Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationTrauma and cultural psychology have been critiqued for their failure to account for factors of relationship and place in trauma research which may reinforce legacies of colonization and negatively affect community and mental health. Feminist conceptual frameworks and decolonizing research methods have been suggested as tools that can transform the discipline of psychological research and practice by centering issues of relationship and place in understanding historical and intergenerational trauma in communities healing from colonization. In this study, I addressed the gaps of relationship and place in psychological trauma theory using feminist and decolonizing frameworks and woman of color theoretical concepts, including geographical selves, women writing through their bodies, and diaspora space. I examined how martial arts practice acts as a form of healing for women of color and map individual and collective theories of trauma recovery using their narratives. I used qualitative inquiry from a woman of color feminist paradigm to answer the following questions: How do women of color access personal and collective power and transformation from trauma through martial arts? How is the body a site of struggle in trauma recovery for women of color who practice martial arts as a form of healing? What is the relationship of trauma recovery to culture, place and sociopolitical and ecological environment to the body? The vignettes demonstrated the relationship between trauma and the environment on women of color's arrival to the martial arts space and how martial arts facilitated transformation from fragmentation, powerlessness, and oppression to connection, identity, roots, resistance, presence, ancestral wisdom, and liberation. Furthermore, feminist psychology and women of color frameworks not only made it possible to see the impact of colonization on women of color on the intersection of both race and gender, but also made it possible to see how their resistance, agency, and collective survival. The results of this study offer the discipline of psychology and trauma theory transformative possibilities of integrating holistic approaches to healing and wellness, including practices of the body, self-care, combative systems, movement, community, culture and history, and relationships