On Personal and Collective Healing
How can we design for a planet that is more than human? This question motivated the Planetary Retreat organized by 10x100 and Horizon 2045 at Diversity Lab in Berlin in June 2023. Its primary objective was to establish the groundwork for a pioneering design standard, one that prioritizes the cultivation of a reinvigorated planetary intelligence. We invited a unique group of thinkers and practitioners working in policy, governance, engineering, advocacy, design, and the arts to share their insights to this effect.
In this talk, Céline Semaan, Founder and CEO of Slow Factory, introduces a framework for collective healing. This work builds upon Celine and her teams experience working with different marginalized communities around the world and the importance of individual and collective healing as the foundation for creative imagination.
This transcript is based on the original audio recordings of the retreat, with minor edits for clarity and length.
Framework for Collective Healing
Overview
Framework for Collective Healing is an approach we at Slow Factory are currently developing and experimenting with. We are working with communities and organizations to unleash radical imagination. In the process, we are asking people to step out of their comfort zone to imagine the next 10, 20 years, or best case scenarios. However, in doing this work, we have found that for many of the communities we collaborate with—especially those that are impacted by the current systems of oppression—this is hard and uncomfortable work. Many of these communities or organizations are not in a place to think about different futures. These are people in survival mode and it’s very difficult to get to imagination without collective healing first.
There is a missing link between collective imagination and status quo, and it’s the collective healing framework.
The Collective Healing Framework therefore needs to be applicable. It’s critical and is missing in our day to day lives. These conversations around healing are happening intuitively, but they can be supported by frameworks, care, time, and attention. We have started to run workshops on care and collective healing as a precursor to imagination work and have learned the importance of first creating the conditions for collective healing to occur. We don’t want to design spaces that are a free-for-all or trauma dumping and as a result reproducing harms. We think this is where a tool like this can help. We hope the Collective Healing Framework can be useful for others to pick up, use, edit, and rebuild for themselves. To read more about this work, head to the Slow Factory website.
Prompt and Structure
Imagine a world that heals you. What would this world mean to you?
Objectives:
- To move towards flexibility rather than stasis
- To change one’s relationship with trauma
- To release emotions that are hindering internal progress
- To make room for radical imagination
Part A
This framework is modular, and can be changed to suit your needs. Healing is a personal journey that expands towards the collective. Important note: before you start, you may want to have a journal next to you with a pencil, a piece of paper and a marker, whatever makes sense to be able to write, draw and connect the dots on the many thoughts that will arise.Part B
There are three circles. Each layer is modular, and can move from section to section according to what may arise as a group or an individual navigates the wheel. Collective healing must begin with introspection, aided by the prompt cards: Cards for Collective Care. Players can begin exploring what is holding them back, what are the emotions that are present and queues on how to transcend them.Part C
Throughout the process, take notes, journal, leave voice notes, and draw. Rules are important to respect, perhaps a set of rules can be defined at the beginning or as the needs arise. For instance, a “respect of others boundaries” and “allowing people space to process” are important along the way.To Begin
We’re going to do a brief grounding exercise to begin. If you can, and if you have the ability, put both feet (or your body) on the ground and close your eyes if you feel comfortable and feel safe to do so. Allow yourself to let go of all the air in your body.
Breathe out and inhale.
Breath in your energy, tying your energy to the center of the Earth. Feel like you are breathing in the center of the Earth, through the muck, through the worms, through the grass, all the way through your toes and your ankles. And as you breathe out, start again, pulling in the energy of the Earth, tying your energy to the center of the Earth. Breathing in from that place through the soil, the muck, the worms, the Earth, the grass, the moss, all the way to your toes, your ankles, your knees, your waist, your heart, your throat, your mind. And exhale.
Breathe out and inhale.
One last time, as you breathe in, consciously connect yourself with the center of the Earth. Breathe in. Imagine yourself tying a rope around the center of the Earth as you ground yourself there, breathing in all of the energy from the Earth. And as you exhale, let go all of the energy back to the Earth, of all the things that you don’t need right now. And when you feel okay, you can open up your eyes. Thank you.
Outer Circle
Forgiveness
Mantra for forgiveness: I forgive myself for the misunderstanding that I had to betray myself in order to be accepted. I forgive myself for the misunderstanding that I had to make myself small in order to belong.Begin with forgiving yourself in the ways in which you had participated in an exchange that left you wounded. Self-forgiveness isn’t obvious, however it is the first step in understanding where and how we have enabled ourselves to be part of a situation that hurts us. Forgiveness is tricky, often oppressive situations that have nothing to do with our own behavior override our own ability to forgive or to act on a given situation. The stage of forgiveness paired with movement, somatic therapy, creative outlets and writing can help in identifying what needs to be released, what needs to be forgiven.
