Somatic Meditation: The Scourging—Spiritual Trauma and the Presence That Holds You

By Ashley E. Schumacher, MS, LAPC

Music Suggestion: ‘Kyrie Eleison’ by Salt of the Sound

youtu.be/NJMqWfs0zQ4?si=Q-SCsmHfSnfIfJzW 

Begin by finding a position that feels grounded and safe.

Allow your body to rest into the surface that supports you.

Feel your breath rise and fall—slow, steady, patient.

Notice the contact your body makes with the ground.

Feel the weight of yourself, held.

There is no need to perform.

No need to fix anything right now.

Just the breath.

Just the body.

Just the truth of your presence.

You are invited into sacred space—into the mystery of suffering and the miracle of compassion.

A place where even your most wounded parts are not cast out, but welcomed.

Witnessed.

Held.

Let your breath lead you now, slowly, to the praetorium.

The air is thick.

Dust hangs like smoke.

The stench of sweat, blood, and iron floods your senses.

The stones are slick with the stains of violence.

Soldiers shout, laugh, sneer.

Let your body sink into the ground beneath you.

You are here.

Safe enough.

Held.

You are invited now to enter a holy place—not one of serene light, but one where suffering has torn open the veil, and truth, though brutal, lays bare.

Let the weight of your body root you.

Let the breath tether you, like a thread between heaven and earth.

Now...

Gently bring your awareness to the scene of the scourging.

Jesus is there.

Bound.

Stripped.

Exposed.

Not only physically—but spiritually.

He is humiliated, not just as a man—but as the Messiah.

The one who came to heal—condemned by religious power.

The one who came in love—crushed by systemic hate.

And then—

The whip cracks.

Once.

Again.

And again.

The leather lashes are embedded with bone and metal. They sink. Tear. Rip.

Flesh is flayed from muscle. Blood spatters stone.

Each strike rings like a scream in the bones of your chest.

This is not just pain.

This is desecration.

This is what it means to be betrayed by the holy—wounded in the name of righteousness.

This is what it means to carry spiritual trauma in the body.

You hear the echoes of the Praetorium—the jeers of the soldiers, the crack of the whip, the wet slap of flesh torn open. The sound reverberates in your bones. You wince with each lash, your body flinching as though it is your own skin that is being ripped.

Torn.

Opened.

You do not need to watch with your eyes.

Your body already knows.

You have lived this.

Not in Roman courts perhaps, but in sacred places where you were supposed to be safe.

Where Scripture was used like a whip.

Where your longing for God was met with humiliation.

Where the hands that claimed to bless you were the same that wounded you.

Where the Church—the Body of Christ—became, somehow, the site of your scourging.

This is what spiritual trauma feels like.

Not a metaphor—your body knew the betrayal.

Knew the confusion.

Knew the tearing.

You flinch not just for Him, but because He is you—and you are in Him.

Let the ache rise. Don’t push it away.

Let it come into the light. Into presence.

Into the sacred witnessing of this moment.

You don’t have to hold it alone.

Now... gently... pendulate.

See her—

On the other side of the wall.

Mary.

She cannot see Him.

But she hears everything.

The whips.

The guttural cries.

The sound of flesh tearing from bone.

The silence between blows—where breath is barely found.

She clutches the cold stones, her knuckles white.

Her lips tremble—but no sound escapes.

And beside her—

Magdalene.

Paralyzed.

Her face is frozen in a mask of horror and disbelief.

Silent tears stream down her cheeks—she doesn’t even feel them fall.

Her eyes are wide, glassy—fixed on something she cannot see but feels in her soul.

Her body doesn’t move.

Can’t move.

She is witnessing unspeakable violence.

She is remembering her own wounds.

She is reliving every moment where shame spoke louder than love.

And Mary—oh Mary—

She gathers Magdalene into her arms, her mantle wrapping around the trembling body of her daughter in grief.

But Mary is trembling, too.

Her breath is shallow, ragged.

Her arms shake with the effort to hold steady.

She is being pierced, moment by moment, with every lash that strikes her Son.

She presses her face to Magdalene’s hair, her cheek wet with both her own tears and those of her

daughter-in-sorrow.

The pendulation between their bodies—the stillness and the tremor—becomes your anchor.

She stays.

She does not run from the horror.

She does not hide from the agony.

She leans into it. Not because she is immune—but because love does not abandon.

Let yourself feel this.

The horror is real.

The betrayal, the desecration, the spiritual wounding—it lives in your body, too.

It knows what it’s like to be cast out by the sacred.

To be wounded by what was meant to heal.

But so does she.

Mary holds this space with you.

Mary, whose womb once carried the Savior, now carries you in her grief.

Mary, whose mantle wrapped the infant Christ, now wraps Magdalene, and you, and every

broken soul in the Church who has felt the whip of betrayal.

She hears it all.

She doesn’t look away.

She stays.

Even in trembling.

Even in the silence.

Even when God seems absent and desecrated—she is there.

Let her hold you.

Let her sobbing heart press against your own.

Let Magdalene’s frozen terror echo your own—because she came back to life in that embrace.

And so can you.

Let that love steady you.

Not the soft, sweet love of idealism,

But the kind of love that does not turn away.

The kind that weeps and holds and stays.

The kind that sees your trauma and does not flinch.

You breathe again.

Not because the pain is gone, but because love remains.

Let your breath return.

And now—

The scourging has ended.

There is a heavy silence.

No jeering now.

Only the dripping echo of Sacred Blood pooling on the stone.

Mary and Magdalene are let in.

They do not run.

They do not scream.

They move like women in a trance, suspended in sacred horror.

Magdalene’s knees nearly buckle beneath her. Her hands, trembling, reach for cloth.

Mary kneels beside her, not with calm composure but with the trembling reverence of a mother

who wipes the blood of her baby from the floor of a place built for cruelty.

Their faces are gray with shock.

Their bodies stiff with the ache of grief.

Yet they move.

They wipe.

They weep.

They touch the Blood with trembling fingers, anointing the stone with their sorrow.

This is what trauma does.

You keep moving, even when the world is frozen.

ou do what love requires, even when your soul is numb.

There are no words.

Only breath.

Only presence.

Stay here, if you can.

Feel your own body—what aches, what trembles, what softens.

Let the tears fall if they come.

Let your breath keep flowing.

You are not alone.

This sacred place, this trauma-scene, is not the end of the story.

But we do not skip past it.

We do not sanitize it.

We stay,

We bear witness,

We let it move through us.

You have felt the ripping.

You have heard the jeers.

You have been left in the shadow of institutional violence.

And yet—you are not alone.

Mary remains.

Magdalene remains.

Christ, even in torment, knows your pain.

His Blood is your pain, made visible.

And still—He is not ashamed of you.

Feel the ground beneath you.

The weight of your body, still here.

Still breathing.

Still held.

There is no shame in the trauma.

No guilt in the horror.

Only love remains.

Love that stays.

Love that bleeds.

Love that trembles.

Love that refuses to abandon.

You are not alone.

You are not what happened to you.

You are not beyond repair.

You are the beloved.

Of the One who was scourged...