What is Collective Healing?

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

How can we heal collective trauma when war is creating fresh trauma day after day? And what are the resources that can sustain us even in the most painful of circumstances?

In this episode, Daria Yemets, a psychologist who runs the Pocket Project's Ukraine Trauma Relief Project , speaks about the organisation's work to support for her fellow Ukrainians since Russia's invasion in February, 2022.

Daria explains that the Pocket Project began by offering more than 100 Ukrainians scholarships to courses in trauma-informed leadership, and then expanded to provide one-on-one and group sessions to those experiencing psychological trauma. Then the Pocket Project introduced a form of peer-led, community-based space known as a 'resilience circle' to rapidly scale the programme's reach.

"What I sensed living in Ukraine at that time is that war is insanely isolating and it just locks you in your own space," Daria tells co-host Sonita Mbah. "So we sensed this need for safe spaces for people to connect. And this is what we've been doing with resilience circles."

Daria speaks powerfully about her commitment to cultivating an interior peace that has allowed her to stay related to herself and others despite the frozenness and numbing caused by the immense toll of death and destruction inflicted by the war.

"Everything can be taken away from me apart from this space inside me that I create for myself by really putting in thought, time, and attention — we could also say energy, love, care, beauty," Daria says. "I'm like a bird creating a nest from different twigs with such care and precision, creating that nest inside me, creating that garden. I try to create my inner space that cannot be taken away under any circumstances."

Daria also speaks about her deep sense of connection to Ukraine's forests and steppes, the grief she feels at how much damage the natural world has also suffered from the war, and her commitment to supporting her homeland to heal.

This episode is essential listening for anyone who wants to understand more about how trauma-informed approaches are being used to provide support to people suffering some of the most difficult circustances imaginable.

Daria's testimony about her personal process is also a powerful reminder of the possibility we each carry of cultivating a sanctuary of inner peace to sustain us through the challenges of an increasingly uncertain world.

World Women Summit 2026: Registration is Open

Pocket Project World Women Summit 2026

Further Resources:

Ukraine Trauma Relief Project

Pocket Project Report: Ukraine Resilience Project 2025 - 2026

Donate to the Pocket Project's Trauma Relief Projects

About Daria Yemets:

Daria Yemets is a psychologist and researcher, born in Kharkiv, Ukraine. She works in the field of collective and transgenerational trauma and maintaining historical truth in Ukraine. Daria leads the development of the Pocket Project Ukraine Support Project. Since the Russian invasion in 2022, she has been coordinating international support for Ukrainian therapists and healthcare specialists.

Hosted by Matthew Green Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

Ahead of the Pocket Project World Women Summit 2026,

Cynthia Brix and Will Keepin of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International (GERI) are hosting two events:

• Relational Alchemy: Healing the Gender Wound for Global Peace (A community call on March 4)

• Bringing Peace to Intimate Relationships (A three-day Regenerative Masterclass launching on March 11)

In this episode, Cynthia and Will draw on their decades of working with the ancient wound of gender dysfunction to give a foretaste of these events — and set forth their vision of a new era of reconciliation between genders.

Gender Equity and Reconciliation International (GERI) creates spaces for participants to share the deepest truths of their experiences as women, men and non-binary people. Through their work with GERI, Will, Cynthia and their global collaborators facilitate a form of "collective alchemy" that builds community by dissolving longstanding barriers to mutual understanding and empathy.

"One of the deepest patterns we've noticed in our 34 years of this work is that untold stories keep gender oppression both invisible and intact," says Will. "We are all living in cultures and in communities where most of us have very little awareness of the real truth of the experiences of people of the other gender categories in our family, in our communities, in our workplace, in our towns and cities."

While men are often shocked to hear women's first-hand accounts of suffering, discrimination, harassment and violence, women are often equally amazed at the breadth and depth of the pain men carry and have been taught to repress, Cynthia says.

"And then both women- and men-identified people are very surprised to see what our LGBTQ+ siblings go through in their lives as well," Cynthia says. "We move through the fire in this work, but we do it as a community holding each other to be able to transmute those difficult experiences and move to the other side."

Cynthia and Will believe that the gender wound is a root cause of virtually every manifestation of destructive human drama — from the intimately personal to the global. Their work with GERI aims to address societal problems at every fractal scale and establish a new form of civilisation of beloved community, rooted in the heart.

"I believe that together, we can rebirth humanity by healing this wound," Will says. "That's my conviction based on what we've seen in these groups. And so our mission is to take it to scale at a larger level."

