body rites: a holistic healing and embodiment workbook for Black survivors of sexual trauma

In this intimate debut, psychologist and yogi Young gently guides Black “women, femmes, and nonbinary survivors of sexual assault” through a “practice of decolonizing our medicine and reclaiming our body sovereignty.” She explains that as Black people have historically been forced to care for others “as a means of survival,” self-care is crucial to healing from sexual trauma and can be undertaken through four different “journeys”: “Settling IN,” or pursuing physical embodiment through nervous system regulation; “the work,” using yoga and meditation to “foster an internal sense of safety, agency, and choice”; “the medicine,” drawing on herbal healing practices and “chakra energies”; and “spirit & the ancestors,” or communing with ancestral spirits “as a source of support in healing yourself and intergenerational trauma.” Young centers her advice in a robust journaling practice that seamlessly marries somatic and emotional self-investigation (“How do you know in your body when you are being your most true self? What does it feel like?”), and her methodology is grounded in African spirituality practice as well as an in-depth understanding of physiology and psychology, making for a wise and broad-minded approach. This is an essential resource for sexual abuse survivors. (Oct.)