The Strong Heart: A Series on Improving Your Important Relationships – Dr. Rick Hanson

Our relationships are fundamental to how we experience life and cope with challenges. And unfortunately for many of us, they’re often the source of our stress, frustration, disappointment, or friction.

Join psychologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Rick Hanson for a special 4-week series on Relationships. You’ll get down-to-earth practical help for important relationships, with a focus on effective ways to handle issues, grounded in the combination of strength and heart.

Discover methods for staying present with others while remaining centered in yourself, respecting the needs of others while honoring your own, and asserting yourself with both kindness and confidence.

We will focus on:

• Supporting Yourself

• Compassionate Strength

• Being Your Best

• Communicating Effectively

To register: DRH – TSASIYIR

Love, Trauma, and Relationships – Terry Real & Thomas Hubl

Many of us crave more connection and more intimacy in our relationships, but we don’t know how to create it.

And why would we? It’s something we’ve never been taught.

We live in a world that champions competition not collaboration, the individual not community.

And right now, we’re living in a world that’s more disconnected than ever, experiencing significant trauma and hurt.

This creates a pressure cooker environment in which pain radiates into our day-to-day lives and relationships, even though we may not consciously be aware of it.

By changing the way you relate to others, you can learn to heal the wounds of the past.

But in order to do that, you need a shared framework and mutual understanding of how to support one another and the planet as a whole.

As you move through these online teachings, you’ll watch Terry and Thomas work—combining methods from psychotherapy and spiritual practices—with individuals and couples who consciously choose to bring their relationships to the next level.

These are the topics you'll explore:

• How to shift from individual consciousness to relational consciousness.

• Moving from a 2-dimensional into 3-dimensional embodied consciousness that allows witnessing.

• How to stay open when your early wounds are brought to the surface, rather than becoming defensive.

• What it means to feel the trauma of your partner in your body and how to work with it together.

• How our body stores fear in the nervous system and what this means in relationships.

• The importance of co-regulation as a tool with our partner.

• What it means to transform our legacies in relationship & the different aspects we face when we choose to do the work.

Themes:

• Dealing With Wounds Within Our Significant Relationships

• Healing Our Legacies: Collective and Multigenerational Trauma

• Growth Practices for Sacred Relationships

• Eros and Embodiment in Relationships

• Dissolving Fear Into Vulnerability and Intimacy

To register: LTR – TRTH

The People's Inauguration: 10 Days to Activate Revolutionary Love – Valarie Kaur, Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams, Various Presenters

In Valarie’s words: “Revolutions do not happen only in grand moments in public view, but also in small pockets of people coming together to inhabit a new way of being.” Join Valarie and an extraordinary community of activists, thinkers, writers, and artists in this global movement to reclaim love as a force for justice and change in our world—including Baratunde Thurston, America Ferrera, Rev. Dr. Traci Blackmon, Rabbi Sharon Brous, Ai-jen Poo, Bryan Stevenson, and many more.

Let’s Birth a Future Where Love Is a Force for Justice!

Valarie Kaur considers revolutionary love to be the call of our time. As rising hate violence, pervasive social injustice, and an isolating pandemic threaten to drive us further apart, we must root ourselves in a culture of love that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves.

The People’s Inauguration puts those ideas into practice with 10 core teachings to take into the world. If you have ever felt hopeless about our future, overwhelmed by the challenges ahead, breathless from the continued labour for justice, or simply not sure where to start in activating change, this summit will provide you with a compass for navigating a world in rebirth.

What you’ll learn:

Loving Others—When we wonder about one another, grieve with one another, and fight with and for one another we can build the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation -- a solidarity rooted in love.

Loving Opponents—When we learn to harness our rage and listen to even our opponents, we can gain the information necessary to reimagine cultures and institutions that protect dignity for all of us.

Loving Ourselves—We can care for ourselves by remembering the wisdom of the midwife: breathe and push. Breathing together, letting joy in, and pushing through fear to become our best selves allows us to summon the bravery to transition from one reality to another

Presenters:

Valarie Kaur

Seane Corn

Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams

Adrienne Maree Brown

Many More

To register: VKRAKW - TPI10DARL

Food and Mood: Improving Mental Health Through Diet and Nutrition – Deakin University

Explore the relationship between nutrition and brain health, why it matters, and how to work towards positive food changes.

Poor diet and poor mental health are the leading causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. We now know that diet quality is a modifiable factor that is linked to mental and brain health across all stages of our lives.

We will explore how our daily diets may affect our mental and brain health, including the role of our immune system and gut microbiome.

The course will provide research evidence, practical examples, skills development, and collaboration on dietary intake assessment, strategies and resource sharing for dietary change.

To register: FutureLearn Platform – Food and Mood

Train the Trainer - Intentional Peer Support

Our Train-the-Trainer Course is a hands-on seminar designed to prepare and designate IPS Organizational Trainers.

These trainers can then teach the Core Content within their own organizations, helping to ensure the fidelity and sustainability of IPS.

The IPS Organizational Trainer pathway is best suited for organizations with 25 or fewer employees. For larger organizations, the scope of an IPS Organizational Trainer may be limited to specific programs or regions. If you work for a larger organization and are interested in becoming an IPS Organizational Trainer, please contact us for more information.

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions

Advanced Training - Intentional Peer Support

We developed our 24-hour Advanced Training to take IPS practice a step further—playing out the principles and tasks using real-life scenarios, heightening self-reflection, enhancing ways of building mutual connections and sustaining the practice.

