Hosted by Sonita Mbah. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

What happens when we expand the circle of collective healing to go beyond the purely human world? And how can we begin to address the enormous weight of animal pain caused by factory farms?

In this episode, Christine Gerike and Michael Grünwald introduce a year-long Pocket Project Integration Lab they're hosting from February 25 called Ethics of Animal Harm: Wounds in the Collective Field. Opening Ourselves to Animal Welfare and Ethical Violation in Factory Farming.

The Lab is one of more than 40 Integration Labs the Pocket Project is hosting in 2026 exploring collective and inter-generational trauma from a wide range of geographic, cultural and thematic perspectives. [Applications open here.]

Christine and Michael's Lab seeks to bring awareness to the trauma factory farming inflicts on livestock including cattle, chickens and pigs and how these ethical violations affect our collective well-being. A core question informing their inquiry will be: "What do we turn away from?"

Participants will be invited to share information about factory farming and attune to the many layers of this global trauma field; explore their personal and ancestral connection to this industry; and sense into the many ways in which this topic informs us, and lives in our collective social and planetary body. We will explore ethical alignment, orient ourselves towards what resources us, and reflect, share and deeply listen to what arises in our group field when attuning to this collective trauma field.

Applications Open: The Pocket Project is offering more than 40 Integration Labs in 2026, each dedicated to exploring and addressing specific dimensions of ancestral and collective trauma. To access a complete list of the Labs and to apply to participate, click here.

Further Resources:

Ethics of Animal Harm: Wounds in the Collective Field

About Christine Gerike

Christine Gerike is a transformational coach and group facilitator. She brings her love and witnessing competence to collective topics, guiding individuals and groups to integrate aspects of ancestral and collective fields we are embedded in. Christine co-founded the community practice of Global Social Witnessing in 2017, and has been cultivating it since. She is a graduate of the first Pocket Project Training, the Timeless Wisdom Training, and the Collective Trauma Facilitator Training. Christine is certified as a Co-Facilitator within the Pocket Project network. In 2026, she offers an integration lab on Ethics in Animal Harm and the Collective Trauma of Animal Factory Farming, together with Michael Grünwald and Gabriela Zagula. Originally from Germany, Christine lives outside of New York City with her family. She has two grown-up daughters.

About Michael Grünwald

Michael is a graduate of the Global Timeless Wisdom Training (TWT), the first Pocket Project Training in Israel 2018 and the Collective Trauma Facilitator Training. Besides his love for the work with people in a diagnostic laboratory, he loves to work with clients on integrating individual and ancestral aspects of life. While being part of the Core Group (a community of long-term students of Thomas Hübl), Michael conducted a study on the effect of the TWT on epigenetics.

Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

In Pocket Project Global Social Witnessing calls, we come together in community to mindfully attune to global crises we've learned about through the news. But what happens when we make the people and systems delivering that news our focus? What can we learn about both the media's capacity for courageous truth-telling and its potential to amplify collective and inter-generational trauma loops from the past?

This episode features James Scurry, a senior producer at Sky News, psychotherapist and co-convener of MediaStrong, an annual symposium convening senior industry figures to host cutting-edge conversations on journalism and trauma.

James was joined by What Is Collective Healing? co-host Matthew Green, himself a former international journalist, to reflect on what they learned by serving as the focal points at a January 7 Global Social Witnessing call where more than 160 people from around the world gathered to witness the global media.

James speaks candidly about recognising the increasingly unbearable toll that serving as a video editor handling horrific footage from war zones was having on his nervous system. That experience ultimately led him to train as a psychotherapist and put what he learned about himself at the service of helping others – including his colleagues in the media.

James and Matthew also reflect on both the magnetic attraction of working in global media organisations, their colleagues' inspiring level of commitment to accuracy and craft, and the enormous pressures journalists and editors now face.

With several current and former journalists having attended the Global Social Witnessing call, James and Mathew imagine bringing collective healing practices into the heart of the global news industry. How might journalists benefit from collective healing work? And how might such processes lead to more emotionally intelligent storytelling – laying the foundations of the trauma-restoring media systems of the future?

