The Art of Facilitation
a trauma awareness training
Holding space is an art.
Facilitation is a craft that honors the connection between people.
Coming from an embodied approach, strong facilitation skills can create a kind of magnetism that makes holding space for others more magical and less stressful.
This workshop acknowledges that everyone is a facilitator.
We’re all facilitating our relationships at home, with family and within our community environments. And we all bring unique and dynamic histories with us into the shared spaces we participate in. Acknowledging this can help us to make space for everyone’s lived experiences and helps us to better navigate conflict and grief living both within us and those we're connected to.
When we approach our relationship both with ourselves and others from an embodied and energetically aware state, we can find deeper connection in spaces that are inherently meant to support growth, learning and human connection.
This workshop series covers and explores:
Self-care approaches to strengthen your capacity to hold space for yourself and others
Understanding trauma from a somatic approach
Body-centered approaches for energetic awareness and nervous system regulation to support your responses to stress, triggers from conflict, grief and chronic fatigue
An introduction to Polyvagal theory, co-regulation and interpersonal dynamics
Ways to support your responses to triggers from your students / clients / employees / loved ones
Understanding the effects of generational trauma on both you and those you’re connected to
This course is for you if you want more clarity and support about how to be more grounded, present and connected when you hold space for the people in your communities, work environments and your family.
Enjoy 3+ hours of video + audio content!
This series includes:
7 Class Video Recordings
3 Guided Meditation + Somatic Practices (mp3)
Journey Within Handbook + Guide (pdf)
Additional worksheets (pdf)
Journal Questions + Resources
This pre-recorded class series is a combination of lecture, guided meditation practices and somatic awareness exercises.
This is a self-study course you can take at your own pace with download access to all materials.
Experience a sneak peek from this course with this Nervous System Hold exercise:
This course is meant for individuals. If you’re part of an organization who’d like to host an extended version of this training live for a group please contact me.
research + practices that influenced this workshop
This workshop is informed by practices from: somatic trauma therapy approaches, energy healing modalities, breathwork, bodywork, Body-Mind centering, playback theatre, sociometry (and social mapping) and positive youth development.
more about my background
I have worked as a facilitator working with youth ages 11-21 and adults since. 2003. I’ve worked as a Teaching Artist in Chicago Public Schools with Silk Road Rising Theatre Company, Victory Gardens, Columbia College’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships, Insight Arts and the Shanti Foundation for Peace. I’ve also worked as a program coordinator and youth worker with the Howard Area Community Center alongside several public and charter schools and have guest facilitated at Smith College and North Park University. I currently have a private healing practice and work with teenagers and adults both 1:1 and in groups to support the process of embodiment and healing.
This class series recognizes that too many of us are living in the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system.
It also recognizes there is no single definitive solution for change. It suggests that a good place to start is with an awareness of the body and understanding of the body as communicator.
More about my story….
As a performing artist, arts educator and healing arts practitioner I have a unique background that’s played an integral role in my facilitation approach. Much of my work in schools and community programs in particular has been to help support the youth of this world come into deeper contact with themselves and their true essence. I’ve been in classrooms as an artist-in-residence helping students connect more deeply with writing through theatre games, story exploration and scene writing as well as working in after school programs and community centers helping students be better equipped with social/emotional skills to utilize during the school day during their classes and approaches to learning and self-development.
I’ve also worked with adults, training college aged mentors and staff in various non-profit programs to hold space for others within the arts, social justice and healing modalities. I’ve trained healers in Reiki and running their own healing practice.
From all these experiences I have seen how working both as a solo practitioner and within institutions is draining for many of us in different ways. Especially in institutional settings, much is stacked up against teachers, social workers, teaching artists and group facilitators. Resources and time are limited. Expectations are high. And trauma responses amongst everyone (adults included) occur daily, especially after the last 2.5 years.
I know that too many of us have been asking: do we quit to tend to the burnout (and maybe that is a very legitimate need for some of us to do for a period of time in order to restore) OR do we ask the systems we work within and our approach within them to change to more sustainable models?
Can our work with clients, groups, employees and classrooms be more playful? More nourishing?
I've come to find that working from an awareness of how trauma is stored in the body, and particularly the nervous system is an essential tool in facilitation work. I’ve also come to find that mental health has to be approached as an extension of a larger awareness of the body and the energy field.
What I love most about facilitating workshops is bringing in a creative awareness and approach to being alive, and this comes from my background in theatre, movement and writing. I pull from a rich background of training and experiences in a way that creates safe space for participants to tune in to their body and authentically express themselves and hold what they've been through. I believe embodiment, creativity and trauma awareness is the place from which healing and social change can find real legs to stand on that is sustainable and ultimately life giving.