What Is Collective Healing?
A lens & practice for being in relationship with the world’s pain
Collective healing is a way of being in relationship with the world's pain—using healing-centered tools to process what we feel, unearth wisdom within it, and bring that wisdom into our lives and the world to be of service to this time of change.
As a practice, it's a set of tools that helps people work with the many normal feelings that come with caring about the world—grief, overwhelm, moral tension, hope, and everything in between. As a lens, it's a healing-centered way to make sense of the question: Why is the world in so much pain?
At its core, collective healing recognizes that we are not separate from the world's pain—we're in relationship with it. The emotions we feel about what's happening aren't separate from the world's change; they're part of it. We just need the right support for them to become doorways to wisdom, transformation, and meaningful action.
People use the term "collective healing" in different ways. Here's how I use it in my work:
A Practice
A set of tools that helps us work with the many normal feelings that come with caring about the world.
A Lens
A healing-centered way to make sense of the question, “Why is the world in so much pain?”
We’re not separate from the world’s pain, we’re in relationship with it. Collective healing supports that relationship, in transformational ways.
Collective healing as a practice
Collective Healing Framework
Collective healing as a practice
Our hearts are inextricably tied to the world and our desire to be of service to her. As a practice, collective healing recognizes this, and sees your heart as a key capacity to strengthen. More than self-care, it helps you unearth the wisdom within what you feel (about your morals, shifting values, existential questions in our complex age) and bring that into your life and the world so you can play the role you're meant to.
The Collective Healing Framework
The collective healing practice follows a framework of five key steps that work together in an ongoing spiral:
1. Create space. For what you’re feeling and experiencing, current events and crises, and the questions you’re holding and grappling with.
2. Process. Use healing-centered tools to help your emotions move in constructive ways.
3. Unearth wisdom. Receive guidance and wisdom from what you feel.
4. Bring it into your life. Put those insights into practice by integrating them into your life.
5. Be supported. In an ongoing fashion through community and more.
We Heal For All Circles
The main method of collective healing I practice are through the use of my We Heal For All Circles.
We have a new, more intimate relationship with the world. Collective healing helps us actualize the potential and possibility within this.
Collective healing as a lens
Why is the world in so much pain?
Collective healing is also a lens I use to make sense of the times we live in.
Throughout my journey, I began to see the world’s pain not just as chaos to solve or systems to fix, but also as a symptom of something larger taking place.
Studying spirituality and healing-centered sciences, I began to wonder, “What would it be like to look at the world—and her pain—the same way we look at a person in pain?” What new insights might that offer? How might that help explain certain phenomenon I see, especially at the collective level?
This shift in lens—and the insights it offers—has become just as important as the tools themselves. It has changed how I make sense of the world, and that change has shaped how I respond.
Connect with Liz to learn more about this collective healing practice & framework
For workshops, interviews, & speaking engagements contact connect@wehealforall.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Collective healing is a practice and a lens for being in relationship with the world's pain. As a practice, it uses healing-centered tools to help people process and learn from the complex emotions that come with living in and caring about a world in transition. As a lens, it applies what we know about individual healing — from psychology, spirituality, and somatics — to the collective level, offering new ways to understand why the world is in so much pain and what we can do about it.
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Collective healing is for anyone whose heart is tied to the state of the world—everyday changemakers, helpers, healers, activists, educators, social workers, and anyone who feels the weight of what's happening and wants support in working with it constructively. You don't need a background in traditional social change or healing work to participate.
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Individual healing helps a person work through their own experiences, patterns, and wounds. Collective healing extends that same principle to the group level — recognizing that some of what we feel isn't only personal, it's shared. When communities process collectively-shared emotions and wounds together, it can lead to deeper consciousness shifts, cultural transformation, and more authentic ways of being part of this time of change.
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A We Heal For All Circle is a support group-style community space for collective healing, facilitated by Liz Moyer Benferhat. Circles use meditation, storytelling, and resonance practice to help people process what they're experiencing as it relates to the world, unearth wisdom within what they feel, and be of better service to these transformational times. The two main tools are Guidelines for Listening & Sharing — agreements for how to be in community together — and Resonance Practice, a form of embodied empathy and emotional mindfulness that keeps listening active and rooted in the body.
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he collective healing framework is a five-step practice: (1) Create space for what you're feeling and experiencing, (2) Process using healing-centered tools, (3) Unearth wisdom from what you feel, (4) Bring those insights into your life, and (5) Be supported in an ongoing way through community. These steps work together as a continuous spiral rather than a linear sequence.
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Not exactly. In her book When the World Hurts, Liz Moyer Benferhat describes collective healing as the broader category, with collective trauma work as one important form of it. Collective healing is about working with everything people feel in relationship with the world — grief, overwhelm, hope, moral tension, existential questioning. Some of what comes up in that process will touch on historical or intergenerational trauma, which is where collective trauma work comes in. But collective healing is considered to be an umbrella for it.