Resilient Teams — Mercurial Flow

Workshop for Advocacy & Movement Teams

Resilient
Teams

A facilitated workshop for advocacy organizations, campaign teams, and nonprofit staff doing high-stakes work. Teams learn to recognize stress before it takes over, stay connected to each other under pressure, and see the larger patterns wearing them down. Not after the campaign ends. In the middle of it.

Bring This Workshop to Your Team The Story Behind This

90 min or 2 hrVirtual or in-person

5–30 peoplePer session

Root · Relate · RiseThe framework

The Reality

It was never about commitment.

Advocacy teams are not burning out because they lack commitment. They are burning out because the infrastructure of care has not kept pace with the intensity of the work.

The timelines are relentless. The emotional labor never fully stops. And the culture of most movement spaces asks people to keep pushing through, to treat rest as something that comes after the campaign, after the legislation passes, after the win. But the work never stops. Which means that moment never comes. The people most committed to the mission are often the first to hit a wall.

Under sustained pressure, communication changes first. People get reactive, or they go quiet. Tension goes unnamed. Assumptions fill the space where a conversation should have happened. What starts as an interpersonal moment can start to look like an individual failure: someone is "difficult," someone is "checked out." Left alone, it settles into resentment and disconnection, and eventually, people leave. This is the pattern Root, Relate, and Rise is built to interrupt.

The Story Behind This

Where this came from.

In 2016, Biola was organizing in Philadelphia during the presidential election. A few weeks out, when everything had sped up and the stakes felt impossibly high, the team's manager called a full stop and gave everyone an evening away from the work, together. There were voter targets to hit, materials to print, volunteers to turn out. And still they went.

"When we returned to work the next day, nothing had changed. Except us."

What she understands now that she didn't have language for then: campaigns don't just demand execution. They demand sustained nervous system activation. Without intentional interruption, that activation builds into burnout, reactivity, and teams that start to fracture under pressure.

In 2017, after years doing work she deeply believed in, that fracture caught up with her. Burnout and grief nearly broke her. The following year, while working a gubernatorial race in Wisconsin, she completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training. That combination, campaign work and embodied practice running in parallel, is where this workshop was born.

Wellness is not a reward for when things slow down. It is the infrastructure that keeps people in the work when they don't.

The Framework

Built on Root · Relate · Rise.

Three movements guide the workshop. Each one gives teams a way to recognize what is happening and respond with more intention: within themselves, with one another, and across the larger systems they work inside.

01 — Root

Root

Stay connected to yourself.

What is happening in me?

Teams begin by recognizing how pressure affects the way they show up. Participants learn to notice automatic stress patterns, create a pause, and build more choice into how they respond.

Automatic → Present

02 — Relate

Relate

Stay human with each other.

What is happening between us?

Pressure changes communication. Assumptions increase. Listening drops. Tone shifts. This gives teams shared language for noticing and addressing tension before it becomes resentment, disconnection, or turnover.

Avoidance → Repair

03 — Rise

Rise

Act with integrity for the whole.

What is ours to understand and change together?

Teams zoom out from individual incidents to see the larger patterns shaping how they work. Together, they identify where stress enters, where it accumulates, what is within their influence, and where a small shift could create meaningful relief.

Fragmented → Collective

What Happens Inside

What your team walks away with.

A clearer understanding of stress patterns

A shared way to recognize what happens when pressure rises: within individuals, between people, and across the team.

Tools to interrupt automatic reactions

Simple practices to help people notice, pause, and create more choice before urgency, frustration, or shutdown takes over.

Language for addressing tension earlier

Practical ways to name what is happening and address difficult moments before they turn into resentment, disconnection, or turnover.

A map of the patterns affecting your team

A facilitated opportunity to see where stress enters, how it moves through the team, where it accumulates, and where collective action could create relief.

One small experiment to take forward

The team leaves with a concrete practice or change to test together, not a vague commitment to "do better."

Is This a Fit

This workshop is right for your team if.

Good fit

Your team is in an intense campaign cycle, a transition, or recovering from a high-pressure season
You're a decision-maker, executive director, or program lead watching your team run on empty
You believe taking care of your people is not separate from the mission. It is the mission
You want something practical that meets your team where they are, not a lecture about self-care
You're ready to invest in team infrastructure before someone hits a wall

Not the right fit

You're looking for a general team-building offering not designed for the pace and pressure of mission-driven work
Your organization is not yet ready to invest in team infrastructure

About the Facilitator

Movement experience meets embodied practice.

Since 2009, Biola Jeje has worked inside political campaigns, advocacy organizations, and movement spaces across electoral politics, racial justice, environmental justice, and economic justice work.

She is not an outside consultant. She is someone who has been in the rooms.

She brings over a decade of experience in political organizing alongside her training as a somatic practitioner, RYT-500 instructor, and Reiki practitioner. The Resilient Teams Workshop draws from all of it. Her organizing background is not a footnote to the practice. They are equally weighted, and inseparable.

Former Communications Director, electoral and advocacy campaigns
RYT-500 Certified Yoga Instructor
200-hour training, Lighthouse Yoga Center, Washington D.C. (2018)
300-hour training, Ulu Yoga School, Bali (2022)
Reiki Level 1 Practitioner
Levels 1–3, Integrative Somatic Parts Work, Embody Institute
Former Board Member, The Participatory Budgeting Project
Clients include BYP100, Vote Run Lead, Re:Power, Southern Vision Alliance

Resilient Campaigners Full Background

What People Say

From people who have worked with Biola.

It is such a treat to have someone who understands the demands of organizing and what it takes from us. Biola helped restore, ground, and shift our shared culture toward one of healing. Having her at our convening was pivotal.

Selamawit Gashaw | Organizer, BYP100

In organizing convening spaces full of ideas and difficult conversations, it was invaluable to have a leader who could truly hold space while also offering concrete tools for breathing and movement. I highly recommend Biola for your convening.

Bryan Perlmutter | Piece By Piece Strategies

Working with Biola over the past two years has been an absolute delight. Her services directly meet our alumni's needs, delivered with both thoughtfulness and precision. If you're looking for someone who is both deeply intentional and highly effective, look no further.

Sagal Handulle | Alumni Community Manager, Re:Power

Investment

Built for your team's context.

Resilient Teams Workshop

2-hour in-person or 90-minute virtual session. Available year-round. Pricing is confirmed on a short discovery call, based on your team's size and context.

Schedule a Discovery Call

Common Questions

Frequently asked.

Can this be done virtually?+

Yes. The virtual session runs 90 minutes and is designed to carry the full experience online. It is not a scaled-back version.

How many people can participate?+

The workshop is designed for teams of 5 to 30. If your team is larger, reach out and we can talk through options that make sense.

What if we are mid-campaign and cannot pause?+

The workshop is designed for teams in motion, not teams on pause. The tools are built to be integrated into high-pressure periods, not reserved for the other side of them. A two-hour investment during a hard season is not a pause. It is a reset.

What's included, and what does it cost?+

The full 2-hour in-person or 90-minute virtual facilitated session, a pre-workshop intake to tailor the experience to your team's context, and materials your team can reference and return to after the session. Pricing depends on your team's size and format, and is confirmed on the discovery call.

What happens after I book a discovery call?+

You and Biola will connect for a short call to confirm fit, talk through your team's specific context and needs, and lock in your date. If it isn't the right fit, she'll say so directly and point you somewhere that is.

Take the Next Step

Your team is your most important organizing asset.

The people doing this work are not replaceable. Protecting their capacity is not a soft priority. It is a strategic one. If your team needs this, now is the time to act on it.