Rest
In a culture that values productivity over balance, a forced optimism to work above one’s own limitation, rest is a radical act. Inspired by the work of Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry, resting is key in being able to contemplate and relax the mind and body in order to embody some of the changes that are happening in real time.Create
Using our creative energy to channel emotions and thoughts into art is key in understanding our inner world and being able to map out webs of emotions and thoughts. Creative outlets can be singing, dancing, writing, drawing, performing, painting. Whatever inspires you to use your creativity is allowed.Acceptance
Mantra for acceptance: I accept and release what no longer serves me. I am grateful for the lessons and allow for a release. I do not need to do anything at this moment but to accept.Middle Circle
Play
Playful outcomes may be to look at each other without laughing, soul gazing. Playful activities are presented in the Cards for Collective Care but aren’t limited to these prompts. Here is the freedom to imagine what playful outcomes inspire you.Movement
Releasing emotions with movement is key in order to move the energy from the mind into the body and into the atmosphere. Movements may be dancing, Qi Chong, Yoga, stretching, breathwork and so on.Imagination
This is the part that allows us to merge both meditation and creativity. Here we are in a place outside right and wrong as Rumi says, in an open field of possibilities. This is the quantum field that allows us to project ourselves outside of our current circumstances. Everything is allowed here. You are in the field of all possibilities.Reparation
Reparation is deeply rooted in Black Liberation. Reparations can also be anchored in reparative justice: what are some of the resolutions needed in order for the person or the group to move forward towards justice?Nurturing
Mantra for nurturing: How can I better nurture myself? What does my body need right now? Sleep? Water? Food? How have I forgotten to center my own nurturing?Affirmation
Write a series of mantras that allow you to release the past and move towards your present moment guided by your future goals. This works both for personal and collective healing workshops. An example of affirmations can be: “I am safe. I am free. I am sovereign in my body.”Conversation
Using the Cards for Collective Care if you need to, engage in meaningful conversations with your peers, perhaps you need a one on one with someone whether a therapist, acupuncture doctor or a friend. Take time to identify who you’d like to communicate with and who can help you in this moment.Bodywork
Bodywork is centering your own wellbeing but can also be explored in groups. For instance community acupuncture sessions or collective healing spaces centering bodywork are also found in Rolfing, Breathwork, Yoga and other forms of body movements and healing therapies.Sleep
In many Indigenous Wisdom, sleep is a source of guidance where people find answers hidden in the subconscious mind. Collective sleeping sessions can result in a sacred space for both healing and liberation. Some practitioners provide Sleep Workshops where the group is guided in a meditation that allows the participants to fall asleep and get connected with their inner wisdom.Journaling
Journaling is an essential part of this workshop, a personal notebook where the participant can meditate on words, emotions, thoughts and write their own affirmations and mantras.Meditation
A personal and collective practice that can be done with eyes open or closed, focusing on breathing in the present moment.Inner Circle
Pause
This phase can be called out when needed, it inspires a moment of contemplation, a short meditation, a moment of reset.Release
This phase paired with either create or bodywork can be a catalyst to release what no longer serves the participants. A ritual: Automatic writing of all the negative thoughts and emotions that may arise on one side of the paper, automatic writing on all thoughts and emotions that inspire or ignite designers on the other. Burn or bury the paper.Plurality
Expanding our perspective as much as possible to include others' perspectives. This doesn't mean inviting the harm, the person inflicting harm, but it means opening up to a broader circle of building solidarity, building international solidarity.Transformation
In your journal: What have you identified needing change? What are the actions or processes that deserve to be transformed or replaced? Transformation is a process in itself and begins with acute observation.Background
Reflections from the author and designer, Céline Semaan.
What inspired me to work on a Collective Healing Framework begins with the self. A self reflective tool, like opening up a box of wounds—wounds observed, lived, and seen in others. How do we transfer these wounds into something that feels like healing and expansion? The wounds put us into a posture of fear and protection rather than a posture of creativity, imagination, and release.
In the context of collective healing, my reflections have been focussed on the culture and limitations of healing. When we are in the context of building for collective liberation or infrastructure for imagination, the observation in activist circles is that it can be hard to decouple one’s identity with the problem that they are fighting for or against. Because of this lack of discernment between the identity, the person, and the problem they are fighting, it makes it so that the problem always needs to exist so as not to shatter one’s identity. This creates barriers to achieving certain goals because our goals are not tied to the resolution of the problem, but rather to the existence of the problem.
To give an example, take someone who is fighting against the military polluting their land. They are in a trauma loop and therefore unable to imagine what it would look like if the military listened and stopped polluting the land. There is no bandwidth or capacity for this person to imagine this because they are in a place of trauma and their identity is tied to the fight. People will protect their identity at all costs, so the problem always exists, which is a problem in and of itself. If we are activists working towards a resolution, our identity should be built towards the resolution not towards the problem. We exist for something, not against something. Which has also been on my personal journey.
My observation is that a lot of this work that we do outside of institutions is built on anger and resentment from what we have survived of institutions and survived in our lived experiences. And what congeals us together in the beginning is anger. Through this work I have learned that we need to design a space for healing. We need to factor in space to pause and reflect, to heal and transform ourselves and each other. It is extremely hard to do collective imagination or the job of a creative—to imagine new systems and new pathways towards collective liberation—if we don’t have the space to release and heal. Therefore “let us build a world that heals you” and for that we need frameworks for healing that can be presented and encouraged.
Slow Factory is an award-winning organization creatively addressing the intersecting crises of climate justice & human rights through cultural change, science and design.
Slow Factory transforms socially and environmentally harmful systems by designing models that are good for the Earth and good for people. We are people of the global majority advancing climate justice and social equity through regenerative design, open education, and materials innovation.
We envision a society that holds interdependence between people and nature as its highest value and liberation as a collective responsibility. In an era defined by climate catastrophe, we recognize the urgent imperative to redesign all human activity. Our methodology applies ancestral wisdom to scientific and technological innovation to turn segregated systems into holistic ecosystems. We embrace plurality to decentralize solutions that repair and nurture global-majority communities impacted by colonialism.
Understanding that culture is a powerful driver for policy and corporate practice, we collaborate with partners across fashion, media, business, and civil society to build an equitable, climate-positive society. Together, we drive systemic change defined by a regenerative ethos, transparent supply chains, and rigorous analysis of material life cycles.