The history and culture of the Southern United States are inextricably linked to that of the US as a whole. We endeavored to explore our relationships – individually and collectively – with the complex archeology of trauma and resilience, othering and belonging in this region. Through a deeper sensing of how the South lives in each of us, our intention was to support the healing of the multi-layered collective traumas centered in “The South” and offer something unifying to the collective field.
Those interested in a holistic exploration of self-awareness, individual integration, and social healing through the lens of historical layers and racial and cultural diversity of “The South,” whether from this region or not, were invited to apply. This lab involved sensing and feeling together while touching on collective history, trauma, resilience, and restoration. Participants received facilitation of relational regulation, embodied integration, and contemplative spiritual resources, and may have also needed outside support for processing individual specifics beyond what the lab context could offer.<br />
Our lab team was attuned to the cycles of nature. We included the energy of the seasonal and moon cycles to help support our resourcing and alignment with the flow of all life. We also slowed down and took our time moving through this journey, touching into what arose, only when it was ripe for exploration. We were careful to prioritize safely in the pacing of our movement through this lab.<br /> <br /> We started out with a group of 22 participants and completed with 17 participants. We met for 12 group sessions from February to December 2024. <br />
We came into this journey, feeling for the year ahead together, asking each participant to share their motivation for coming and commitment to the process. We highlighted the ethical boundaries of the container and the deep field of support that made space for it to safely land in each of us. We opened into this space of practice as we began to explore and develop some of the core competencies that would support our self and co-regulation throughout the year. From this foundation we began to include what was nourishing in our lives and how we might resource ourselves as we moved through the deep journey ahead. We also looked at how the territory of “The South” was more nuanced and complex than simply a field of trauma that we were working in and with, and acknowledged that for many and most of us, “the South” had also resourced us in our lives, in many ways. We began to recognize and include these resources that also nourish us as we readied ourselves to meet the layers of trauma that arise from turning toward this field.
We began to open the field of trauma in “The South” by introducing the practice of “Story Circle,” originated in the Southern Freedom Movement. At this point we continued to include our connection to resourcing as we opened into this territory. Participants shared stories of family, faith, connection to land, water and place, to work, to ancestors, and experience with deep, hard sacrifice. We stayed attuned to the images that touched us from these stories, and ventured deeper through the inquiry of “What arises in me when I connect with ‘The South’”? We used “the 5 W’s” (Where, When, What, Who, and How in this context, instead of Why is “The South?”), creating a tapestry of awareness around our relation to the South.
We further asked, “What do I turn away from when I connect with ‘The South’”? In this section of exploration, new and uncomfortable material began to surface. We could start to see and feel our resistances a bit more and also notice more numbing or distancing in relation to what was arising together. Here we really learned to slow down, to allow for this to be here, be felt, be shared amongst us, to welcome this discovery and allow for it to still us. We learned to recognize and feel our “No” and make space for this important part of our process to be welcomed, embraced, and move through us.
The solar eclipse and the spring season opened an ideal time of the year for us to embark on fresh challenges. We used the metaphor of beginning at a trail head, bags packed, and slowly moving down into a foggy valley and shady forest, mapping the territory as we went.
Exploring the historical background and gathering the threads included sharing how we are touched somatically, emotionally, mentally, and relationally. Ways of learning and exploring included observing, experiencing, palpating, and attuning. We acknowledge discrepancies in information and worldviews, and incongruence and fragmentation in narratives.
We explicitly welcomed the noticing of stagnation and numbness. We asked what it is like to bring in voices that were previously not in awareness or denied. We explored cultural conditions during people’s early years, and used the three-sync to help bring explicitly to the surface what has been implicit. These explorations included racial differences, superiority, and othering. All invitations and explorations were done in a gentle fashion.
The season of this period coincided with a time of harvesting, which allowed more information to begin to arise in the group. The Day of the Dead holiday also marked the period of ancestors, which heighted connection to ancestors.
We invited lab participants to bring in and look into each other’s ancestors. By looking at and feeling into each other’s ancestral streams, we asked what was different about our participants' sense when we include ancestors into their awareness. Also to look and sense what conditions their parents, grandparents, and earlier ancestors had to live with given the collective culture they had to survive within.
