The trauma therapist and founder shares how community-based wellbeing models can transform individuals and organizations alike
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Show Notes:
In this episode of Mission Matters, Adam Torres interviews Hala Khouri, Founder of The Collective Resilience Model, about her mission to reframe trauma healing as a collective, community-powered process. Hala shares insights from her panel on mindfulness, her groundbreaking work with system-impacted youth, and the vision behind her books and training programs aimed at addressing burnout and building organizational resilience.
About Hala Khouri
Hala Khouri, MA, SEP, E-RYT, is a sought-after speaker and trainer on the subject of trauma, yoga, and social justice. She has been teaching yoga and movement for over 25 years and has been doing clinical work and trainings for 15 years. Originally from Beirut, Lebanon, she has dedicated her life to the study of trauma, justice, and building resilience. She earned her B.A. in Psychology from Columbia University, an M.A. in Counseling Psychology, and an M.A. in Community Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Hala is trained in Somatic Experiencing, a body-based psychotherapy that helps resolve trauma and its symptoms.
Hala is a co-founder of Off the Mat, Into the World, a training organization that bridged yoga and activism within a social justice framework. Hala also works with A Thousand Joys training direct service providers and educators to be trauma informed and culturally responsive. She leads a monthly, online membership program called Radical Wellbeing. Her first book, Peace from Anxiety: Get Grounded, Build Resilience and Stay Connected Amidst the Chaos, was published in April 2021. She lives in Venice, CA with her two sons.
About Collective Resilience Model
Collective Resilience trainings offer a physiological framework of trauma and how it manifests in the body and mind. Along with addressing the personal and interpersonal, these trainings also explore how systemic patterns of trauma—at the heart of social justice issues like poverty and racism—impact individuals and entire communities of people. Ingrained in all of the trainings is the understanding that injustice, as well as historical trauma, must be addressed in order to cultivate healing.
These trainings are for yoga teachers who would like to work with individuals or communities with trauma. They are also for clinicians, therapists, social workers, educators, medical personnel, first responders, non-profit employees or volunteers, or anyone else who would like to integrate basic yoga tools and somatic practices into their work or lives to support greater health and well-being.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on Be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today my guest is Hala Khouri, and she is the founder over at the Collective Resilience Model.
Hala, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Adam. Well, it’s a pleasure to have you here and for everybody listening that’s just tuning in. This is, this particular interview will be part of our Milken conference Global, our global conference coverage series where we bring on individuals that either participated or were part of the conference.
And in this case, Hala actually correct me if I’m off on this. you were also on a panel, right? Yes, I was on a panel for mindfulness. Amazing. So, tell me a little bit more about that, and I understand this is your first time attending the conference. So give us a little, a little peek into your first experience as well.
It was wonderful. I didn’t get to attend too many other panels, but we had a really wonderful panel talking about the role of mindfulness, not just in wellbeing, but in community care. And it was a pretty diverse group of speakers. And then I got to be at the wellness garden at the conference, which was just incredible.
They had all these healers and talking about wellbeing, which really is, is my jam in so many ways, is how can we be well and how can we be well together? Hmm. What was one of your I mean, whether from the panel or otherwise, what was one of the big takeaways? Like what made this conference special for you?
I think it was the sense of community, especially, I think that I. With COVID, we lost so much of our in-person community. And to just see people all in one space that are really interested in figuring out how to make the world a better place you could feel that it was palpable and people that are innovating and really thinking about the world in such a critical way.
And so that was really the most powerful part for me. Let’s go a little bit further into your work. So the collective resilience model as see your founder. how’d you come up with this? Well, this particular model is rooted in my last 20 years of work. I started as a therapist and as a yoga teacher.
A lot of my work was developed with system impacted youth. I started teaching yoga at Central Juvenile Hall here in Los Angeles. About 25 years ago, and at the same time I was training to be a trauma therapist and mm-hmm I started to think about how might I bring this trauma healing work into a group setting with these girls that are impacted by these systems of violence and racism and poverty and all that.
And so the work really started there in that space with these young girls. Figuring out how do we, how do I empower people to understand how their nervous system works so they can feel a sense of control over trauma or anxiety or depression? And how do we think about healing while acknowledging the larger systems that impact people’s capacity to be Well, I.
So that was really my, my pathway into this work was through yoga, trauma healing and really just boots on the ground working with hundreds, thousands of folks supporting them to be well. Mm-hmm. When you work with organizations serving trauma impacted communities, what, what are you seeing most?
