In this enthralling episode, I spoke with Anita Bhardwaj and Raggi Kotak about their work and upcoming six week program, Race Resilience. I was honoured to speak with them about their decades long social justice and somatic healing expertise and the powerful work they do in the UK and beyond. 

Race Resilience is a professional collaboration that combines their forty years experience of activism, exploring ground-breaking tools and resources to understand and move forward on the issue of racial justice.

Anita Bhardwaj

For twenty years Anita has worked as a senior manager, trainer consultant and coach in organisations, with a specialism in developing services on the issues of gender violence, race and mental health. This has offered her the opportunity to develop a deep understanding of the impact of issues of power and abuse, based on one’s social identity, as well as the variety of layers and aspects that are required to heal and recover from such experiences.

Her training includes Psychology, Life and executive coaching, Thai Yoga Massage, Reiki Practitioner, Chi Kung Teacher, TRE (Tension Stress and Trauma Release) Provider. Anita works in organisations (individuals/teams) and in clinical practise. She has a keen interest in working with both those that are impacted by racism and other forms of abuse; and professionals to support them to recover and expand their own resilience to the stress and vicarious trauma, they experience. Her work is embedded within a framework that acknowledges personal and social histories of trauma whilst challenging the, structural inequalities, social injustices and oppression as the root context from which stress and trauma manifest for individuals and communities.

Raggi Kotak

Raggi is a south Asian queer woman living in London. She is a human rights barrister, who has worked with asylum seekers for twenty years. She has a long history of anti-oppression work and has been involved in the setup and running of numerous ground-breaking and award winning projects. 

Raggi trains in Process Work - a widely respected facilitation method for conflict and change, which informs her work. She specialises in issues of power and oppression.  She provides consultancy, facilitation, training, coaching and mentoring, working with individuals, groups and organisations. 

Raggi is the founder and main facilitator of an active online discussion forum called Race Talk, which aims to bring different racial groups together to find ways through their racial conditioning and trauma. She is also a facilitator for the Racial Justice Collaborative, an international project challenging racism through dialogue. Raggi’s work is informed by psychology, trauma awareness and movement work, in which she has extensively trained.

Visit their website learn more about their upcoming Race Resilience course starting October 21st.