A Taste of Global Social Witnessing, with Bayo Akomolafe
Release Date: 08/26/2025
Reclaiming Agency After the Invasion of Ukraine, with Dasha Gaian
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Matthew Green Produced by J’aime Rothbard. When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, had just embarked on Thomas Hübl’s two-year Timeless Wisdom Training in the principles of collective trauma healing. Born and raised in Ukraine, and living in the United States, Dasha recognised that the surge of anxiety she was experiencing as she witnessed the devastation being visited on her homeland was shared by millions of fellow Ukrainians and people watching in horror from around the world. In this episode, Dasha shows how collective healing work can not only help...
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Kitbag Africa: The Decolonization of Trauma Healing in Action, with Wycliffe Ngoko Oloo
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Sonita Mbah. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. Wycliffe Ngoko Oloo is on a mission to support vulnerable young people to share what’s on their hearts. As team leader at the Kenyan organisation Kitbag Africa International, Wycliffe convenes sharing circles on soccer fields, in classrooms or under trees – anywhere he can find where people can gather. “I have seen young people drop their masks and speak their truth,” Wycliffe says. “I have seen widows laugh after years of silence, and this is always beautiful.” In this inspiring conversation with Sonita Mbah,...
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Grief as a Gateway to Resilience, with Luka Faradsch
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. How can learning to grieve cultivate resilience? And why are people reviving the ancient social technologies of collective grieving rituals today? Luka Faradsch shares how teachers such as Francis Weller, Sobonfu Somé, Malidoma Somé, and Joanna Macy helped her understand how working with sorrow and loss — far from being only heavy and painful — could become a “sacred practice of aliveness.” By honouring the universal truth that the old must die for the new to be born, Luka describes how grief work can awaken a profound form of...
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Metabolizing Climate Grief, with Brother Spirit and Brother Embrace
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Kosha Joubert. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. In the run-up to the , we ask: How can we live with the knowledge that humanity is rapidly destroying the foundations of the ecosystems that support all life on Earth? And how can we learn from suffering without falling into overwhelm or despair? In this inspiring dialogue, Kosha Joubert speaks with Brother Phap Dung (pronounced “Yung”), also known as Brother Embrace, and Brother Phap Linh, also known as Brother Spirit, who are both leading teachers in the monastic movement of Thich Nhat Hanh. Brother Embrace and Brother Spirit...
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Embodying Non-Violence as Combatants for Peace, with Rana Salman & Eszter Korányi
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Kosha Joubert. Produced by J’aime Rothbard was founded in 2006 by Israelis and Palestinians committed to following a path of non-violence to push their leaders to stop perpetuating war, occupation, and the cycle of violence. In this episode, Kosha Joubert speaks with Rana Salman and Eszter Korányi, the organisation’s respective Palestinian and Israeli co-directors, about what it’s been like to continue jointly advocating for peace since the horrendous Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023 and subsequent mass killing of civilians caused by Israel’s subsequent bombardment...
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"How Can We Listen in a World That is on Fire?" with Joshua Konkankoh
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Sonita Mbah. Produced by J’aime Rothbard What does the wisdom encoded in West African Indigenous traditions have to teach about modern-day systems change? And how can the — a spiritual force honored by the people of Cameroon’s Bafut region — awaken a felt-sense of connection with the more-than-human world? Cameroonian elder will join Colombia’s Ati Quigua and Mamerto Tindongan of the Philippines to offer a Pocket Project on October 27, 29 and 30. The sessions will equip participants with practical knowledge on how to cultivate regenerative...
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Recursion or Ruin: AI and the Future of Collective Healing, with Nico Forest Heinimann
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard. Can artificial intelligence (AI) support humanity to foster greater coherence and alignment with truth? Or does the headlong rush to exploit this new technology risk amplifying existing trauma loops – pointing to a more dystopian future? In this dialogue ahead of the , Matthew Green and Nico Forest Heinimann explore how AI could potentially aid both individual and collective healing by serving as a mirror revealing patterns previously hidden deep in the human psyche. At the same time, Forest emphasises the urgency of...
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Restoring Relationships with the More-than-human World, with J Dallas Gudgell
What is Collective Healing?
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Softening Into the watery layers of Self
What is Collective Healing?
A self attumement to meet the watery edges of the self, facilitated by Kosha Joubert. Kosha is the CEO of the Pocket Project. What is Collective Healing? Are you curious to find out for yourself? Every month, the Pocket Project hosts a range of different free events open to everyone. To find out what's on this month, visit https://pocketproject.org/pocket-events/
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Embodying the Feminine, with Stephanie Pizarro
What is Collective Healing?
Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J’aime Rothbard. What changes when the body is no longer a place of suffering but of joy and presence? How does collective healing shape individual transformation? And how would the world change if women reclaimed their bodies as home? Animated by these questions, Stephanie Pizarro joined María Troya and Karla Mejía to co-lead a exploring the theme “Embodying the Feminine" in 2024. Joined by more than 40 women from 15 countries across Latin America, the year-long exploration helped participants to renew their relationship with their...
info_outlineHosted by Kosha Joubert. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.
Description: For Dr Bayo Akomolafe, Global Social Witnessing is a way to “be with each other in the fires, and not burn.”
As the Pocket Project prepares to launch Phase Two of the Global Social Witnessing Facilitator Training on September 3, 2025, this episode features a dialogue between Bayo and Kosha Joubert, the Pocket Project CEO, from Phase I of the course.
“For those of you who would like to show up for this sharing together, this is not a place of checking each others’ stories – it’s a way of holding with compassion the stories that are emerging,” Bayo tells participants.
“If we don’t start to cultivate the capacities to hold nuance in this way, then we are unfortunately part of the projects of war,” Bayo says. “This is an invitation to a stranger kind of paradigm. It’s about being there with each other in the fires, and not burning.”
This episode offers key insights into the principles of Global Social Witnessing — a potent tool for establishing a sense of presence, sensitivity and agency in relation to the pain and suffering transmitted through the news.
It also opens a window into what to expect from Phase Two of the facilitator training and self-study courses offered by the Pocket Project in this essential practice.
To find out more about regular Global Social Witnessing calls hosted by the Pocket Project, please click here.
Further Resources:
Phase Two of the Global Social Witnessing Facilitator Training
Self-Study Course: Holding Space for a World in Transition
Global Social Witnessing Calls
About Bayo Akomolafe: Rooted with the West African Yoruba people, Bayo Akomolafe is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist and author of two books: These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak.
Bayo is also the Founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide initiative that seeks to convene communities in new ways in response to the critical, civilizational challenges we face as a species.
He is host of the postactivist course/festival/event, ‘We Will Dance with Mountains’ And currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California, and sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality (US) and Ancient Futures (Australia).
0:00 Introduction to What is Global Social Witnessing
1:39 What is Global Social Witnessing?
5:34 Significance of Greeting Each Other
6:55 Curating an Intentional and Emergent Space
7:50 Story of Martin Luther King and Harry Belafonte
9:13 "Integrating into a burning house"
14:30 The Continuity of Wartime
18:05 Going Deeper, Beyond Consensus and Becoming Different
20:05 Being Habituated into Forgetfulness
22:40 Staying Open to the Cracks that Are Emerging
24:50 Invitation for Participants to Sit Together
25:50 Guidelines for Global Social Witnessing
29:30 As a "Ritual of Presence"
30:50 Participant refelctions
32:50 The Future Potentials of Global Social Witnessing
35:10 Phases of Global Social Witnessing Trainings & Invitations