The best laws and diversity training have not gotten us anywhere near where we want to go. Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem is working with old wisdom and very new science about our bodies and nervous systems, and all we condense into the word “race.” Krista sat down with him in Minneapolis, where they both live and work, before the pandemic lockdown began. In this heartbreaking moment, after the killing of George Floyd and the history it carries, Resmaa Menakem’s practices offer us the beginning to change at a cellular level.

Resmaa Menakem offers therapy and coaching in Minneapolis and teaches across the U.S. He’s worked with U.S. military contractors in Afghanistan as well as American communities and police forces. His latest book, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, is part narrative, part workbook.

This interview is edited and produced with music and other features in the On Being episode “Resmaa Menakem — ’Notice the Rage; Notice the Silence’”. Find more at onbeing.org.