You can find out more about James' work at James Scurry and Safely Held Spaces.

Applications Open: The Pocket Project is offering 48 Integration Labs in 2026, each dedicated to exploring and addressing specific dimensions of ancestral and collective trauma. To access a complete list of the Labs and to apply to participate, click here. (Registration closes on 20 January, 2026).

Further Resources:

James Scurry

Safely Held Spaces

Story on James Scurry by JournalismUK

MediaStrong

MediaStrong (LinkedIn)

MediaStrong Membership

Matthew Green's writing on trauma-restoring media

Integration Labs 2026

About James Scurry

James Scurry is an accredited psychotherapist based in London and the co-founder of Safely Held Spaces, which provides compassionate support to families of people experiencing mental and emotional distress.

He is also a journalist and Senior Producer at Sky News and, for the past two years, has co-organised MediaStrong, one of the UK's largest mental health symposiums for journalists.

James has a particular interest in the role of spirituality in mental health care and completed teacher training in Berkeley, California, at the Nyingma Institute in Kum Nye, an ancient Tibetan movement practice, which he integrates into his work with journalists, veterans, police officers, and first responders who have experienced trauma.

Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

For centuries, the march of modernity has not only unleashed devastation on Indigenous peoples and our natural environments, but also aimed to eradicate healing arts that have sustained communities and landscapes for millennia.

Hāweatea Holly Bryson is an Indigenous psychotherapist, rite of passage guide, and Māori healing practitioner of the Ngāi Tahu and Waitaha tribes who is working to challenge the colonial power structures that still endure within Western psychotherapy, and restore the role of cosmologies that long predate modern psychology.

While this process has at times been deeply challenging, Hāweatea is convinced that the "younger sibling" of Western psychotherapy must come into relationship with the "elder sibling" of Indigenous knowledge at this time of interlocking global crises — when the modern world has much to learn from older ways of knowing.

"In our Western mindset, we're still theorizing, we're still having to prove things that Indigenous people already know," Hāweatea tells host Matthew Green. "And yet, if we look back at how Indigenous people have handled this same crisis over generations, at the ways that my communities or my elders are responding, it is through tending these wounded places that we are guardians of, and which are part of our being, with furious love."

This episode illuminates the powerful role practitioners are playing in challenging therapeutic models rooted in modernity's story of separation, and shows how Indigenous worldviews could help to heal the split between the human and the more-than-human world.

This conversation was first published as part of the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024.

Applications Open: The Pocket Project is offering 48 Integration Labs in 2026, each dedicated to exploring and addressing specific dimensions of ancestral and collective trauma. To access a complete list of the Labs and to apply to participate, click here. (Registration closes on 20 January, 2026).

Further Resources:

Nature Knows

Hāweatea on Instagram

Climate, Psychology and Change: Psychotherapy in a Time When the Familiar is Dying (features a chapter by Hāweatea, 'Decolonizing Psychotherapy')

Integration Labs 2026

About Hāweatea Holly Bryson

Hāweatea Holly Bryson (Hāwea) is the founder of Nature Knows, and a specialist in trauma, transition, and transformation. She is an Indigenous psychotherapist, couples therapist , and Māori healing practitioner. She trains facilitators and therapists in rites of passage, ecopsychology, and profound ways of listening.

Hāwea's community bases span Hawai'i Island, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Australia. Rooted in her tribal lineage of Ngāi Tahu and Waitaha, Hāwea has spent 15 years guiding rites of passage, committing herself to the resurgence and retrieval of our Ways of Knowing. Her work is driven by a lifelong fascination with human energy and the unique, innate power we each hold to heal and move toward greater alignment.

Hosted by Kosha Joubert Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

When Teddy Frank was diagnosed with breast cancer, her initial reaction was one of shock and denial. Then a more competent part of herself — a part she recognised from her ancestral lineage — took charge, seeking to gather as much information as possible about her treatment options.

