We came together in solidarity to hold a healing space for one another. This was not an intellectual exploration, but rather an experiential process. We strongly recommended that those interested in the lab have a commitment to some form of daily embodiment practice, and that they be familiar with expressing their emotions in a non-violent way toward others.
The lab brought together 8 Jewish participants and 8 non-Jewish German participants.
We aimed to build a safe container where we could gradually sink beneath cognitive polarization and reach a deeper level of connection—one where we could feel intimate together and process emotions ready to be released. In doing so, we grounded the energy of our personal, ancestral, and collective past through our bodies. We explored this in pairs and small groups, as well as through group processes and meditations.
We built coherence in our group but offering meditation, body grounding, and exploring reservations that participants might be noticing coming up for them. We also set up triads for smaller group connection to build safety amd further resources.
We brought the collective trauma theme into our lab by creating space to feel into the subject in a slow paced series of questions about why we are here, why we want to explore this together.
We posed questions for exploration around our individual childhood condition that might be informed by our deeper cultural experiences, how intergenerational patterns of attachment are shaped by larger collective and societal structures, structures that themselves are symptoms of trauma.
Through meditative inquiry and guided visualization we invited participants to connect to their ancestral roots as a resource, inherited resilience and fields of support. When we asked questions about how trauma has informed the familial field we paused to invite voices to share about the experience. We also made space for what these shares would bring up in other participants of the same cultural backgrounds.
Through group sharings we contacted emotional streams that moved through the field in response to each other’s shares. New creative impulses looked like surprising discoveries of empathy for the previously assumed polarized ‘other’. Near the later stages of the lab we explored this topic in further depth of what an ethical upgrade might look like for us now, after having been so deeply moved through the intimacy, understanding, and vulnerability of leaning towards instead of resisting the humanity in the other. The triads between each lab were crucial in integrating and restoring relationality where there was previously avoidance from feelings of shame, anger, and fear.
Towards the end of our lab we asked our participants what changes if any had taken place for them, what were their responses now towards the shared collective realities of our Holocaust. Many participants shared having healed something inside that would otherwise have no context to be brought up or container to integrate in a shared group field of kind and warm togetherness. Many were surprised that what seemed like a scary endeavor felt in the end like a vehicle for loving each other deeper.
It was a very touching and rich process, I experienced a lot of fear in the group as well as a very deep connection and warmth of heart. It was a very safe space, we were able to be very honest with each other and I have the feeling that we had an understanding for each other and for each other's suffering through our shared history. It is as if the echo is very similar in the following generations, both among the Jewish people and the Germans.
I have much greater respect for the complexity of the problems we are dealing with. I have engaged in listening to eye witness accounts of the relevant topic and had to confront my own avoidance of certain emotions, particularly hatred and deep pain. This has widened my capacity to recognise and respect these emotions showing up in others, even in their hidden expression, and meet them with compassion rather than a reactive response of closing off and distancing.
I learned that talking and feeling our traumas is a very new activity and it has the power to connect people from diverse perspectives and experiences.
I have learned how important it is for my feeling of safety to hear people’s truth, even if that truth is awful. Hearing the truth of how Nazi beliefs were held and spread gave me more understanding. I had so much empathy for the German members of our Lab. I also felt very frustrated when Jewish members of our lab could not look at their own internal truths and only make observations about others or their feeling about others.
I've gained a much greater sense of the trauma levels and pain in Central and Eastern Europe. I have been very touched by the vulnerability and depth of sharing in the large group, especially by most of the German participants.
I'm learning for the first time what it means to step outside of myself in order to "leave space," and allowing myself to listen attentively, without judgement, to another's retelling of their experience. In doing so, I am better able to empathize, to feel compassion for their particular struggle with their internal conflict and in turn investigate how that relates to my own personal experience. Doing so enables validation of their experience as well as my own.
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.
Joel Decker 
English