3 Beats
As antiracist practitioners, we employ practices to either neutralize a racial charge or rewire learned racial conditioning. A primary practice that we teach at the ReCenter is called the 3 Beats. Lo and I came to this practice in different ways, through different means and teachers. Lo came to it through a Taoist meditative practice, and I came to it through a form of shadow work originating from both Egypt and Great Britain. As a meditative practice, the 3 Beats brings more of our awareness, intelligence and presence to the forefront. As a form of shadow work, the awareness and presence that arrive during the 3 Beats, allow us to see what we were previously unable to see. Our shadows are simply the parts of ourselves that we have not yet seen and therefore have not yet tended to. As a product of inevitable social conditioning, racism is a shadow aspect of ourselves. It is often left unseen, and for white folks in particular, is habitually left unattended. Our learned racism is one of the things we are most afraid to look at, let alone tend to.
As a meditative practice and a from of shadow work the 3 Beats effectively shift our state of being and nervous system from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic, from fight or flight, to rest and digest. What is critical here is that the racial conditioning or racial socialization that we have all received trains us (conditions us) to remain in the sympathetic, in a state of stress and tension, and keeps us poised to defend or recoil whenever racism is put to question. This means that without awareness, our knee jerk tendencies and default modes of operating will be from tension, will be from our racial conditioning, and this tension and reactivity will create more harm in the moment.
If someone calls me out on a racially insensitive comment, and I default to a reactive state, I will either blame the situation on someone or something else and effectively deny responsibility, or I will recoil into an immobilized state of guilt and shame. If however, I take 3 Beats and give myself an opportunity to rewire that conditioned state of tension in the moment, then I will have a chance to respond instead of react. The practice allows my nervous system to shift from the constraint of the parasympathetic towards the a more expansive or contextual state of the sympathetic. The pause brings my presence and compassion, my intelligence and willingness to the forefront, so I can meet the moment for what it truly is - a call up! These moments are asking us to be more than our racial conditioning, they call us up to be better.
Although the 3 Beats may seem simple, it takes practice and a fair level of mastery to actually employ this practice in edgy moments, in the situations we are most afraid of and have previously avoided at all costs. In these moments of racial charge where the tension of our conditioning is triggered, are the moments where the racism that lives within us shows itself. The 3 Beats is shadow work, when the shadow arises as trigger or activation, this is the moment to use the practice. For what we previously were not seeing is being seen, by another, and if we are willing to listen, we will see it too. To see the shadow of racism as it rises within us is critical to healing. The shadow will rise in racialized moments; a moment of call out or call up, or when leaning into a challenging conversation, like calling someone else up to their harmful words and/or actions. I call these moments Pockets of Potential. They are ripe with potential, and our consciousness or lack of it will determine whether that potential is harmful or healing.
To create opportunities for healing within a Pocket of Potential, we need to have a practice at the ready. These pockets are super charged. The tension of our conditioning around race creates the charge. It is like a coiled spring, storing tension as energy that creates a charge. This is why we get nervous, stressed and anxious when the topic of race comes up. White folks in particular are conditioned into this kind of tension that literally makes us do weird things when race comes up, like put our foot in our mouth, and creates a vast gap between what we mean to say and what actually comes out. This is real and I know you have experienced this personal like I have. And for many of us, this flavor of reactivity is what keeps us from entering into antiracist work in any meaningful way. We don’t trust ourselves to see ourselves.
As an easy-to-remember practice, the 3 Beats is the perfect remedy for these default tendencies. Personally, professionally and with our students, Lo and I have put the 3 Beats to the test. If it can hold its weight in the face of what I consider to be the deepest shadow of humanity, racism, then it can be used anywhere. The aspects of self that get squeezed out in moments of racial tension; presence, breath, awareness, our sense of core stability or grounding, are the very things that we need in order to rewire these very moment towards healing. The 3 Beats brings these aspects of self back online so we can be present to what the moment is asking of us. The 3 Beats is easy to remember and simple in form, but actually very hard to do, especially when our default is reactivity.
