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

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The signals from the soul nerve are incorporated into one of several body practices, below, for working with the body’s checkpoints or warning signals. It’s about allowing — the reason why we want to heal the trauma of racialization is that it thwarts the emergence.

As a Community Care Counselor, he managed the wellness and counseling services for civilians on fifty-three US military bases in Afghanistan. Menakem: So the idea that people could go through a thousand years of the Dark Ages and come out of that unscathed — 500 A. This is examined in detail, from solitary incidents that happen to an individual, as well as witnessing traumatic events, and how oppressed people internalize values and techniques that are trauma-based, including African American self-hate, renunciation of Blackness, mistreating and a lack of respect for other black bodies, and reticence about owning property.In this groundbreaking work, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of body-centered psychology. it's got less to do with supremacy of white skin and more to do with supremacy of bodies that are considered white. And this shift away from centering race as a focus of analysis actually helps us understand why race and racism continue to shape-shift and regenerate, every best intention and effort and law notwithstanding. And to me, what you speak into that, very concretely — you say, “We tried to teach our brains to think better about race” — which makes sense; it felt like that was a good idea.

The author also discusses why white Americans must lead the transformation for growing out of white-body supremacy. Soothing: Soothing physical acts or soul (vagus) nerve training, such as touching parts of the body and vocalizations (humming, buzzing, singing, chanting), belly breathing, which is a well-recognized meditation technique, especially among somatic meditators, physical movements (rocking, movements of parts of the body), and resourcing, as well as focusing on sensations that arise from painful incidents. Instead, it encourages both people to stand by what they need and who they are—but to do so with compassion rather than competitiveness or vengefulness. What I did was put together pieces—especially in terms of race, trauma, and biology—that are already widely accepted but that others hadn’t put together before.

It means that you have many more places to turn—and many more options to explore—when the heat gets turned up under you. Today, we Americans, whatever the hue of our skins, have great resilience—but we also continue to carry that trauma in our bodies. So that’s a lot of times why, when a white person comes to a person of color and tries to whitesplain about race and what should be happening, that’s why people of color go … Like, “Are you out of your mind? One of the first things that happens is that white people will invariably come up to me and start rolling out their racial resume: “Well, you know, I marched with such-and-such.

His New York Times best-selling book, part narrative, part workbook, is My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Civilization as we know it is lost if we don’t take responsibility for reversing white supremacy, and other forms of racism in our world. Menakem: So one of the things about the animal part of the body is that even though me and you are in this room, this nice place, there’s a part of the body that’s saying, “Yeah, but what else is gonna happen? Group practices : Soothing activities (Chapter 14) that all bodies can do with friends, family, and others that a person knows and trusts, of the same race or different races; while Chapter 15 shares physical activities for black bodies, as well as guided imagery practices involving perceived unsafe situations. All of your intelligence, all of the smart things you’ve done — this is one of the things that happens with me when I come off the stage and I’m doing like, a book signing.Not orient in a mystical way, but actually, literally — because many times, the bodies of culture are waiting for danger. A more pinpointed scan is shared in the chapter on clean pain and anchors: Check Your Body’s Checkpoints , or physical sensations that signal a “not right” situation—one that is unfair, frightening, dangerous. Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being, today with clinical therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem.