Collective Healing Circles
Healing as the ground from which a more just politics can emerge.
- Territory
- Mexico · Latin America · Intercultural and community-rooted practice
- Field
- Collective Healing · Intergenerational Dialogue · Indigenous & Ancestral Wisdom · Social Justice · Peacebuilding
Photo pending. The client has not yet assigned the project's own image. Until it arrives, this space stays empty on purpose: it is not filled with stock imagery.
Description & Objectives
Collective Healing Circles (CHCs) is a community-rooted practice for addressing the wounds, divisions and enduring legacies of historical injustice while strengthening dignity, relationships, belonging and shared responsibility.
Supported by the School of Conscious Politics in Mexico, the project connects the international Collective Healing movement with local territories, communities, ancestral knowledge holders, facilitators and civic actors. The approach recognizes that historical violence does not simply disappear when an event or political regime ends: its legacies can continue through memory, narratives, relationships, institutions, cultural disconnection, exclusion and patterns of collective mistrust.
Collective Healing Circles create intentional spaces where communities can remember, listen, witness, reconnect, imagine and act together. The methodology combines psychosocial, somatic, communal, spiritual, intercultural and participatory approaches, adapted to the history, culture, needs and wisdom of each territory.
The project seeks to acknowledge historical wounds and their continuing legacies; create spaces for intergenerational remembering and dialogue; restore human dignity and collective agency; reconnect communities with ancestral knowledge and cultural memory; strengthen relationships across generations, identities, institutions and worldviews; transform narratives of separation, helplessness and polarization; cultivate collective responsibility for the wellbeing of the community; envision more just and peaceful futures; and translate healing and awareness into concrete community action.
At its deepest level, the project explores a political question: What becomes possible when healing is understood not only as a personal process, but as a pathway toward dignity, social justice, reconciliation and democratic transformation?
Diagnosis / Context
Communities affected by colonialism, displacement, racism, violence, exclusion and other forms of historical injustice may carry wounds that remain present across generations. These wounds can manifest through silence, fragmented identities, loss of cultural memory, mistrust, social division, exclusion, or the weakening of relationships between people and their land, traditions, institutions and one another.
The Collective Healing approach begins by recognizing that these realities cannot be addressed solely through technical or institutional interventions. Communities also need spaces where they can remember together, listen to one another, recover suppressed knowledge, acknowledge pain, restore dignity and imagine different futures. This is particularly relevant in territories where Indigenous and ancestral histories have been disrupted by colonial processes.
Tepeapulco: a pilot experience in Mexico. The School of Conscious Politics contributed to the implementation of a Collective Healing Circle in Tepeapulco, Hidalgo, Mexico, in September 2025. Tepeapulco is a territory with deep Otomí and Nahua histories and a complex colonial legacy: the area became a site of Franciscan evangelization during the sixteenth century and was associated with the work of Bernardino de Sahagún, who documented extensive Indigenous knowledge while living there.
The local CHC emerged from this layered historical context and sought to create a space for reconnection with memory, territory, ancestral wisdom, community dignity and collective agency. The process brought together local cultural actors, elders, community members, public officials, facilitators, Indigenous and spiritual leaders and international allies. Water collected from local springs and wells became part of the ceremonial altar. Fire was used as a symbolic and spiritual space for mourning, release, forgiveness and renewal. Food became a vehicle of ancestral memory and dignity. A collective visit to Xihuingo created a space for reconnection with ancestral roots. The process culminated in a vision for the future of Tepeapulco and the planting of a Peace Tree as a tangible symbol of continuity, responsibility and collective commitment.
The experience demonstrated how a globally developed methodology can be localized through the wisdom, rhythms, symbols, relationships and needs of a particular territory.
Theory of Change
Collective Healing Circles work from the premise that communities cannot sustainably transform what they are unable to acknowledge, remember or collectively reimagine.
