Our written and shared intention was to create a safe space for all present to share and witness each other’s beauty and pain and through that support the healing and integration of traumatizing experiences in them and their ancestors, in service of creating a lighter, more inclusive and integrated life in the region and beyond.We explored the effects of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s on the individual and ancestral level. When exploring ancestral trauma, we touched upon the historic roots of the 1990s war, in particular the events in the Balkans during the second World War. In the exploration, participants representing the different former combatting ethno-religious groups shared, processed their painful experiences and discovered the commonalities in these. When meeting in-person, we deepened our exploration through the connection with the physical land in Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina. We experienced a retreat with intensity and depth in which we also shared dance, singing and meals.
We invited women and men who were touched by the situation in the Balkans and who felt ready to explore and be part of a collective healing movement in the region. We had participants from Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Greece, and The Netherlands. Partly the participants were living in the Balkans, and partly they were of Balkan descent, living in other parts of the World.
We started with strengthening the group coherence and creating a safe container. In the third session, we asked the participants to commit to the remainder of the journey. 4 stepped out at that point. The rest stayed until the end. We entered the landscape of trauma, included individual experiences by listening, witnessing and feeling emerging emotions. After building up trust, we gave space to painful experiences and invited healing. Sharing about customs, narratives, listening to music helped us to value the differences between the ethno-religious groups. In addition to the whole group meetings, triads met in-between the online sessions for further processing. Halfway the process, we met for an in-person retreat. At the end of the lab, several impulses for action emerged. One of these, is a participant-led continuation of online monthly meetings in 2025. Another is a festival in Croatia, to be held in 2026 on the theme of Acts of Humanity during the 1990s war.We started out with a group of 39 participants and completed with 31 participants. We met for 12 online group sessions from January – November 2024 and a 3-day in-person retreat in Visoko, Bosnia & Herzegovina.
We started with getting to know each other, our why, and doing a 3-sync meditation. We kept repeating the 3-sync meditation every session. In the second session, we created space for finding resource in the ancestry. This brought up tensions for some: instead of resource, ancestral trauma came up. In the session after that we gave space for regulation of what came up in the session before.
We started with exploring the heart connection with the Balkans: the “Beauty of the Balkans, as seen through my heart”. After a short trauma teaching, we entered the trauma field, asking “What pains me the most”. We then used the intimacy of the connection with the “selo”, the Balkan village the participants or their ancestors grew up in, to approach trauma.
When we wanted to give space to the narratives of each of the ethno-religious groups, we ran into resistance: a wish to return to the Yugoslavian ideal of “brotherhood and unity” and a feeling of having lost the identification with a specific group that was present for many came up. This led to an exploration in small groups by each individual participant of their relationship with the topic of belonging and “It”. “It” was the word that emerged from the group field to refer to the unspeakable, the unnamable of the collective traumas present. This created healing movements. In this context, the metaphor “We are sitting on a volcano” also came up. This image stayed with us throughout the next sessions as a feeling for the amount of unprocessed material smouldering underground and creating pressure.
This exercise opened up the field of ancestral voices. When one of the participants spoke about the trauma of her grandmother, we felt how for all of us the ancestors entered the room. These were sacred moments of witnessing how the field opened up to their presence. In our first session after the Visoko retreat, we shared about what had touched and puzzled us most during these days. This led to several people sharing about the impact of the war in the 90s. In this, the connection with the trauma of WW2 became also visible. One of the participants noticed that we had not heard from the participants who had lived in the region during the war: so far, only the people from the Balkan who lived outside of the region had spoken. Then one of the participants who lived in the region during the 90s war spoke about how difficult it was still today to open up and share about her experiences. We held the fragility of this together.
In our last session, we each had a visit from our wise guide, and asked them what is possible now that was not possible before. From this, several impulses for action emerged: the idea for a 2-year program of personal transformation and trauma healing in and for the Balkans, an Acts of Humanity festival in Pakrac, Croatia, a grieving ritual session using Francis Weller’s approach, and a continuation of monthly online sessions.
Warm connections between people from the different ethno-religious groups grew during the Lab. Several spontaneously spent part of their holiday together, following the Visoko retreat. The physical coming together was instrumental for this. Singing, music and dancing together were important ingredients. In the music, the interconnectedness, the shared roots could be felt and experienced. The coherence that grew during the sessions led to a strong motivation with many of the participants to continue the work and share it with more people in the Balkans.
"It has been deeply transformative. The lab is a powerful container for healing. I believe that in this lab as in life in general, one encounters opportunities for healing at the level at which they are willing and able to do the inner work. The lab and circumstances around it has been a potent source of such healing opportunities for me."
"Love. Pure love that is expressed by humans that know nothing about one another except sharing the same collective trauma that we can all share, feel and hold space for one another in with love."
"I am learning so much about possibilities and limitations around what can and cannot be processed in the collective field in every given moment. The experience so far has been surprising and enriching. It is becoming clear to me why is the work on the collective trauma an intergenerational endeavor, and I am surprised to discover new layers and connections between individual, interregional, collective and ecological contexts."
"I have realized that the Balkans are more ready for collective trauma integration work than perhaps ever before."
"The in-person retreat in Visoko. It was clear that the layers were so softly and safely peeled during the first 6-7 online sessions that we could come together so coherently as a group and share openly and with so much curiosity and non-judgement."
"I have gained a more nuanced understanding of my multifaceted relationship with the collective trauma field, not only in the Balkans but around the world. This year-long journey has been both challenging and rewarding, and it still feels as though we are only scratching the surface, gaining a sense of what must be a lifelong personal and intergenerational journey....... Deep gratitude for this opportunity to journey with others."
Crisis Trauma Relief
Trauma-Informed Practice
Collective Trauma Integration
Community of Practice
Raising Awareness
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Підпишіться на наші інформаційні листи. Допоможіть нам зцілювати колективну травму та зменшувати негативні ефекти для нашої глобальної культури.
Susanne Stillhammer 
English