Somatic Facilitation Guide

Facilitation lives at two layers: what's being said, and what the room is doing. This guide works at the second layer — the collective nervous system, the unspoken tensions held in posture and breath, the charged silence before someone says the thing.

It draws on somatic practice and transformative justice facilitation to give you a working framework for noticing — and responding to — what's happening in the body of a group in real time.

There are concrete moves, specific practices, and enough theory to understand why they work.

• Facilitators who sense there's more happening in a room than they have language for
• Coaches and practitioners who want to integrate body-based awareness into group work
• Workshop designers who want to build moments that land differently
• Anyone who holds space for humans in high-stakes situations

What it asks for is a willingness to pay attention differently.

Zen Lara is a designer, researcher, and facilitator. They've built design systems at Calendly, written facilitation curriculum with Harvard, and developed the listening methodology behind Zen Design Labs. They're trained in somatic practice and transformative justice facilitation — disciplines that shape how they hold the room when the work is real.