The visceral experience of existential terror came on much more slowly – and with it an initiation into what it means to feel at first helpless, and then embraced by a much bigger force.

In this episode, Teddy speaks about the encounter with the illness that served as the impetus for her to join Dana Revnic and Ntombiyethu Biyase to offer Journeying with Breast Cancer: A Path of Personal and Collective Learning and Growth. This year-long Integration Lab — one of 48 such Labs hosted by the Pocket Project in 2026 — aims to establish new architectures of emotional, energetic, ancestral and collective support for women around the world dealing with a diagnosis of the disease.

With breast cancer the most common form of cancer worldwide, according to the World Health Organisation, Teddy, Dana and Ntombiyethu's Lab will explore the associated shock, fear of dying, and anxiety over a possible recurrence, to grief for loss of fertility, disfigurement, shame and stigma stemming from cultural norms of feminine beauty. Isolation, over-giving as caretakers, and lack of self-care all play a role in women's experience of this disease.

The intention is to build a global community of women committed to developing their capacity to include and witness their own and each other's experience, grow a sense of interdependence between participants,, and align with the innate self-healing mechanism of Life itself.

As Teddy tells What Is Collective Healing? co-host Kosha Joubert: "I couldn't respond for a long time. I needed to go very still. And the beauty is that that stillness has infused every cell of my body. Because when do we as women get to really stop? How sick do we have to be before we allow ourselves to be cared for?"

Teddy also speaks about the ancestral echoes in her Jewish identity that her diagnosis touched in her — a theme that connects her Lab with her wider work co-facilitating calls in the Pocket Project's Jewish Trauma Relief Project.

This Lab is one of 48 Integration Labs the Pocket Project is offering in 2026, each dedicated to exploring and addressing specific dimensions of ancestral and collective trauma. To access a complete list of the Labs and to apply to participate, click here. (Registration closes on 20 January, 2026).

Further Resources:

Integration Labs 2026

Journeying with Breast Cancer

Jewish Trauma Relief Lab

About Teddy Frank:

Teddy brings compassionate attunement and embodied experience to guide clients to release blockages and align with their natural state of flow.

As a Licensed Master Social Worker (LMSW), she has over 30 years in trauma-informed somatic therapy (Reichian/Bioenergetics), polyvagal theory, transformational facilitation, is a Yoga instructor (RYT) and initiate of Swami Satchidananda, and breast cancer survivor.

She has studied with Thomas Hübl since 2017, is a Senior Assistant in Core Group, has run four Global Trauma Labs/Groups, is a certified collective trauma facilitator and Timeless Wisdom Training graduate.

Teddy is an executive coach with Mobius executive leadership and Founder of Humanenergetics, an organisation dedicated to restoring healthy relationships with self, others, and the world.

Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

This episdode is a rebroadcast from July 1, 2025.

Solea Anani sees the collective healing work taking place in the world today as the answer to prayers offered long ago by our ancestors.

In this powerful dialogue, Solea opens a unique window into ancestral healing work – drawing on her roots as a member of the red-skinned Taino people of the Dominican Republic, who know the island as Quisqueya, or Mother of All Lands.

Solea describes how the grief, fear and isolation she experienced as a child when her socialist parents moved their family to the United States as illegal immigrants served as a catalyst for her deepening connection with spirit.

Blending the legacy of ancestors including the rice field tenders of China, the voyagers of Western Spain, and the rhythm keepers of West Africa, Solea offers an expansive, mystically-informed vision of trauma healing. She describes how we can invite multiple forms of intelligences to "co-abide" in our consciousness – and describes the transformations this profound work can unlock.

This is an exceptional conversation that will speak to anybody who wants to gain a clearer understanding of ancestral healing, and how the exeprience of migration and motherhood can catalyse a deeper connection with the unseen realms.