Conversations in the lab naturally brought in voices of historical inequality and oppressions in the Southern United States, which our ancestors dealt with in ways distinct from our own current day experiences. As we listened and attuned to those in previous generations, we asked questions like, what are the ancestral voices that are on the outside or othered from the dominant culture of the South? What cultural agreements have we created to hide implicitly and involuntarily? We guided participants to inquire what draws their attention and what does not, and we brought both into greater view.
It was a time of transition into winter, moving from mature adult to elder, which helped bring a grounded knowing into our space. Participants shared many profound insights in our lab sessions (and occasionally over email too). They attested to having insights arise through triads, home practices and in small group breakouts. These seemed to come through especially once we invited participants to follow their ancestors deeper into the dark lake. For more than one, new information about their ancestors emerged at this time, allowing them to relate to previously concealed family stories in an embodied way. Many people spoke movingly about seeing their ancestors more clearly now and recognizing the pain and belief systems that fueled their ancestors’ actions. Mainly we integrated these insights by collectively feeling these truths as they were spoken, still moving at a pace that allowed us to stay aware of our bodies and nervous systems as we listened and spoke. We sensed a refreshed quality in our field as truths emerged from the depths. Occasionally participants shared art or written pieces about their transformative realizations as a result of our work together. Our exploration of an ethical upgrade came through our practice. Part of our original intention for the lab, which we stayed true to throughout, was to not push any aspect of what we found in the collective. As the journey ended, we realized we were just beginning to relate to ethical violations—that was ripe for us.
The majority of reflections we received about our lab spoke to the support of the container we created and the level of new insights participants were able to have as a result. People appreciated the slow pacing of our journey and many said at the end of it that they felt “we were just getting started,” as though all of this had been needed just to get to the point of being able to really relate with “The South.” As each person shared in our closing ritual in December, there seemed to be a shared sense of motivation to continue the work of healing the trauma of “The South.”
Many people also spoke to feeling able to take action in new ways in their families and communities as a result of this process. Some had renewed energy for pursuing ancestral questions more fully. For others, the willingness just to stay with the group process and the fear that came up for them during it was particularly significant — we trust that this will lead to changes in their lives, even if they are not visible yet. Our goal as a team was to follow the group’s energy more than guide everyone through all of the stages and communicate respect for each person’s journey exactly as it was.
“The lab has provided a rare opportunity to face whatever has arisen in the company of others with similar intentions… I sense that I -- and we - are only getting started, and that our continued exploration and healing, aligned with the Divine, will have mystical and practical benefits far beyond ourselves, extending into the land from which we come”
“My Southern roots have been a major source of my need and interest in studying and deeply feeling into the work of Thomas Hubl on personal, ancestral and collective trauma and resilience.”
“I joined "The South" Learning Lab because I had been wondering on my own about the very questions we'll be exploring in the Lab. I was thrilled, and amazed, that others also had these same longings.”
“I have deeply appreciated the lab and the tender yet strong container that the co-facilitators host and are moving us through. While going at the slow pace of sensing, resourcing, and presencing is sometimes challenging, I can feel the rich soil we are co-creating and the emerging edges of the trauma symptoms we are beginning to host and digest....... I can often feel the ancestral and collective energies of the South present and flowing.”
“This year took me on an amazing inner journey which became increasingly reflected in my outer reality… I'm now sensing the whole construct around racial whiteness as a corrosive force that actually cuts one off from aspects of their own light/spirit. The way I sense it now, at the level of spirit and soul -- all of us are black and white… I really feel the work I was able to do this year was because the container was so big."
“I went into this experience thinking that I knew where I was from and who I am in relation to that. I have discovered through this process that everything I thought I knew about my childhood was seen through the filter of where I grew up. That filter has a built in bias and blindness that colored everything I thought I knew about myself, my world, and my place in it… This is just the beginning…. The "me" that is emerging from this process is very different from the "me" who went into it a year"
Crisis Trauma Relief
Trauma-Informed Practice
Collective Trauma Integration
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Raising Awareness
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Підпишіться на наші інформаційні листи. Допоможіть нам зцілювати колективну травму та зменшувати негативні ефекти для нашої глобальної культури.
Hannah Sadtler 
English