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

photo of a paper collage with dense forest, above reads where to distribute time, energy, £, allyship?

Operations in Movement-Centred Organisations

Exploring how we structure, govern, and transform our organisation in challenging conditions.

So you want to research Palestine?

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

silhouette of a person with long hair holding their phone

Communications as a Site of Transformation

Exploring the role of communications and narrative change in HJL’s work.

Rootwork: Like The Seeds of a Pomegranate

When it feels like the world is suspended in a state of permacrisis, community is the root that grounds us, giving us stability and hope. Not only does politicised somatics offer us an alternative pathway to reimagine our liberatory futures, but it also demands that we do it together. Like the seeds of a pomegranate, we nestle tightly against one another, connected by the white membrane that threads us together as one.

Inside Movement Medicine: Meet Macole

“I’m learning how it also starts from the self and how it is at the cellular level in which we create ripples and changes at a more macro scale. Innerstanding that being in the body, as a site of transformation, simultaneous effects broader structures. So much of the time we are understanding oppression by intellectualising it.”

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.