Presenters & Affiliations: Christen Coscia Mindfulness Education Coordinator, YWCA York

Session Title:  “Mindbody Grounding Practice”

Session Description: This session will offer participants a brief practice of using Mindfulness & Trauma Sensitive Yoga to support their nervous systems in healing and resetting.

Presenter & Affiliations: Erica Gaimari, Luna.Corvus.Curiosities

Session Title: Trauma and the Alchemy of Healing

Session Description: Trauma healing is a process that requires an approach that includes not only the mind, but also the body and spirit. I will highlight my own experience with trauma healing from a holistic perspective and how to tap into your own inner wisdom to do the same. I will also discuss the impact of healing personal trauma on community growth and collective healing.

Presenters & Affiliations: Denis Quirk, PhD ABD, Tulpehocken Area School District Assistant Superintendent Tulpehocken Area School District, Neumann University

Session Title: Seek to Understand So That We May Be Understood

Session Description: Presentation will focus on an approach to build capacity in public educators to understand the dynamics of stress, trauma, and human behavior. Capitalizing on prior knowledge of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the presentation will introduce participants to the neurosequential model of therapeutics in an effort to challenge participants to view behavior through a trauma informed lens. The goal is to provide relevant connection and understanding behind the impact of stress and trauma in an effort to cultivate empathy and drive behavior that is trauma informed and sensitive.

Presenters & Affiliations: Jennifer O’Higgins New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services (NH DHHS), Katherine Cox NH DHHS, Jennifer Sabin, NH DHHS

Session Title: Words Matter: Language, Stigma and Bias

Presentation Description: This presentation will explore how language impacts access to and retention in treatment for mental health, suicidality, and substance use. Participants will leave this presentation with a better understanding of how we can all be a part of the solution to behavioral health challenges that our communities are facing. The people and families we serve often have complex and related needs and this presentation is meant to assist learners in understanding considerations to promote positive interactions with clients and families. In particular, ways that we can build trust and honor the strengths of the people we serve.

Presenters & Affiliations: Ross Sullivan, Institute for a Sustainable Future

Session Title: Dare to Care: Reimagining Health Care Through Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy

Session Description: Dare to Care: Reimagining Health Care Through Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy, explores the intersection between healthcare and psychedelic-assisted therapy. Healthcare has co-developed with an underlying economic paradigm which promotes growth and externalizes social and environmental costs in a manner that is inconsistent with health. We need to untangle deeply enmeshed financial incentives within the business of health care, so as to unlock the true healing potential within our communities. Psychedelic-assisted therapy, a novel clinical mental health treatment, may be crucial to unlocking this potential, yet it is in danger of commoditization within the current system. Can we reimagine and create systems that match the individual healing potential that psychedelic-assisted therapy offers, in order to achieve real health outcomes for our communities? And, how might we create a place-based health care system in which health and care are built in, that supports psychedelic-assisted therapy?

Presenters & Affiliations: Suzanne Delle, York College of Pennsylvania

Session Title: Creating a Consent Based Classroom

Session Description:  In the past few years, Intimacy and Mental Health Training for artists has been trendy and expected in theatre classrooms. How can pedagogy be designed by borrowing the ideas from these fields and using them to create more equitable spaces? This presentation will look at some categories of care in the classroom including flexibility, accessibility, and self-care. Participants will be challenged to rethink their course design to put consent first.

Presenters & Affiliations: Makyia Jones Lincoln University, Melina McConatha, PhD Lincoln University

Session Title: A Relational Education Curriculum: Pleasure Activism on Public Lands

Session Description: This poster illustrates a relational curriculum that explores 1) What are ways people across time and spaces have found pleasure on public lands without the exploitation and oppression of others? 2) How can the process of deep listening provide a better understanding of the reparations owed to marginalized communities in the name of pleasure? 3) How can we rediscover pleasure while protecting both people and the planet? This HBCU student-led process looks to untangle the enslaving and colonizing frameworks that permeate public land today, while highlighting and celebrating the joy and pleasure we all need to continue to fight for freedom.