Remember → Witness → Restore Dignity → Reconnect → Re-story → Envision → Commit → Act
1. Remember — Communities create space to explore their shared histories and recognize the enduring legacies of dehumanization, colonialism, displacement, violence and exclusion. 2. Witness — Through intergenerational dialogue and inquiry, experiences that may have remained silent, fragmented or individually carried become part of a shared field of listening and recognition. 3. Restore dignity — The process moves beyond defining communities through their wounds: participants identify sources of resilience, wisdom, cultural strength, spirituality, belonging and agency. 4. Reconnect — Relationships are strengthened across generations, social groups, institutions, cultures and worldviews. Participants rediscover their interdependence with one another and with the land and more-than-human world. 5. Re-story — Communities examine narratives that reproduce separation, shame, polarization or helplessness and begin to develop narratives rooted in dignity, connection, resilience and possibility. 6. Envision — Participants imagine what a more just, peaceful and flourishing future could look and feel like in their own territory. 7. Commit — The circle expands toward concrete commitments involving community members, institutions, civic actors, cultural leaders and other stakeholders. 8. Act — Healing becomes connected to community action, social justice, cultural revitalization, peacebuilding and structural transformation.
In this way, the project connects inner and collective healing with the transformation of relationships, narratives, communities and systems.
Resources Needed
Human. Trained Collective Healing Circle facilitators · local community hosts and coordinators · Indigenous Elders, traditional knowledge holders and spiritual leaders · intergenerational facilitators · researchers and practitioners in peacebuilding, interculturality, trauma-awareness, community development and social justice · local institutional and civic allies · international mentors and peer-learning partners.
Methodological. Collective Healing Circle facilitation methodologies · Intergenerational Dialogue and Inquiry practices · contextual community mapping and listening processes · participatory research tools · documentation and evaluation frameworks · culturally appropriate ceremonial and reflective practices.
Relational. Trusted local relationships · accessible and culturally meaningful gathering spaces · relationships with schools, community organizations, cultural institutions, local authorities and spiritual communities · opportunities for youth and elders to participate together · local knowledge, stories, foodways, artistic traditions and ecological resources.
Financial. Funding for community preparation, facilitation, travel, local coordination, materials, documentation, interpretation, participant access, evaluation, follow-up activities, and the continuity of community initiatives emerging from the Circle.
Milestones & Evidence
Key milestones include community listening, mapping and preparation before each Circle; development of locally adapted CHC designs; facilitation of intergenerational dialogue and inquiry; participation of elders, youth, community leaders, civic actors and cultural practitioners; recovery and documentation of local stories, traditions and ancestral knowledge; creation of community visions, declarations, commitments or action plans; stakeholder dialogues connecting healing with social justice and community development; symbolic and practical actions emerging from the process; continued relationships and follow-up after the Circle; documentation of participant experiences and changes in awareness; and development of local facilitation capacity.
Tepeapulco evidence. The 2025 Tepeapulco pilot generated several tangible forms of evidence and continuity:
- Participation of approximately 10–20 community members across the three-day process
- Involvement of elders, cultural actors, public officials, community historians, traditional practitioners and local residents
- A five-day territorial scouting and preparation process
- Collection and ceremonial integration of local waters
- Intergenerational and intercultural dialogue, and ancestral and spiritual ceremonies
- Community storytelling and documentation
- Shared meals as expressions of cultural dignity
- Collective visioning for the future of Tepeapulco
- Creation of community commitments and a social healing manifesto
- Planting of a Peace Tree in a community-donated space, and its continued stewardship
- Subsequent stakeholder engagement and temazcal-based follow-up
The experience also generated testimonies emphasizing belonging, cultural memory, collective responsibility, mutual care and the desire to continue working together. The longer-term ambition is to develop a growing body of practice-based evidence showing how Collective Healing Circles can contribute to healing, social cohesion, intercultural dialogue, community agency and structural transformation.
