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The Healing Arts Book Club
Read. Gather. Go deeper.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes your BODY reacts before you've even decided how you feel?
Your chest tightens.
Your heart starts racing.
You feel heat rise in your face.
You want to shut down, defend yourself, leave the conversation... or say something you might regret.
What if some of those reactions have a history?
In October, the Healing Arts Book Club at Rootlight Collective is exploring My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem.
Menakem asks us to look at racism and racial healing through a different doorway: the body.
The book explores how experiences of threat and racialized trauma can shape our nervous systems and how those patterns can move through families and communities across generations.
And it asks a fascinating question:
What changes when, instead of immediately reacting to discomfort, we learn to notice what's happening inside our bodies first?
We'll talk about Menakem's ideas of "clean pain" and "dirty pain," inherited patterns, the nervous system, racialized trauma, and the body practices he offers for staying present when difficult things come up.
You do NOT need to be an expert on any of this.
You don't need experience with body-based healing practices.
And you don't even need to finish the book.
Come curious.
Come with questions.
Come with a friend.
📖 My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem
📅 October 3 & 17
📍 Buho Bookstore, Brownsville
🕑 Free to attend
The Healing Arts Book Club is a place to explore approaches to healing beyond the ones most of us already know... together.
November
The Body Keeps the Score
Where & when
Buho Bookstore · Brownsville, TX
Every 1st & 3rd Saturday · 1:00–3:00 PM
June–November 2026 · Free · Open to all
What to expect
Come as you are
You don't need to have finished the book — or even started it. Come with whatever you have. The conversation meets you where you are.
Real discussion
Each session is led by a local practitioner who brings the book into dialogue with their own healing work. You'll leave with more than notes — you'll leave with a felt sense of what you read.
A community of readers
The people who show up to The Healing Arts Book Club are asking the same kinds of questions you are. About healing, about patterns, about what it means to live with more intention. That's the real gift.
Ready to read with us?
Meetings are free and open to the public.
No registration required — but RSVP helps us plan.
The Healing Arts Book Club is a monthly community reading series hosted at Buho Bookstore in Brownsville — where books about healing, consciousness, and the human experience become a doorway into real conversation and practice.
Each month we read one book together. We meet twice — on the 1st and 3rd Saturday — to discuss what we read and explore it through the lens of a local practitioner who lives and works in this tradition. No prior knowledge required. No pressure to have finished the book. Just show up with an open mind.
Free to attend. Open to everyone.
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