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Rae Johnson

California Institute of Integral Studies, Somatic Psychology, Faculty Member

Naropa University, Graduate School of Psychology, Faculty Member

Pacifica Graduate Institute, Depth Psychology with an Emphasis in Somatic Studies, Professor and Chair

Pacifica Graduate Institute, Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychologies, Faculty Member

Pacifica Graduate Institute, Somatic Studies in Depth Psychology, Faculty Member

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RAE JOHNSON, PhD, RSW, RSMT is a social worker, somatic movement therapist, and scholar/activist working at the intersections of embodiment and social justice. Prior to their current appointment as full professor in the Somatic Psychology doctoral program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Rae served as Co-chair of the Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-psychologies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Rae is the author of several books, including Embodied Social Justice (Routledge, 2018) and Embodied Activism (North Atlantic Books, 2023).

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Papers by Rae Johnson

Embodied Activism Chapter One

Embodied Activism, 2023

Queering / Querying the Body: Sensation and Curiosity in Disrupting Body Norms

Oppression and the Body, 2018

It is not uncommon to mistake social norms about bodies as also physically natural, psychological... more It is not uncommon to mistake social norms about bodies as also physically natural, psychologically healthy, and morally right. As a result, it is easy to minimize the cost required to bring the body into compliance with social norms of physical appearance and comportment. Likewise, it can be tempting to dismiss how frequently we judge the worth of others based on the degree to which they conform to prevailing body image ideals. Queering/querying the body provides a means for disrupting social norms of the body; not by expanding the repertoire of socially acceptable bodily expressions, but by working to disable the act of body norming itself. This disabling can be facilitated by a turn toward the lived, felt experience of the body and an intentional cultivation of the body's deep curiosity. By privileging sensation, attending to movement impulses, and honoring embodied intuition, we access a subjective data set that informs (and potentially, transforms) our relationship to objective body standards. In this way, the disruption of body norms becomes not only a strategy for resistance against oppression, but a process of creative, sensual inquiry that each body engages as an ongoing liberatory praxis. Author Bio Rae Johnson, PhD, RSMT is a queer-identified scholar working at the intersection of somatic studies and social justice. Key themes in their work include the embodied experience of oppression, somatic approaches to research, and the poetic body. Rae has held academic leadership positions in several somatic psychology graduate programs, and is the author of three books: Elemental Movement, Knowing in our Bones and Embodied Social Justice.

The Embodied Experience of Microaggressions: Implications for Clinical Practice

Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 2018

Ongoing scholarship in multicultural counseling practice has established the significance of micr... more Ongoing scholarship in multicultural counseling practice has established the significance of microaggressions in the lived experience of clients and in the client-counselor dyad. Grounded in new research into the embodied experience of oppression, this article reviews key concepts in nonverbal communication and traumatology to illustrate how the body is implicated in the transmission of microaggressions and how counselors can become more attentive, informed, and responsive to how social power differences manifest in the body. Las investigaciones actuales sobre la práctica de la consejería multicultural han establecido la importancia de las microagresiones en la experiencia vital de los clientes y en la díada cliente-consejero. Fundamentado en nuevas investigaciones sobre la experiencia corporal de la opresión, este artículo revisa conceptos clave de la comunicación no verbal y la traumatología para ilustrar cómo el cuerpo está involucrado en la transmisión de microagresiones y cómo los consejeros pueden tornarse más atentos, informados y sensibles a cómo las diferencias de poder social se manifiestan en el cuerpo.

Research 101 for Body Psychotherapists

by Rae Johnson and Christine Caldwell

Many parallels exist between clinical practice and research practice in somatic psychotherapy, cr... more Many parallels exist between clinical practice and research practice in somatic psychotherapy, creating rich possibilities and cross-fertilizations. In this article, the authors introduce and discuss these parallels, and examine how they can be leveraged to advance emerging research interests in the field of somatic psychology.

The Artful Body

Grasping and Transforming the Embodied Experience of Oppression

Research has established the crucial role of the body in navigating experiences of social differe... more Research has established the crucial role of the body in navigating experiences of social difference and mediating the traumatic impact of oppression. Although conceptual frameworks from education, counseling, and critical embodiment studies offer powerful lenses through which
to view these experiences of oppression, existing social justice models (e.g., anti-oppressive education, multicultural counseling and social work) are insufficiently inclusive of the body’s role in navigating oppressive social interactions. Conversely, existing models of working with embodied experience (e.g. somatic education and somatic counseling/psychotherapy) are insufficiently attentive to the role of social power in interpersonal relations. Drawing on current research on the embodied experience of oppression, this paper articulates an integrative model for addressing problematic experiences in relation to the body and social justice.

