Decolonizing the Body: The Colonial Virus, Superiority Complex, and the Courage to Feel

Inside our virtual Somatic Activated Healing™ Teacher Training, where students from across the globe are learning to become somatic dance coaches, I found myself cracked open in ways I didn't expect.

This training weaves together Buddhist wisdom, trauma healing, restorative and social justice, trance dance, and the depth of somatics.

For one of our recent sessions, I invited my dear friend, activist, and author Kerri Kelly to join us as a guest lecturer.

Kerri is the author of American Detox: The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal, the founder of CTZNWELL, and a force who has spent decades mobilizing people to reimagine wellbeing as a collective, political act. She is a prolific organizer and teacher, known for speaking truth to the ways white supremacy, capitalism, and spiritual bypassing infect our bodies and communities.

When she spoke into our virtual space, it was like she dropped a match into dry kindling. She named colonization as a "colonial virus," echoing the wisdom of Malidoma Patrice Somé, and illuminated how this virus still shows up in our nervous systems, our hierarchies of worth, our superiority complexes, and even in the wellness industry itself.

That conversation changed me. It landed in my bones that decolonizing the body requires visceral engagement, not theoretical understanding. The way we breathe, the way we grieve, the way we unconsciously rank one another all carry this colonial imprint. In that moment, she opened the door for all of us to feel what it actually means to embody decolonization: not as an idea, but as an act of intimacy, repair, and radical presence.

We spoke about social justice, colonization, somatics, and the body. And what landed loud and clear is this:

The same systems we're fighting out there (white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, patriarchy) are alive in us: In our nervous systems, breath, and bones.

This is the heart of decolonizing the body.

The Colonial Virus Goes Beyond History Into Somatic Experience

West African teacher and Dagara elder Malidoma Patrice Somé once described colonization as a colonial virus. He saw it as more than a historical event; it becomes a spiritual and psychological infection that still shapes our bodies today.

This virus:

• Convinces us to disconnect from our ancestral ways
• Teaches us to suppress our emotional truth
• Conditions us to fear what's different
• Mistakes dominance for power

And here's the uncomfortable truth: even in wellness, spirituality, and somatic spaces, we still carry it. We may wear better outfits and use kinder words, but the colonial virus lingers, embedded deep in our flesh and nervous systems.

The Goal Involves Intimacy, Not Immunity

There's a dangerous myth in the spiritual world that awakening means immunity. That we can vibe high, bypass suffering, and remain untouchable.

But immunity becomes detachment when we seek liberation through disconnection. Superiority wears many disguises, including mala beads and spiritual bypassing.

Decolonizing the body is about dropping in.

It means asking yourself:

• Who do I flinch around?
• Who do I unconsciously rank as "less than" or "irrelevant"?
• How do I punish my own body for being too much (or not enough)?

This work demands somatic engagement, not conceptual analysis. Colonization lives as a reflex in our bodies.

Spirituality Without Soul Becomes Superiority

Modern psychology often teaches us to strengthen the "I."

Buddhist wisdom, on the other hand, teaches us to dissolve it.

But here's the paradox:

• If we dissolve without knowing who we are, we become dissociated and easy to control.
• If we only strengthen without examining our impact, we become self-absorbed and bypassing.

The real path is holding both.

This is the bodhisattva's way:

• Being the biggest one in the room: capable of holding it all
• And the smallest one in the room: curious, tender, and always learning

The Punitive System Lives in Us

If you've ever hated yourself for being anxious, sad, or "not over it yet," you've felt the colonial justice system working inside you.

You punished yourself, told your grief to shut up, and sentenced your body to silence.

But healing doesn't come from punishment; instead, it emerges through repair—from the radical belief that even when we cause harm, we are still good. We are still worthy of restoration.

This work transcends modern psychology and enters sacred somatic territory.

Feeling Is a Political Act

When my mother died, I wailed beside her body. This raw, ancient sound rose through me and outward.

Some may have called that sound a breakdown, but they'd be wrong. I was keening: a Celtic ritual of grief, a sacred scream, my soul returning home.

But rather than make space for my feelings and their expression, the hospital staff asked me to quiet down.

This is what colonization stole: our rituals of feeling.

To feel fully and unapologetically is decolonization. It is a form of resistance.

True Liberation Requires Intimacy With All of Life

Let's be clear: "love and light" falls short of the goal when it becomes avoidance.

When used to avoid discomfort, "love and light" becomes colonialism in a chakra necklace.

We are not here to be happy all the time. We are here to be whole.

Love goes beyond the pretty and performative parts. It also encompasses the grief, the rage, the cravings, the parts still learning to be free.

If You're Still Here, You're Ready

If you've read this far, something in you is ready to:

• question how you've been conditioned to feel
• notice when your healing tools are actually hiding places
• reclaim your joy, your rest, your grief, your truth

This is the work we do at the Somatic Dance Institute.

What we teach transcends dance.

We teach remembering. Returning. Resisting.

We teach the courage to feel again.

Want to take this further?

Join the waitlist for the next Somatic Dance Teacher Training and begin your journey today with my free resource: Dance for Change: 3-Day Dance Challenge