About Solea Anani

Solea Anani is founder of Anam — ​a living sanctuary devoted to supporting the emerging human align with Soul​. Drawing from the wisdom of animism, depth psychology, and mysticism, Solea offers group mentorships in ​Ancestral ​Reverence, ​individual ​Somatic ​Attunement​ mentorships, body-based meditation classes, and ​Evolutionary Sidereal Astrology readings.

Further Resources

Solea Anani

Anam

Ancestral Reverence

Somatic Attunement

Evolutionary Astrology

Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

Do we need 'parenting schools'? What does it mean to be initiated into the archetypal power of being a mother or father? And what responsibility do we hold to build the kind of healing communities that can nourish us in our daily lives – and allow us to nourish others in return?

In this second part of a conversation first published on Point of Relation, Pocket Project co-founder Thomas Hübl builds on a question about the transmission of ancestral trauma from parent to child to set forth an expansive vision of the power of healing-oriented communities to support us through critical moments.

Hearing Matthew's story of the shock he experienced at unexpectedly having to serve as midwife during his daughter's homebirth, Thomas speaks about the many ways 'generous' communities can resource us to face these kinds of initiatory challenges.

Thomas also emphasises the importance of inviting ancestral resources into our community-building efforts and to support our families to serve as healthy ecoystems for the next generation.

"The more we heal our ancestral wounds, the healthier the family becomes. The atmosphere of the family is not just created by [living] people: A family is the relational network and coherence that the ancestors create. And that's where the new generation lands," Thomas explains. "When there's a lot of trauma, that information field is depressed, fragmented, polarized, numb. And as we heal, it becomes more alive, more creative, more vital, more warm, more supportive. And that's the ecosystem in which our children grow up in."

This prompts Matthew to share a glimpse of the ancestral echoes that underpinned his commitment to covering wars in his early journalistic career – echoes that were revealed during his participation in the two-year Timeless Wisdom Training with Thomas and his team.

The conversation brings core principles of community-building and ancestral healing to life by exploring real-world experiences of fatherhood, career and relationships through the lens of Thomas' work.

Further Resources:

Point of Relation podcast (with Thomas Hübl)

Thomas Hübl

Thoms Hübl's Instagram

Pocket Project

About Thomas Hübl:

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.

His new book, co-authored with Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is called Releasing Our Burdens: A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral and Collective Trauma. Thomas is also the author of Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World and Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.

Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

Why do we beat ourselves up for getting pulled into the same old triggers? And how can we grow our capacity to observe our emotional reactions – rather than being hijacked by them?

Pocket Project co-founder Thomas Hübl has devoted his life to helping as many people as possible to 'grow our cup' – his term for building a capacity to meet the trauma loops playing out inside of us with more awareness, spaciousness and compassion.

In this episode, Thomas and Matthew go back to basics by exploring how we can tell when we're experiencing trauma reactions from the past – and what it means to gradually learn to respond to triggering situations, rather than react.

By choosing to 'own' our triggers, we don't magically dissolve the legacy of past trauma, Thomas explains. But we do start to heal when we bring more awareness to the mechanisms behind our anger, sense of overwhelm, or impulse to withdraw — rather than pathologising these symptoms as signs that there's something wrong with us.

"The cup that holds the trauma trigger is growing," Thomas says. "And it's important because some people say, 'Oh, the healing is only when the symptom disappears.' No: The healing is also when the cup grows."

Thomas explores how groups oriented towards collective healing can serve as a 'social mirror' that can reveal more of our own unconscious patterns. And growing interest in building healing communities represents a reawakening of a latent human capacity to support one another to process collective and ancestral trauma that is now ripe to be recovered, Thomas believes.

This conversation aims to inspire anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how we can loosen the grip of unprocessed trauma on our lives — whether we're new to collective healing work, or advanced practitioners.

This conversation was first published on Thomas' Point of Relation podcast. A second installment from the dialogue will follow in the next episode of What Is Collective Healing?

Further Resources:

Point of Relation podcast (with Thomas Hübl)

Thomas Hübl

Thoms Hübls Instagram

Pocket Project

About Thomas Hübl:

Thomas Hübl, PhD, is a renowned teacher, author, and international facilitator who works within the complexity of systems and cultural change, integrating the core insights of the great wisdom traditions and mysticism with the discoveries of science. Since the early 2000s, he has led large-scale events and courses on the healing of collective trauma.

