A 3-month online learning and practice programme for people interested in the connections between embodiment and collective change
March - June 2026
Register by 1 March
Embodied Resilience for Apocalyptic Times
What is it?
In this video, Julia talks about how ‘self-improvement’ stories of resilience, that don’t recognise the systemic nature of our struggles, can make people feel like they are ‘failing’ at being more resilient. She explains that embodied resilience, by contrast, doesn’t separate the individual person from the wider context, but helps us become more capable of collectively changing the conditions that diminish our resilience in the first place.
You can read a transcript of the video here.
Embodied Resilience for Apocalyptic Times is a brand new, 3-month online learning and practice programme.
It is designed for anyone struggling under the weight of the apocalyptic destruction, violence and dehumanisation happening around us and interested in a collective approach to change.
This course teaches you to expand your inner capacity so you can show up to collective change work with more stability, freedom and coherence - without burning out.
It consists of both theory and daily practices that you will be supported to embed into your life in a way that is easeful and sustainable, even when you have little time or motivation.
Through regular practice, you will learn to:
❋ Identify your stress level in real time
❋ Discern whether that level of stress is helpful to the situation you’re in
❋ De-escalate your stress response using a range of practices if it’s safe to do so
❋ Access more internal safety and stability to change or leave the conditions that are causing your stress in the first place
This builds the foundation not only for individual healing but for collective transformation.
Why embodiment?
Our bodies are microcosms of the whole world. They hold vital information about us and our environments that we can learn to tap into.
In the dominant culture, cognitive skills are seen as superior to embodied knowledge.
Embodiment is an antidote to dehumanisation, division and disconnection.
Our bodies are not only a powerful tool but a doorway to ourselves, each other, our imagination and our shared humanity.
Why resilience?
Resilience is often understood in individualistic terms as the capacity to endure and bounce back from ever more oppressive conditions.
This ignores the systems, relationships and wider conditions that shape our lives, stress and trauma.
Embodied resilience reframes resilience as inherently collective and political.
It sees resilience not as bouncing back from oppression, but bouncing forward together to create a world that includes all of us.
Why does it matter?
So many of us are anxious, tense, alienated, exhausted or dissociated. We are dealing with perpetual scarcity of time and resources, we’re trying to make sense of a deeply divisive political landscape, watching the collapse of norms and institutions and witnessing on-going injustice at an apocalyptic scale.
Living through such turmoil, our survival responses are activated a lot of the time. This can lead to chronic stress, interpersonal conflict, cynicism, burnout and illness, among other things. It leaves our collective capacity to change the systems that cause our stress in the first place seriously diminished.
Our struggles are not a sign of personal failure, but a symptom of our times.
Embodied resilience is an approach that recognises the connection between people’s individual experiences and the political reality we are in and intentionally brings them into conversation.
In doing so, it resists individualising things that are systemic - such as the competitive culture that pits people against each other rather than enabling solidarity and collaboration. Nor does it pathologise normal responses to oppressive conditions - such as overwork, exhaustion or dissociation.
Instead, embodied resilience helps people expand their inner resources and gain more access to presence, stability and freedom as well as increased capacity for doing the collective work of changing the conditions around them.
What are the benefits?
Embodied resilience unlocks benefits both at individual and collective levels. At its most elemental, it teaches people to notice their stress activation in real time. From there, you will learn tools to change stress responses that are too strong, last too long or no longer serve you.
This helps prevent chronic stress and brings more stability, balance and coherence into the nervous system. Expanding your inner capacity enables things like:
❋ Being able to notice your own boundaries and limitations before they have been crossed, which prevents burnout and improves relationships
❋ Having access to more choice under pressure, which enables you to move away from survival responses that no longer serve you
❋ Learning to stay present in moments of tension or conflict, which strengthens relationships and prevents rupture
❋ Having more capacity to offer and receive appreciation and care, which deepens relationships and improves wellbeing
❋ Learning to recognise other people’s stress responses and how to offer them support in moments of activation, which enables mutual care
❋ Having access to more creativity, ideas and imagination, which unlocks new strategic possibilities for your work and life
Over time and through regular practice, people not only build more stability inside of their own nervous systems. They also expand their collective capacity to hold difference, change, complexity, uncertainty and conflict as well as connection, imagination, joy and creativity.
