A training for facilitators, activists, and helpers who want to work with the “ghosts of history,” transform trauma, and facilitate conflict across the deepest divides.
The training weaves together political, social, and psychotherapeutic work — so you can meet history, trauma, and conflict with awareness and skill.
This training grew out of our experience of rising fear and insecurity, growing right-wing extremism and racism in Europe and worldwide, an escalating sense of “us versus them,” and a deep yearning to find new patterns in an ever more complex world.
We bring together people of different backgrounds, faiths, and political interests to create an atmosphere of mutual trust and understanding across national boundaries. We want to reduce prejudice against other ethnic groups and beliefs, ease “xenophobia,” and facilitate conflicts rooted in European history as well as regional conflicts between countries and people.
The Healing History Project
“Since 2012, people from many countries have met to explore who we are — as individuals, cultures, and nations — and how our present is shaped by history.”Worldwork seminars — Warsaw · Bonn · Brussels · Budapest
This is a specific training for human rights, peace, and political activists; facilitators; organizational development practitioners; psychotherapists; and other interested people worldwide.
The training is open to everyone who wants to integrate this approach into their professional field and / or use it for personal development.
Methods of political, social, and psychotherapeutic work are combined and connected through Worldwork — an aspect of Process-Oriented Psychology (Process Work) developed by Arnold Mindell. Process Work is a holistic methodology for individuals, relationships, groups, and systems, seeking meaning in every experience; its central principle is to follow what is happening with awareness.
Worldwork offers methods for non-violent conflict resolution, including diversity, “Deep Democracy,” self-perception, the “participant facilitator,” “Eldership,” and ways of working with power, rank, and privilege as well as hot spots, trauma, and accountability.
Across the seminars we move from the foundations of Process Work to the most demanding edges of conflict, leadership, and healing.
During the training you will take part in at least four Healing History seminars offered in different countries — a chance to understand different cultures and to learn each region’s perspective on history, cultural habits, patterns, and edges, and how these are entangled within Europe and the world. Each seminar includes slots of personal supervision to work on issues that arise.
As a Certificate Program student you choose an advisor from the list and together create a learning plan:
Participation in the seven Healing History seminars.
Fifteen hours of personal work and supervision.
Your own Healing History project, developed and applied in your world.
Seven seminars carry you from the basics of facilitation to living free of trauma — and helping others do the same. Select any seminar to read what it holds.
The first seminar focuses on basic methods of group facilitation. This includes a summary and review of theory and basic concepts about “group process” as well as “inner work.” Inner work is a central method of Process Work for developing awareness of the field and how issues in the outer world are reflected in the inner realm.
We all carry our personal and collective history inside us. With inner-work exercises and small and large group processes, we explore how history has shaped us and affects our lives today. The goal is to develop awareness of inner patterns such as “inner oppression” and to free ourselves from the ghosts of history — connecting with our deeper selves and finding a place from which we can facilitate current world issues. Identifying unhealed parts of history within situations such as the refugee flow, we apply and reflect on our learning.
In the second seminar we deepen the learning from the first and focus on trans-generational trauma. We explore tools crucial for transforming patterns of frozenness, helplessness, and revenge in order to reconcile with ourselves and in relationship with others.
Whether our family roots are grounded on the side of victims or offenders, unresolved collective trauma often keeps us in a cycle of silence and depression that can lead to revenge and violence.
With inner work, dyad, and group exercises we identify the dynamics of power, rank, and oppression within ourselves and collectively, in order to facilitate these dynamics within our family and community. The goal is to reconnect with our strength, develop awareness of national and group stereotypes, and become fluid in facilitating relationship and group conflicts.
The third seminar focuses on working with situations of extreme conflict such as war, violence, terrorism, and fundamentalism. Special tools are taught for working with strong emotions and the heat of conflict — in order to make violence an obsolete method and create a safe space.
This includes awareness of escalation and de-escalation signals, as well as developing fluidity about one’s own attitudes, roles, and styles. We explore and train these methods within our group and apply them to the regions of the world we are working in.
In this seminar we focus on more intuitive and sentient methods (second training) for working with Healing History. Beyond the topics, tools, and interventions we have studied, we apply new methods that help us develop detachment, wisdom, compassion, and empathy — in order to make change sustainable.
The seminar consists of theoretical introductions and exercises to understand and learn about these subtle aspects of facilitation.
In this seminar we focus on how to apply our learning within our families, communities, organizations, political parties, and governments — and how to facilitate and work on healing history between groups and nations.
We explore different levels: the practical details, the emotional field, and the larger system in which our actions take place — helping us bring this work into the world and implement our projects.
You will present your research and receive 721-feedback: an interactive, multi-levelled approach that unites awareness of various dimensions of experience. It includes not only practical learning but also the hidden dreaming background, which is crucial to any learning situation. The goal is to move into community learning and into action for world change.
Details to come…
Details to come…
We ask for a written application describing your interest, aims, and individual situation. The trainers decide about participation individually.
Upon completion — having attended at least 15 hours of personal work and supervision — participants receive a certificate that entitles them to work with the methods of Worldwork in the field of Healing History.
Send us your application and start your Healing History path.
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