Embodied Journaling Program at the Exhale 2024 Retreat
Pilates People’s Exhale 2024 retreat is designed to support you in exploring, expanding, and enjoying new experiences in community. Hosted by Pilates People, a New York City based Pilates Studio, this all-inclusive 6-day program integrates movement practices that support embodiment and grounding, daily excursions intended to awaken the senses and spirit, and reflective practices to help you process and integrate your experiences both in Costa Rica and after you have returned home.
Participants will bookend afternoon adventures—a volcano hike, skywalk, wildlife boat tour, and a cacao ceremony to name some of the options—with a morning pilates class and an evening journaling program. The morning pilates session will be led by Pilates People’s founder, Cassandra Cotta and is designed to prepare you to engage with the day from a grounded place. Laura Khoudari’s early evening embodied journaling program will ease you into reflection and rest with a mind-body journaling practice after a day of adventure.
Intro To Embodied Strength
Intro to Embodied Strength
A five-week, in-person, small group training program designed and run by Laura Khoudari (CPT, CES, Well-Being Coach)
TUESDAY, 11 JULY, 2023 — THURSDAY, 10 AUGUST 2023
About the program
Intro to Embodied Strength is a two-day per week, five-week, in-person, small group training program designed and run by me, Laura Khoudari (CPT, CES, Well-Being Coach). This progressive strength training program will allow new lifters, and those returning to strength training to cultivate a deeper mind-body connection while getting stronger and learning about lifting weights.
I love to teach folks how to work with a barbell, and Intro to Embodied Strength will feature progressive programming that will focus on squat, benchpress, and deadlift along with accessory exercises. Over the course of five weeks you will get stronger and learn how to turn your workouts into a mindful movement practice. Classes will be small (capped at 6 participants) so that I can make sure you are moving well with barbells, kettlebells, and dumbbells, and so participants can get to know one another while also forging a new relationship with themselves.
This program will meet Tuesday and Thursday mornings 7:00am- 8:15am.
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You may already know that strength training is good for your physical and mental health but seldom are you taught how to reap all the mental health benefits from your movement practice. If you do a workout you enjoy, it will likely help you feel better in the short term; however, long term gains such as deepening your relationship with yourself, and increasing your capacity for curiosity, self-knowing, and joy, occurs only through cultivating a mindful or embodied movement practice. It is these long term gains that help you identify your values, goals, interests, and strengths so that you can make informed choices in your daily life and experience a greater sense of well-being more often.
If you are living with trauma, contending with systemic discrimination, or coping with stress, you likely have another obstacle to contend with—you may be disconnected from your body and not even know it. This disconnect can lead to frequent feelings of overwhelm, illness, chronic pain, and injuries—even if you are trying your best to tend to your well-being.
Intro to Embodied Strength will give participants the opportunity to cultivate a mindful strength practice through experiential learning and regular guided practice.Description text goes here
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Descripimprove your sleep. Studies have found it may improve brain health and slow decline in cognitive function as we age, and that it reduces anxiety and promotes increased self-esteem and self-efficacy which can help with mood regulation. Strength training increases your mobility, stability, and bone strength which helps prevent injuries over the course of your lifetime. tion text goes here
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Intro to Embodied Strength will be a small group (capped at 6 person) in person program. This 5-week introduction to strength training program will combine physio-psycho education about mindful movement with personalized instruction on proper technique on performing the squat, benchpress, and deadlift along with warm up and cool down techniques and accessory movements.
Participants will receive:
Fourteen hours of hands-on, personalized, instruction on the benefits and techniques of mindful strength training
A four-week progressive strength training program
An additional four weeks of programming that you can continue with on your own after the class has wrapped
A paperback copy of Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time
An in-person group check-in four weeks after class has wrapped to get feedback on your movement patterns and to celebrate together how your training has progressed since the class.
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Laura Khoudari is a leader in trauma-informed strength training, writer, speaker, wellness coach and author of the book, Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time. She uses her gift of storytelling in unison with her training and expertise, to inspire and empower people to live fulfilling lives aligned with their own values, goals, interests, and strengths.
Her work has been widely recognized by the trauma and fitness community, and she has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, Buzzfeed, UpWorthy, Outside Online, Medium, Vice, and Nike.com. She has presented her work for Somatic Experiencing International, The Breathe Network, Reebok, Les Mills, Fitness4AllBodies, and conferences, schools, and fitness studios in the US and Canada.
