Hooks, Healing and Harm Reduction:

Body Suspension in Trauma and Recovery

Body suspension is often viewed through the lens of spectacle, pain, or subculture; however, for many practitioners, the experience, both as a suspendee and as a practitioner, is more ritualized and represents something far more complex and deeply personal.

This presentation explores body suspension as a practice that can function within broader frameworks of harm reduction, trauma recovery, and self-regulation. Drawing from lived experience, community knowledge, and perspectives from harm reduction and trauma-informed care, this class explores how suspension creates unique opportunities for participants to experience emotional release, altered states of consciousness, nervous system regulation, self-exploration, and renewed relationships with their body.

This class focuses on the ways that individuals recovering from substance use disorder, psychological trauma, chronic stress, and other forms of emotional or physical suffering may experience suspension as a way to feel more grounded, develop a greater sense of agency over their lives and reconnect with themselves and the broader community.

This presentation does not seek to medicalize body suspension, nor to suggest it as a replacement for clinical treatment or therapy. It invites people to consider how suspending, or participating in a suspension or other practices that ritualize pain, can serve as tools for greater self-awareness, resilience and, within the context of “recovery,” can be considered a form of harm reduction for some individuals.

by: Kevin Donaghy
Slot 17 : Sun. 2pm-3:30pm