Rethinking Advocacy Through Somatic Awareness: Beyond “Us and Them”

I now think many advocacy frameworks do not just organise people into movements. They organise people into “us” and “them,” and that division is embodied long before it becomes something we think about.

What if the very frameworks we use to organise change also shape how separation is expereinced in the body, before we can see how they are reinforcing it in practice?

Community organising and advocacy are often guided by frameworks designed to mobilise participation and build collective power. In my years working in environmental advocacy, I regularly used a model of concentric circles associated with modern organising traditions, most notably associated with Marshall Ganz. The model maps engagement as layers of relational proximity: an organisation at the centre, surrounded by circles of commitment ranging from core leadership, to active contributors, to broader supporters and the wider community.

The purpose of this framework is practical and strategic: to identify people in the outer circles and support their movement inward toward deeper engagement.

At the time, I experienced this as an effective way of thinking about change. It gave shape to something that felt unstructured.

While still effective as an organising tool, my work in somatics has shifted how I relate to these frameworks. Rooted in labour movements, civil rights struggles, and faith-based organising traditions, they have played a vital role in building collective power and political voice.

My inquiry is not into their effectiveness, but how do these frameworks shape how we feel? Do they also create separation between people, not just as an idea but in how we experience it in the body?

This shapes how we perceive others, how we relate, and how we create change.

The Logic of Concentric Engagement and Its Limits

The concentric circles model is built on the idea that the closer someone is to the organisation, the greater their level of involvement is assumed to be. Those who are closer are understood as most aligned, informed, or activated, while those further away are positioned as less engaged or still “in need” of integration.

This way of organising is not inherently problematic. It offers clarity, helps direct energy, and supports strategic coordination. But it also introduces a directional hierarchy of belonging.

In practice, this hierarchy can produce a subtle but powerful form of othering. People are understood in relation to a distance from something, an organisation, an issue or a movement. And engagement becomes a process of movement toward alignment. Even when framed in positive terms such as “building community,” there is often a distinction between those who are “in” and those who are “not yet in.”

This distinction does not remain conceptual. I have come to notice that this distinction is also a felt experience. It may appear as a shift in how we orient to someone, our tone or an internal judgement, often happening before we are conscious of it. From there, there becomes a certainty about who is aligned, who is resistant, and who needs to be persuaded.

Othering as an Embodied Phenomenon

A key insight from somatic practice is that perception is not purely cognitive; it is embodied.

In my own experience within advocacy spaces, I noticed how quickly the “us/them” structure became internalised. Those within the movement were often experienced as aligned, competent, and “on the right side.” Those outside it were more likely to be perceived as indifferent, misinformed, or obstructive.

This is not just a belief; it is something that is felt in the body. There is often a tightening in response to resistance, and a sense of ease or openness in response to alignment. Over time, this pattern can reinforce polarisation, not only between groups, but within the nervous system itself.

From here, othering is not only social or political. It can also become a habitual way the body responds, shaping how situations and people are felt before they are thought about or put into words.

The Somatic Alternative: Relational Awareness

Somatic practice interrupts this by shifting attention from categorising people to noticing what is actually happening as an experience. Rather than asking, “Where does this person sit in relation to my organisation or belief system?”, it asks, “What is happening in me as I encounter this person?”

This shift does not remove difference but it changes how difference is met.

In practice, I often begin simply. I sit, notice my breath, and allow attention to settle into the body. From there, I bring different people or groups into awareness, those who feel aligned, those who feel distant, those who feel challenging or charged.

What becomes noticeable is how quickly the body responds. Sometimes there is openness. Sometimes contraction. Sometimes neutrality. Sometimes a subtle bracing or readiness.

Nothing is required of this practice, and there is nothing to fix. The point of this practice is recognition. To notice how quickly the body organises the world into familiarity, safety, uncertainty or threat.

This matters because advocacy does not only occur through messaging or strategy. It is expressed and experienced through tone, posture, and the quality of attention we bring to others. How we hold others internally inevitably shapes how we communicate externally.

Reframing Advocacy as a Relational Practice

If conventional advocacy tends to move toward a centre, then a somatic approach reframes advocacy as a field of relationship rather than direction.

In this framing, the question is no longer only how to bring people into closer involvement, but how to remain in contact with shared humanity while engaging across difference.

This does not require abandoning structure or strategy. Rather, it adds an additional layer of awareness. Because communication is never only informational. It is relational. And it is always already embodied.

This has implications for how we engage in this work. Urgency-based messaging, persuasion-driven narratives, and binary framings of “supporters” and “opponents” may be effective in certain contexts, but they can also reinforce the very separations they seek to address.

What becomes interesting is what else might be possible when communication begins from curiosity rather than conversion, and from presence rather than positioning.

Implications for Communication and Storytelling

Community organising emphasises storytelling as a tool for change. Personal narratives can translate abstract issues into lived experience, creating understanding and resonance where statistics alone cannot.

But storytelling can also carry separation when it is directed toward convinving an external “other.”

A somatically informed approach asks something slightly different. What changes when communication is shaped not only in narrative structure, but in awareness of the listener as a living, responding presence? When communication is understood as something relational rather than one-directional? When communication is shaped by attention to how it is landing, moment by moment, in real time? This shifts storytelling from transmission toward attunement.

The work of Vietnamese Zen teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh offers a useful entry point here. In his teaching on interbeing, he invites the practice of holding a sunflower in the chest and extending it toward another person, not as metaphor, but as a felt shift in perception. Something subtle changes in that orientation. Not agreement, but contact. Not sameness, but proximity.

Conventional advocacy frameworks are effective at mobilising people. However, they may also reinforce a sense of separation that is not only conceptual, but embodied.

Somatic awareness shifts the question. Not how to organise people toward closer involvement, but how to remain in contact across difference while we do.

Perhaps the real question is not how to eliminate separation, but how to notice where we are already practicing it.