This dialogue will be an inspiring source for anybody seeking to bridge the gulf that so often divides men, women and non-binary people. It also provides invaluable insights from two practitioners who have dedicated their lives to addressing one of humanity's oldest and most consequential wounds.

Further Resources (Pocket Project):

Relational Alchemy: Healing the Gender Wound for Global Peace, a Community Call with Cynthia Brix and Will Keepin

Bringing Peace to Intimate Relationships, a Regenerative Masterclass with Cynthia Brix and Will Keepin

Pocket Project World Women Summit 2026

Further Resources (Gender Equity and Reconciliation International):

Facebook Page

Facebook Group

Instagram

LinkedIn

YouTube

Satyana Institute

Closing the Gender Gap: Women and Men Creating Social Change Through Dialogue

Healing the Heart of Humanity: The Outer and Inner Alchemy of Reconciliation between Masculine and Feminine (forthcoming book)

Upcoming Workshops (Gender Equity and Reconciliation International):

The Alchemy of Reconciliation: Awakening to the Mystery of Love between Masculine and Feminine.

Grand Rapids, MI. Four-day, in-person workshop .April 9 – 12, 2026. Register.

Healing the Divide. Cape Town, South Africa. April 22-23 For more info: [email protected]

A Call to Wholeness: The Alchemy of Reconciliation between Masculine & Feminine Tavira, Portugal. Four-day, in-person workshop. May 15-17, 2026. Pre-registration.

About Cynthia Brix:

Rev. Cynthia Brix, Ph.D. (hon) is co-founder of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International. An ordained interfaith minister with a background in women's issues and racial diversity, she co-organized seven international conferences on interspirituality, including two on women's spiritual leadership across diverse religious and indigenous traditions. Cynthia holds an honorary doctorate from the California Institute of Integral Studies, M.A. in wellness and gerontology, M.Div., and is certified in Grof Breathwork. She is an Evolutionary Leader, and co-author of Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation between Women and Men, and Women Healing Women: A Model of Hope for Oppressed Women Everywhere.

About Will Keepin:

William Keepin, Ph.D. is co-founder of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International, and Satyana Institute. A mathematical physicist with training in contemplative spirituality and transpersonal psychology, his research on global warming and sustainable energy influenced international environmental policy. He has published widely on environmental science, quantum physics, ecology, archetypal cosmology, comparative mysticism, divine feminine theology, and principles of social change leadership. He is an Evolutionary Leader, a Findhorn Foundation Fellow, and Board member of the Grof Legacy Project. His previous books include Divine Duality, Song of the Earth, and Belonging to God: Spirituality, Science, and a Universal Path of Divine Love.

Hosted by Kosha Joubert. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

What role does empathy play in powering the fight for justice? And why is prosecuting war crimes an essential step towards collective healing?

In this powerful episode, which was first aired last March as part of the Pocket Project World Women Summit 2025, human rights defender Oleksandra Matviichuk provides a deeply personal account of how empathy fuels her struggle to secure accountability for atrocities committed during the invasion of Ukraine.

The head of the Center for Civil Liberties, which was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, Matviichuk reflects on the necessity of everybody embracing the fight to preserve civil liberties — particularly in countries where people may be tempted to take democracy for granted.

Matviichuk also shares inspiring an accounts of her organisation's work to gather the evidence required to one day hold perpetrators of war crimes to account — an essential step towards supporting Ukraine to heal.

"I think that one of the main questions nowadays is the following: How do we — people who live in the twenty-first century — defend human beings, their lives, their freedom, and their human dignity?" Matviichuk tells co-host Kosha Joubert.

"Can we rely on the law? Or does just brute force matter? The answer to this question will define the future, not just of people in Ukraine, in Iran, in Sudan, in Nicaragua or Venezuela," Matviichuk says. "The answer to this question will define our common future."

This inspiring episode reveals the depth of the courage and commitment Matviichuk and fellow human rights defenders are bringing to the struggle to protect freedom and dignity — and shows how we each have a role to play in stemming the rising authoritarian tide.

World Women Summit 2026: Registration is Open

Pocket Project World Women Summit 2026

Resilience Ukraine Trauma Relief Project

Pocket Project Report: Ukraine Resilience Project 2025 - 2026

Donate to the Pocket Project's Trauma Relief Projects

Further Resources:

Oleksandra Matviichuk's TED Talk: The Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things in Ukraine

Center for Civil Liberties

About Oleksandra Matviichuk:

Oleksandra Matviichuk, a lawyer and human rights activist, leads the

Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The centre has recorded war crimes by Russian troops since the invasion in 2022, from the shelling of schools and maternity hospitals to torture and executions. Her organisation received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022.