Like what’s are some of the most pressing issues? The main thing I see is burnout. People feel like there’s just not enough time in the day to get the work done that they need to do. But the other thing that I see that really breaks my heart is when that burnout causes breakdown inside the organization, where people are fighting with each other, where they’re not getting along with each other, they’re not able to collaborate effectively.
So to me, that’s really the pressing issue because. If unaddressed trauma is breaking down, our organizations that are trying to support not just Trump trauma impacted communities, but social justice and really important issues, that breakdown really can break down our movements towards freedom. So those are the main things I see.
I do wanna spend a little bit of, some time here. I love supporting authors. I love when individuals write books, put them out. You have multiple books. Maybe tell us a little bit more about those. So my first book I wrote during the Pan Pandemic, and it’s called Peace from Anxiety, get Grounded, build Resilience, and Stay Connected Amidst the Chaos.
And I like to say that this book is really, it’s like disguised as a self-help book. It’s got like a pastel cover and it’s very peaceful looking, but it really is meant to take the reader on a journey from individual wellbeing into collective care. And so it’s not like a traditional, like, here’s how to get rid of your anxiety book.
Of course I talk about that, but ultimately I’m inviting people to think about community, the ecosystem of support they have around them and how they’re participating and finding purpose. Mm-hmm. So that’s the first book. The second book I’m a contributing author to and an editor of. And that book is called Practicing Liberation.
Transformative Tools for Collective Healing and Systems Change. And so you can see the evolution of my work from talking to individual folks about wellbeing and community and justice, into talking to organizations of folks about how do we practice liberation. Together. How do we build communities where we can care for one another, where we can address trauma, where we can fumble through difficulty without turning on one another.
And to me that’s what’s really exciting right now is, you know, the world is so messed up in so many ways. We are in our silos. We are. Fighting with one another. But if we can start to build communities inside of that that are pushing against that, to me, that’s how we’re gonna change the broader culture.
Mm-hmm. So that’s what practical liberation is about. What do you hope that your readers take away from your, let’s just say your body of work? ’cause now multiple books, they’re building on each other. You, you have of course your, main website, the content you’re creating, you’re coming on shows like this.
What do you hope your readers take away from the, the brand and from the books as well? You know, the reason I call ’em the work I do collective resilience is because I like to say that wellbeing is something we do together. And so that’s, that’s my hope. I think that even in the healing psychology, self-help space, we are sold this overly individualistic idea of wellbeing.
It’s about, you know, exercise and sleep and eat a healthy diet and go to therapy and it doesn’t. Remind us that we are social beings and that actually for us to be well, we need everybody to be well. COVID really revealed that to us, right? With COVID, until the most vulnerable people were okay, nobody was gonna be okay.
So that’s my hope, and that people can hear that message, not as a burden, not as like a, ugh, this is a good, you know, a terrible idea, but as something that is actually hopeful that we thrive when we’re connected to one another. We thrive when we take care of one another and we can heal from trauma. We can heal from almost anything when we are surrounded in a healthy community.
And that’s really my hope that folks take for my work. So we’re in, you know, 2025. We’re in June, 2025. You know, half the years that are gone basically. Actually we’re a couple days away from that. What’s next for you for the rest of the year? Like what, what do you have on the horizon? You know, I’m really trying to build more infrastructure around my work and my model.
It’s just been me going in as a consultant into organizations and I want to let the work scale a little bit. So I’m bringing in a few more faculty members and we’re trying to also raise some money so that we can get some. Fiscally sponsored projects so we can really bring the work into organizations that might not have budget to cover it.
So I am, I’m really in a process of articulating my work in a more grounded way and trying to make it accessible to more people and building up some new faculty who can share the work with others. Fantastic. Well, Hala first off, it’s been great having you on the show and learning more about your work, about what you’re doing, and congrats on the panel, of course, that you were on at mil at the Milken conference.
Great stuff there. What, a great privilege to be on the panel the first time you attended, so that’s amazing. How do people follow up with you? How do they connect with your work and and continue the dialogue? I think the best way is through my website, which is my name, Hala cori.com.
H-A-L-A-K-H-O-U-R-I. A lot of what I do is not public facing, but I do try to offer some public facing workshops when possible, and I even have a little membership community where folks can come on and take, I used to be a yoga teacher, so I’ve got lots of yoga classes on there and short talks, and so that’s a way to also access a little bit more of my therapeutic work.
Fantastic for everybody listening. Just so you know. We’ll definitely put some links in the show notes so that you can connect. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Hala, thanks again for coming on. Thank you for having me.
