Single-Session (75 minutes)
High levels of stress are among the very top challenges that people identify in their lives. Although people are often familiar with ways they can engage in self and collective care, putting these techniques into practice can be much harder. We will review simple “tips and tricks” and daily habits that drive better sleep and daily routines. We will also discuss ways to create time, space, and build wellness practices into your daily life, especially if you find yourself feeling too busy for self-care and you are looking to find balance in your life.
Single-Session (1 hour)
Pain is a common and difficult challenge. It has emerged as an urgent global health issue that impacts physical, psychological, and emotional health. Chronic pain is the second most common reason for outpatient visits in the U.S. Fortunately, scientific understanding of pain is growing as well as ways to help provide emotional support for those suffering from chronic pain. This course includes information about chronic pain, ways chronic pain impacts mental health, and personal and professional resources for reducing pain-related distress.
Single-Session (75 minutes)
Loneliness is a common experience, and could mean that we are not as connected to others as we would like to be. While everyone experiences loneliness, some people are more susceptible to acute or chronic loneliness. This course will focus on focuses on understanding and addressing loneliness among those most vulnerable. One exciting new way to strengthen communities is the concept of Social Prescribing. Social Prescribing refers to the ways in which social health is as important to a person’s health as physical and mental health. In particular, we will discuss how Social Prescribing can be a key tool to address loneliness epidemic.
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.
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.
Single-Session (75 minutes)
A growing body of research is showing that spending time in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it also contributes to your physical well-being, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones. We will discuss the rationale, evidence, and benefits of spending time in nature for mental health and wellness.
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.
Single-Session (1 hour)
Feelings of anxiety and depression are very common during times of adversity and uncertainty. Although these feelings can seem overwhelming, simple practices can help reduce these emotions and give us a sense of perspective. One method that has been shown to be especially useful is journaling. This presentation will review the evidence around journaling to support wellbeing and ways that it can be used to turn distressing emotions into powerful stories.
Single-Session (1 hour)
Among the many challenges that people face now are a sense of ongoing uncertainty and lack of control. Although we may never fully be able to anticipate challenges that lie ahead, there is growing research suggesting that how we perceive our ability to cope with stress and adapt to challenges can make a difference in our mental health. We will review recent work highlighting the importance of proactive coping and self-efficacy, as well as easy to use techniques that provide a sense of control and reduce worrying during times of uncertainty.
Single-Session (1 hour)
Whether due to the lasting impacts of COVID-19, mass violence, work stresses, or other difficulties, many people are experiencing considerable increases in stress and feeling like it is harder to manage uncertainties. This introductory course draws on research from psychology and neuroscience to develop simple practices that can help us stay grounded and centered during these difficult times.
Multi-Session (7 months)
The Motivational Interviewing (MI) Certificate program for organizations or teams provides comprehensive training, coaching, and implementation support that help organizations implement MI to improve services and outcomes. More than individual training, this unique program was designed to support the transfer of MI skills into practice in community settings. Selected organizations will identify at least 15 organizational leaders, supervisors, and direct care staff to participate in the program’s three tracks: MI Implementation Teams, MI Practitioners, and MI Supervisors.
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 (1 hour)
Stressful events and exposure to trauma are common experiences that bring significant challenges. The process of recovering from stress or trauma can look different for everyone. For some people, these events may lead to ongoing fears, unsettling dreams and memories, feeling jumpy or agitated, or other symptoms. Many of us will temporarily experience some of these feelings, whereas others might feel them longer, reflecting a type of posttraumatic stress reaction. We will share an overview of what posttraumatic stress is and how we can care for ourselves if we experience these challenges.
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 (4 hours)
Psychological First Aid (PFA) is an evidence-informed approach to help in the aftermath of stressful and potentially traumatic events. PFA is designed to reduce the initial distress caused by these events and help people strengthen short-term and long-term coping strategies during challenging times.
Single-Session (2.5 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.
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 months)
The trauma-informed organizational practice certificate program equips leaders and supervisors to create environments that protect staff from the impacts of primary and secondary traumas and help them deliver compassionate, healing-centered care. It includes training, interactive coaching, and implementation support in two tracks: trauma-informed supervision and trauma-informed leadership. This program is designed for organizations or teams who participate in both tracks.
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.
Single-Session (75 minutes)
During times of uncertainty it is often hard to define and stick with goals, both personal and professional. This can be especially hard during times of stress and upheavals. However, goals are critical for helping to maintaining a sense of self-esteem and positive mental health. We will review very simple strategies to help identity and maintain motivation for goals even when confronted with unexpected challenges and high levels of stress.
