Instruction: 2.5 hours | Practical Application: 1.5 hours

“Safety is not the absence of threat but the presence of connection.” - Gabor Mate

We always start with safety. Without it, the rest of the work is impossible.

In this session, we build a collective understanding of the key concepts used throughout the rest of the course, emphasizing the role of the nervous system in the stress response. The primary objective of the instruction in the first session is to create a safe connection to the body and to normalize the response to stress as both protective and adaptive. The practicum component will provide tools for attuning to stress and will introduce resourcing skills as a response to stress.

Instruction: 2.5 hours | Practical Application: 1.5 hour

Summary:

“The only way out is through.” - Robert Frost

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 the instruction in the second session is create a collective understanding of the biopsychosocial experience of emotions while the practicum component introduces 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.

Instruction: 2.5 hours | Practical Application: 1.5 hours

“You will not survive by self-care alone.” - Cole Arthur Riley

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 our third and final session. We use the prinicple’s from the first two sessions 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.