A Conversation with Resmaa Menakem

Resmaa Menakem is a healer, therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in the healing of racialized trauma. He is also the founder of the Cultural Somatics Institute and best known as the author of the New York Times bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies. Resmaa is the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building.   

As a cultural trauma navigator, Resmaa’s work focuses on making the invisible embodied and visible. He applies embodied, somatically based concepts and practices to healing and releasing historical and racialized trauma. He speaks not only about how white supremacy has harmed people of color, but also how the traumas of colonialism, imperialism, and violence have been transmitted from one generation to the next in white bodies. Resmaa believes we must recognize the trauma embedded in our bodies and accept the necessary pain of healing to move through and out of our trauma, enabling us to mend our hearts and bodies.  

Join Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Rachel Bryant for a transformative conversation with Resmaa examining how we can heal the historical and racialized trauma we carry in our bodies and our souls.
 
Resmaa Menakem is a healer, a longtime therapist, and a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in the healing of racialized trauma. He is also the founder of the Cultural Somatics Institute, a cultural trauma navigator, and a communal provocateur and coach. Resmaa is best known as the author of the New York Times bestseller My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, and as the originator and key advocate of Somatic Abolitionism, an embodied antiracist practice of living and culture building.    

For 10 years, Resmaa cohosted a radio show with former U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison on KMOJ-FM in Minneapolis. He also hosted his own show, Resmaa in the Morning, on KMOJ. Resmaa has appeared on both The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dr. Phil as an expert on family dynamics, couples in conflict, and domestic violence. He has also been a guest on Charlamagne Tha God’s Comedy Central TV program, Tha God’s Honest Truth, and on iHeart radio’s The Breakfast Club with DJ Envy.    

Resmaa has served as the director of counseling services for Tubman Family Alliance, a domestic violence treatment center in Minneapolis; the behavioral health director for African American Family Services in Minneapolis; a domestic violence counselor for Wilder Foundation; a divorce and family mediator; a social worker for Minneapolis Public Schools; a youth counselor; a community organizer; and a marketing strategist.   

From 2011–2013, Resmaa was a community care counselor for civilian contractors in Afghanistan, managing the wellness and counseling services on 53 U.S. military bases. As a certified Military Family Life Consultant, he also worked with members of the military and their families on issues related to family living, deployment, and returning home. You can learn more about Resmaa and his work at his website.
 

Rachel Bryant, MA, is an educator and administrator with more than two decades of experience in public mental health and a pedagogical orientation in Black, Indigenous, and Liberation Praxis. She currently serves as the Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), where she has helped teach, mentor, and launch the careers of hundreds of emerging mental health clinicians from diverse backgrounds. From 2009 to 2017, she was the Director of the Mental Health Services Act Project at CIIS, which recruited and retained graduate students underrepresented in the mental health workforce. Skilled in group facilitation, strategic planning, program development, fundraising, and evaluation, Rachel has experience winning and managing six- and seven-figure grants from state, county, and private foundation partners. She has administered behavioral health services and programming at the Alameda County Public Health Department and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. She holds a Masters of Counseling Psychology degree with a concentration in Community Mental Health from CIIS and has also served as an Assistant Professor in CIIS’ Masters of Counseling Psychology and Undergraduate Studies programs.