Science - Politic -Indigeneity - Animism : A provocative and non-Eurocentric somatic approach to trauma, grief and nervous system work.
A soft space for embracing the uncertainty of where grief and trauma may lead us.
“The Eurocentric paradigm often centers on 'healing' trauma by fixing individuals, pathologizing, and suppressing grief. In contrast, the approach I live by invites us to lean into grief—to feel it fully, own it, and become curious about our fragmented parts. I can’t promise “healing”, but I invite you to explore what “healing” truly means for you, in your own body.” Tobi Ayé
TRAUMA is often stigmatized as something bad or dysfunctional; something that we shouldn’t have. But in fact, we are already born into a traumatized and fragmented world and the air we are breathing is full of grief. Trauma in our nervous system could be understand as a result of an intelligent and necessary response that saved us. It helped us survive and cope through the situation in that moment.
We don’t let GRIEF rise in us not alone allow ourselves to feel it. Western paradigm has even pathologized grief. Although GRIEF holds answers and solutions to many of the world’s issues we are facing - whether on a collective or individual level.
We need to change the way we understand grief.
We need to grief differently.
Trauma & grief work help us get in touch with the wisdom of our body. By integrating non Eurocentric practices and understanding of trauma and grief to somatic work, we invoke and build your nervous system’s capacity to respond to situations instead of reacting to them.
Practitioner Alignment
I work with individuals across a range of genders, races, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds, with a particular focus on supporting bodies from the Global South, as well as systemically marginalized communities. However, I do not work with everyone who approaches me. I hold the Indigenous belief that each person has a practitioner meant for them, and that what we often call 'healing' is, in part, the process of finding and connecting with that practitioner.
UP COMING EDUCATIONAL & WORKSHOPS PROGRAMS
UNCHARTED WATERS: A SOMATIC EXPLORATION OF COLONIAL GRIEF
Weekly gathering , Every Friday from APRIL 11th, 20:00 pm to 22 pm, Berlin time
Language: English
Length: 12 - week journey (April 11th - June 27th)
“For the same waves that brought us colonization will, one day, carry our grief and sorrow away.”
WHY THIS GRIEF JOURNEY
Uncharted Waters: A Somatic Exploration of Colonial Grief invites colonized bodies to dive deeply into the embodied currents of loss left by colonization. Rooted in my personal journey—growing up in Benin, a land profoundly shaped by colonial history, and now living in Portugal, the birthplace of this legacy—this workshop offers a collective space to feel, grieve, and create with what remains.
Together, we will somatically navigate the unspoken grief of:
What was erased and what could have been.
The voids, wounds, and silences carried by the land and the ocean.
The sorrow and anger left within us—how do we hold them, process them, and transform them?
….
My Offerings
My Approach
1-1 Sessions
In Person / Virtual
Facilitation & Training
In Person / Virtual
Free Monthly Grief Space
About Tobi
Tobi is a dyer, mender, and weaver of stories, born and raised in Benin. Movement and displacement have been integral to her life, shaping her identity. Growing up across the West African sub-region and living in North Africa, notably Tunisia, she has personally experienced the ethnic, inter-religious, and social divisions rooted in the continent's colonial trauma.
Now based in Portugal after years in Germany, she is a cultural somatic practitioner, grief worker, and educator. Her work focuses on helping individuals and communities repair fractured connections and integrate collective, intergenerational, individual, and systemic trauma and grief.
With a commitment to bridging Indigenous perspectives and modern neurobiology, Tobi created Collective Resonance™, a grief program that trains facilitators to hold space for collective grief processes and acknowledge systemic grief. This program fosters deeper community connections by addressing grief somatically, helping people integrate their losses while nurturing resilience and collective transformation.
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Grief is part of life, part of our growth process, part of us.
What if we make more space to honore it? What if grief more often together?
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