In Bloom: Finding new meanings in old concepts
Defining our health and wellbeing on our own terms
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Hi there ♥ This is Paz from Argentina. I joined Chayn quite recently as part of the Spanish speaking team of Bloom. I live one-hour South of Buenos Aires, in a city called La Plata. In this part of the world, our days are getting a bit longer as we leave winter behind. This is the perfect moment to plant seeds and plan for Spring and Summer harvest.
In today’s newsletter, I want to think about what “healthy” means for me and how that has changed over the years. But first, we’ll begin with a grounding exercise that gets us moving, and root ourselves in news from the Chayn community - including new job opportunities and an update on our Bloom courses. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to the Bloom newsletter.
Ground: Settling into our bodies and the present
Our grounding exercise for today is a bit energetic. I realised recently that sometimes I need to shake my hands and body in order to ground myself, because if I do a slow meditation my mind is more likely to go elsewhere instead of focusing on the present. So this exercise will get you moving.
Start by closing your eyes or focusing on some object near you that you like, for example a plant or a painting.
Once you’re there, place one hand on your chest and the other on your belly. Take a couple of breaths at your own pace.
Then you’ll fill your lungs as much as you can and let the air escape through your mouth, with an exaggerated sigh or a sound like “ahh” while shaking your hands in the air.
Now, do this again. Place your hands on your chest and belly while you inhale and then exhale while shaking your hands or any other part of your body that needs it.
When you’re ready, go back to taking some nice and easy breaths, with your hands touching your legs, and come back as slowly as you want.
Remember that you can do this exercise with any of your body parts that need some movement, and if you’re unable to move due to any reason, imagine the motions in your mind instead!
Root: Connecting with the Chayn community
Chayn is continuing to grow and we continue our search for therapist partners to support our Bloom team. We are currently looking for:
Trauma-informed therapist partner [USA & Canada based]: We’re looking for a trauma-informed therapist based in the USA or Canada to partner with us, delivering remote, short-course therapy to survivors.
Trauma-informed therapist partner [French]: We’re looking for a French-speaking, trauma-informed therapist to partner with us, delivering remote, short-course therapy in French to survivors.
Trauma-informed therapist partner [Portuguese]: We’re ALSO looking for a Portuguese-speaking, trauma-informed therapist to partner with us, delivering remote, short-course therapy in Portuguese to survivors.
The deadline for these roles is on a rolling basis, so apply ASAP!
Bloom 1-1 Chat Facilitator [French-speaking]: We’re also looking for a French-speaking 1-1 Chat Facilitator to provide trauma-informed support and care to users of our Bloom project, via our 1-1 chat service.
Deadline: 12 September, 2022
We also wanted to let you know that unfortunately, we’re postponing the next few courses we were hoping to release on Bloom: ‘Recovering from toxic and abusive relationships’, ‘Managing anxiety’, and ‘Creating boundaries’. This is due to some team changes at Chayn. We want to do everything we can to continue supporting you, so we have some alternative options that you might find helpful, such as sending you the content from when we ran those same courses last year. To take a look at the options, see this short form and let us know what suits you best. We’re here for you.
In the meantime, a reminder that ‘Healing from sexual trauma’, ‘Society, patriarchy, and sexual trauma’, and ‘Reclaiming resilience in your trauma story’, and our 1-1 chat service are all available on Bloom whenever you need them.
Branch: Exploring together
When I was a child, my two grandmothers taught me a lot about plants. Not only to live with them and learn about their life cycles, but also about their medicinal potential. In these parts of the world, they didn't talk so much about herbalism as they did about “yuyos” (weeds); so for example, adding boldo or burrito to mate or tereré means that your belly will not hurt.
When I grew up, I became interested in the medicinal side of plants and began to study it a little to prepare my own tinctures, oils, and teas. Since I started to get more involved in the subject, I keep thinking about what concept of health I’m promoting. And that’s what I’d like to talk to you about.
When I was in school, some of us heard the new World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of health, as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not just the absence of disease. While this was a huge step for an organisation that until 2018 considered being transgender as a mental disorder, I can't help but wonder if it’s possible in the Global South to have complete mental and social well-being. We have to deal every day with so much social inequality and injustice that it makes me wonder if aspiring to a complete state of mental and social well-being is not utopian. Yet, I am absolutely certain that we have our own ways of living our health.
I believe that it's essential to build a concept of health more rooted in experience and culture. Such a concept will also be more flexible. Is it possible to inhabit wellness from a disruptive, authentic, and more radical stance than simply ticking boxes of what others think is healthy? Perhaps the answer lies in thinking in terms of wellness and leaving "healthy" behind for another conversation. Personally, I’m constantly bombarded by checklists and recipes for “healthy” living that, even if I don't want them to, unconsciously enter my head through social media. Almost without realising it, I feel terrible after eating a hamburger, or missing a day at the gym because I had no energy, or forgetting to drink the litres of water I should have during the week.
Both in my training path on medicinal plants and the one I went through to learn how to support survivors of gender-based violence, I have come to understand that healing has very different meanings for all of us. Some people consult me for plants that’ll help them sleep better but feel guilty about their daily habits. During the worst time of the pandemic, a mother of two children told me that she was very anxious, could not sleep and felt guilty because she worked all day (at work and at home), so at night she would stay up late watching series. She knew it was bad for her but it was her only time to relax alone. This person didn't need someone to tell her to "exercise more and reduce your screen time". She needed to be able to sleep properly whenever she decided to do so.
Wellness should be more associated with regaining agency and empowerment, being able to live comfortably in the body and in the moment we are in, rather than as a concept that’s hegemonic and ideal. That's why when I read Bloom's courses, I really liked that the idea is not to heal completely or to return to a previous state as if the experience and time had not affected us at all.
It's important to identify when this standardised and capitalist world wants to sell us a one-size-fits-all recipe that should work for everyone. Especially because it’s frustrating when that doesn't happen. So, anything that falls outside of what society understands as "healthy" is therefore "unhealthy" and therefore "wrong". This feeds fatphobia, transphobia, and ableism. For example, a society that understands thinness as the only image of health will see fat bodies as unhealthy. Moreover, if the most influential international body in the field of health labels being transgender as a mental disorder, how can a trans person have good health? Deconstructing health standards is crucial; we deserve to live in a world that’s more gentle to us.
Thinking in terms of wellness and not health has brought me some peace and comfort within myself. Recognising myself as a neurodivergent, queer, and non-hegemonic person within a society that judges the "other/different" as unhealthy, is rebellious and makes me feel a little more in control of my life. I realise that I find happiness and wellness in places farther and farther away from those unique “healthy” recipes that invade social media. I feel more comfortable around what’s different and authentic.
My wish for you is that you also find your own definitions of concepts like health and wellness for your body and mind, even if they are slightly different from what society deems acceptable. I hope you have an insanely good day.
For anything urgent, you can always reach us at team@chayn.co. We’ll see you very soon.
With love,
Paz and the Bloom team