What is Collective Healing?

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

Pocket Project Report: Ukraine Resilience Project 2025 - 2026

Donate to the Pocket Project's Trauma Relief Projects

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.

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

How can learning to grieve cultivate resilience? And why are people reviving the ancient social technologies of collective grieving rituals today?

Luka Faradsch shares how teachers such as Francis Weller, Sobonfu Somé, Malidoma Somé, and Joanna Macy helped her understand how working with sorrow and loss — far from being only heavy and painful — could become a "sacred practice of aliveness."

By honouring the universal truth that the old must die for the new to be born, Luka describes how grief work can awaken a profound form of feminine wisdom rooted in the inherent cyclicality of life.

While modernity often denies or suppresses our natural impulse to grieve, Luka shares her commitment to helping more people to experience the power of grieving ceremonies to initiate collective healing and nurture our capacity to meet life's challenges with greater fluidity and grace.

"In psychology, we speak about resilience as sturdiness — the ability to resist and recover from setbacks in your life," Luka says. "And yes, that's one part of it, but resilience is also letting things die…For me, grief work is also one expression of a deeply feminine wisdom because the feminine is inherently cyclical. So it continuously dies and rebuilds itself and dies and rebuilds."

Also honoring teachers including Martin Prechtel and Tobi Aye, Luka speaks about her evolving work with companies and organisations — and how she sees grief work as opening new pathways to systemic change.

This episode will be a source of insight and inspiration for anyone curious to understand more about contemporary griefwork — and why the innate human capacity to grieve together is reawakening at this critical time.

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:

Luka Faradsch

Luka Faradsch (Instagram)

Sobonfu Somé on Embracing Grief

Francis Weller on the Point of Relation podcast with Thomas Hübl

Francis Weller on the Five Gates of Grief and Loss

Pocket Project

Climate Consciousness Summit 2025

About Luka Faradsch:

Luka Faradsch is a Psychologist, Trauma-Informed Facilitator and Embodiment Practitioner. Her work lives at the thresholds of science and soul, body and business. She weaves together Psychology, New Work, Somatics, Trauma Restoration, Animism and Ritual to invite individuals and groups into their deep resilience, relational nature, and innate belonging. From start-ups to large organizations and community spaces, Luka holds space for transformation, grief, and re-membering.

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

In the run-up to the Climate Consciousness Summit 2025, we ask: How can we live with the knowledge that humanity is rapidly destroying the foundations of the ecosystems that support all life on Earth? And how can we learn from suffering without falling into overwhelm or despair?

In this inspiring dialogue, Kosha Joubert speaks with Brother Phap Dung (pronounced "Yung"), also known as Brother Embrace, and Brother Phap Linh, also known as Brother Spirit, who are both leading teachers in the monastic movement of Thich Nhat Hanh.

Brother Embrace and Brother Spirit speak about the very different paths that led them to become students of the late Vietnamese Zen master, and their shared understanding of how Buddhist mindfulness practice can help us find equanimity in the face of the climate crisis – and respond more effectively..

"I choose to accept, I choose to say yes to this present moment because I know that saying no to it is already not helpful. It's already adding to the tension. " says Brother Spirit.

"But the crucial thing is not to misunderstand and not to think that by saying yes to this, it means inaction or passivity. It's the opposite: It's the yes that allows us to engage, but engage in a different way. Engage in a peaceful way. Engage in a way which brings joy and solace rather than struggle."

This nourishing conversation transmits the essence of the timeless wisdom cultivated by Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village community at its centre in southwestern France, and applies it directly to today's global challenges.

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.

This dialogue was first published during the Climate Consciousness Summit 2023.

Further Resources:

Plum Village

Climate Consciousness Summit 2025

About Brother Phap Dung:

Brother Phap Dung (pronounced "Yung"), also known as Brother Embrace, is a senior teacher in the late Thich Nhat Hanh's movement. Born in Vietnam in 1969, he escaped with his family aged 10 and became a refugee in the United States. He has helped bring a spiritual dimension to ecological activism and the climate movement. Brother Phap Dung is passionate about bringing mindfulness practice and well-being into educational settings, offering young people an alternative and sustainable way to engage themselves with the social, racial, and environmental challenges of our times.

About Brother Phap Linh:

Brother Phap Linh, also known as Brother Spirit, is a Zen Buddhist monk, musician and seeker. He began his monastic training with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in Plum Village in February 2008, and has since composed many of the community's beloved chants. Before ordaining, he studied mathematics at the University of Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer. A co-founder of the Wake Up Movement for young people, today Brother Phap Linh is actively engaged in teaching applied mindfulness to climate activists, business leaders, artists, and scientists.

As a leading voice in the new generation of Buddhist monastics in the West, he is passionate about exploring how meditators and scientists can learn from each other and open new paths of healing and discovery.

Hosted by Kosha Joubert. Produced by J'aime Rothbard

Combatants for Peace was founded in 2006 by Israelis and Palestinians committed to following a path of non-violence to push their leaders to stop perpetuating war, occupation, and the cycle of violence.

In this episode, Kosha Joubert speaks with Rana Salman and Eszter Korányi, the organisation's respective Palestinian and Israeli co-directors, about what it's been like to continue jointly advocating for peace since the horrendous Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 and subsequent mass killing of civilians caused by Israel's subsequent bombardment of Gaza.

In a dialogue recorded several weeks after a U.N. commission found that Israel's actions in Gaza amounted to genocide, and days after a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas took hold, Rana and Eszter spoke about the courage it takes to follow the principles of non-violent resistance in the face of enormous pressures on both sides.

Rana and Eszter also discussed the significance of the annual Joint Memorial Ceremony and the Joint Nakba Remembrance Ceremony their organisation stages each year, and their hopes of drawing more attention to the dedicated work of Israelis and Palestinians working together to change their current reality.

This conversation offers a moving insight into both the monumental challenges of peacebuilding work, and the stubborn sense of the possible that sustains two of its most dedicated practitioners – even in the most desperate of conditions.

This conversation was first published as part of the Collective Trauma Summit 2025.

Further Resources:

Combatants for Peace

Palestinian Trauma Relief (Pocket Project)

Jewish Trauma Relief (Pocket Project)

About Rana Salman:

Rana Salman is the Palestinian Co-CEO of Combatants for Peace, a role she has held since 2020. Born in Jerusalem and raised under Israeli military occupation in Bethlehem, her experiences drive her commitment to building a just and lasting peace through dialogue, nonviolent resistance, and fostering mutual respect between Palestinians and Israelis.

About Eszter Korányi:

Eszter Korányi is a passionate nonprofit leader with extensive experience in youth education and community development. Her journey working with NGOs has taken her across Italy, the Netherlands, and Israel, where she now co-directs Combatants for Peace alongside Rana Salman.

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