What is Collective Healing?
Self-Regulation is the Key: Hard-won Wisdom from a Pioneer of Collective Trauma Integration, with Markus Hirzig
Hosted by Matthew Green. Produced by J'aime Rothbard. Therapist and teacher Markus Hirzig has pursued a central question throughout his decades-long career: Why, despite our enormous human potential, do we so often get caught in patterns that limit us and drain our energy — and how can we break these cycles? Having started out as a physiotherapist and osteopath, Markus began looking for answers in the body by deeply exploring patterns of movement and tension. Then, after meeting Thomas Hübl , co-founder of the Pocket Project , more than 20 years ago, Markus went on to play a pivotal role in helping to pioneer collective trauma integration practices in Germany. Markus has since worked to bring principles of collective healing to a global audience via his own in-person and online training and by co-leading a team of assistants supporting Thomas' two-year Timeless Wisdom Training and other offerings. In this episode, Markus reflects on the journey since his early days of working with groups in Germany with Thomas, when collective energies linked to the Second World War, the Holocaust and the East-West divide began to surface in striking ways. Markus explains how he learned the crucial importance of supporting participants in collective healing processes to gradually learn to regulate their nervous systems — a practice he also shares in his free Open Trainings . Markus sees this self-regulation capacity as essential to creating the kind of stable ground from which deeper exploration, integration and change become possible. Themes Markus and Matthew explore include: Early days of learning to work with collective trauma Collective trauma patterns as "bubbles" in the wider field Role of self-regulation in collective healing work Origins of collaboration with Thomas Hübl Working with Germany's undigested past Surfacing ancestral war-time memories Germany's reckoning with the Second World War and the Holocaust Creating spaces to host the emergence of new possibilities Using intention to address specific fields of collective trauma Building collective healing architecture on a global scale Role of outside perspectives in national collective trauma work This powerful episode offers a chance to hear directly from one of the luminaries in this field about how collective trauma integration work has evolved over the years, the wisdom accrued along the way — and where the global healing movement might go next. Further Resources: Markus Hirzig's Open Trainings Related Pocket Project Programmes: Resilience Programme, Phase II (A standalone facilitation training). Pocket Project About Markus Hirzig: Markus began his journey into healing in the 1970s and 80s, becoming a physiotherapist and later an osteopath. For decades, he worked in private practice while also teaching classes. Starting from a deeply body-oriented perspective, Maruks trained his perception of movement and patterns within the physical body. Along the way, he also discovered a connection to what we might call "subtle energetic perception" — or a deeper field of information behind the physical. This opened up questions that have shaped Markus' work ever since: Why do we have so much potential, and yet so often find ourselves caught in patterns that limit us and drain our energy? How can we break these cycles? And how much of what we experience as individuals is connected to our families, our ancestry and the collective? These questions led Markus into decades of exploring individual, family, ancestral and collective patterns and trauma. Over time, Markus came to understand self-regulation as an essential foundation for this work: the capacity to recognise when we are triggered, stay present with what arises, and distinguish between our own experience and what may be connected to larger family, systemic or collective fields. Again and again, returning to regulation creates the ground from which deeper exploration, integration and change become possible. Today, Markus works as a therapist and teacher, both in person and online. Markus regularly offers free online Open Trainings where people can experience this work firsthand.
