The veiled legacy: Recognising and processing the impact of collective trauma.

Our nervous system’s physiology develops in the interaction with the nervous system of others. It is not really possible to completely separate personal experience from the familial, social and cultural context in which we are conceived, born, raised and in which we live. Likewise, we cannot completely separate personal, individual trauma, from collective traumatic experiences.

Working with trauma, we are confronted with the client's life history in their interaction with other individuals within a social, historical and cultural context. Trauma resolution must therefore be considered not only as an individual process, but also as a phenomenon of socio-cultural interconnectedness, involving several individuals or a community. The definition of collective trauma in fact includes: “a traumatic effect shared by a group of people, a social group or the entire population”.

Traumatic events experienced by an entire society provoke collective feelings and defense mechanisms, such as denial or repression, that often change cultural values and attitudes globally. Such phenomena are often unacknowledged and they influence our life choices unconsciously. Somatic Experiencing offers powerful tools for processing trauma at the various levels in which it occurs.
The first level of group trauma we encounter when we shift from individual to collective, is generational trauma. The imprints of generational trauma are passed from one generation to the next as an invisible, unspoken, unresolved legacy that encodes and reinforces implicit messages in the fabric of the family identity.
The Somatic Experiencing practitioner, therefore, in addition to supporting the client in resolving their individual trauma, must also be present to the collective trauma phenomena that often keep the person imprisoned in repetitive and unconscious trauma patterns.

In this course, you are invited to co-create a field of awareness to explore the various facets of collective trauma.
We will experience the importance of a conscious container, and the transformative potential of presence in the context of the sessions.

Collective trauma belongs to the whole, and can and should be processed in a field of collective coherence, where our nervous systems communicate harmoniously through somatic resonance.

Some topics that will be explored:

• Definition of collective trauma
• Transgenerational trauma and historical trauma
• Discovering the gift of traumatic inheritance
• Witnessing the implicit memory of trauma
• Presence as a tool for resolution
• Importance of group coherence

Practical Details

Teacher: Kavi Gemin
Language: English
Location: Vergaderzaal Kop van Kessel-Lo, Leuvensestraat 18, 3010 Leuven
Dates: Friday April 5 – Sunday April 7, 2024
Times: daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m
Price: 430 €

Registration