Workshop: The Integration of Somatic Interventions to Support Equity Leadership and Work Spaces
For an organization to create sustainable and equitable changes to its culture, it is essential to understand how the connection between the brain and body impacts human behavior. Trauma, stress, and systemic oppression impact us as individuals and as a collective. This impairs our ability to create positive changes, particularly in high-pressure situations. Without the ability to pivot, our nervous systems become dysregulated, reducing our ability to attend and focus. Our capacity to emotionally regulate and connect with others is impaired, making it difficult to work collaboratively towards solutions. Focusing on evidenced-based somatic interventions can support leaders in cultivating an environment of safety, awareness, connection, learning, understanding, and equity in the workplace.
Objectives:
Review the impact of trauma, stress, and systemic oppression
Understand the connection between the brain, body, and behaviors
Learn the skills needed to foster trauma-informed equity in work and leadership
Demonstrate the use of somatic interventions to increase safety, awareness, connection, learning, understanding, and equitable change
Duration: 1 hour 15 minutes (75 minutes)
Facilitator: Shae Ivie-Williams, LPC, CPCS (She/her)
Identities:
Black, Queer, Neurodivergent, Cisgendered Woman
Shae is a licensed professional counselor and trauma expert with over 12 years of experience in the mental health field. Since beginning her career in community mental health, Shae has dedicated herself to serving marginalized communities by identifying significant gaps in conventional therapeutic approaches. Shae resolved to unearth the vital components necessary to support underserved populations. As she worked with her clients, she recognized the inherent embodiment of trauma and the absence of somatic-based interventions in mainstream curricula. This sparked her professional and personal journey to becoming a scholar of somatic, body-based interventions. Shae is formally trained in several somatic-based therapy techniques: Advanced Level Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Shae is now committed to spreading awareness of the ways that systemic trauma and inequity can stifle our ability to adapt and grow. Trauma causes dysregulation of our nervous systems, leading to significant disruptions in our inner and outer environments. By integrating somatic interventions to support equity in leadership and work, organizations can cultivate spaces of safety, connectedness, and understanding among team members and promote lasting, equitable change.