Crossing the Bridge: Travel to Calm with Guided Drawing
Experience using visual mark-making to soothe the whole body. Using bilateral movements and resistive materials, gain tools for yourself and others in crossing from over-thinking, anxious states to those of greater integration and mindfulness. Simple, easily accessible materials will be provided and extensions discussed for integrating into your daily and/or therapeutic-settings.
About the Instructor
Julie Smiley is an artist and arts educator dedicated to strengthening her community through creativity. Born and raised in Del Norte, she teaches visual arts across the county, works with local organizations, and is passionate about helping people of all ages connect, learn, and thrive through the arts.
Forest Bathing
Through the practice of forest bathing, we will be addressing the regulate stage of the sequence developed by Dr. Bruce Perry. Originating in Japan, shinrin yoku, or forest bathing, means taking in the forest atmosphere. As you move mindfully through nature and engage all your senses, you're literally bathing in the forest's healing benefits. Forest bathing has been scientifically linked to reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, improved cardiovascular and respiratory health, attention restoration, increased immunity, and boosted creativity. In just 30 minutes, feel your body measurably shift toward calm, and open the door to connecting with yourself, others, and the land itself. Come for a 30-minute introduction to forest bathing experience and leave with a technique you can return to again and again.
Regulating Through Gardening & Nature
As part of Raising Resilience, join us for a gentle exploration of how gardening and time in nature can support regulation, connection, and resilience. Inspired by the work of Dr. Bruce Perry and What Happened to You?, this workshop invites us to slow down and notice what helps us feel grounded and connected. We’ll share the ways nature supports us and reflect on our own gardening and nature-based self-care practices.
Then we’ll head into the garden for a simple creative activity: making botanical bookmarks by rubbing plants onto watercolor paper. As we choose a plant, feel its texture, notice its shape, and reveal its imprint, we’ll practice slowing down, exploring, and paying attention to the small details around us. There is no need to rush or create something perfect. This is a chance to pause, connect with the garden and with one another, and explore how simple experiences of rhythm, sensory awareness, curiosity, and connection can become part of our own resilience practices.
Come slow down, get curious, and find your own place to feel rooted.
About the Instructor
Angela Gray has always been drawn to the garden, not just for the joy of growing food, but for the quiet magic that happens when people cultivate the land together. Putting hands in the soil, tending living plants, and sharing fresh harvests naturally creates a space where you can slow down, breathe, and truly reconnect.
Much of Angela's life's work springs from this deep belief. Through hands-on youth programs, community food initiatives, camps, and local gatherings, she has walked alongside young people and families as they discover their own strength. She has watched children plant a single seed, harvest their own food, teach a peer, and realize just how capable they really are.
For Angela, resilience isn't about pushing through on your own, it’s about nurturing the relationships, places, and grounding practices that bring you back to center when life gets hard. Nature remains her favorite teacher, offering a gentle reminder that growth isn't a straight line. Gardens experience seasons of abundance, necessary rest, unexpected weeds, and endless fresh starts.
In her sessions, Angela transforms the garden into a living classroom, a sanctuary, and a place of deep nourishment. She brings this spirit to Raising Resilience as a warm invitation for you to slow down, get your hands in the dirt, notice what grounds you, and experience how our connections with nature and each other help us grow stronger together.
Regulation through connecting with your ‘authentic resonance
This interactive session blends “Conscious Breathing” (aka Breathwork, Pranayama), Somatic meditation, and sound meditation. Combined to offer you a portal to a journey within. A journey through the subconscious mind to the place behind your thoughts, the place behind all that arises in the world of the senses. By practicing the ‘attitude of the observer’, withholding judgments while observing whatever arises, just noticing like roadside attractions, you can follow that road all the way back home, to your authentic resonance.
Regulation occurs through slowing down brainwaves from the ‘Beta’ state associated with alert waking consciousness, to the ‘Theta’ state associated with the edge of relaxation and sleeping. This process is facilitated by activating the parasympathetic nervous system, and relaxation response. This offering of Somatic Sound Meditation is designed to gently induce this meditative state so each participant can have their own self-healing experience of regulation.
Yoga Calm
Utilizing the 5 elements of the social emotional program Yoga Calm, created by Jim and Lynea Gillen, we will practice games and a yoga flow that helps co-regulate families from the bottom up! Yoga Calm focuses on integrating neuroscience, movement and mindfulness practices that help promote a feeling of safety and regulation. If time permits, we will overview Empower, an online program created by Yoga Calm that families can use in their homes.