Sima Gatea

Conscious leadership coaching and facilitation

I coach, train and facilitate people to connect with their inner capacities for awareness, connection, healing and embodied wisdom. My approach is rooted in Somatic Experiencing, Compassionate Inquiry, Sufi Psychology and Dalai Lama Fellowship teachings.At the heart of my work is the intention to hold spaces where people feel seen, heard, safe, cared for, inspired and resourced to express their authenticity, passions and talents; a state which I believe will ultimately nourish more peace — within themselves, in their communities, and in the world at large.As a coach, facilitator and social entrepreneur, I know that the impact we have in our projects, personal circles and larger communities, is directly linked with our own level of self-connection, awareness and wellbeing. I am committed to holding spaces of contemplative leadership, self-awareness and healing in community.I offer all my services in English, French and German.

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Somatic Coaching

I use a blended approach of classic Transformative Coaching methods together with Compassionate Inquiry, a psychotherapeutic method created by Dr. Gabor Maté and Somatic Experiencing, a nervous system-informed practice for healing trauma. I am trained to hold spaces of attunement, enabling me to show up for you from a place of present awareness, warm-heartedness and a regulated nervous system, allowing us to create safety through co-regulation.
This kind of space, together with my intentional questions and deep listening enables people to feel seen, heard and held. Together, we will explore your questions, doubts and wishes, uncovering what is holding you back and supporting you to move forward in a grounded, capable and authentic way.

Community Healing Circles

I hold six to twelve week journeys for committed groups of people to explore their inner worlds in community. Using methods from Somatic Experiencing, Compassionate Inquiry, Sufi Psychology and contemplative teachings from the Dalai Lama Fellowship, we dive into a deep exploration of Self; strengthening our inner resources; inquiring into our somatic, emotional and cognitive experience of safety and belonging; sharing personal stories and strengthening our capacity for self-compassion, intuition and healing. The power of collectively witnessing each other and being witnessed by the group with curiosity and compassion has profound healing potential.
For more information on upcoming community healing circles and sign-up, visit the link above.

Facilitation & Workshops

I facilitate warm and engaging spaces and journeys for people to connect, learn and collaborate in safety. Next to my years of experience facilitating my own programs with my non-profit SINGA, I also trained in the digital and in-person Network Facilitation Training of ChangemakerXchange.
I have designed and delivered over one hundred workshops and capacity building formats on topics including:
The Inner & Outer Architecture of Belonging
Somatic Awareness 101
Insights from Sufi Psychology
Cultivating a Baraka Mindset
Inclusive & Conscious Language
Systems Change & Impact Strategy

Mentoring for social impact

Since founding my own social startup in 2015, I have mentored hundreds of founders, leaders and teams around the world to develop their social impact strategy, theory of change, purpose, vision and values in the fields of migration-inclusion, sustainability, youth empowerment, education, gender equality and poverty reduction. My strengths include: identifying impact indicators, building strategies to address root causes and supporting organisations to shift their language, structures and practices to centre inclusion and belonging. I also advise on narrative change, strategic and inclusive communication.

A glance into my own journey

Having co-founded SINGA Berlin, a leading non-profit in the field of migration and inclusion in Germany, I know how easy it is to lose yourself in the process of building a team, organisation and community for everyone but yourself. I also know the difference between talking and walking the talk. At the United Nations in Geneva, I spoke about the power of belonging. At the Obama Foundation, I proposed to President Barack Obama, that global peace can only stem from inner peace and asked him whether there was space for mindfulness in global politics (I guess we have our answer). All this to say, that I brought my questions to the highest stages and yet I struggled to apply these values to my own life. I learned the hard way about the consequences of prioritising work and impact over my own health. Unaware of my own boundaries, being emotionally attached and having unattainable expectations of myself, I ultimately experienced burnout, anxiety and depression. Naturally, this affected the wellbeing of our team, the sustainability of our impact and ultimately my own quality of life. This led me to engage in a deep process of introspection, contemplation and healing. My trainings in programs like the Dalai Lama Fellowship, Transformative Coaching, Compassionate Inquiry, Somatic Experiencing and Sufi Psychology have all contributed to my own awareness building and healing journey and I feel called to share this with others.

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Short and sweet biography

Some of the earliest themes that influenced my life included questions around identity, home and belonging. I grew up in Toronto, Canada with German-Iraqi roots. As the only mixed one in my family, I always felt a bit different. Code switching became my mother tongue and later drew me to do a Master's in Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg. There, I started my community building work, exploring how to create spaces of belonging, bringing together newcomers and locals that had so much in common but would never meet. When I co-founded SINGA in Berlin, we brought this community building and narrative change around migration and diversity to a higher level. After creating nation-wide capacity building programs on unconscious bias and inclusive mindsets, leaders that I was training in the field told me I had a coaching style. This is what led me to first explore the world of coaching and later healing, through my work with the Dalai Lama Fellowship, Compassionate Inquiry and Somatic Experiencing. I am now merging worlds, uniting the forces of community, healing and belonging. My dream is for more people to create spaces of belonging for others, from a space of belonging within.

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