My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

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Throughout Part I of the book, the author leads readers through a series of body grounding and settling practices, which include awareness of our environment, guiding us through fears and hopes that arise. This is of immense help to all of us: to notice when we are open or constricted and what causes these reactions, what it activates, and where any discomfort or pain is located. The practices should be repeated several times. Menakem: You see it everywhere. That’s why the reps are so important, because when you get the reps in, if you get the reps in around race — Menakem shares these exercises and techniques to help people do the difficult work of healing and dismantling white body supremacy, and (most importantly) remaining alive in the presence of traumatized police. Resmaa Menakem (born Chester Mason, Jr.) [1] is an American author and psychotherapist specialising in the effects of trauma on the human body and the relationship between trauma, white body supremacy, and racism in America. [2] [3] [4] [5] [1] My Grandmother's Hands was an interesting book about racialized trauma and its effects on our bodies.

Tippett: [ laughs] This is why I do my interviews remote. [ laughs] I don’t have to worry about what my body is communicating. [ laughs]Tippett: One of the things you — this was one of the five anchors for moving through clean pain — the first one, Anchor 1, was: Shut up. Tippett: It’s amazing. If I ask you, through this life you’ve led and this knowledge you’ve taken in and that you teach people, how would you start to answer the question about how your sense of — your sense of what it means to be human, how that is evolving, how you’d start to think that through right now? On Being is an independent nonprofit production of The On Being Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I created this show at American Public Media. The idea that losing weight will make one less reactive is fat phobic/harmful and does not seem to be based on any sort of truth except for the readers opinion. Tippett: That makes sense, too, in terms of how trauma is in the eternal present; you’re not remembering it, it’s reliving itself. And you’re getting — just for that minute, you’re actually settling in the real present.

The author also discusses why white Americans must lead the transformation for growing out of white-body supremacy.

Experiencing Clean Pain

Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary. Menakem: It’s always been there. There’s always been this kind of resonant knowing that something’s there. Because it’s been decontextualized and handed down from my mom, my grandmother, my grandfather, blah blah blah, all the way down, I didn’t have a language for it, but there was a knowing that “this ain’t right.” Tippett: One thing that occurred to me, reading your work, is one reason that elders are so comforting and healing — and children understand that — is because — not everybody becomes an elder; some people just get old …

These are where the opportunities for healing lie. You’re not going to heal the Mason-Dixon line, but real, breathing, flesh-and-blood bodies can heal. My book helps to begin that healing.Tippett: The Tower of London that we go to as a tourist attraction, and it’s one torture contraption after the other. PDF / EPUB File Name: My_Grandmothers_Hands_-_Resmaa_Menakem.pdf, My_Grandmothers_Hands_-_Resmaa_Menakem.epub Menakem: Exactly. Flaying, whipping — here’s the thing. Land theft, enslavement, imperialism, colonialism, genocide — all of that.

a b "Resmaa Menakem on Why Healing Racism Begins With the Body". Compassion Center, University of Arizona. 2020-04-05 . Retrieved 2020-11-26. Now, if you get reps in with that — not just do it one time or just when I tell you to — what you may notice is that you have a little bit more room for other — literally, for other things to happen that can’t happen when the constriction is like that.

Kalliopeia Foundation, dedicated to reconnecting ecology, culture, and spirituality; supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth. Learn more at kalliopeia.org. Somatic Abolitionism is a living embodied Anti-Racism practice and culture building that requires endurance, agility, resource cultivation, stamina, discernment, self and communal discipline cultivation, embodied racial literacy and humility. Sewell, CheyOnna. "Artist Resmaa Menakem launches new book, gallery exhibit and album to inspire action on racial justice". Twin Cities Daily Planet . Retrieved 2020-11-26. Menakem: Exactly right. So if I’m a 13-year-old white boy, and I get on the internet, and I see symbol, I see rules of admonishment, rules of acceptance, a tone, a cadence, a dress, an understanding, a rhythm — so I’m not just talking about just the things that we see, the dress and stuff like that. I’m talking about the glue — the resonant and dissonant glue that holds things together. An exceptionally thought-provoking and important account that looks at race in a radical new way. For all readers— Library Journal (starred review)