Team Profile
6.1 Team Profile — Lead Team
Carmen Cariaga — Co-lead. Carmen Cariaga is President of CONADEPOA, the National Council for the Development of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples of Mexico, and a spiritual grandmother and founder of a school for spiritual development in Monterrey. Her work combines spiritual development, Indigenous and intercultural engagement, community accompaniment and intergenerational leadership. She has travelled extensively across Mexico supporting young people and communities in processes of spiritual growth and cultural connection. Within the Tepeapulco Collective Healing Circle, she played a central role in connecting the process with local authorities and community actors and in stewarding its ceremonial and spiritual dimensions — helping ensure that the CHC was not simply introduced into the territory as an external methodology, but grounded in local relationships, ceremony, ancestral memory and spiritual practice.
Gisela Pérez — Co-lead. Gisela Pérez is a journalist, peace activist and community facilitator from Veracruz, Mexico, now based in Cholula, Puebla. Her work brings together narrative transformation, community organizing, gender equity, peacebuilding and intercultural dialogue. A graduate of the Caux Leadership & Peace Program and Caux Scholars Program, Gisela integrates principles of Buen Vivir into her personal and professional practice. Within the Tepeapulco CHC she contributed to ancestral knowledge-sharing, energy-cleansing practices, team coherence, translation and intergenerational dialogue, helping bridge different generations, cultures and traditions.
Juana González Aréchiga — Co-lead. Juana González Aréchiga is a facilitator and intercultural researcher from Guanajuato, Mexico, with experience in local governance, participatory research, Indigenous knowledge systems and community development. She previously worked within the Municipal Presidency of Coatzacoalcos, where she coordinated a South-South Cooperation project with the Government of Bolivia focused on mapping ancestral Buen Vivir codes. Her work combines interculturality, participatory research, ecological innovation and ancestral knowledge. She is also an entrepreneur in the bamboo sector and has extensive experience working alongside traditional Elders and community actors. During the Tepeapulco CHC she contributed to the design, coordination, facilitation and grounding of the process in local realities.
6.2 Extended Team & Facilitation Ecosystem
Wider facilitation & partnership ecosystem. Collective Healing Circles are inherently collaborative: their strength comes from bringing different forms of knowledge and leadership into relationship. The Tepeapulco pilot brought together local, national and international contributors, including Indigenous and spiritual leaders, community practitioners, public actors, peacebuilders, researchers and representatives of international partner organizations. The wider facilitation ecosystem included Allan-Charles Chipman and Rodrigo Martínez Romero as lead facilitators of the Tepeapulco pilot, together with Carmen Cariaga, Víctor Sandoval, Gisela Pérez and Juana González Aréchiga. The process also connected Mexico with wider networks of collective healing, peacebuilding, Indigenous wisdom, African solidarity and spiritual activism.
This ecosystem reflects a core principle of the project: collective healing is itself collective work. No single tradition, institution, discipline or individual holds the whole answer.
Contribution to Conscious Politics
Collective Healing Circles contribute to the School of Conscious Politics by placing healing at the intersection of spirituality, memory, citizenship, community development and political transformation.
The project challenges the assumption that politics begins with policy. It asks what must happen before communities are able to create just policies together: Can people remember together? Can historical wounds be acknowledged without reproducing division? Can dignity be restored? Can ancestral knowledge return to public life? Can generations listen to one another? Can communities move from narratives of fragmentation toward narratives of belonging? Can healing become a source of civic agency?
For the School, this is the essence of Sacred Activism: creating spaces in which the sacred is not separated from the social and political realities of a territory. The Tepeapulco experience illustrates this convergence: water became memory, fire became transformation, food became dignity, ancestral knowledge became political voice, the Circle became a space of belonging, and the Peace Tree became a public commitment.
Collective Healing Circles therefore seek to move from wounded memory to conscious memory, from separation to relationship, from inherited pain to collective agency, from healing to justice, and from vision to shared action. In this sense, healing is not the retreat from politics. Healing becomes a way of preparing the human and relational ground from which a more just politics can emerge.
← All projects · Previous: Inner Wisdom Circles · Next: Conscious Arts Collective