presentations
There is no substitute for stories.
They carry a kind of power that ripples far beyond the present moment. They offer the audience something to hold on to. They stick in ways that facts and figures never will. And they are my favorite way to create a connection to my own experience and to the world around me; so, from keynotes to breakouts, from small seminars to a packed house, I promise to share the sort of stories that provide practical tools while also inspiring lasting change.
Want to know more about I offer?
Great! We’ll start with my signature offering, but also offer some other areas of expertise below. If you don’t see what you’re looking for, reach out to me directly to customize a presentation for you and your people.
This is it - the thing I love to talk about the most. It is the culmination of my work - both personal and professional - over the past decade. This is the place where all of that stuff about our bodies gets translated as practical tools offered to a workforce that is always stretched too thin.
This is Unburdened: A Somatic Approach to the Stress Cycle.
It is so hard to be human.
Competing priorities abound, relentless personal and professional expectations meet us on every front, and at the end of the day, we are often left with too little time to be able to do anything about the situational stress that saturates our lives. And so we just keep going, often living with an excess of physical, mental, and emotional strain because we don’t have the tools to live any other way.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
We are biologically wired to move stress through our bodies, allowing us to complete the stress cycle without adding one single thing to our to-do list. We only need someone who can show us how.
Unburdened: A Somatic Approach to Completing the Stress Cycle is a collection of content designed to connect you to the inherent wisdom of your body and teach you how to use your body to complete the stress cycle instead of being endlessly stuck in it. Through a combination of instruction and practical application that focuses on three key areas, you will both understand and experience your body in a new way, a way that allows for relief and encourages safe connection to the world around you.
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We always start with safety. Without it, the rest of the work is impossible
In every Unburdened presentation, we build a collective understanding of the key concepts used throughout the rest of the presentation, emphasizing the role of the nervous system in the stress response. The primary objective of this instruction is to create a safe connection to the body and to normalize the response to stress as both protective and adaptive. Tools for attuning to stress and resourcing will be provided.
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We have been conditioned to believe that our success is at least partially dependent on our ability to separate the way we feel from the way we work, and yet, nothing could be further from the truth. The best work is the work that has been motivated by drive, commitment, passion, and purpose and every one of those attributes is rooted in the experience of emotion.
But the trick is this:
We have to make as much room for difficult or painful emotions as we do for the positive and productive ones if we have any hope of becoming unstuck from stress, and so this is where we direct our focus in the second session - away from avoidance and toward developing an ability to tolerate sensations of every sort.
The primary objective of this part of the instruction is to create a collective understanding of the biopsychosocial experience of emotions while also introducing tools to expand the window of tolerance for sensations in the body. Said differently, we can’t shift something we can’t sense, so our ability to complete the stress cycle is dependent on our skill for expanding our tolerance for sensation.
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We live in a cultural context that touts self-care as the solution for stress, and so we schedule the appropriate appointments and carve out time for ourselves, but even our best efforts seem to only provide temporary relief. Why is that? What isn’t working about this solo approach to solving stress?
The answer is sociality - the inherent human capacity for social connection that is also a biological imperative for survival and well-being. Because of sociality, stress cannot be solved in isolation; instead, it is exacerbated by it.
Completing the stress cycle requires reciprocal relationship, and so this is what we do in this part of the presentation; we use the principles we’ve already explored and apply them to creating a collective agreement about how we will function together. We create community around a common goal. We commit to a way forward together so that we never have to “go it alone” again.
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"Safety not as in the absence of threat, but as in the presence of connection." -Gabor Mate
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“The only way out is through.” - Robert Frost
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"You will not survive by self care alone." - Cole Arthur Rile
Now, a few words about the other work I’ve done…
A moment of silence to honor where it all began - the TEDx talk that took ten years off my life. My first big, brave attempt at taking a stage and telling the truth. After TED, I was being invited into all sorts of spaces to offer a new way to understand wellness. To this day, talking about what keeps us well is one of my favorite things to share. A few of those specific topics can be found below:
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Yes, it’s a real thing! Yes, it produces better outcomes. Yes, it will change your life! Inquire here to find out more.
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An intro to what it means to learn how to trust yourself WITH yourself.
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An exploration of the ways we can use movement to help us come home to ourselves.
But then it went beyond TED and weight-neutral wellness…
I started to ask questions about really keeps us well in the workplace and before I developed Unburdened, I found myself exploring these topics:
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Together we’ll center a framework for measurable action that creates real change around DEIB initiatives.
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Want something better than spa days when it comes to self care? Super! I’ve got plenty of stories to make self care sustainable for your team.
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Yes, I promise to keep everyone clothed; but I also promise to invite you and your team to become “leaders without layers,” the kind that can create a workplace that centers radical authenticity. This one is a fan-favorite!