Presenters & Affiliations: Kaitlin Bunoza, Early Childhood Leadership Institute at Rowan University

Session Title: “I’ve Got the Sense(s) I’m Going to Be Okay”

Session Description: “On the days you don’t know what to choose, choose your mental health.” It starts and continues with the exploration of us, and our values in preventing the stigma against seeking support, the individual effects trauma has on each of our six senses within our bodies, and honoring each step of the healing process to unlock potential of the whole person. This session will encourage new insights through describing and discussing the vision of the whole person and by sharing of strategies for each “sense”/area of body, seek to empower listeners to tailor what they’ve learned by connecting their creativity and imagination to their (or those in their care/circle) own unique healing journey.

Keynote Speaker Bio: (link to bio), Dr. Rodrick Carey, Department of Human Development and Family Sciences University of Delaware

Keynote Speech Title: Imagining Comprehensive Mattering: Toward a Vision For Better Schools and Worlds for Black Boys and Us All

Keynote Speech Description: In this presentation, Roderick L. Carey, PhD will discuss his theorizing on how Black boys and young men perceive of their mattering in schools and society. Carey will highlight research-based insights from his four years of study at two high schools, called The Black Boy Mattering Project. The Project is a unique school partnership that serves as a think tank for adolescent Black boys to describe their mattering and imagine it more robustly or comprehensively. In addition to guiding attendees through what comprehensive mattering is and could be for Black boys, and the educators and social actors who engage with them, Carey will foster a vision for radical social change and collective healing for us all.

Presenters & Affiliations: Kate Worley Neumann University & Claudia Robuck Neumann University

Session Title: The Power of Play for Healing in Children

Session Description: Play is an essential aspect of human life. For children, play is an important part of development that often helps in healing hurt. This presentation will address the fundamentals of child-led play and its role in regulation for child survivors of trauma. Play is a child’s way of processing and is the medium through which trauma or hurt is worked through. In child-led play, the child herself determines and communicates where she wants or needs to be helped, often through the symbol of play. Play is also an inherent way for children to learn regulation skills. Through the natural cycles of up and down regulation that occur while playing, children naturally learn to move into cycles of regulation after excitation. In child-led play, caregivers create a safe space for children to process trauma and hurt. Through the child’s direction, play meets their needs and creates natural opportunities for self-regulation.

Presenters & Affiliations: Kate Worley, Neumann University

Session Title: Drag and its Role in Collective Hope and Healing for the LGBTQ+ and Ally Community

Session Description: Attending drag brunches seems to be the new way to spend a weekend morning but drag is much more than a social event. Since its inception, drag has been a political movement and a symbol of hope for the LGBTQ+ community. Historically, drag was part of an act of resistance against homophobic laws. Tragically, due to recent legislation, drag queens and kings are experiencing similar restrictions. Despite recent bans, drag stars continue to advocate for LGBTQ+ persons and offer a sense of community to their supporters. Drag offers LGBTQ+ persons a safe space to truly express themselves and feel accepted. Additionally, drag shows the wider community that it is okay to be different. The inclusive message of drag has been powerful for many young people facing homophobia or stigma. As drag’s popularity has increased and become more mainstream, their positive messages have impacted the wider community.

Presenters & Affiliations: Grace Martin &  Loretta Brady, PhD  Saint Anselm College Community Resilience and Social Equity Lab

Session Title:  Development of a Role-Playing Game to Support Student-Athlete Well-Being Through Imagination

Session Description: Bad Call Sport, an interactive role-playing game, emphasizes the challenges a student-athlete must face concerning their well-being by providing resources to improve athlete mental health. Role playing games as a resource generates intervention strategies through the player’s imagination, allowing them to become aware of prevalent situations a student-athlete must face, what they can do to promote healthy well-being, and the resources available to them. As participants journey through the script, they are given prompts to decide their fate with the real concern of how student-athletes must juggle athletics, academics, a social life, and living away from their parents for the first time. The game allows participants’ to cognitively process the script and imagine the multitude of current issues student-athletes encounter to acknowledge the need for student-athlete support. Through imagination role play, student-athletes and those who support them learn the tools to support resilience.

Presenters & Affiliations: Maria Turkson, PhD Penn State Harrisburg

Session Title: Resiliency in Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

Session Description: Strength-based strategies used by intimate partner violence survivors in overcoming abuse will be discussed.