Multi-Session (6 hours)
A Call to Action invites participants to examine the complexities of self-care and wellness as a birthright. We explore how the roots of our multi-layered behaviors impact our daily lives, mind, body, and spirit, both positively and negatively. Together over 4 sessions, participants will learn to recognize body, mind, and spirit disharmony and gain tools that include: ancestral connection, guided meditation, five element theory, herbal medicine, acupressure, aroma therapy, sound therapy, qi gong, and tapping – all to create an environment that fosters the practice of intentional, loving self-care and healing.
Self-Paced (2 hours)
Burnout and compassion fatigue can diminish the way people feel about their work and contribute to things like turnover, especially for helping professionals. However, it is possible to combat these issues by building and promoting self-care and self-compassion. This course introduces definitions of burnout and compassion fatigue, helps learners recognize signs and symptoms in themselves and others, and offers proactive strategies to protect or improve wellness in the face of work-related stress.
Single-Session (2 hours)
This foundational course shares research and concrete strategies for having compassionate conversations. It will help learners develop self-compassion, strengthen reflective listening skills, and engage with the spirit of Motivational Interviewing: acceptance, evocation, collaboration, and compassion.
Multi-Session (16 hours)
Nalanda Institute’s Compassion-Based Resilience Training (CBRT) is a complete, evidence-based training in stress-reduction and self-healing developed and tested at the university hospitals of Columbia and Cornell, where it has been offered continuously since 1998. The Academy offers this course to help NYC non-profit social service providers strengthen mindfulness and compassion practices that can offer protection from the stress and trauma you may encounter in doing your jobs.
Multi-Session (10 hours)
Connecting Through Art and Creative Expression equips learners to engage children and young people through art-based experiences. Participants will learn to use art to build rapport, trust, and psychological safety in relationships with young people who have been impacted by violence. This course is centered in trauma-informed theory and practices, and is taught by licensed creative arts therapists. Each week, participants will explore a different kind of art material and experience the benefits they can offer. Participants will be guided to apply these techniques between course sessions and learn how to facilitate art activities within their own scope of practice at their organization. In the final week, each participant will present on their experience of using art and creative expression with children and young people impacted by violence.
Multi-Session (12 hours)
This course explores the healing methods that have allowed communities to survive and thrive in the midst of intergenerational, complex, and mass trauma. Beginning with an exploration of how we ourselves can cultivate healing practices, we then tap into how our communities and lineages have cultivated wellness throughout time. Together, we share healing modalities and practices that have allowed our families and communities to thrive and overcome adversity.
Multi-Session (16 hours)
This 8-session course will enhance participants’ capacity to navigate conditions of fear and uncertainty by orienting to our biological and communal practices for safety and belonging. Participants will build individual and communal resilience skills that support them to act courageously, and encourage those they lead to do so as well, as we collectively survive a historical period rife with existential threats and the attempted erasure of social equity. This course includes both education and practice, drawing on Black Feminist poetic, cultural, and academic lineages, as well as Black and indigenous approaches to trauma healing and cultural practice.
Multi-Session (8 hours)
Foundations of Care is the first in a series of courses to prepare supervisors to advance racial equity and trauma-informed care within organizations. Through co-design with a cross-section of NYC social service providers, the Academy developed this course to help supervisors orient toward practices for acknowledging and mitigating the harms of persistent systemic inequalities – on yourselves, your supervisees, your organizations, and the communities you serve.
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
One of the challenging aspects of working with bereaved children is how different grief in children and adolescents looks from adult grief. We will discuss the hallmarks of grief in children, the grief experience through the lens of child development, and tools for supporting bereaved youth. Additionally, we will review how to identify the difference between typical grief experiences in children and those that may signal a need for further evaluation or support.
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
Learn foundational concepts of grief through scenes from classic and contemporary film and television. These scenes will bring to life concepts such as acute grief, integrated grief, ambiguous loss, prolonged grief, ritual, complicated spiritual grief, and attachment theory.
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
Gain a helpful foundation for understanding and addressing grief, loss, and healing. This course presents research-based information and addresses common myths about grief. We will start exploring ways grief and loss may impact our work and wellbeing, and steps we can take to support ourselves and others. This will be a helpful primer for those planning to participate in the multi-session course, Understanding Grief and Loss: Supporting Bereaved Community Members.
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
Traumatic and sudden losses, including those caused by homicide, suicide, accidental overdose, disasters, and accidents, can be particularly difficult losses to bear. The survivors of such losses can experience both grief and post-traumatic symptoms, as well as stigma, isolation, anger, and guilt. We will examine the phenomena of traumatic and sudden losses, learn what the research says about such grief experiences, and gain tools and strategies for supporting survivors of traumatic and sudden losses.
Multi-Session (10 hours)
This advanced 5-week course offers an immersive exploration of art-based techniques for empowering children, teens, and adolescents who have experienced trauma. Building on the Academy’s introductory course, Connecting Through Art and Creative Expression, this course will help learners expand and strengthen skills to support young people through creative expression. The techniques in this course can be used with young people who are affected by violence in a range of ways, including in their communities, homes, schools, the immigration process, or other oppressive systems.
