I hope you can join me for one of the fall classes. The self-healing practices are needed these days. I feel honored to serve so many organizations and communities.

We can navigate the myriad of challenges we are facing with more ease. Doing so makes us smarter. As our bodies enter a restorative state, more oxygen and circulation get to our brains and vital organs. Our brains come out of survival mode more easily and we plug into our exquisite intelligence. We can hear and see each other. We can be in learning and relationship. We can focus more.

Our Fall Cohort for Take Care of Your Heart is forming now.

Our Train-the-Trainer Team for Self-Regulation:Create Habits of Ease is growing!

Self-Regulation helps us navigate each day with a little more ease.

Restorative Anatomy for Self-Regulation helps us learn about our brilliant bodies and minds.

Enjoy these opportunities! Visit PowerOfEaseKeys.Com to sign up.… Continue Reading...

Become a trusted adult to help address the Youth Mental Health Crisis. Join us in growing webs of support for our Youth. We take a two generation approach to mental health. We are working with intergenerational patterns. Together we take the journeys toward wellness. The Calm and Connected Toolkit trainings help communities and networks grow the adult skills needed, and brings in a wealth of wellness practices that are easy to integrate as curriculum in any youth centered programming.

Teresa was a supporting author for the series and integrated Self-Regulation movement breaks into the beautiful curriculum.

Learn more at the website Calm and Connected Toolkit

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation commissioned an article on  Washington State’s Self-Healing Communities: A transformational process model for improving intergenerational health.

The powerful article by Laura Porter, Kimberly Martin, and Rob Anda reflects the learning of the Family Policy Council and our states Community Public Health and Safety Networks.

https://1drv.ms/b/s!AiqfWKZGqfBJgagKHpYZm31vbD5epQ  

Community is at the center of the efforts, community capacity building.  Also key is a complexity and adaptive learning approach to addressing the prevalent issue of the community.  The third essential element is an understanding of trauma and supporting systems and communities to adapt their strategies rooted in understanding of trauma and brain science.

The potential cost savings from taking such an approach are significant.  One of the many things I admire about the work of the Family Policy Council was their commitment to data and measuring their impact and their learning.

The sister article to the one above is a case story that details the level of cost savings secured with small investments. … Continue Reading...

Watch the webinar I led for Public Health Institute of California at the link below. Sue Grinnell is running a learning and innovation lab for California’s Accountable Communities of Health and this was one of the monthly sessions offered.

The discussion questions posed to the ACH Leaders were: 

1. How does Adverse Childhood Experiences and/or Toxic Stress impact your ACH’s Population Health challenge?  What data is available to support this?  You can include information from ACE’s study in your findings.
2. Are you using a Trauma Informed Lens to look at the challenges the community faces?  How could the NEAR Sciences paradigm inform your approach/strategy?
3. Given what we now know about NEAR – how to we design systems that help – rather than systems that add to the burden of ACE’s?  What does this look like across the lifespan?
4. Do you know your ACE Score? Your Resilience Score?   What does NEAR have to offer YOU personally on the journey to hope/healing/health?

For many years,in trauma informed care work, we’ve been saying,  “Everyone needs to know about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s)!” You might be asking what qualifies as an ACE? An ACE is any kind of childhood trauma ranging from physical abuse to loosing someone of importance. The idea is that by answering a serious of 10 questions you are able to create an ACE score, the higher your score is the more likely you are at risk for certain behaviors or health problems in the future. This score is important, however, we also need to incorporate resilience into this equation.

Everyone needs to know about the impact of resilience. Trauma is buffered by the type of care giver response. A person with a high ACE score with support, can be less at risk than someone with a low ACE without support.The resilience score comes from a questionnaire, complementary to the ACE test, that is based on protective factors.… Continue Reading...

The front lines of social justice leadership are often stressful places to stand. The causes, the people, the issues, ask a lot of us.  They ask the best of us when we’re standing in historic trauma fields – looking to find ways to transform the system, transform the situation, and heal ourselves.   We’re looking for the inspiration, the break through into new paradigms that serve our communities.

The NEAR Sciences offer a new paradigm that helps both at a personal level, at a community level and at a systems level.  The NEAR Sciences are:  Neuroscience, Epigenetics, ACE’s (Adverse Childhood Experience), and Resilience.

What the neurosciences are saying is trauma and patterns of toxic stress are deeply imprinted often across generations. Epigenetics shows our DNA is changing based on our environment in the first few years of life.  It also says our brains can heal and we can radically shift how we PERSONALLY respond, and how our COMMUNITIES and SYSTEMS respond to toxic stress or stress related “triggers.”

In Washington State there is a 15 year effort underway to reduce trauma in communities generation to generation informed by the NEAR Sciences. … Continue Reading...

We had a session at our Bowen Island Art of Hosting on the Neuroscience and ACE’s – I offered to share out a suite of resources from the work here in Washington State and also my ever geeky study of the neurosciences, resilience, and healing.   It is a deep passion of mine learning how patterns are in the physical, emotional, mental body and what are the tools and practices that support healing.   I’m profoundly grateful to Laura Porter, Rob Anda, all of my friends at the former Family Policy Council, and SOOOO many others offering the gift of their leadership to these efforts.

Video Resources on ACE’s AND Resilience

Rob Anda, MD, “Adverse Childhood Experiences in our Society.”

Rob Anda, MD “Adverse Childhood Experience, What Do Future Leaders Need to know”

Laura Porter Keynote Address on Flourishing – youtube

Breaking the Cycle of ACE’s in Washington – Laura Porter

Resilience in Education youtube series by Michael Unger

Ace Study DVD Movie Trailer

 Adverse Childhood Experience Study resources:

Adverse Childhood Experiences Fact Sheet  http://www.cdc.gov/ace/ Rob Anda, MD

Find out your ACE score:  http://acestudy.org/ace_score

More on the ACE’s Study http://acestudy.org/home  linking childhood trauma to long term health and social consequences. … Continue Reading...

Last month I hosted the first ever NEAR Sciences Think Tank with over fifty thought leaders from across the country.  The NEAR sciences (neurobiology, epigenetics, adverse childhood experiences & resilience) are such an amazing combination. I’ve been following the neurosciences and work around trauma and toxic Stress for 11 years as part of my work here in Washington.  It’s been an amazing ride to see how these understandings have been brought into our community networks, legislator, early learning programs and into systems and communities across the state.   More formally adding in Epigenetics  is powerful – showing things like how our genetics are changed by our environment early in life.  We are wired to adapt to the circumstances we face… to survive.   Then add Resilience – learning how to thrive and how to “Build Resilience not ACE’s.”

The Think Tank participants came from many disciplines and perspectives.  We used our diversity of experience, training and practice to engage in cross-cutting dialogue.… Continue Reading...