Resonant World #132
In our relationships, workplaces and daily life, we can choose to embrace the people and situations that trigger us as opportunities to heal and grow.
That’s an approach I aspire to adopt — even though it’s often easier said than done. (Resonant World #123: Into the Lost City of Rage and Shame).
What’s newer for me is the idea that we can apply an equivalent process to events on the global stage — using what evokes a strong response in us as a mirror to look within.
Because world events can resonate with layers of collective and inter-generational trauma lying dormant in our system, this process is best undertaken in community.
That’s the core of the Global Social Witnessing process taught by my friend Manda Johnson, and you can also find plenty of opportunities to practice with the Pocket Project. It’s also an approach we work with when training as collective trauma integration facilitators with Thomas Hübl and team. (Resonant World #79: Why I’m Training as a Collective Trauma Integration Facilitator).
I felt an impulse to record the above video immediately after completing our latest two-hour facilitation practice session — where Manda led half a dozen of us through a process to explore how the recent abrupt geopolitical changes and rising authoritarianism live in us.
To my surprise, I was taken back to the Second World War, and had a visceral experience of what the intervention by the United States had meant to Britain at that time. I’ve done my best to convey the essence of what I experienced in the above video.
Even now, an hour-and-a-half after the height of my process, I feel a sense of both expansion and vulnerability in my heart area. I also feel more grounded — and more capable of hosting what I’m seeing in the U.S. in my system, without going into projection or overwhelm.
This collective witnessing work may as yet be practiced by only relatively small numbers of people. But I believe Manda’s right when she says that coming together in this way provides our collective body with an opportunity to heal — just as we can integrate our individual trauma by attending to our everyday, personal triggers.
As I experienced this morning, the process creates a powerful sense of connection with the others in the group — as we each recognise how profoundly external events are affecting us, and untangle the complexity of our responses. By allowing the ancestral and collective layers we carry to come into our shared awareness, we each build more inner “soil” to stand on. Wiser action naturally follows.
Thomas calls this collective healing work “global acupuncture.”
I share his conviction that the effects of each of these sessions ripple out in non-linear ways — and I’m full of gratitude for what Manda unlocked via her deeply skilled facilitation, and the opportunity to learn from her art.
(PS-If anyone is hungering for a less elliptical reference to remarks by the U.S. vice-president, I recommend the sense-making offered by the Marsh Family).
Soaring Together: Join the World Women Summit
A wonderful invitation from my friends at the Pocket Project:
Imagine an eagle — one wing masculine, the other feminine. When one is weak, it cannot fly. This is our world today — out of balance, longing for wholeness. The World Women Summit is a call to restore that balance, embracing feminine wisdom as a force for healing and leadership.
This is more than a summit—it’s a movement. Join us to learn from extraordinary voices, engage in deep conversations, and step into a future led by compassion and courage. Will you answer the call?
👉 Register now for free:worldwomensummit.net
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