His new book, co-authored with Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, is called Releasing Our Burdens: A Guide to Healing Individual, Ancestral and Collective Trauma. Thomas is also the author of Attuned: Practicing Interdependence to Heal Our Trauma—and Our World and Healing Collective Trauma: A Process for Integrating Our Intergenerational and Cultural Wounds. He has served as an advisor and guest faculty for universities and organizations, as a coach for CEOs and organizational leaders, and is currently a visiting scholar at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University.

Hosted by Matthew Green Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

It's often said that peace starts within. But what does that mean in practice?

Eva Dalak is a Palestinian peace activator, international consultant, and women's empowerment coach with decades of experience as a gender and conflict expert working across Africa, Latin America and Asia.

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, Eva founded Peace Activation, a global peace initiative that brings Israelis and Palestinians together to heal divides by bearing witness to each other's pain. She continues to host this space every week and it is welcome to everybody.

Eva continued to deepen her Peace Activation work, even as the devastation unleashed by the Israeli military in Gaza intensified. In September 2025, a U.N. commission concluded that Israel had committed genocide against the Palestinians. Although a peace accord was signed the following month, the Israeli military has since killed hundreds more people, and the onset of winter has intensified the staggering scale of suffering inflicted on Gaza.

In this episode, Eva sets her present-day peace activation work in the context of her upbringing in Israel, early encounters with systemic discrimation, her work in 22 conflict zones – and the pivotal experience of temporarily losing her eyesight, as recounted in her new book Dancing in the Dark: How I Found My True Vision for Peace.

In an at times frank and powerfully outspoken exchange, Eva explains why she believes 'truth-telling without dehumanisation' is a key ingredient for peacebuilding – and outlines her vision of an awakened human future.

"We're all capable of being this perpetrator, just like we're all able to be this victim and we're all able to be the savior," Eva says. "And so the-truth telling without dehumanisation means that we understand that we are one."

This episode shows how years of painstaking inner work can equip us with the spaciousness needed to bring people together across seemingly unbridgeable divides – and what it means to build peace from the inside out.

Further Resources:

Eva Dalak

Peace Activation

Peace Is Possible Podcast

The Other Narratives Substack

Dancing in the Dark: How I Found My True Vision for Peace (by Eva Dalak)

Palestine Trauma Relief Project (Pocket Project)

Jewish Trauma Relief Project (Pocket Project)

About Eva Dalak:

Eva Dalak is a Palestinian peace activator, international consultant, and women's empowerment coach. She is the founder of Peace Activation, a global peace initiative that was created as a response to the crisis in Palestine and Israel and is rooted in the belief that sustainable peace begins within.

With over 30 years of experience as a gender and conflict expert, she leads trauma-informed, soul-centered initiatives, based on her experience and work with international organisations in over 22 conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, blending systemic change with personal and collective healing.

Born in Israel and now based in Costa Rica, Eva launched Peace Activation in 2023 in response to the escalating crisis in Israel-Palestine.

Fluent in five languages and trained in international development and law, spiritual psychology and somatic experience she combines grassroots depth with policy-level insight. Eva hosts the Peace is Possible podcast, and authors The Other Narrative Substack, sharing stories of resilience and hope from the frontlines of conflict.

Hosted by Matthew Green Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Dasha Gaian had just embarked on Thomas Hübl's two-year Timeless Wisdom Training in the principles of collective trauma healing.

Born and raised in Ukraine, and living in the United States, Dasha recognised that the surge of anxiety she was experiencing as she witnessed the devastation being visited on her homeland was shared by millions of fellow Ukrainians and people watching in horror from around the world.

In this episode, Dasha shows how collective healing work can not only help individuals to relate to global crises from a more grounded place within themselves, but also inspire us to take practical action to support those most affected.

