Collective Healing Conference 2024

The Politics of Body and Earth

Dr. Ruby Gibson & Calvin Terrell

We are collectively inhabiting a world whose rhythm has sped up. The impacts can feel hopeless, and humans can feel stressed. Yet Mother Earth still keeps her pace, her rhythm, and her cycles just as our bodies attempt to do the same. Aligning with Earth at this time will allow us to sense her rhythms and regenerate balance within.

This dynamic and interactive workshop will assist you in recognizing the great individual changes you hope to engage in that will broadcast beautiful ripples into the future as a blessing to all our relations. This session for somatic mindfulness is an invitation to explore your personal politics. Identify the balance of power between Body & Earth, Power & Virtues, Patriarchy & Matriarchy.

“The outcome of our personal dynamics and societal ills are influenced by our thoughts and choices every minute of every day.” - Dr. Ruby Gibson

Climate Cafe

Merritt Juliano

Join us for an online Climate Cafe for Personal & Planetary Healing! One of the biggest challenges of the climate crisis is knowing what to do with the complex set of emotions regarding children, young people, and the fragility of our environment in the future. This is particularly pertinent to parents, caregivers, and those involved with today’s youth.

Climate Cafes are founded on the belief that the reality of climate change is inherently overwhelming - and that the difficult emotions connected to climate change are very difficult to feel. Processing painful feelings and situations among other people can be helpful in managing overwhelm, feeling more contained, and being able to feel empowered and support others in our lives. This is a structured space for informal, open, respectful, confidential emotional responses and reactions related to the climate. 

Although not required, you may wish to bring a natural object (e.g., rock, feather, shell) to the cafe that is meaningful to you and/or your experience of the planetary health crisis.

Cross-Generational Trauma and Personality

Daniel J. Siegel, MD

Explore the profound impact of cross-generational trauma on personality development, weaving together the latest insights from interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB) and emerging concepts from Dan’s upcoming book, Personality and Wholeness in Therapy: Integrating 9 Patterns of Developmental Pathways in Clinical Practice. We will delve into how overwhelming experiences, genetic predispositions, and epigenetic inheritance contribute to the formation of our personality and influence our potential for growth and healing.

Using the IPNB framework, we will examine how trauma is transmitted across generations, shaping the brain's architecture and influencing relational patterns. We will also explore the nine developmental pathways that define our journey towards wholeness, offering a comprehensive understanding of how these pathways interact with cross-generational trauma.

By integrating these pathways into clinical practice, we can cultivate a deeper understanding of our human experience, helping individuals transcend the limitations imposed by trauma and move towards a more integrated and fulfilling life. This workshop will provide practical tools to support navigating the complexities of personality development and healing from trauma, both for clinicians and anyone interested in trauma healing.

Cultivating Care in Times of Loss

Bayo Akomolafe, PhD

The world is undergoing tumultuous moments of war and strife. Through these storms, a conversation about healing and wellbeing persists - urged on by traditions that stabilize healing as an ideal.

In this workshop, Dr. Akomolafe invites a reconsideration of the centrality of healing and investigates how some notions of healing get in the way of care. Suggesting that therapy is the political manufacture of the boundaries of the body, Dr. Akomolafe discusses the shadows of a trauma fundamentalism that is increasingly popular to contemporary expressions of care, and traces out a history of trauma that connects it to the rise of industrialization. His concept of "abtherapy" will also be examined.

Healing Through Compassionate Inquiry

Dr. Gabor Maté

Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapeutic method developed by Dr. Gabor Maté that reveals what lies beneath the appearance we present to the world. In this workshop, Dr. Maté will explore how Compassionate Inquiry can help unveil the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories, and body states that form the real message that words both express and conceal.

Learn how this unique therapy modality can help you and your clients recognize the unconscious dynamics that run our lives and how to liberate ourselves from them. This powerful technique helps us access deep healing and transformation by cultivating presence, bringing attention to signals from the body, and creating a safe, sacred space between client and therapist.

Explore the hidden inner workings of your mental climate, understand the pressure that modern-day living exerts on your mind, and discover how to work with the physical impacts of trauma and stress in a live, interactive format guided by Dr. Maté.

Embracing Climate Change Emotions — A Crucial Step toward Human Survival

Barbara Easterlin, PhD

Climate change anxiety and eco-grief are on the rise, especially among young people. Sensing massive changes ahead, most people are not equipped to cope with the uncertainty of our ecological future, and instead slip into dissociation and other defensive modes. This includes polarizing, projecting blame, and endlessly ignoring a problem which experts say can be solved.

On the other hand, worry can be motivating if met compassionately and skillfully. Therapists, healers, educators, and others at the forefront of transformational thinking can play a crucial role in shifting
the energy bound up in fear and apprehension toward empowered and unstoppable action.

Join Climate Psychologist Barbara Easterlin on an experiential journey navigating the mental health dimensions of the climate and ecological crisis and the social justice inequities it reveals. Learn how psychology plays a pivotal role in crafting coping strategies, scaffolding informed optimism, nurturing resilience, and encouraging effective action.

This workshop will provide skills training in mindfulness, compassionate listening, art experiential methods, emotional regulation skills specific to climate feelings, and steps to avoid burnout in a burning world.

Global Social Witnessing – An Embodied Introduction to Our Inner World Space

Kosha Joubert

Join our introductory workshop on Global Social Witnessing, where you'll learn to mindfully attend to global events with embodied awareness, thereby creating an inner world space that mirrors and brings compassion to the experiences unfolding. Shift from being a passive bystander to an active witness, responding from body, heart, and mind. Discover how to gently turn your attention towards rather than away from challenging situations while befriending our own nervous system in a deeper and healthier way.

The Courage in Poetry: An Invitation to Solace, Companionship, and Courage

David Whyte

For more than 30 years, David has spoken about the role of courage in everyday human life, reminding us that the origin of the word is coeur, meaning heart, the foundational way we care about a person, a passion or solving a central perplexity in our lives; all felt in the mind, the body, and the spirit and all felt at an intimate crossroads of robustness and physical vulnerability.

During this time of intense personal, political, and collective anxiety, working from this internal bodily foundation of caring and compassion is vital both for our own individual sanity and for the sanity of our societies.

By exploring courage, beauty, and vulnerability, as well as, from a practical point of view, some of the tiny everyday disciplines each of us can undertake to better our lives, this workshop should work as a kind of close companion to our thoughts, our difficulties, and our possibilities for a present and future happiness.

Bridging Generations: The Ancestral Healing Path

Thomas Hübl

This session will explore the deep connections between personal, ancestral, and collective trauma, illustrating how understanding these links can empower your healing journey. You’ll learn about the underlying causes of present-day trauma found in our past and how to connect with the soul of humanity—creating both personal growth and collective healing. Through this workshop, we will gain insights into reawakening our roots and connecting with the soul of humanity.