What my Chickens Taught me about Racism

by Bettina Shultz-Jobe, LPC, NBCC | Aug 25, 2020 | Applied Principles

By Bettina Shultz-Jobe and Kate Naylor

We at The Natural Lifemanship Institute believe deeply in the power of relationships and the need for felt safety in order for humans (and other animals) to flourish, and we also understand well the devastating impact of traumas, old and new. 

Our country is in turmoil right now.  The coronavirus is affecting everyone in varying ways; everywhere you look the pain is evident.  However, that isn’t the only unrest people are experiencing in our country – there are also powerful and growing civil rights movements happening all over, in response to generations of trauma experienced in the black, indigenous, and people of color communities. 

As a largely white organization, we have been watching closely, listening carefully, and reflecting deeply.  

In order for us to do meaningful work on the subject of racism and antiracism we know we have to move beyond predominantly cognitive approaches and dig deeper into subjects like implicit bias, the neurobiology of “othering”, cultural somatics, felt safety, and more. 

We believe experiential education on these topics is the role NL can play in dismantling oppression, hate, and divisiveness in our communities.  Planning this sort of work takes time.   We hope that our actions will speak loudly as we develop meaningful and transformational learning opportunities for all of us in the coming months and years. We hope you will join us. 

Here is our first endeavor – A Three-Part Webinar Series:  Embodied Conversations about Racism and Antiracism with Vanessa Timmons and Bonnie Badenoch

Or join the conversation at our virtual conference Interconnected 2020 where connection and compassion drive all we do!

In the meantime, we have prepared a series of blogs to begin the top-down process of understanding, that will set the stage for the bottom-up work to come. . . 

So what do chickens have to do with it?  

Years ago my husband and I purchased the sweet little chickens you see in this picture at the top of this blog.  It was the first time we had purchased dark and light chickens.  This picture was taken after dusk in the chicken coop when I realized that our chickens were, predictably, segregating by color each evening.

Just in case you don’t classify as a crazy chicken lady like I do, let me tell you a bit about chickens.   They go into the coop each evening around dusk on their own.  We don’t need to put them in there.  Female chickens, hens, tend to flee to keep themselves safe.  Like many animals, the survival and movement (brainstem and diencephalon) regions of their brains are quite developed, and the thinking and reasoning parts (neocortex) of their brains are very underdeveloped.  They flee to the safety of their coop each evening due to instinct.  Hens also tend to be quite submissive when they feel they can’t flee.  They do this little squatty thing and then they freeze.  They are prey animals that are at the bottom of the food chain, and their flight and freeze responses are pretty strong. 

 SO. . . when we first brought these little girls home they immediately began to do what their survival brains told them to do – organize for safety through establishing a pecking order. The lowest survival regions of our human brains (and my chickens’ brains) are wired to identify threat, this includes the perceived threat when someone is different from us.  This is designed to keep us safe. 

Our oldest and deepest survival responses push us to seek out group members who are similar to us so that we belong and blend in. Our brain scans the environment and others over and over, looking for anomalies.  It is an over-simplistic yet effective function when we consider physical safety.  If we see what we expect to see, our brains and bodies can rest.  If we see something unexpected, we have to evaluate it, which requires extra energy and takes more time.  

The 4 dark chickens immediately became their own little flock and the light chickens became their own little flock.  They began to segregate and be quite nasty and aggressive to each other – literally pecking at members of the other flock.  What is even more interesting is that when we bought these chickens they were already living in the same pen – they were not strangers to each other.  Non-rational survival impulses kept telling them that they needed to organize by ‘same’ and ‘other’. These behaviors were merely survival functions arising from the lowest, most primitive regions of the brain.   

However, within about a month they stopped segregating, which made me wonder…what had changed? 

What I realized upon reflection was that they had begun to ease into their new environment.  They knew where to find food and water, and there was never a shortage.  They had plenty of space to move and explore.  Quite simply, there wasn’t a shortage of resources.  

They also began to understand, in a very predictable manner, what the humans in their life would do and began to build a relationship that would engage higher regions of the brain.  

At the Jobe household, we strive to not expect or reinforce submissive behaviors with our chickens (or anybody else really) or do things that encourage our chickens to flee or freeze.  For example, when I walk close to a chicken and it does that submissive squatty thing I simply stay exactly where I am, while breathing and regulating, until the chicken stands up and relaxes and then I move on.  

The need to submit and appease keeps all animals, including humans, in the lower, survival regions of the brain.  A shortage of resources does the same.  Unpredictability in the environment, in general, does the same. 

I believe the chickens no longer felt the need to segregate and be aggressive to each other because they began to feel safe. . . or at least safer.   

The more safety they felt the less clear their hierarchy became and one night I realized that they were no longer segregating in the chicken coop. We also noticed that during the day they interacted more peacefully.  

