Tippett: Also, you talked about how your mother and your grandmother, again, how they just modeled this for you, that there is no failure, there is only practice. Ever since hearing Resmaa Menakem in conversation with Krista Tippett for her *on being* podcast (twice!), I knew I had to read this book. Menakem proposes that we'll not achieve racial healing and cultural change with solely cognitive understandings or political/activist strategy. It is through achieving a "settling" within our bodies that we can personally and collectively heal/break the cycle of generational trauma. And this has SO MANY implications for teaching; teachers CAN be healers and CAN create classroom culture that is safe, healthy, and inclusive. It feels important to me right now, at this moment in our life together — there’s a lot of judging other people, or thinking, “Can’t they just get their act together?” or “Can’t they just see the truth?” “Can’t they just hear the facts?” And it happens on every side. And something that you know and that you articulate so well is that the vagus nerve also is about safety; that the core of us, the core of our bodies, is always asking, first, “Am I in danger; am I safe?” Hey, are we — I feel like we’re so animated in here. OK? I was worried if the microphones are gonna be — if they can handle it. That’s why I put the practices in there. And so that is a very important place that I think white bodies get to, sometimes, and they either genuflect to process or strategy, and then they never —

Tippett: The Tower of London that we go to as a tourist attraction, and it’s one torture contraption after the other. anti-racism work is somatic. we need to create opportunities for people's actual bodies to learn how to have non-traumatic responses to bodies that they have lizard brain reactions to. those reactions that are based in trauma, are not helpful because they are knee-jerk and not intentional or conscious. by Ellen Hoffenberg-Serfaty https://journal.workthatreconnects.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/WhiteBodyElderMeets.mp3 a settled body accepts attempts at healing (clean pain). an unsettled body rejects attempts at healing (and therefore creates dirty pain).And one of the things that I talk to people about is that there is this nerve that comes out of the brain stem, and it’s called the wandering nerve. And it hits in the face, it hits in the pharynx, it hits in the chest, it hits in the gut — it wanders the whole body. And it, I believe, is one of the things why we have “gut” reactions, because most of that nerve actually ends up in the gut. And when we’re stressed, that gut constricts or opens. And so one of the things that happens is that if I’m with you long enough, like if me and you become friends, over time I will start to hear things in your throat because the vagal nerve is either open or constricted. An important concept is how trauma can spread between bodies, termed “blowing” trauma through another person, using varying degrees of abuse, control and violence. This phenomenon often occurs as a result of triggers, in a spontaneous manner, which are considered unintended, and thus may be rationalized after the act. This spread can occur in families as well as among strangers.

Current racial conflicts in America are viewed as being several centuries old, having their roots in injustices committed against white bodies in Europe, and passed onto their descendants.If I was tasked with summing up the book in one sentence, I would borrow from Ta-Nehisi Coates, quoted at the beginning of the book: