Embodied Resilience for Apocalyptic Times
A 3-month online learning and practice programme for people interested in the connections between embodiment and systemic change
**New cohort coming soon
What is the Embodied Resilience for Apocalyptic Times programme?
You can read a transcript of the video here.
Embodied Resilience for Apocalyptic Times is a brand new, 3-month online learning and peer practice programme that combines individual embodied practice with a collective and systemic approach to change.
The programme is designed for anyone struggling with the dehumanisation of this time.
It offers you a grounded, trauma-informed entry point to navigating this time with more clarity, spaciousness and internal capacity - without burning out.
Embodied resilience is an approach based on The Resilience Toolkit by Lumos Transforms.
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, energy or motivation.
What participants have said
What are the benefits?
Embodied resilience unlocks benefits both at individual and collective levels. At its most elemental, it teaches you to notice and change your stress activation in real time.
On the programme, you will learn how to:
❋ Notice your stress activation in real time
❋ Discern whether that level of stress is helpful to the situation
❋ De-escalate your stress response if it is safe to do so
❋ Change your stress response if it is too strong, lasts too long or is no longer helpful
❋ Access more internal safety and stability to change or leave the conditions that are causing your stress in the first place
This brings more stability, balance and coherence into the nervous system, which, in turn, enables more presence and prevents chronic stress and burnout.
At an interpersonal level, embodied resilience supports you to:
❋ Stay in authentic relationship with yourself and people around you - whether this is in the workplace, in your family, friendships, community or romantic relationships
❋ Hold difference, change, complexity, uncertainty and conflict in ways that align with your values
❋ Access more connection, imagination, joy and creativity
Embodied resilience builds the foundation not only for individual healing but also 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.
However, 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, to each other, to 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 difficult conditions.
This ignores the systems, relationships and wider conditions that shape our lives, stress and trauma.
Embodied resilience reframes resilience as inherently collective.
It sees resilience not as bouncing back from injustice and dehumanisation, but bouncing forward together to create a world that includes all of us.
What’s the methodology?
Embodied resilience is a multi-modal approach based on The Resilience Toolkit. It combines the following cognitive and embodied elements:
Body-based practices
Simple, portable and adaptable exercises that can be practised anywhere and 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 systemic context and illuminate the connection between personal embodied practice and collective action.
Scientific models
Drawing on models from neuroscience, ethology and psychology to illustrate how stress manifests in the body and how our survival responses are shaped by the conditions around us.
Peer learning
Learning, reflecting, co-regulating and building community with people who share similar questions are central for expanding individual and collective capacity and resilience.
Trauma-informed facilitation
Trauma often occurs when people have no choice. Agency, care and collaboration are central. 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) expanding common notions of resilience.
The weekly practice sessions support you to apply what you have learnt straight away and get to know the manifestations of stress and resilience in you own body.
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 notions 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
Month 2: Embedding
After the first 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.
You will also be supported to develop your own practice recipe to embed ‘tiny habits’ into your 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. You will be supported to reflect on the shifts you have noticed in your relationships, collaborations and social interactions.
In the final session, we will celebrate all the wins (big and small) and explore what further change is possible for you to find more stability, capacity and alignment.
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 expanded inner capacity for collective change
Celebrating big and small shifts
Why does it matter?
We are living through a very turbulent time.
There is increasing precarity, a divisive political landscape, unbearable destruction and dehumanisation combined with the collapse of international norms and institutions.
Many of us are overwhelmed, anxious, exhausted or dissociated.
Our survival responses are activated a lot of the time.
This can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, burnout, overwhelm, conflict and illness, among other things.
These are human responses and not a sign of personal failure, but a symptom of this time.
Embodied resilience recognises the connection between people’s individual experiences and the collective reality we are in and intentionally brings them into conversation.
In doing so, it resists individualising things that are systemic (such as a scarcity of resources) and pathologising human responses to oppressive conditions (such as overwork or dissociation).
Instead, embodied resilience helps people expand their inner resources to change the systems that cause our stress in the first place.
What’s the investment?
Places are limited and available on a sliding scale. A 20% pilot discount is included in each tier:
Actual cost: £750 £500
Subsidised places: £400 £300
Paying it forward: £900 £720
A £50 non-refundable deposit is required on registration.
Full course payment is via bank transfer and can be done in instalments. VAT is not applicable.
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 figure out what’s possible.
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 over £500,000.
Key questions answered
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In principle yes. This course is structured incrementally, which means in each session you’ll learn something 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 more than 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?
Who is the facilitator?
Photo by the wonderful Livio Salvi
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 nearly 15 years of experience in the social justice space.
I developed this course because I have seen so many incredible people, projects and organisations struggle 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.
I believe that, as more people grow their inner stability, we can expand our collective capacity to build a world that includes all of us.
I can’t wait to meet you!