“bodies tell stories”: Meaning Making, Trauma and Social Work, On Poetry, Pandemics, and Embodied Practice

Authors

  • Benjamin Heim Shepard City Tech/CUNY

Keywords:

trauma, narrative, embodiment, poetry

Abstract

In my field practicum undergraduate courses, we sit in a circle sharing, listening, and connecting head, hands, and hearts. In so doing, we bring whole selves into our practice. With students struggling with complicated wounds, including police brutality, HIV, hepatitis, and COVID-19, I added a course on trauma-informed practice. The following offers a practice-based reflection. It explores themes of mindfulness, logotherapy, laughter, philosophy, narrative, adventure therapy, and trauma, mixing into a poetics of embodiment. Embodiment brings poetry into practice, connecting trauma theory with humanistic approaches to social work. Embodiment helps practitioners challenge clinical and cultural problems. The question remains: how can educators use embodiment, poetry, and reflection to support practice—and why should they?

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Published

2023-01-04

How to Cite

Shepard, B. H. (2023). “bodies tell stories”: Meaning Making, Trauma and Social Work, On Poetry, Pandemics, and Embodied Practice . Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, 28(3), 35–51. Retrieved from https://reflectionsnarrativesofprofessionalhelping.org/index.php/Reflections/article/view/1895

Issue

Section

General Submissions