All Scheduled Dates
The November Cohort will meet the following Thursdays from 10:00am-11:15am:
- November 5
- November 12
- November 19
- December 3
- December 10
- December 17
Applications close 10/15
Course Type
Multi-Session
Course Length
7.5 hours
QUESTIONS?
Email [email protected]
ATTENDANCE POLICY
We expect participants in the Academy's cohort-based courses to attend all sessions. Each week builds on and reinforces the prior weeks. Your consistent presence also supports other cohort members, who you will learn with in an interactive setting.
Participants who attend at least 5/6 sessions will receive a certificate of completion from the Academy.
Embodied Presence with People Navigating Migration
Cultivating Mindfulness and Somatic-Based Skills
DESCRIPTION
This multi session course is designed for NYC non-profit care providers who witness and can help address the emotional, psychological, and systemic challenges experienced by individuals and families navigating migration. It expands on the brief course, Responding to Immigration-Related Trauma, by offering opportunities for deeper engagement with the embodied and relational practices introduced in that course.
As humans, there is a universality in the ways we experience stress, distress, and trauma. Threats to our survival or connection with others activate a range of automatic responses, including fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop. As providers who serve people navigating migration, you may witness the impacts of stress and trauma on your clients and participate in their care, “holding the rim” of their suffering, while processing your own.
Through this multi-session course, we explore how the impacts of pre-migration adversity, displacement, acculturation stress, family separation, and ongoing legal uncertainty show up somatically in our individual and collective bodies. We will also explore ways to meet the most common responses to trauma, using mindfulness and somatic-based practices to self-regulate and be present with clients.
We will practice grounding and containment skills as a form of resistance and resilience to oppression. A central focus of this course is the role of providers in witnessing, holding, safely discharging, and somatically transforming distress. These are essential skills for supporting clients who carry complex trauma while also tending to your well-being as providers. Through a trauma-informed and culturally grounded lens, this multi-session course emphasizes relational safety, attuned communication, and strategies that foster empowerment, stabilization, and healing.
WHAT TO EXPECT
This multi-session course is experiential in nature and has a dual focus on client and provider care. Participants are invited to explore with their bodies the somatic-based tools and techniques that will be offered each week. Through repeated and gentle practice, learners will increase confidence in how to effectively meet clients who are experiencing distress or trauma. You will also gain tools to protect yourself as you witness trauma, and reduce burnout and compassion fatigue.
During the course, participants can expect to be on camera, speak aloud, use the chat, and physically move your bodies (as you are able). You will engage with others in a large group and pairs or small groups. Please note that there may be participants with personal and direct experience with migration and immigration. Self-disclosure is neither required nor expected.
COURSE OUTLINE
Each session includes:
- An arriving practice
- Defining the trauma response
- Somatic signs and symptoms in our clients
- How each trauma response shows up at work and the impact on providers
- Somatic tools
- Closing practice
Session 1: Migration Stressors, Somatics, & the Window of Capacity
Description
The first session will include introductions, setting group norms, and outlining what to expect. We will cover how migration-related stressors and legal precarity shape survival responses and impact the window of capacity. Participants will learn to identify their own somatic cues and practice foundational regulation tools to support stability.
This 75-minute live online session will involve:
- On-camera introductions
- Presentation by instructor
- Group practice
- Guided discussion
Objectives
- Create the virtual container, including community agreements for our 6-week exploration.
- Understand how migration-related stress activates autonomic survival responses and narrows the window of capacity.
- Identify personal somatic cues of hyperarousal and hypoarousal, and practice foundational regulation tools (orienting, felt sense and paced breathing).
Session 2: The Fight Response - Intentionally Discharging Activation
Description
In the second session we focus on recognizing the fight response and how discrimination, systemic barriers, or immigration encounters can trigger this response. Collectively, we will practice somatic techniques that support returning to one’s window of capacity.
Objectives
- Recognize how systemic discrimination or immigration encounters can activate a fight response.
- Participants will practice somatic techniques to safely discharge activation and strengthen boundary awareness for themselves and their clients.
Session 3: The Flight Response – Creating Spaciousness for Returning to the Body
Description
In the third session the focus is on recognizing the flight response related to immigration trauma. Participants will practice skills that support moving from flight back into the window of capacity.
Objectives
- Identify flight responses (restlessness, avoidance, urgency) and understand how surveillance, legal instability, and fear of detention amplify escape impulses.
- Develop grounding and containment skills to reduce nervous system over-activation and support steadiness.
Session 4: The Freeze Response – Feeling into the Body’s Wisdom
Description
The fourth session explores the freeze response and its impact on the nervous system when we asses that fighting or fleeing is not a viable option. Participants will explore tools for “thawing out” and feeling into the body’s wisdom.
Objectives
- Understand the freeze response and its connection to overwhelming immigration experiences (detention, border trauma, bureaucratic powerlessness).
- Practice gentle activation tools (micro movements, breath expansion) to support re-engagement and returning to the body.
Session 5: The Fawning Response - Reclaiming Bodily Autonomy and Boundaries
Description
The fifth session focuses on recognizing the fawning response within the context of power imbalance and cultural expectations. Participants will practice skills to move from a state of fawning to one of presence and bodily autonomy.
Objectives
- Recognize fawn response (self-silencing, shrinking, appeasement) and how structural power imbalances can re-enforce self-silencing.
- Explore somatic boundaries and voice activation skills to reduce over accommodating others and support authentic self-expression.
Session 6: The Flop Response - Helping the Body Come Back Online
Description
This sixth session focuses on identifying the flop response. Participants will investigate ways of gently moving out of collapse while learning somatic practices to regulate and reclaim their nervous system.
Objectives
- Identify the flop response and how it is linked to chronic immigration stress, systemic failures, and long-term exhaustion.
- Practice nervous system regulation tools that promote rest, restore energy, and promote social engagement.
ELIGIBILITY
Academy courses are open to non-profit care providers who deliver social services or behavioral health care in New York City.
This includes, but is not limited to, staff of: community-based organizations, government agencies, and public hospitals, along with members of mutual aid groups, community gardens, NYCHA resident committees, and more.
This course is open to any NYC non-profit care provider who serves immigrants and refugees, including, but not limited to non-profit providers of legal services, social services, health, and mental health care.
HOW TO APPLY
Applications for the upcoming cohort can be found here and will close on 10/15.
Please reach out to [email protected] with any questions.
INSTRUCTORS