Now co-facilitating the Pocket Project's Ukrainian Practice Group with Daria Yemets, Dasha describes how the work she has done to integrate layers of collective and ancestral trauma has helped her recover a sense of agency and release patterns of victimhood and suppressed rage set in train by the injustices of the Soviet past.

Part of the team at the newly formed Global Restoration Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting a trauma-informed approach to diplomacy, peacebuilding, and policymaking, Dasha outlines a vision for how collective healing work could play a crucial role in helping to resolve seemingly intractable crises.

Dasha also speaks about her collaboration with David Young (a guest on Episode Two of What Is Collective Healing?) to address social polarisation via the Art of Collective Integration

This episode is essential listening for anyone who wishes to understand the relevance of collective healing work for active conflicts – and gain a deeper perspective on how the past and present collide on the world stage.

Further Resources:

Dasha Gaian

Pocket Project First Ukraine Practice Group

Ukraine Trauma Relief Project

Global Restoration Institute

Art of Collective Integration

About Dasha Gaian:

Dasha Gaian is a trauma-informed coach, facilitator, and collective trauma practitioner with a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural background. She is a member of the Global Restoration Institiute team contributing to initiatives that embed trauma-informed and somatic approaches into peacebuilding, conflict resolution, and policymaking.

Drawing on neuroscience, somatic awareness, and systems thinking, Dasha facilitates individual and group processes in English, Ukrainian, and Russian. She supports clients and communities in regulating symptoms of personal, transgenerational, and collective trauma while fostering resilience, emotional intelligence, and embodied leadership.

She is also a co-creator of the Art of Collective Integration, a trauma-informed practice and framework used for transforming fragmentation in human systems into coherence, resilience, and wholeness.

Born in Ukraine and having lived in multiple cultures, Dasha brings a lived understanding of resilience and interconnectedness to her work, supporting both individual transformation and collective restoration.

Hosted by Sonita Mbah. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

Wycliffe Ngoko Oloo is on a mission to support vulnerable young people to share what's on their hearts.

As team leader at the Kenyan organisation Kitbag Africa International, Wycliffe convenes sharing circles on soccer fields, in classrooms or under trees – anywhere he can find where people can gather.

"I have seen young people drop their masks and speak their truth," Wycliffe says. "I have seen widows laugh after years of silence, and this is always beautiful."

In this inspiring conversation with Sonita Mbah, Wycliffe describes how his own struggle with financial hardship, relationship difficulties and lack of meaningful work gave him first-hand experience of the kind of challenges facing so many young people in east Africa.

"We have a saying in my culture that says that a community cannot truly prosper when its neighbor is still in pain. And this wisdom aligns deeply with my vision, which is healing hearts and transforming communities," Wycliffe tells Sonita. "That's why I really love this work so much, because this work is not just about trauma and mental health. It is about restoring dignity."

Sharing how his engagement with Pocket Project Practice Groups has shaped his approach, Wycliffe describes how he has integrated Kenyan cultural resources into his approach, including the proverb that, "when a wound is opened to the light, it begins to heal."

Infused with warmth, wisdom and hope, this episode opens a window into a grass-roots collective healing initiative that shows what becomes possible when innovation and African wisdom traditions combine.

For more dialogues at the intersection of inner transformation and outer action, register for the free Climate Consciousness Summit 2025, brought to you by the Pocket Project, which runs online from November 14-20, 2025.

Further Resources:

Kitbag Africa International

The ACE Study in Sub-Saharan Africa

Pocket Project Africa Practice Group

Pocket Project Practice Groups

About Wycliffe Ngoko Oloo:

Wycliffe Ngoko Oloo is a trauma-informed community healer, football coach, and founder of Kitbag Africa International (KAI). He creates safe spaces for healing through sport, play, and dialogue, and advocates for trauma and mental health among children, young mothers, widows, and grassroots communities. Trained in Somatic Experiencing, Wycliffe uses culturally grounded resources like the Kitbag to promote emotional resilience and wellbeing across Kenya and beyond.