What I take away from observing my chickens:

1.     Segregation and aggression were not cognitive experiences – they were not a conscious choice.  It was the result of animals in the survival parts of their brain.  Segregation was a somatic experience.

2.     Unity was not a cognitive experience.  When the survival parts of the brain began to feel safe, the divisive and aggressive behaviors subsided.   Period. Unity was a somatic experience.

3.     Racist behaviors happened in the most lower regions of the brain and were healed in the most lower regions of the brain.  Racism is a somatic experience.

When I say segregation was not a “cognitive experience” I mean that I don’t think the chickens had belief systems that were driving their behaviors.  Therefore, cognitive therapy would not have been effective with my chickens.   Cognitive therapies operate on the premise that what we think or believe influences our emotions which, in turn, influences our behaviors.  Therefore, a basic tenet of cognitive work is that we must first change our thoughts or beliefs to change our feelings so we can behave differently.  This is a top-down approach.  We first address what is happening in the most upper regions of the brain (the neocortex) and move down.  

It seems to me that much of the racial justice movement is operating off of this same premise. . . If we can just get people to change their beliefs and their thoughts, their behaviors will change.  I do think this is a starting point, but in my personal experience, this is only a bandaid. Let’s discuss what I think happened for my chickens and what I think is a powerful alternative to cognitive work.    

What we know about the chickens is that their neocortex (the area of the brain responsible for thoughts) is very underdeveloped.  The parts of the brain responsible for body sensations, survival functions, and movement are highly developed.  My chickens were engaging in racist behaviors from the lower regions of their brain, and it was somatic work that was effective.  From a brain perspective, somatic therapies are exactly the opposite of cognitive therapies.  A basic premise is that what we sense in our bodies, affects how we feel (our emotions), which influences our beliefs and thoughts.  So, if you want to change a belief, you must first address the body sensations which are only addressed first through safety, given that body sensations are located in the parts of the brain responsible for primitive, reflexive, fast survival responses. 

Aggression, “othering” and hierarchies became practically non-existent when the chickens felt safe  – when repeated experiences of body sensations told them they could relax and trust.

Now, I realize humans aren’t chickens, but a brain is built similarly in any species – bottom to top and inside out – with survival existing in the deepest regions and reasoning and thought existing in the highest regions, with relational connections nested in the middle.  All brains use body sensations to inform those survival regions, which then send messages to the uppermost regions.  This means what gets built into our survival regions – both through biology and experience – will affect the uppermost regions (where our thoughts and reasoning exist).  

This means a sense of threat in our bodies will motivate us to make more aggressive, divisive, and hierarchical choices…whether we are aware of it or not.

Can divisiveness and aggression also be “trained” into our cognitive awareness and lead to specific choices?  Yes, of course.   We unconsciously learn what feels safe and what doesn’t from our repeated experiences in relationships with others.  Our caregivers, our families, and our communities tell us what is safe and what isn’t.  As we grow, these implicit biases can become explicit and more conscious. For most of us though, that is not the case.  Most of us fall into divisiveness unconsciously when our bodies or communities tell us we are not safe, and the choices we make then are based on the deep-seated implicit biases that are woven into the lowest regions of our brain.  Therefore, it is not just our individual body that needs healing, it is the collective body of our families and our communities, as well.

We ALL have implicit biases built into us – no one is exempt from this.  

Research tells us that babies start to distinguish between skin tone and prefer familiar faces/skin tones as early as 3 months old.  It is something that has been built into the deepest parts of our brains and bodies from the beginning.  In the moments we feel unsafe, our deepest survival instincts take over, including our implicit biases.  In order for us to be able to overcome these implicit biases, we must focus on helping our bodies feel safe.  

We are called to bring our implicit biases into our awareness so they no longer motivate our actions and choices unconsciously.  

For this, we need more moments of felt safety when our bodies can relax and trust – so that we may move more and more into a loving, connected relationship with ourselves and others.  The beauty of the human brain is that we can consciously choose to practice feeling safer in our bodies – while others will affect us, we can also give ourselves the gift of felt safety.  Our felt safety ripples out into co-regulation and felt safety for others, and ripples back to us as safety from the community.  We feed the community and it feeds us.

At Natural Lifemanship, we have a powerful lineup of opportunities to explore our own somatic experiences as they relate to bias – we aspire to cultivate a safe and supportive format in the hopes that you will join us on this journey.  

Sign up for our upcoming Webinar Series:  Embodied Conversations about Racism and Antiracism with Vanessa Timmons and Bonnie Badenoch

Or join the conversation at our virtual conference Interconnected 2020 where we will dig deeper into subjects like implicit bias, the neurobiology of “othering”, cultural somatics, and felt safety!  PLUS 15 other categories!