Somatic Psychotherapy and Research: Walking the Common Ground

Research is a crucial element in advancing our collective knowledge of somatic psychology, but bo... more Research is a crucial element in advancing our collective knowledge of somatic psychology, but body and movement psychotherapists often struggle to engage in meaningful relationships with the psychology research literature and the
community of scholars who typically produce it. This paper elaborates the common ground between research and somatic psychotherapy by linking the values, attitudes and skills of somatic psychotherapists with specific research
methodologies. It traces the similarities between doing therapy and doing research, with a focus on the role of the therapist/researcher, and outlines a research method that somatic psychotherapists might consider as a basic
framework when undertaking their own formal research.

Oppression Embodied

Contacting Gender

Gestalt therapists are uniquely positioned to address issues of gender and sexuality in authentic... more Gestalt therapists are uniquely positioned to address issues
of gender and sexuality in authentic and empowering ways.
However, gender has been a relatively neglected territory within Gestalt therapy theory and professional discourse. Drawing on social and somatic theories of gender, this article articulates how Gestalt therapists might harness existing skills and orientations to become significant contributors to the evolving debates on gender and sexuality in counseling and psychotherapy. The author describes a four-step approach to professional development on gender issues focused on application to Gestalt therapy practice.

Sorting the Mixed Bag: Grounding and Integrating a Multimodal Somatic Practice

The Silent Wound: Discourse and the Nonverbal Reproduction of Oppression

Knowing In Our Bones: Exploring The Embodied Knowledge Of Somatic Educators

Elemental Movement: A Somatic Approach to Movement Education

This book describes the theory and methods of an original somatic approach to movement education.... more This book describes the theory and methods of an original somatic approach to movement education. Based on the five Elements of ancient philosophical tradition, Elemental Movement integrates somatic and alchemical principles, processes, and practice. It employs movement as the primary vehicle for a wide range of personal explorations, using the Elements both as a framework and as a set of symbolic tools.

Books by Rae Johnson

Chapter One of Embodied Social Justice

The lived experience of the body–that is, our bodily sensations, perceptions and behaviors–is the... more The lived experience of the body–that is, our bodily sensations, perceptions and behaviors–is the essential ground of human identity. Developmentally, our visceral impulses serve as the foundation for personal agency, guiding us as we move through the world, reaching for some things and refusing others. Our bodily encounters with the physical environment shape and reshape our understanding of the world; we learn about gravity by falling down and discover how our point of view changes when we walk around and encounter new perspectives. Language, often considered a function of our cognitive capacity for abstraction, is laden with meaningful references to the body that hint at its sensorial roots. Indeed, cognition itself is increasingly understood as deeply intertwined with bodily feeling i. When applied to our understanding of the social world, our embodied experience plays an equally important role. As we navigate interpersonal relationships and learn about the characteristics associated with different groups of people, our bodies help to create and maintain the power dynamics that can arise between us–for instance, by signaling dominance or submission through our gestures and eye contact ii. We are categorized into sociocultural groups according to physical traits that are marked as desirable or deficient based on their appearance and functioning. Depending on our social identifications, we may learn to treat our bodies as sexual objects or as instruments of labor. In short, our nonverbal communication patterns, beliefs about body norms, and feelings of connection and identification with our bodies are all deeply affected by our assigned membership in different social groups and the privileges associated with that membership iii. However, despite the research evidence supporting these ideas, existing models of social justice have not been particularly attentive to the body's role in reproducing oppression iv in everyday life. Neither have approaches that specialize in working with the felt sense of the body (often grouped into a field called " somatics " v) offered many strategies for resolving the tension between the information available to us through bodily explorations of sensation and movement and the data grounded in social power and authority. However, it is possible to address the singular experience of the body in a way that does not bypass the political. Conversely, it is possible to work collectively to transform oppressive social structures while fully recognizing the micro-sociological building blocks that maintain those structures. An embodied approach to social justice–one that recognizes the degree to which our bodies are implicated in the reproduction of social power–should not be considered a replacement for working on the macro-sociological level to make structural and ideological changes in social institutions such as education or healthcare, or as a substitute for legislative reform. Rather, it works to support change in the relational fabric of our lives so that structural shifts correspond with authentic transformations in attitude, and where legal rights and freedoms are experienced at the core of our beings and manifested in our everyday interactions with others.

Drafts by Rae Johnson

Components of a Somatic Approach

According to Thomas Hanna (1970), a somatic perspective is one that privileges the subjective fel... more According to Thomas Hanna (1970), a somatic perspective is one that privileges the subjective felt experience of the body in understanding and working with human experience. In other words, when making meaning of an experience, what we feel in our bodies is always incorporated into what we (or others) think or believe about the experience. When working with the body, our interventions are primarily informed and guided by the impact those interventions have on our bodily sense of ourselves. But what comprises this embodied felt experience? Here are some frequently referenced, sometimes overlapping components:

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