Dear all,
Below I share with you a closing message posted recently on Instagram via @breakthesilenceongenocide – thank you for all your support!
April 15th marked 6 months since the launch of the Open Letter to Thomas Hübl and The Collective Trauma Summit 2025 calling for an end to silence on the genocide in Palestine.
Signatures to the Letter have now closed.
Its contents, however, will remain visible as a public testimony and ongoing call to the wider wellness world.
This was never just about Thomas Hübl.
Over 1000 people - therapists, mental health professionals, trauma specialists, somatic coaches, spiritual teachers, and beneficiaries of these practices - from more than 25 countries signed a statement calling for:
- naming of genocide in wellness spaces
- recognition of Western complicity
- centring of Palestinian voices & experiences
- ongoing work to end depoliticisation and spiritual bypassing
signalling a clear shift of public expectations of this field.
What did we achieve?
1) Many leading figures in the (white) wellness world added their name to the letter - including Gabor Maté, the founders of Science and Non Duality, and Summit contributors, with others - including Tara Brach, Lissa Rankin and Richard Strozzi-Heckler - signing more recently.
This indicates the Letter contributed to growing peer and public pressure to speak up and shift norms within a largely white cultural context.
2) I can now announce The Collective Trauma Summit website has gone into archive mode. Visitors are thanked for 7 years of collective healing, and sales of Summit content - which had bypassed naming of genocide - are no longer available.
This strongly suggests the Summit will no longer take place - at least in prior form.
While this was not the intention of the Letter - which was to seek accountability from Thomas Hübl, the Summit’s founder and platformer, to implement changes within this powerful convening node - this decision shows it has had a strong impact on the ability of anyone to host future global events on collective trauma and related issues while remaining silent on Palestine.
Together we have taken a stand.
3) Multiple people have reported that the Letter has prompted and enabled different kinds of conversations behind the scenes and in wider networks.
This was not a marginal intervention. It was widely seen. It was widely read.
By 25,000+ people.
It was circulated to many leading figures in this space - and will continue to be.
Awareness of its contents and call has spread, exposing fissures and rearranging alignments.
Something in the culture has shifted.
That’s thanks to YOUR support.
4) Some leading figures who chose not to sign the Letter due to personal relationships with Thomas, nevertheless conceded they would have chosen to do things differently at the Summit, and that they would speak up about genocide in Palestine going forward.
A number in Thomas’s networks reportedly emailed and spoke with him directly to have “calling in” conversations.
As far as I am aware, it did not shift his public position.
He has remained silent in the face of the Letter.
It may, however, have shifted theirs.
This is not the end of the story.
The genocide is ongoing.
It is now being exported elsewhere.
Silence still needs to end.
But over 1000 people made an undeniable, visible, collective intervention into a global wellness space that has long positioned itself as apolitical.
What this effort has made critically visible is:
Silence is not neutral.
It will no longer go unquestioned.
Public accountability of power matters.
And it is a legitimate tool in our toolbox in all contexts - including in the wellness world.
Thank you so much for being part of this particular crack in the wall.
I will be sharing further reflections on my substack when possible: https://substack.com/@irmakinga
Let’s keep breaking silence.
Free Palestine.
In solidarity,
Irma