NEW COURSE: From Climate Stress to Strength: An Embodied Response to a Changing Environment (8 weeks)

$400 CAD for Canadians. Two scholarships are also available.

Many people are struggling to cope with the climate crisis. Feelings of anxiety, dread, and helplessness are at an all-time high. Everywhere we look, we see people suffering. Fire season, catastrophic storms, and the loss of plant and animal species are the new normal. We can no longer escape the impacts of a world in distress.

How can we possibly respond any other way than shutting down when we are both experiencing disasters today and living with the uncertainty or dread about catastrophes to come?

Research corroborates what many cultures have known since time immemorial. In times of crisis, we need practices that move our grief and fear and bring us into connection in ways that foster the clarity to know how best to be of service. These innate and indigenous practices are largely missing in popular culture – outsourced instead to an overreliance on cognitive reasoning and tools of distraction and dissociation.

Harnessing Eugene Gendlin’s embodied Focusing Process, this 8-week course will create a gathering place for professionals to learn to hold space for the complex interplay of climate emotions in their work and simultaneously, to also show up as individuals. Combining current neuroscience, trauma research, and ancient wisdom practices we will develop an understanding of our patterned threat responses and explore new ways of showing up in the world with the power of our intuition, and clarity of how best to be of service.

Focusing is an evidence-based, somatic, or embodied mindfulness practice with six-steps that deepens our connection to our inner knowing which Gendlin termed the “felt sense.” In being with these physical sensations, their meanings become clear and the process brings change.

Course outcomes

Each session includes an embodied practice, experiential learning, and opportunities for sharing. There will also be optional peer dyads (Focusing partnerships, see below) and readings to supplement your learning between classes. 

Outcomes:

• Understand habituated stress responses in yourself and others

• Build your own resilience through somatic practices

• Experience a deeper connection to community and belonging

• Enhance your intuition or inner knowing of how to best be of service

• Honour and explore grief in ways that shift us out of isolation

• Unpack climate psychology to help place ourselves in this particular moment

By the end of this 8 week course you will experience a paradigm shift, feel less stuckness or burnout, while being clear on the action(s) that are meaningful for you now.

Who is this for:

This course welcomes diverse identities and backgrounds. We welcome professionals working on climate issues or in adjacent fields including mental health, education, community organizing, and journalism. We welcome people who have been in this area for years or those just beginning to feel the magnitude of this existential threat. You might be a therapist, coach or other professional for which climate change is now a pressing issue for your clients or staff.

This course is not appropriate for anyone experiencing an acute psychological crisis.

Timing and other details

Next Groups:

• Tuesdays, June 4th to July 23, 4-5 pm Eastern **REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS MAY 28TH**

• Following classes - dates to be determined. Please email me at annette@pupa.ca if you cannot make the above course to let us know when you would be available for this training.

Group size: For the sake of community building and intimacy each group has a cap of 16 participants.

Fees: $400 US/$400CAD
Canadians can use this discount code to access the course at par: CLIMATECAD

Course location: Zoom

Course teachers: Annette Dubreuil (Coordinator-in-training), Jenn Wesanko (Climate Change Communicator, Somatic Psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and Focusing Trainer)

Scholarships: Two needs-based scholarships are available. Please email us to enquire.

Focusing partnerships: involves meeting between classes to practice, in an exchange of Focusing and listening. You can also opt to be assessed for the Proficiency in Focusing Partnership Award provided through The International Focusing Institute (TIFI) in the final few weeks of the course (fees through TIFI apply: you must be a member and there is a processing fee).