Mata’s transformative love

As a de/colonizing pivot within the field of somatics, this article is one of the first of its kind to centre Punjabi-Sikh embodied traditions within the context of western therapeutic and somatic approaches. Foregrounding the specificity of my Punjabi-Sikh diasporic body and lineage, I trace the tensions that arise in and through my body, an integrative site of knowledge, in coming to comprehend the inextricable connections between personal, structural and intergenerational patterns of pain that have throbbed in my Punjabi-Sikh lineage across five generations in Canada. Sikh wisdom expressed through embodied, poetic and performative forms of inquiring in arts-based research generatively invite me to reconnect with my Punjabi-Sikh ancestral roots. Through this sensuous–sacred connection, I confront colonial manifestations of pain and epistemic erasure in accessing intergenerational healing and reclaiming a sense of home through my body-in-relation .