The Politics of Trauma 2.0

Embodied Transformation in Times of
Polarization, Grief and Overwhelm

“The difficult times are the most important times to keep practicing.”

Facilitators and Teachers

Staci Haines

Erika Lyla

Brandon Sturdivant

Inspiring and clarifying interviews with Movement Leaders and Visionaries to help make meaning of our times

Maria Poblet

Alicia Garza

Marielena Hincapié

Malkia Devich Cyril

Alok Vaid-Menon

Deepak Bhargava

and Evelyn Lynn and May Boeve

The struggles and complexities of this moment are uniquely overwhelming, and uniquely ours.

While we are impacted and often traumatized by the polarizing conditions of ongoing genocide, climate crisis, rising authoritarianism and an epidemic of loneliness, we also have capacity to change, grow, and heal on purpose. A beloved teacher once said, “The difficult times are the most important times to keep practicing.”

Transformative, embodied change enables us to heal, to organize, to innovate, and to creatively meet our times and our moment - individually and collectively. How will you meet our moment?

Join us on a path of embodied transformation as we navigate these complexities shoulder-to-shoulder. Learn how to heal deeply and practice purposeful action under pressure, while holding joy, love, and relationship amidst it all.

October 2024-Jan 2025: let's practice together.

Why gather and practice now? What’s at stake?

We expect ourselves to show up fully engaged, each day, even amidst ongoing genocides and environmental disasters worldwide. Americans (US) are facing an ominous presidential election with chilling implications for our global future. 


The Politics of Trauma 2.0 Online Program offers a pragmatic understanding of the impacts of personal and collective trauma, and ways to cultivate resilience and connection as a direct answer to the contradictions and complexities we are living through. 

Coming together for healing, intentional practice, and discovering right-action provides the foundation for deep internal work within community. This program will enable us to fortify existing relationships and build new ones that can weather the chaos and pressures of healing and social change. These relationships are integral to our resilience in facing a difficult world, together. We can affect social change by engaging with others, envisioning and organizing a life-affirming world through collective action.

Embodied practice transforms reactivity
into skillful action.

Through this program you will:

  • Build a joyful and sustaining vision for your life, your leadership, and your social justice work, while staying responsive to what is.

  • Discover the unavoidable embodied habits and reactions we take on to navigate our lives, trauma and oppression, and the challenges of social justice work—and how to transform what doesn’t work anymore.  

  • Learn to generate more trust and range in relationships, and cultivate our ability to learn and grow together—rather than keeping our healing and movements small and protective. 

  • Use transformative practice to strengthen our organizations and movements, not limit them. Cultivate embodied resilience, individually and collectively.

This course is based on three decades of experimentation at the intersection of somatics and social justice, through generationFIVE and transformative justice, generative somatics, and many partnerships with social and climate justice organizations and alliances.

This program is in the Living Lineage of generative somatics and Strozzi Institute. Learn more. 

The Politics of Trauma 2.0:
Embodied Transformation in Times of Polarization,
Grief and Overwhelm consists of

  • 6 Modules, each with a 90-minute pre-recorded session and a 90-minute Live session

  • 8 Live sessions, including a Live Opening and Closing session

  • Movement leaders in social and climate justice to inspire us through interviews that clarify our times

  • Daily practice videos and an online learning platform with handouts, resources, readings, and more

  • 3 Coaching Circles, led by experienced social justice somatic coaches, to deepen practice and build community

Live Opening Session:
Welcome, Core Practices, and Community

Module One: Joy & Justice in the Apocalypse

We begin by looking at our current conditions, and what it’s like to live individually and collectively amidst so much care and pressure. From there, we introduce a roadmap for embodied transformation and trauma healing that integrates an understanding of how we are shaped by our social and political conditions. We’ll start to get to know our embodied reactions and habits (conditioned tendencies) and how to work with them.

Module Two: Muscle of Imagination: Visions for Change

We’ll learn how declarations ask us to build muscle for visioning and longing. We’ll hold imagination not as a fantasy, but as a faculty of the soul which is necessary to navigate our times. We’ll learn how to be rooted in what is, while creating both personal and collective visions for change. The Body learns on “Yes.”  What do we want to transform toward?