Single-Session (3.5 hours)
In this training, you will learn motivational interviewing approaches that you can immediately apply in your role as a helping professional. This course will be a fast-paced, highly interactive introductory course about three key skills in motivational interviewing.
Multi-Session (9 hours)
This two-part course integrates theoretical frameworks with practical communication skills to consider how we can bring a more holistic approach to our work with people who use drugs. The first session introduces Dr. Zinberg’s “Drug, Set, Setting” framework to develop a multidimensional understanding of drug use, examining how pharmacological properties, individual characteristics, and societal factors interact. The second session introduces Motivational Interviewing techniques that you can use to help community members develop their own insight, grow confidence in their capacity to make changes, and honor their autonomy—core elements of self-determination theory and facilitating meaningful change.
Single-Session (2 hours)
Led by licensed creative art therapists, this workshop invites you into a journey of artistic discovery through an open studio approach. Participants will be introduced to a variety of art materials and creative techniques, then encouraged to develop your own artistic voice through independent creation.
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
The loss of a colleague or client can often reverberate through an entire organization. Often, organizations are uncertain how to best support their employees and the clients they serve when a death has a system-wide impact. In this course, we will review research-backed best practices for responding to organizational losses.
Single-Session (3 hours)
This experiential workshop introduces meditation as a secular and supportive practice to reduce stress and anxiety and improve interpersonal relationships and overall wellness. We will explore how to access meditation, and ways it can benefit us, in the context of social stress and challenges. This workshop will incorporate teachings from Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a scientifically researched program developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 for the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Multi-Session (10.5 hours)
This advanced course helps learners develop skills to attend to the emotional needs of people who are grieving. Drawing on current research and clinical practices, learners will deepen their understanding of what grief is and its emotional, physiological, and social impacts. This is an experiential course where learners gain concrete skills to help people process the pain of loss in 1:1 conversations and bereavement support groups. You will strengthen skills to cultivate presence with clients, validate others’ experiences, and support meaning-making and rituals, among others. This highly interactive course involves self-reflection, active listening, experiential learning, and skills practice in small groups.
Prerequisite: Understanding Grief and Loss: Supporting Bereaved Community Members
Single-Session (2 hours)
This course is designed for NYC non-profit care providers who support individuals and families navigating migration. Participants explore the impacts of migration-related trauma, including displacement, family separation, acculturation stress, and legal uncertainty, while learning trauma-informed, culturally responsive approaches to assessment and support. The course also emphasizes practical strategies for fostering safety, resilience, and healing while promoting provider wellbeing.
Multi-Session (9 hours)
This three-part series will be a collaborative reimaging of the traditional SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment) framework through a critical, compassionate lens that centers client autonomy and recognizes the complex factors influencing substance use. Together we will challenge ourselves to move beyond conventional medical models, exploring how we might develop more nuanced approaches that acknowledge diverse experiences of drug use and pathways to change.
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
We will explore the multiple ways systemic inequality and related harms impact ourselves and our communities. Through examining new and emerging research on trauma and healing, we will explore the rich and diverse tools that support physical and emotional wellness, that have been led in communities and passed down through generations. Focusing on healing tools, we will explore and discuss our own lineages – those cultural practices we learn from the places and people we come from.
Self-Paced (1.25 hours)
This 3-part series will allow participants to explore their grief and its possible constituent elements (fear, anxiety, outrage, apathy, hopelessness, despair, and more) as they are experienced in relation to the legacies of loss in many marginalized communities, including those associated with gentrification and the geo-socio-political realities of our time. Participants will gain experience with life-affirming contemplative practices that can be used toward ongoing personal, interpersonal, and communal insight, empowerment, and transformation.
This series includes:
Session I: Processing Sociopolitical Grief with Joyful Empowerment
Session II: Moving with the Movements Toward More Just Behavioral Health
Session III: Rewriting an Equitable Future of Human Service Provision (Available soon)
Single-Session (1.5 hours)
While grief is often associated with the death of a loved one, we know that grief can accompany all sorts of loss experiences, including the loss of a job, the loss of health or functioning, and even the loss of a dream. This course draws on current research, contemporary grief and loss theory, and clinical experience to discuss strategies for coping with non-death losses and supporting community members who are grieving non-death losses.
Multi-Session (7.5 hours)
This course introduces current research about grief, loss, attachment, and resilience, along with helpful strategies for supporting bereaved people. Participants will learn culturally responsive and person-centered ways to support community members, employees, and co-workers who are impacted by grief, including when someone may benefit from therapeutic support. We will also explore how our personal experiences of loss can impact our work with bereaved community members. This is an interactive course that involves presentations, film, discussion, and role plays.
This course satisfies the prerequisite for the Skills-Based Certificate Program, Principles of Grief Support.