Matviichuk believes that "the mass mobilization of ordinary people in different countries can change world history" and embodies this principle by coordinating civic initiatives such as Euromaidan SOS, which unites thousands of volunteers to provide aid in response to political injustice and crimes against humanity.

Since October 2022, Matviichuk has been vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). In 2017, she became the first woman to participate in the Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program at Stanford University and in 2022 was recognised as one of the world's 25 most influential women by the Financial Times.

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

When Rita Maria Brown's daughter was three years old, they were playing in a garden in her native Brazil when an older girl approached Rita and asked: 'Do you hit her?'

"Her words went straight to my heart. I'll never forget that moment," Rita says. "And it was like time slowed down and I felt the weight of that question in my own nervous system because of my history with domestic violence, but also what that question meant to her."

In this episode, Rita shares this powerful anecdote to illustrate how wounds from the undigested past of colonialism and dictatorship live on in our minds, bodies and relationships, cascading down through family systems over generations until these frozen layers can finally be witnessed and felt.

In 2024, Rita joined Shayla Wright and Jo Hardy to offer a year-long Pocket Project Integration Lab called Pathways to a Decolonized Future: Exploring the Ongoing Impact of Colonization and How We Can Begin to Heal. (For their report on the Lab, please click here).

The process supported participants to firstly recognise how past oppression shapes our present reality and then, in Shayla's words, to shed the "skins" of colonisation and "really claim a way of being that is so much more fluid and free and playful."

"Sometimes, the heartbreak is hard to be with," Shayla adds. "But it's also such beautiful medicine to be able to stay with that heartbreak."

Rita shares from her own experience of growing up under military dictatorship in Brazil, migrating to the United States, and her recent return to her homeland after 25 years. That arrival has brought her into renewed contact with the pall cast by unjust structures that denied people "the possibility to dream."

In a legacy of colonial-era practices, both Rita's mother and grandmother were forced to work as child labourers. The conditions they suffered instilled in them such a rushed pace of life that Rita never heard either of them tell stories.

"This is also very close to my heart because of being born in a dictatorship and living in military bases and growing up with that suppression and silence and controlling energy," Rita tells co-host Sonita Mbah.

Rita and Shayla reflect on lessons they learned while running the Lab – including how strongly participants desired as much time as possible to share and listen to each others' experiences.

They also reveal how their collaboration changed them as people. As Shayla says of Rita: "I'm not the same person that I was before I became close to her."

With the annual carnival transforming the streets of Rio de Janeiro this week, Rita explains how the festivities provide opportunities for a creative form of confrontation with Brazil's shadows as millions of carnival-goers experience a sense of shared coherence and well-being on the city streets.

This moving conversation will be a potent resource for anybody seeking new perspectives on what it means to heal the inter-generational trauma caused by colonisation and learn from inspiring women committed to working with this collective wound.

"It's a radical process and I tend to think of it more and more as almost an initiatory process," Shayla says. "It asks us to come out the other side a different person than when we went in."

Integration Labs 2026: 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:

Rita Maria Brown on LinkedIn

Intro to Shayla's work: Wide Awake Heart |

Shayla's Substack: You, Me and the Living World

Shalya's Twitter

A report on Rita and Shayla's Lab Pathways to a Decolonized Future

Pocket Pocket Integration Labs 2026

Films Mentioned:

I'm Still Here

The Secret Agent

About Rita Maria Brown:

Rita was born within the vibrant Afro-Brazilian culture, has lived across the United States and in the Netherlands and speaks Portuguese and English. Her work combines over 12 years of experience as a certified developmental coach,advanced studies in Somatic Experiencing, and a commitment to serve diverse populations.

She has a M.A. in Social Justice in Intercultural Relations and a M.A. in Marriage & Family Therapy. For the past ten years, at the University of California, Berkeley, she teaches an intercultural course and coaches visiting scholars, international postdocs, researchers, and their spouses and partners supporting them navigate the effects of culture shock, and its impact on the nervous system, during international transitions. She integrates psychoeducation into this work sharing a variety of self-regulation practices and resources for grounding, connection, and more vitality.

As a certified Integral Master Coach™, she is currently part of a team at Spring Strategies coaching individuals and groups of social and climate justice leadersworldwide. Her offers support human development, somatic awareness and mental health education. Rita studies Mystical Principals and the Collective Trauma Integration Process with Thomas Hübl and is part of the assistant team.