Module Three: Just Resilience & Regenerating Safety

We will ask what resilience is and what it is not, from a social justice perspective, and learn how to cultivate resilience individually and collectively. We’ll explore a somatic understanding of safety and practice regenerating safety from the inside out. We’ll develop embodied skills like consent, boundaries, and requests considering the I, you, and we. We’ll deepen our ability to discern between triggers and challenging experiences, aligning ourselves with our visions for healing and social change.

Module Four: Roots & Depth

We’ll delve into what deeper transformation is (we call it somatic opening) and how to work with our embodied survival strategies. Somatic opening helps us get to the roots of habitual protective reactions that don’t serve our lives or work, and transform them. We’ll learn how expanding our capacity to sense and feel can expand our choices and skillfulness. 

Module Five: Relationship & Complexity

We’ll explore relational skills, and how we can grow together. We’ll learn to expand, to be with complexity, and increase our emotional range. We’ll explore how we can hold contradictions in our relationships and in our movement work together. Somatics understands giving and receiving love as an embodied skill we can learn and cultivate. 

Module Six: Allyship, Practice, and Embodying Our Visions

We’ll delve into allyship—not as a checklist, but as an embodied skill. Allying and being allied with needs to be based on what the soma needs, rebuilding the link between safety and belonging. We’ll consider embodied transformation as a path, and unpack how you can use practices to help you embody your declaration and navigate the space between who you are now, and who you are becoming.

Live Closing Session: Gratitude and Path

Program Dates

The Politics of Trauma 2.0 is a 15-week, online program,
from October 8, 2024 - January 28, 2025.  Find the full schedule here.

This 15-week program is offered at $597.

Payment plans are available: 4 monthly payments of $120

Sliding scale is available.

Somatic Coaching Circles

3 facilitated groups throughout the program: $187

Groups of 20 or more get a 15% discount off the total, and a private group session. Inquire at support@stacihaines.com.

We are committed to making the Politics of Trauma financially accessible, and have three levels of support available: 25%, 50%, and 75% off. Please read this resource from the Catalyst Project as a guide in understanding class and financial access. Once you read this, choose what works for you. 

We cannot offer sliding scale prices for coaching circles, in order to take good care of our coaches. If you have any further questions, please contact us at support@stacihaines.com.

Learn more about this program

Sign up to receiveThe Politics of Trauma 2.0 Open House Recording

Somatic Coaching Circles

The Somatic Coaching Circles will be led by skilled social justice somatic coaches. You’ll be held and supported to deepen the practices you're learning in the program. Small groups will offer an opportunity to build community and relationship.

FAQ

  • Tuesday, September 10th from 9am - 10:15am PT. Sign up here.

  • All program content will be presented through the online learning platform. This includes:  pre-recorded sessions, recording of live sessions, practice videos, written materials and resources, etc. Live sessions and coaching circles will be held over Zoom.

  • Yes, all live sessions will be recorded and available within approximately 48 hours on the online learning platform.

  • During the course, content will be released weekly and then will be available to you on the online learning platform indefinitely. You will be able to go through the recordings of live sessions at your own pace and review the contents at any time.

  • We are exploring being able to have the program accessible in Spanish as well as English.  We’ll let you know as soon as we do!

  • Yes, transcripts of pre-recorded sessions and recordings of live sessions will be provided.

  • We offer a full, no-questions asked refund until October 22nd (two weeks after the program start date). After this time, partial refunds are offered proportionally to how much of the course has elapsed (for example, if you request a refund after the first 4 weeks, which is approximately 25% of the course, you’ll be offered a 75% refund).

  • Yes, we offer a 15% discount for groups of 20 or more. Contact support@stacihaines.com for more information.

  • Yes, financial support is available. We are committed to making the Politics of Trauma financially accessible, and have three levels of support available: 25%, 50%, and 75% off. Please read this resource from the Catalyst Project as a guide in understanding class and financial access. Once you read this, choose what works for you. 

    We cannot offer sliding scale prices for coaching circles. If you have any further questions, please contact us at support@stacihaines.com

© Staci K. Haines. All Rights Reserved.