is a true American GIFT. It serves as a unifying tool of empathy, compassion, and understanding for other members of the Black community who are NOT survivors of sexual trauma. For those of us determined to HEAL from the unspeakable harms that internalized generational terrorism brings...those us us willing to do the WORK to finally END this insanity of cyclical sexual trauma, THIS is for us, Black survivors. Thank you Dr shen!

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Body Rites is a workbook to help one heal from past sexual trauma. It’s not meant to be read continuously from beginning to end. If you are able to do that, I will applaud you. It will bring back hard feelings and great sadness, but it teaches a person how to heal. This book will give you the tools to work through your trauma and learn how to cope when those moments of great anxiety and anger overwhelm you. There were moments I cried profoundly hard and had to stop and that’s okay. The book tells you to take a break. You will learn yoga, teas, mantras, channeling your ancestors, and so much more. Although, it has a targeted audience for black survivors; I feel this will help anyone begin their journey to healing at home. Thank you for the opportunity to read this wonderful workbook. #Goodreads Giveaways