The Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Hall (REC Hall) is creating healing spaces for racialized, queer and non-binary students through closed discussions and workshops hosted on campus.
Several women and non-binary people of colour came together in a closed discussion hosted by REC Hall on April 2 over the commodification of healing spaces. Attendees also practiced yoga together after the discussion.
“In a campus, city, and, well, society that often does not centre womxn and non-binary folks of colour, I think it’s so important to create spaces like these but also participate in events like this—it’s healing,” said Gowlene Selvavijayan, a co-ordinator at REC Hall.
Yamikani Msosa, a facilitator at the event, led a discussion about the importance of using a healing-centric framework when tackling issues related to healing spaces for people of colour. Msosa also led yoga after the discussion.
“To me, it is a form of resistance when racialized folks are taking care of themselves,” Msosa said.
Selvavijayan said it was very powerful to see a Black queer person like Msosa lead the discussion and yoga at the event.
“Yoga is something that has been whitewashed and capitalized off of heavily in the West by people who do not truly understand the practice,” Selvavijayan said. “To have someone who understands what yoga truly means for racialized folks and that person be a Black femme themselves is powerful. It’s us reclaiming and holding healing spaces for each other.”
During the discussion, Msosa said healing-centered engagement focuses on how people are “more than just their trauma and that they are on a journey of healing and it is ongoing.”
Msosa, who studied at Carleton and were also a previous REC Hall coordinator themselves, said while they saw spaces to discuss social justice issues during their time at the university, they didn’t see any spaces for people of colour to heal.
“I found that there wasn’t a lot of intentional spaces . . . that actually focused on regeneration and healing and what that could look like for racialized communities and for trans folks as well,” they said.
Msosa said it is important for racialized people to have a closed space to discuss and heal.
“I don’t feel comfortable talking about certain things with white people,” they said. “Healing has been commodified in ways that harm us.”
They added that “healing is seen as this individual act instead of this community act.”
Msosa said their workshop was not made with the expectation of making the participants feel good.
“If I am really intentional about healing with radicalized communities, it is not always going to feel good and it is not for me to dictate what people walk away with,” they said. “Today folks were quiet because it is hard to talk about what’s going on.”
“I don’t have any expectations of people walking away with anything other than whatever they are feeling,” they added.
Darian Agapay, a second-year journalism student, said the event “was a space I didn’t know I needed.”
“Being around people who understand the micro-aggressions we [people of colour] go through was almost a revelation, and I didn’t expect that I could take away so much from it,” she said.
Sierra D’Souza Butts, a second-year student, said she had never heard of yoga for racialized students until this event.
“Being a woman of colour, I thought this would be a great way to meet other individuals who come from different backgrounds and having that space to be able to talk to one another about our experiences where we feel as if we don’t fit in, through a safe environment, while doing yoga sounded super exciting to me,” Butts said.
Selvavijayan said the healing series will continue in the 2019-2020 school year.
Photo by Bella Grandin
