Trauma Healing Workshop by Rooted Connections and CHI for Trauma and Wellbeing - Adaiyalam'26 Chennai Mental Health Fest

Conducted by Rooted Connections and CHI for Trauma and Wellbeing, the Trauma Healing Workshop brought together participants for a session that was as emotionally demanding as it was carefully held, one centred on healing, lived experience, and the ways societal systems shape individual wellbeing.

Introductions here went beyond names. Participants were asked to describe how their bodies typically feel upon waking each morning, and the honesty of the responses set the tone for everything that followed:  hypervigilance, agitation, physical constriction, anger, fatigue, a low hum of constant stress. By the time introductions were done, the room had already settled into something rare: an atmosphere of genuine empathy rather than performance. From there, the facilitators framed the workshop's core idea that healing isn't purely individual. It's tangled up with systems of oppression, power, caste, identity, and community, and understanding those systems is part of understanding one's own path toward healing.

The first exercise asked participants to write about a time they felt unseen, unheard, unsupported, or invalidated. Volunteers shared their stories aloud, and while many of these accounts touched on genuinely difficult periods, the conversation kept bending toward resilience, toward the quiet, gradual ways people had rebuilt strength and found support.

The second exercise flipped the lens: participants wrote about moments they had felt truly seen, heard, and supported. They named the people behind those moments (therapists, parents, friends, loved ones) and were pushed to go further, describing the physical sensations that came with feeling safe. It was a small but pointed way of building awareness around what emotional safety actually feels like in the body.

The session's most structurally ambitious activity came next: a systems-thinking exercise where participants drew three concentric circles representing different levels of power in society. They identified what they believed held the greatest power in the world, then placed themselves within that structure. Answers ranged widely from governments, educational systems, careers, identity, kindness, individual rights, personal choice. The facilitators pushed the group to interrogate their own hierarchies: why certain institutions or identities had landed where they did, and what that said about how power actually operates. The conversation moved through concrete examples: a doctor's medical authority, an educator's role in shaping knowledge, a therapist's responsibility for a client's emotional wellbeing.

Importantly, power wasn't framed only as something oppressive. Participants were also encouraged to recognise their own capacity to influence the people around them, even as they questioned the larger systems shaping their lives. The facilitators tied it together with a clear thread: healing isn't only personal work; it also demands awareness of systemic inequality and a collective push toward more inclusive communities.

To bring the emotionally intensive session to a close, participants took part in a mindful walking exercise — moving through the room at varying paces, paying attention to breath, physical sensation, surroundings, and emotional state. The session ended on a simple, disarming note: turning to the person beside them and smiling. The workshop closed with a shared reflection that individuals are shaped by the systems around them, and that reshaping those systems into something more inclusive is, ultimately, a collective responsibility.