The Power of Somatics for Collective Transformation

How can somatics be used to abolish the structures which keep us dispossessed and sick? Hear from visionary somatics and social justice speakers on how we come together as communities, leaders and changemakers to build the path towards transformation.

‘The Power of Somatics for Collective Transformation’ with Marai Larasi, Farzana Khan & Staci Haines, chaired by China Mills, is the first of a 3-part Healing Trauma and Social Justice series looking into the potential of somatics.

Decades of austerity, a growing cost of living crisis, climate breakdown and the ongoing pandemic are all causing multiple forms of harm and devastation, and we can’t rely on power structures to help us. We need a collective response. While in recent times healing has been depoliticised and individualised, we explore how somatics, from the individual to the collective body, can be applied to climate, racial, and social justice movements. The work of dismantling oppressive systems involves transforming patterns, culture and community practices through engaging the body and healing trauma caused by social and political structures.

methodology, movements, panel, somatics, trauma, video

dark orange background with white writing that reads protest regulation and support. We keep the fire, they can't burn us out.

HJL Protest Regulating & Support

Tools to regulate and resource us before, during and after protest.

illustration by Sabba Khan of a portal with Black and brown hands reaching through to pull a brown woman in a white dress through towards some food

Experiments in Imagination

The work of imagination opens up possibilities to transform our society – to redesign and remake the world together.

Report cover. Blue textured background with faint image of a woman wearing a hijab. Cover is designed to look like a folder with multiple pages and tabs in it. Bold black text with a red streak of ink circling around it. Text reads: 'The Violence of Liberal Racism. What Palestine Reveals About British Mental Health Care. An original research report by Dr. Tarek Younis.

The Violence of Liberal Racism: What Palestine Reveals About British Mental Health Care

Building Collective Power & Preparing to Govern

Exploring the internal and external work. We offer this space for all of us – organisers, liberation workers, community leaders, healers, and abolitionists – to learn about the embodied competencies we need to cultivate in order to build and tolerate power, and reckon with what it costs us when, instead, we default to shame or making ourselves smaller.

View of Trafalgar square following the fall of Assad A crowd stands in front of Nelson's column with Syrian flags

Politicised Somatics in Practice, Liberation, and Contradiction

Movement medicine practitioner-in-training dr dima mekdad explores how somatic practice illuminated and complicated her embodied experience navigating the liberation of Syria.

So you want to research Palestine?

Researching Palestine as an anti-Zionist academic and mental health practitioner situated in the Global North

Liberation Through the Lens of Disability Justice

Discussing disability justice and its relationship to racial justice, abolition and liberation.

green background with outline illustratons of Alex Augustin, Nkem Ndefo, Melz Owusu, Temi Mwale, and Rebekah Delsol

The Power of Somatics for Racial Justice

A discussion about the need and potential of somatics for racial justice.

colourful illustration of people walking across a rope bridge in a dense forest with white texts on a pink background that reads life-affirming infrastructures

Life-affirming Infrastructures

Hear from individuals and organisations who are visioning and building radical infrastructures across London and beyond.

Anchoring Resilience

A workshop sharing frameworks and practices to reduce stress, address trauma and build embodied resilience.

Rootwork: Reimagining the Future Starts in the Body

“Taking just a few minutes to land in our bodies changes the quality of how we are together. It creates a different foundation for connection, conversation, and collective imagination, and my hope is that we can all build on those skills and apply them to our daily practices.”

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