About Shayla Wright:

Shayla Wright has studied and worked internationally for 35 years as a mediator, depth coach, somatic therapist and group/ritual facilitator. She guides people in a whole ecology of practices connected with transforming our human culture: soul support, individual and collective trauma work, ancestral healing, and relational healing and integration. Her current focus is on the integration of spiritual practice, deep inner transformation, and healing systemic oppression.

Hosted by Kosha Joubert. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

What happens in a Pocket Project Integration Lab? And how does the process contribute to individual and collective healing?

In this episode, Adrian Wagner, part of the Pocket Project's research team, explores his work using software known as SenseMaker to capture the subtlety of the processes that occur in collective healing work.

After gathering personal stories from participants in the last round of International Labs in 2024, Adrian curated the Sacred Story Book – which opens a window into the many ways people explored collective trauma across diverse themes and cultures during the year-long process.

The freely viewable e-book shows how encounters with grief, resilience and reconnection in the context of the supportive community provided by each Lab helped participants begin to see their own lives and global issues in a new light, and meet each other in deeper ways.

"Within the Labs you see that the intelligent function of trauma is fully appreciated, so that what is frozen can melt in the right time," Adrian tells co-host Kosha Joubert. "So the trauma is not pushed open or broken open, but people do some resourcing and then slowly more and more perspectives show up."

If possible I would like to add here: „It's not about solving, much more about growing space to hold more of the messiness, beauty and complexity that we call life."

This conversation will provide invaluable insights to anybody considering participating in one of this year's round of Integration Labs, which are addressing more than 40 collective trauma themes.

This episode will also support anyone who wishes to gain a deeper insight into what Adrian calls the "magic" of collective healing – and hear a rich discussion about how to make this work available on a larger scale.

Integration Labs 2026

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:

Sacred Storybook: A Journey Through Collective Trauma and Renewal (Report on the International Labs 2024)

Overcoming Polarisation in Crises: A Research Project on Trauma and Democracy with 350 Participants (Report by Adran Wagner et al. synthesising influences including Dave Snowden and Thomas Hübl)

https://www.complexitypartners.com/

Adrian Wagner on Linkedin

About Adrian Wagner:

Adrian Wagner is moved by the possibility of dancing between applied complexity and precise emotional attunement - holding space for both individual and collective blind spots with care and discernment.

He is working with Complexity partners as a free consultant and as a researcher with the Pocket Project. Adrian is focused on developing the academic resource library for the organization's website. Over the past 15 years, his professional journey has unfolded across roles as a teacher, researcher, coach, and transformational facilitator. His work has served diverse institutions including the European School of Governance, the German Foreign Ministry, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele, the European Commission, and the University of Witten/Herdecke.

Hosted by Kosha Joubert Produced by J'aime Rothbard.

When Dorotea Gucciardo returned to Rafah in southern Gaza in November last year, she could barely comprehend the scale of the devastation caused by the Israeli military.

"I couldn't recognize a thing. Every building was gone. and not just gone but removed, rubble removed and new roads built. And I remember asking the U.N. representative on the bus that was bringing us in, where are we?...It was as if I was on a completely different continent."

In this powerful episode, Gucciardo, who is Director of Development at the Canadian medical solidarity organisation Glia, shares her witness testimony from her third assignment to Gaza since early 2024.

This dialogue is deeply personal, touching on Gucciardo's decision to leave her own newborn daughter behind in Canada to serve in Gaza – spurred by a video of a young Palestinian mother whose month-old baby Mahmoud Fattouh had starved to death due to the Israeli blockade.

But the focus is on the intimate portrait Gucciardo paints of the suffering inflicted on civilians by the Israeli military in response to the October 7, 2023 attacks, and the depth of the relationships that have helped Palestinians survive the staggering destruction. In September, a U.N. commission found that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza..

Resilience is, however, only part of the story: The conversation challenges listeners to consider how both notions of Palestinian reclamation and international responsibility are inextricably tied to the quest for justice and collective healing.

"I actually struggle with the term resilience…because in many ways I think it can unintentionally suggest that extreme hardships like that which Palestinians are experiencing is something that they're expected to endure," Gucciardo says.

Gucciardo invites us to consider instead that the job of resilience should actually fall to people outside of Gaza who can be "resilient in our own solidarity and in our own activism" to ensure their governments work to deliver justice to Palestinians.