So we need to practice the 3 Beats when the stakes aren’t high, in moments without trigger or racial charge. We need to practice, practice, practice and massage the 3 Beats into something really useful for us personally. Instead of using spiritual practice and tendencies to bypass the deeper work around racism, we can reorient them directly towards this deep shadow. Spirituality means nothing less than to bring the unconscious to consciousness. If learned bias, stereotype and racism are hidden behind our well-meaning outlook and good intentions, then the work to shine the light of our awareness on them is spiritual work.
The 3 Beats is a spiritual and an antiracist practice. It creates the pause that shifts any trajectory of reactivity toward the possibility of a response. Reactivity creates harm. Response and response-ability create healing. Reactivity, whether that is blame or shame, create more harm in a moment that is already charged. As mentioned, a Pocket of Potential can either lead toward harm or healing. Harm can simply mean that racism continues uninterrupted. And healing can simply mean taking a moment to listen.
The outcome depends on our personal capacity to unwind the charge of the moment. Conscious practices, like the 3 Beats, increase personal capacity to shift a dynamic or interrupt a trajectory of harm. In our workshops, we invite folks to come up with their own 3 Beats. Sometimes each beat is simply one breath. As simple as this is, three breaths create a significant pause, and within a racist culture of urgency and overwhelm, pauses offer potent medicine. My current personal 3 Beats are: Pause, Locate, Allow. Pause ~ a pause stops any knee jerk trajectory towards reactivity. I take a pause and take a breath. Locate ~ when the shadow of my racist conditioning is activated in me, it will arise in my body as tension. I place my hand on the area of my body that feels tight, restricted, or constricted. It may be my solar plexus, my belly or my throat. I locate it and place my hand over the area of tension. In this way, I turn towards the very thing my reactivity would have me deny or avoid. Allow ~ here I don’t do anything other than allow this sensation to be present and meet it with my presence. I tend to it by offering it my breath, which will inevitably create more space and unwind the tension, even just a little.
We envision the 3 Beats much like a practice of stacking 3 stones
Here are some examples of other 3 Beats that have arrived during our trainings:
Stop Look Listen
Pause Breath Pause
Breathe Ground Respond
Feel Sense Listen
Root Breathe Rise
Arrive Allow Amend
Hold up, Wait a minute,Let me put some boom in it.
As you can see, the practice itself can consist of any three beats. What is important is that they are both meaningful and useful for you. What practices do you already use to move from a stressed state to a more relaxed state? If you are a healthcare practitioner, or a parent, or a partner, how do you let go of a stressful interaction so you can show up for the next one with presence? Can you take this practice and divide it into three steps? If so, write those down. Practice them. Repeat them over and over until they are right there and ready for you to use at anytime. Like I mentioned, in moments of high racial charge when awareness and presence are being squeezed out and hard to access, you will need a practiced and embodied relationship with this tool so it can be available to you.
As long as each beat leads you into a deeper sense of self and reminds you in that you are in a body, then the 3 Beats will work. Your body will show you where the tension is being held, where the coiled spring of your own conditioning resides, and the 3 Beats can give you a moment to tend to that before taking action. The 3 Beats allow us to remember that racial socialization lives inside our body, and if we do not tend to how it shows up in the moments it is activated, like through the chemistry of our nervous system, and through our emotional wiring around race, then it will continue to be a force of harm outward in our lives. However, if we do tend to the deeper recesses and shadows somatically, then we can become agents of change, disruptors of the ‘normalized’ patterns of racism, and midwives to the healing that is already happening.
The 3 Beats practice and other centering practices like it, build resilience for all people, and are especially useful for white people who culturally avoid opportunities to build racial resilience. For black and brown folks, the 3 Beats can reduce harm incurred, and for white folks it can reduce harm perpetuated. Resilience and core stability return to us, within emotional charged moments, within pockets of potential, through this meditative and spiritual form of shadow work.
Reya Born ©️ 2022
