Roots & Reach

🗓 Half-Day Workshop Outline 3.5 hours

This format works best with 8–20 participants. Requires one lead facilitator and ideally a co-facilitator for breakout support.

1. Opening (15 min): Welcome, land acknowledgment, community agreements. Establish safety norms: confidentiality, no cross-talk during sharing, "take what serves you, leave what doesn't."
2. Context-Setting (20 min): Why relationship intelligence for Black communities? Brief facilitated conversation on how systems — enslavement, migration, redlining, policing — have shaped relational patterns. Ground the work in Ubuntu: "I am because we are."
3. Assessment (40 min): Participants complete all four domains independently. Quiet, private time. Play ambient music (suggest artists like Ambré, Sudan Archives, Flying Lotus). Do not rush this.
4. Individual Reflection (10 min): Journal prompt: "What surprised you? What felt deeply true?"
5. Break (15 min)
6. Small Group Debrief (45 min): Groups of 3–4. Each person shares one insight from any domain. Facilitators use the prompts below. No advice-giving — only witnessing and curiosity.
7. Large Group Harvest (25 min): What themes emerged? What did you hear in your group that resonated? Capture on a shared board.
8. Somatic Practice Together (15 min): Lead the group through one collective somatic exercise (see Facilitation Tips tab). Ground the workshop in the body before close.
9. Closing Circle (10 min): One word: how do you leave different from how you arrived? Optional: commitment share — one thing you'll practice this week.

💬 Debrief Prompts by Domain

Romantic:

Platonic:

Familial:

Career:

🌀 Small Group Format (3–8 people) 60–90 min

Ideal for friend groups, family units, mentorship circles, or therapy groups. Works for one domain or all four.

1. Open with intention (5 min): Have someone open with a prayer, affirmation, or moment of silence. Ask: "What word describes how you're entering this space today?"
2. Complete the assessment (20–30 min): One domain or all four, depending on time. Complete silently and individually first.
3. Share your profile (5 min each): Each person reads their profile name and description aloud. The group simply listens — no commentary yet.
4. Resonance round (15 min): After everyone has shared their profile, the group speaks to what they heard. "I see that in you." "That matches what I love about our friendship." "I didn't know that was what was going on for you."
5. Depth question (15 min): Choose one of the domain prompts from the Workshop tab. Go around the circle.
6. Somatic close (5 min): Place both hands on your chest. Take three deep breaths together. Name one quality you're grateful for in this group.

✨ Holding the Space Well

• Name the cultural context explicitly. Don't just use the tool — hold the "why." Black people's relational patterns have been shaped by histories of forced separation, surveillance, respectability politics, and communal survival. Say this out loud.
• Honor multiple expressions of Blackness. This tool speaks to common cultural patterns — it does not represent all Black experiences. Make room for participants from the diaspora, multiracial participants, queer and trans participants, and those with complex family compositions.
• Resist the debrief spiral. It is easy for a single participant's painful disclosure to take over group time. Witness, affirm, and redirect: "We honor what you've shared. We'll hold that. Let's hear from one more person before we go deeper."
• Don't rank profiles. Resist the urge (or the group's urge) to assign value to high vs. low scores. Each profile describes where someone is — not what they're worth.
• Model vulnerability. If you've taken the assessment, share your own result early. This gives participants permission to be real.

🫁 Collective Somatic Practice

Use this as a group opener, a transition between modules, or a close.

1. The Communal Breath (3 min): Stand or sit. Feet flat. Inhale for 4 counts together; exhale for 6. Repeat 5 times. Name what you're releasing on the exhale.
2. Shoulder Drop & Open (2 min): Inhale and shrug both shoulders to your ears. Hold for 3 counts. Release everything on the exhale. Repeat 3 times. This releases hypervigilance stored in the trapezius — a common site of racial stress.
3. The Village Stand (1 min): Stand with feet hip-width apart. Feel the ground beneath you. Say aloud: "I am held. I am here. I am not alone."

🛡 Trauma-Informed Facilitation

Roots & Reach touches deep material — family wounds, romantic loss, code-switching fatigue, generational grief. Facilitators must be prepared to hold what surfaces.

• Establish safety before depth. Don't open with the hardest questions. Build trust, warmth, and collective presence before inviting vulnerability.
• Name what you see, not what you interpret. "I notice you went quiet after sharing your familial result" is safer than "That seems like it was painful."
• Always have resources available. Know the mental health resources in your community. Have them written down and accessible — not just mentioned at the end.
• Plan for disclosure. If someone shares something that requires follow-up (abuse, suicidal ideation, domestic violence), know your protocol. You are not a therapist unless you are — and even then, the group setting is not the treatment space.
• Close every session with grounding. Never end on disclosure or high emotion alone. Use the somatic close or a group affirmation to return everyone to safety before they leave.

💜 For Participants in Active Healing

Some participants may be in early-stage trauma processing, grief, or crisis. Share this with participants before they begin:

Consider having a private check-in option — a sign-up sheet where participants can request a brief 1:1 after the session for anything they didn't want to share in the group.