Somatic Healing and Ancestral Wisdom: How the African Diaspora Heals Trauma Through Movement

Before the world started using words like “somatic experiencing” or “nervous system regulation,” our people were already experts in the science of survival. They’ve gone and put brand names on our medicine, but they didn’t invent the cure. We carried it in our bones across oceans.

We need to talk about why we dance—really dance—and why it has never been about how we look to the people watching.

The Medicine in the Movement

For a Survivor of violence, abuse, or the systemic weight of racism and genocide, the body is often a place where “the story” gets trapped. When you’ve been through the fire, that trauma doesn’t just vanish; it settles in your hips, it tightens your shoulders, and it clouds your spirit.

We FELT that before we had words for it. We FELT that even when doctors turned us away and told us that it was in our heads. We FELT that when they kept telling us that all we had to do was lose weight and we were at our lowest high school skinny weight.

We didn’t just dance for the rhythm; we danced so that the pain wouldn’t rot inside us.

It’s Not a Trend, It’s Blood Memory

Modern psychology is finally catching up to what your grandmother and grandfather already knew. When you see our people shaking, catch a spirit, or moving with a ferocity that looks “aggressive” to the untrained eye, you are witnessing somatic release.

• Rhythmic Shaking: This is the body’s natural way of discharging the “fight or flight” energy that gets stuck after a trauma.

• The Pulsating Funk: That heavy bass and syncopated rhythm weren’t just for a good time. The rhythm acts as a metronome for a dysregulated heart, bringing the nervous system back into alignment.

• Communal Trance: We have always known that healing is a collective act. (Native American and other Indigenous culture Pow Wows, church, cookouts, clubs, rent parties, basement parties, skating rink, dance teams, Soul Train line, jumping rope, hand clapping, line dancing, our unique marching band style; bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire or The Jacksons-where choreography and singing go hand in hand.)

Moving together reminds the body that it is safe, seen, and supported.

Correcting the Narrative: Soul Train and the Funk

I see the young people online looking at old footage of Soul Train. They see someone dancing with every fiber of their being—sweating, eyes closed, muscles straining to the funk—and they make jokes. They say, “Cocaine was a helluva drug,” because they can’t imagine that kind of intensity coming from a place of pure, sober necessity.

But they don’t understand the “Pressure Cooker” of the time.

When you spend your week navigating a world that denies your humanity, that 1970s bass funk line was your ventilator. Your oxygen. Your connection to your “last good nerve”.

Those dancers weren’t “high” on substances; they were high on the relief of finally being able to shake off the indignities of the world. It wasn’t an aesthetic. It was a biological imperative. They were dancing for their lives.

A Call to Return to Your Body

To the Survivors who have been dancing in their kitchens, in the clubs, or in the privacy of their rooms just to make it to tomorrow: I see you. Your body is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Do not let them tell you that you need a “method” or a “certificate” to heal. You have the wisdom of the Diaspora flowing through your veins.

1. Avoid dancing for the “look”: Close your eyes. Don’t worry about the line of your leg or the grace of your arms.

2. Find the vibration: Let the music hit the parts of you that feel numb or heavy.

3. Shake it off: Literally. Shake your hands, your feet, and your torso. Let the “tremor” happen. That is your nervous system letting go of what you no longer need to carry.

Our ancestors didn’t survive the Middle Passage, global colonization, the Trail of Tears, the fields, and the Jim Crow South by just “thinking” their way through it. They moved through it. Sang through it. Hummed through it.  It’s always the right time we reclaim that power within you.

“Your body remembers the trauma, but it also remembers the rhythm of the release. It remembers the healing. Listen to the blood memory.”

Affirmations for Reclaiming Your Rhythm

• “I don’t need a clinical label to prove my healing; my rhythm is my birthright, and my body already knows the way back home.”

Use this when the world tries to make your survival feel like a new science instead of an old soul-truth.

• “When I shake and move with the music, I am not just dancing; I am shaking off every lie, every heavy hand, and every indignity the world tried to settle in my spirit.”

Use this when you feel the weight of the day—or the decade—clinging to your shoulders.

• “My intensity is my medicine. I give myself permission to move with a ferocity that clears my blood, regulates my heart, and restores my soul.”

Use this when people misunderstand your power or try to tell you to ‘calm down’ when your spirit needs to ‘move through.'”

• “I am connected to a long line of Survivors who danced in the face of the fire. Every step I take is a sacred echo of their strength and a testament to my own.”

Use this to remind yourself that you are never dancing alone; the ancestors are in the room with you.

• “I move for the feeling, not for the look. My body is a sanctuary, not a stage, and I am the only audience that matters when I am dancing my way to freedom.”

Use this to ground yourself in the internal work of healing, letting go of the need for anyone else to understand your ‘why.'”