BREATHING ROOM
Practicing Organisational Healing
in the Everyday
Working with people and organisations in the everyday to create
“breathing spaces” individually and collectively.
UPCOMING EVENTS
UNPACKING BREATHING ROOM
What we mean by "Breathing Room"
Breathing Room is the relational, emotional, and learning capacities that allow people and organisations to remain connected, adaptive, and humane in the midst of disruption. It is the invisible network of behaviours, practices, relationships, and shared norms through which trust is built, conflict is engaged, and collective work can continue.
Our Approach
committed to care as both individual and shared collective work
relational rather than extractive
political about power
embodied and trauma-informed
working from the inside out
slow enough to allow connection and truth-telling
The Breathing ROOM Team
Our team consists of a collaboration between two organisations: Ella Scheepers from Wellbeing Architects and Mike Abrams and Minkateko Wicht from Hands On.
| Minkateko Wicht | Mike Abrams | Ella Scheepers |
|---|---|---|
| Minkateko is a mental health occupational therapist and facilitator who supports people to navigate stressful and demanding contexts. Her work explores how the relationship between people and their contexts shapes our capacity to show up in everyday life. Grounded in trauma-informed practice, she supports people to develop awareness, strengthen self- and co-regulation, and cultivate more sustainable ways of doing, being, becoming, and belonging. She is known for bringing an intuitive and grounded presence, inviting breath, care, and lightness while gently encouraging people into deeper relationship with themselves and each other. | Mike is a radical thinker, organiser and Popular Educator working with individuals, organisations and working-class communities. Mike integrates trauma-informed approaches, relationship building, games, drama therapy and active learning methodologies with personal and organisational development ensuring healing and learning within mind, body and soul. He is known for asking difficult questions, uncovering power relationships and radical honesty. | Ella is a feminist facilitator and organisational wellbeing practitioner who loves creating spaces where people can slow down, listen differently, and imagine new ways of working together. She is especially interested in how care, power, and relationships shape the everyday life of organisations—and how paying attention to these can make work more sustainable and joyful. She is know for her compassion (and her hugs), intellectual curiosity and Bonteheuwel assertiveness. |
We draw on years of practice, facilitation, organising, and research in human wellbeing, organisational healing, systems practice, and feminist
approaches to care.
WHAT WE DO
ATTUNE TO OUR LUNGS
Community of Practice
A space to breath together.A place for practitioners, facilitators, and leaders who are experimenting with care in the everyday to gather and to learn with peers, share tools, and build language together.
CONNECT TO OUR LUNGS
Co-created Learning Spaces
A space to expand your lungs.For individuals, teams and collectives who want to understand how this work is done through practical, embodied sessions where theory meets practice to make care understandable, felt and actionable.
TEND TO YOUR LUNGS
In-Organisation Partnerships
A space to nurture your capacity to breathe together.For organisations in transition, conflict, growth, or fatigue, we come inside and work alongside you nurturing your lung capacity to breath together over time.
If you’re curious about any of these pathways,
drop us an email and let's talk:[email protected]
CREATING BREATHING ROOM INTERNALLY
A fundamental part of our work is intentionally building and
caring for our own Breathing Room.
We cultivate an internal care network. We intentionally support one another and share responsibility for holding the space of Breathing Room.
Leadership is shared. Power is distributed as equitably as possible, allowing each of us to lead and contribute in different and unique ways.
We honour different interests, values and strengths. We recognise that each person brings unique passions, skills, and capacities, and we support one another in exploring and developing these.
Relationships matter. We make time to connect and care for one another beyond the immediate demands of the work.
We make space to show up as we are. Each person is welcomed in their humanness, in time, space and body, without needing to perform or fit a single way of being.
Difference is valued. We celebrate diverse ways of communicating, thinking, working, and relating.
We hold space for challenge and conflict. We love honest conversations, respectful disagreement, and engaging with questions of power. This is part of how we live and grow together.
We learn and evolve together. Breathing Room is an ongoing practice of reflection, learning, and collective growth.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
| Question | |
|---|---|
| Who is this for? | Care-holders. Leaders, managers, facilitators, organisers, HR and people-culture leads, and anyone holding emotional or relational responsibility inside a team. |
| Do you only work with whole organisations? | No. While we love working organisation-wide to engage at a whole systems level, many engagements begin with a smaller group. A leadership team, a care or people-culture group, a programme team, or a cluster of practitioners who are ready to start. Care infrastructure rarely changes all at once. It usually grows from the inside out. |
| Do we need to be in crisis to work with you? | No. Many organisations come to us because they want to strengthen foundations before things end in crisis. |
| Do you work online or in person? | Both, depending on what is needed and what is possible. We create interactive and creative online and in-person communities and workshops, and we also work inside organisations in person or in hybrid formats. |
| How do we begin? | Start with a conversation. We’ll listen to what you’re facing and explore whether our work feels like a good fit. |
For more information or if you have further questions email us here: [email protected]
Let’s make room to breathe, together.
© 2026 Hands On & Wellbeing Architects | Breathing Room