Intentional Peer Support requires an ongoing commitment to learning and growth. Once participants complete a Core Training and begin practicing IPS in their relationships, lots of questions emerge—most commonly, “How do I make this stuff work in my particular environment?”

Deepen IPS Practice

Our Advanced Trainings are for anyone who has completed a Core Training or needs a brief IPS refresher and are tailored to fit your organization’s or community’s needs. 

Learn the Art of Co-Reflection

Co-reflection is a vital practice where people regularly come together to reflect on their relationships using the IPS framework. Here is an opportunity to examine relationships, look at assumptions and sustain the tasks and principles.

Our Core Training gets you started with Co-Reflection, and our Advanced Training helps you master it. Download our free Co-Reflection Guide.

Traditionally, crisis in mental health has been viewed as something undesirable or harmful, and risk assessment has led to fear-based responses that keep people stuck. In the Advanced Training, we focus on using crisis instead as an opportunity to connect, maintain mutuality, and create a culture of healing.

Respite programs will find particular use as we further explore what it means to be trauma-informed, work with conflict and challenging situations, develop flexible boundaries, use pro-active crisis planning and prepare for program evaluation.

Offered virtually over 6 days.

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions

Managers & Supervisors Training - Intentional Peer Support

This online event is designed for those who manage or supervise peer support workers and programs. 

It deepens understanding of peer support dynamics and improves team effectiveness in fostering transformative relationships. Tailored to the IPS framework, this training equips participants to integrate IPS principles effectively into their workplace practice.

Duration: 6 days, held over 2 separate weeks (Tuesdays to Thursdays)

Our training is tailored to enhance the capabilities of managers and supervisors within the IPS framework. Participants will:

• Learn to apply IPS principles in management and supervisory roles.

• Explore challenges specific to overseeing peer support environments.

• Develop strategies for supporting staff and facilitating their growth.

• Understand how to integrate IPS values into everyday practice and team development.

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions

Queer IPS (for LGBTQIA+) - Intentional Peer Support

This curriculum was adapted from the IPS core training at the request of the Q Corner, a peer support program in Santa Clara County, California, that supports LGBTQ+ community members.

Empowerment Through Stories:

IPS is about building relationships where our stories can be told and explored. By sharing our stories, we:

• Build networks of support.

• Create justice and empowerment.

• Drive social change rooted in civil rights movements, including gay liberation and the Stonewall riots.

"In the words of indigenous Australian activists in the 1970s, 'your liberation is bound up with mine.'"

Intersectionality:

Creating Space

QIPS was designed to acknowledge and support those of us whose gender, expression, and/or sexuality don’t fit within our society’s narrow definitions of “normal.” This includes individuals who have historically been marginalized by various systems such as education, employment, healthcare, and housing. 

From this vantage point, we examine how these systems have also marginalized those of us whose experiences of mental or emotional distress, “big feelings” or altered states don’t fit into societal definitions of “healthy.”

A Unique Intersection:

Participants in QIPS engage at the intersection of queer/trans communities and peer support. They:

• Learn the tasks and principles of IPS.

• Examine assumptions about who they are.

• Acknowledge personal and cultural histories of oppression and trauma.

• Focus on understanding “what happened” instead of “what’s wrong.”

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions

Core Training - Intentional Peer Support

The Core Training is our foundational training for learning and practicing Intentional Peer Support. This training is for anyone interested in mutual support and has been widely used for people working in both traditional and alternative mental health settings.

Based on Shery Mead’s book, Intentional Peer Support: An Alternative Approach, our Core Training is a 40-hour introduction to this innovative framework and is designed to have you practicing right away.

In a highly interactive environment, participants learn the tasks and principles of IPS, examine assumptions about who they are, and explore ways to create relationships in which power is negotiated, co-learning is possible, and support goes beyond traditional notions of “service.” 

IPS is all about opening up new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing, and here we examine how to make this possible.

• Seek ways to connect, become aware of disconnects, and work to reconnect

• Explore how we have “come to know what we know”

• Strive for mutuality in relationships

• Stay curious, question assumptions, and own judgements and opinions

• Open up new ways of listening

• Use experience to relate and build trust

• Name and negotiate power in relationships

• Navigate conversations about suicide and self-injury

• Approach crisis as an opportunity to grow

• Share risk and responsibility

• Focus on the quality of relationships instead of fixing one another

• Pay attention to the impact of clinical and labeling language

• Understand how trauma affects lives

• Keep the energy in relationships moving towards what we want

• Understand peer support in the context of social change and social justice

• Learn to see altered states or non-consensual reality in new ways, and to connect with people having these experiences

Offered as a 10 day virtual session.

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions

IPS Overview: An Introduction - Intentional Peer Support

This three-hour online overview course introduces participants to the history of IPS and the tasks and principles of this transformational framework.

The course provides an interactive platform for questions and discussions with facilitators and fellow participants.

Peers unite around shared experiences and a desire for change. However, without a new framework, people often recreate "help" based on their past experiences.

IPS offers a foundation for a different approach, rooted in grassroots alternatives that focus on building relationships that are mutual, explorative, and conscious of power dynamics.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive overview of IPS history and principles

• Interactive discussions with experienced facilitators

• Networking opportunities with like-minded individuals

• Introduction to a transformative framework for relationship-building

• Exploration of power dynamics in helping relationships

• Insights into creating mutual and explorative connections

For more information: IPS Workshops

To register: IPS Eventbrite Sessions