What’s the methodology?
Embodied resilience is a multi-modal approach based on the teachings of The Resilience Toolkit. It combines the following cognitive and embodied elements:
❋ Body-based practices
Simple, portable and adaptable exercises that can be practised anywhere in under 2 minutes to help the body de-escalate its stress response when it’s safe to do so.
❋ Systemic frameworks
Designed to help you put your own experience into a wider political context and illuminate the connection between personal embodied practice and collective action.
❋ Scientific models
Taken from various disciplines including neuroscience, ethology and psychology to illustrate how stress manifests in the body, mind and emotions and how our survival responses are shaped by the conditions around us.
❋ Peer learning
Embodied resilience is an inherently collective approach. Learning, reflecting, co-regulating and building community with people who share similar questions is one of its most potent elements, particularly in a hyper-individualist culture.
❋ Trauma-informed facilitation
Trauma often occurs when people have no choice and no witness. Agency, care and collaboration are central to the way I have been trained and facilitate. Everything we do is invitational, so you can choose what works for you and let go what doesn’t.
What’s the content and schedule?
Month 1: Foundations
The first month is about laying the foundations in three ways: 1) creating connection across the group, 2) learning the baseline practices of embodied resilience, and 3) critically examining individualist notions of resilience.
The weekly practice sessions support participants to apply what they have learnt straight away and get to know the manifestations of stress and resilience in their own bodies over time.
Wednesday, 11 March 2026 10am-1pm GMT
Introductory workshop
Wednesday, 18 March 2026 12-1pm GMT
Wednesday, 25 March 2026 12-1pm GMT
Wednesday, 1 April 2026 12-1pm GMT
Weekly practice sessions
Learning outcomes:
Building trust and safety across the group (a pre-requisite for practice)
Expanding common understandings of resilience to include a collective dimension
Learning to read signs of stress and relaxation in the body, mind, emotions and social interactions
Distinguishing between fight, flight and freeze
Familiarity with baseline practices to settle stress responses
Month 2: Embedding
After participants have had four weeks of practice, we go deeper and examine how stress, trauma and resilience are shaped by the societal conditions around us. We will look at survival patterns, chronic stress and protective factors that build our resilience.
Participants will also be supported to develop their own practice recipes to embed ‘tiny habits’ into their existing routines in ways that are sustainable over time.
Wednesday, 8 April 2026 10am-1pm BST
Learning workshop
Wednesday, 15 April 2026 12-1pm BST
Wednesday, 22 April 2026 12-1pm BST
Wednesday, 29 April 2026 12-1pm BST
Weekly practice sessions
1 hour session with me for questions and tailored support
1-to-1 check in
Learning outcomes:
Understanding how survival responses are shaped by identity, culture, history, systems, trauma etc.
Learning how to recognise them in others
Developing ‘tiny habits’ that can fit into existing routines
Month 3: Expanding
The third month is about applying the practice and learning at a collective level. Participants will be supported to reflect on the shifts they have noticed in their relationships, collaborations and social interactions since starting the programme.
In the final session, we will celebrate big and small wins and explore what further change is possible to show up with intention in times of great turmoil and uncertainty.
Wednesday, 6 May 2026 10am-1pm BST
Learning workshop
Wednesday, 13 May 2026 12-1pm BST
Wednesday, 20 May 2026 12-1pm BST
Wednesday, 27 May 2026 12-1pm BST
Weekly practice sessions
Wednesday, 3 June 2026 11am-1pm BST
Celebration
Learning outcomes:
Reviewing and adapting tiny habits recipes
Identifying shifts in relational capacity and opportunity for further practice
Understanding the power of co-regulation and the impact of expanded inner capacity for collective change
Celebrating big and small shifts
Who is the facilitator?
I’m Julia Oertli (she/her), and I’m a certified facilitator of The Resilience Toolkit, a trauma-informed, somatic approach to real-time stress navigation.
I’m also a process facilitator and consultant with over a decade of experience in the social justice space.
I developed this course because I have seen so many incredible people, projects and organisations crumble because they did not have the internal capacity to figure out conflict, difference and uncertainty together.
Embodiment work that speaks to the political conditions of our time has been a game-changer for my own healing, work and relationships.
