Science - Politic -Indigeneity - Animism : A provocative and non-Eurocentric somatic approach to grief and trauma

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

Dyeing Before Dying: A Return To Indigenous Wisdom on Death

A WEEKEND WORKSHOP- SATURDAY 29TH & SUNDAY 30TH NOVEMBER, 4 pm to 7pm, Berlin Time

Language: English

Length: 3 hours x 2

This summer, I was in Benin and went to my paternal grandmother’s grave, visiting it for the first time since she died some years ago. Her grave is not just a stone in the ground of a cemetery, but a room within her family’s house, a place where life continues to unfold with death resting beneath us. With my brother, my aunt and my grand mothers’s siblings, we settled in the room, removed the dust, sat, chatted and performed rituals and prayers for her soul to continue resting in peace and wisdom. There, in the presence of her spirit, we shared foods and drinks that are specially made for death rituals, we laughed and told stories about her and us, not only beautiful ones, but also painful ones. 

The room and the entire family compound filled with memory, with sound and silence, with the feeling that she was still among us. We stayed the whole afternoon until dusk. The light dimmed; the air thickened with memory, and I felt how thin the line between life and death truly is. How in our ways, death is never separate from life but part of its ongoing rhythm. It was there, sitting in that room together with everyone, repeating the same ritualistic gestures, being in silence and patient, that I remembered that dying , like dyeing is a slow process, a transformation, a return. 

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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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