This episode provides a searing insight into the struggles aid organisations face in bringing relief to Gaza in the face of the Israeli occupation. It also demonstrates the ingenuity displayed by Glia in supporting Palestianians to reclaim a sense of agency in rebuilding their healthcare system.

Listeners will learn more about what collective healing means in the context of an active conflict zone, and gain a deeper appreciation of the significance of international solidarity for civilians in Gaza.

The Pocket Project is offering two online courses for our Palestinian community:

Palestinian Mental Health PractitionersRoots of Resilience : Collective & Intergenerational Healing Through Art a 6-Session Training for Palestinian Mental Health Practitioners. Limited spaces, please follow this link to register. Palestinians in the diasporaRoots and Wings: Remembering, Reclaiming, Creating For Palestinians is an 8-session online Expressive Arts Therapy program. Limited spaces, please follow this link to register.

Integration Labs 2026

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:

Glia

Palestinian-Led Team Produces First Fully Local External Fixator in Gaza Using Recycled Plastics, 3D Printing, and Solar Power

Doctors Against Genocide

Dr Gucciardo quoted by Drop Site News

Pocket Project Palestine Trauma Relief Project

Integration Labs 2026

About Dorotea Gucciardo:

Dorotea Gucciardo, PhD, is the Director of Development for Glia, a Canadian-based medical solidarity organization. She has been overseeing capacity-building projects in Gaza's healthcare system since 2019. In response to Israel's genocide, she helped the organization bolster support through international medical delegations and she herself has volunteered three times as a team lead since early 2024. She holds a PhD in History and is currently working on a book about material forms of existence and resistance in Gaza.

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

What is a global acupuncture point? Join us as we explore how the mystical is born out of integrated lived experience. Valencie shares her journey into collective healing, tracing her story from birth and early life in Haiti, into her formative years after her family migrated to the United States.

Valencie speaks of the imprint of cultural collisions that she faced as she came of age in a foreign land, offering a glimpse into the mountainous terrain that she carried within. She draws us into a parallel reality reflecting the grief of colonization, held deep within Haiti, the land of her origin.

Drawing on her participation in the Timeless Wisdom Training (TWT) with Thomas Hübl, Valencie explores the interconnected layers of trauma—individual, ancestral, and collective—and how these dimensions shape both personal identity and communal well-being. She reflects on how historical events, cultural displacement, and inherited trauma within the Haitian community continue to live in the body and psyche, and how healing must therefore be relational and communal, not just individual.

Valencie discusses her work with acupuncture as a powerful bridge between individual and collective healing, describing it as both a physical and energetic practice that helps release trauma held in the body and also grounds Thomas Hübl's theory of global acupuncture into what could become an embodied cultural practice. She also shares insights from her spiritual journey, including encounters with Haitian spiritual traditions and unexpected revelations about her role as a cultural and spiritual lineage holder.

Throughout the conversation, Valencie emphasizes the importance of community, mentorship, and strong support systems when engaging in collective healing work. The episode ultimately presents collective healing as an ongoing, embodied practice—one that honors ancestry, history, and spiritual wisdom while actively working toward personal and global transformation.

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:

Valencie Exceus

Valencie's Integrative Care

Instagram

TikTok

Substack

LinkedIn

About Valencie Exceus

Valencie Exceus, also known as Vie, is a Chinese medicine practitioner, storyteller, drummer, writer, and healing facilitator whose work gathers at the heart of medicine, culture, and spirituality. Born in Haiti and raised in the United States from the age of twelve, she carries a bicultural and global sensibility shaped by migration, memory, curiosity, and a deep love for humanity.

Her university studies began in the Social Sciences and grew into a lifelong devotion to the relationships between people shaped through culture, food, music, spirituality, and nature. Her approach is grounded, unadorned, and soulful. Alongside her clinical work, she also volunteers as a funeral attendant, tending to the living during moments of transition and grief. When she is not in the clinic, she works with people online through private sessions and a signature practice she calls Tending to the Roots.

After nearly two decades of clinical practice and through her own lived experience, she has come to know and trust that restoration, repair, and healing are possible when we are willing to address root and structural causes. Through her own life and the lives of the countless people she has worked with, she has also witnessed the restorative power of grace and the larger movements and forces at work beyond our individual efforts. This has drawn her into a deep intimacy with the divine, while accepting to live with unanswered questions and to trust what unfolds beyond her understanding. Comfortable holding both gravity and levity, she creates spaces where truth, joy, and beauty can surface despite trauma, like a garden tended with care.

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.