My hope is that as more people grow their inner stability, we can expand our collective capacity to create the conditions for a world that includes all of us.
Photo by the wonderful Livio Salvi
What’s the investment?
Places are limited and available on a sliding scale. A 20% pilot discount is included in each tier:
Actual cost: £570 (£190 per month)
Subsidised places: £330 (£110 per month)
Paying it forward: £780 (£260 per month)
As a rough guide for which tier to choose:
Actual cost is for people with financial security who are self-funding or those supported by an organisation with limited resources.
Subsidised places are for people with limited financial resources who are self-funding.
Paying it forward is for people with financial abundance or those supported by an organisation with an annual turnover of more than £500,000.
A £50 deposit is required upon registration. The deposit is non-refundable - see the key questions section below for details on the refund policy of the course fee. Full course payment is via bank transfer and can be done in monthly instalments. VAT is not applicable.
I want to make this work available to people who need it while also sustaining myself as a practitioner. That’s not an easy balance in a climate of so much scarcity. If you’re keen to participate but the cost is a barrier, don’t count yourself out but please get in touch with me so we can explore together what’s possible.
Registration closes on 1 March 2026.
Not quite ready to commit? Sign up to a free taster session or book a call with me to discuss the course in more detail.
Key questions answered
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In principle yes. This course is structured incrementally, which means in each session you’ll learn something new that future sessions will build on.
Of course, life happens, and you may miss parts of the course due to unforeseen circumstances.
If you know in advance that you can’t attend one of the learning workshops, I ask that you sign up to a future cohort instead.
You can still sign up if you miss up to 2 practice sessions, but please let me know which ones they are when you sign up. -
Yes, but it’s minimal in terms of time commitment. The thing you will be practising between sessions is your ‘tiny habits’, which we will develop together in such a way that they fit into your existing routines.
There is no required reading or preparation you’ll be asked to do outside of the sessions. I may occasionally give you a question to keep at the back of your mind for a week or so. I may also give you optional materials to read or listen to if you’d like to deepen your understanding. -
You can get a full refund if you cancel by 18 February (3 weeks before the course starts). If you cancel by 25 February (2 weeks before the course starts), you will get a 50% refund. If you cancel with less notice, I won’t be able to offer a refund.
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A £50 deposit is required upon registration. After that, you can pay upfront or in monthly instalments via bank transfer at least two days before the first session. You will receive full instructions once you have registered for the course.
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No. While embodied resilience is a trauma-informed approach, it is not a therapeutic method.
It is designed to help you notice and stabilise your body and mind in moments of stress or trauma activation. So while we will talk about the role of trauma in resilience, we won’t be analysing or unpacking its content and instead focus on where we might find places of ease.
If you require trauma-healing support, I recommend you seek out a trained therapist or certified trauma-healing professional. -
Yes. Embodied resilience was developed by practitioners with decades of experience working with people with complex trauma. It is explicitly designed to stabilise the nervous system in moments activation.
If you feel comfortable, you can let me know in advance that this is something you carry so I can suggest adaptations to the practices should they be necessary.
The methodology centres choice, agency and bodily autonomy. You will be encouraged throughout the course to sense what feels possible for you to do and develop strategies for moving through moments of trauma activation should they occur.
Embodied resilience is gentle by design, not because the challenges are small, but because gentleness is what allows change to happen without getting overwhelmed or traumas being re-triggered. -
Most likely yes. There are only two conditions for which practising embodied resilience is unsuitable: brain implants and seizures originating from the brain stem.
If you are not affected by either of those, you will be supported to adapt the practices to your own body. Some of them involve gentle physical movement, but this is not a requirement. You can do the practices in any position and even when energy is low.
Online sessions will be on Zoom with close captioning enabled, content will be offered in written and verbal form, and you can participate verbally or via the chat. We will have regular breaks (every hour).
The sessions will involve a mix of talking, writing, reflecting and guided practice. We will regularly switch between full group and small group engagement. Cameras are optional, and everything we do together is invitational.Please contact me if you have specific access needs you’d like to discuss ahead of time.
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Please see my privacy notice for detail: https://www.orchidculturechange.com/privacy-notice
I ask all participants at the start of the course to agree to treat what is shared in the sessions as confidential.
Got a question that isn’t answered here? Contact me
