June 10, 2022
Resmaa Menakem joins 91探花Community Circle to explain somatic approach to healing
On May 3, 2022, the 91探花 Population Health Initiative, the School of Public Health, the Race & Equity Initiative and the Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity hosted a virtual guided conversation with (pictured), an educator of anti-racism whose multiple books and courses implement a somatic approach to healing racialized trauma.
Over the past several months, a group of 91探花faculty and staff joined to create the 91探花Community Circle in which they read and discussed Menakem鈥檚 book My Grandmother鈥檚 Hands. The Community Circle was intended to create an intentional space for faculty and staff to gather in community with one another by discussing and applying the somatic healing practices from Menakem鈥檚 book.
The conversation last month with Menakem was the culmination of the time the group spent working through and discussing racial trauma while healing with one another. Members of the Community Circle and others who joined the conversation had the opportunity to ask Menakem questions regarding several ideas in his book including somatic abolitionism, differences between bodies and identities and maintaining somatic wellness.
Menakem鈥檚 work centers on the idea that in order to abolish white body supremacy and the trauma from centuries of systemic racism, people must start within their body where the charge of trauma is typically held. He emphasized the power of pause in allowing the body to heal rather than constantly working through racial trauma verbally, which is a significant step in the maintenance of somatic wellness practices in daily life.