Along with being a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer and Corrective Exercise Specialist, Laura coached novice lifters through Strength Groundwork (a foundational barbell program) at JDI Barbell in New York City, and supported their powerlifting and weightlifting athletes as well. She also served as the Director of Trauma Informed Strength Training for Women’s Strength Coalition, a national 501(c)3 and works closely with many folks in the trauma and strength training world. She blends her training in somatic approaches to trauma healing with her knowledge of exercise science to create programs that support her clients mental and physical health.
Mindful Movement Workshop at NJIMHC
Mindful Movement: The Most Empowering, Transformative, and Self-Compassionate Approach to Moving More and Feeling Better
A workshop at the New Jersey Integrated Mental Health Conference
THURSDAY, 22 JUNE 2023
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You know that exercise can support your patients’ and clients’ physical and mental health, and yet how often do you find that there seems to be obstacles preventing your patients and clients from bringing more exercise and movement into their lives? Many people have complicated relationships with exercise and their bodies. For some, gyms and fitness studios can feel intimidating or unwelcoming. Others do know the gym can be a place to feel better, but no one is teaching them how to reap all the mental health benefits from their movement practice. And if your clients and patients are living with trauma, contending with systemic discrimination, or coping with stress, they likely have another obstacle to contend with—they may be disconnected from their body and not even know it. This disconnect can lead to frequent feelings of overwhelm, illness, chronic pain, and injuries—even if our patients and clients are trying their best to tend to their well-being.
Using both written and simple movement exercises, teachings about trauma informed movement practices, and her gift of storytelling, Laura will show you how to help your patients or clients reframe how they think about and approach movement and wellness, and she will do it with a sense of humor and compassion.
By the end of the program attendees will be empowered to show their patients and clients how to incorporate mindful movement into their lives, not as another to-do, but as a grounding and empowering practice that fits into their daily routines as they are right now.
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>> learn how to use a strengths-based approach within a trauma-informed framework to help clients and patients turn any movement they already do (even chores!) into a healing practice that allows them to begin to reconnect with themselves
>> learn how increased embodiment through mindfulness helps clients and patients build tools for having conversations around challenges in the practitioner's office and in the greater world, as well as increase their overall capacity for curiosity and self-knowing
>> explore what “wellness” means
>> discover how teaching clients and patients how to create a simple shift in their approach to daily movement can foster a deep mind-body connection, which begets increased access to a tremendous amount of knowledge about the self and the world, boosts their communication skills, and taps into their agency.
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Laura Khoudari is a pioneer in trauma-informed strength training, a certified Positive Psychology-based Well-Being Coach, speaker, and the author of Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time. She is passionate about giving people the tools they need to heal from trauma and cultivate mental health and wellness. Her work has been widely recognized by the trauma and fitness community, and she has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, Buzzfeed, UpWorthy, Outside Online, Medium, Vice, and Nike.com. She has presented her work for Somatic Experiencing International, The Breathe Network, Reebok, Les Mills, Fitness4AllBodies, and conferences, schools, and fitness studios in the US and Canada.
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The mission of the Ner Jersey Integrated Mental Health Conference (NJIMHC) is to grow into an annual conference that provides a forum for integrated mental health care professionals to foster curiosity and learning, to inspire creative solutions to care for inequity, and to promote the building of a community of long-lasting, collaborative relationships. This conference will develop and promote a practice model that affirms wholeness and wellness and will work towards ending the illusion of separateness and the trauma of stigma.
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This one-day conference will be filled with thought-provoking keynote speakers, engaging panel discussions, and immersive workshops designed to inspire critical conversations and take a deeper dive into exploring collaboration between psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mind-body modalities to effectively treat mental wellbeing of patients.
Our inaugural theme - Integrated Care for a Disintegrated World - explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has been the singular shared adverse community experience of our time. The impact of the pandemic created an environment of chronic stress that closed the window of tolerance and resulted in a society more fragile and brittle in managing distress.
However, the pandemic also presented an opportunity to revisit the conventional model of mental health initiatives and reimagine one where the whole person is seen and heard, with approaches that bring the whole person into understanding; building beyond general medicine and psychiatry. Proposing a truly whole person, whole life experience perspective to clinical care, incorporating psychiatry, psychotherapy, integrative approaches, and mind-body modalities required for the recovery of self, family, community, and a world so worthy of rescue.
This conference will develop and promote a practice model that affirms wholeness and wellness and will work towards ending the illusion of separateness and the trauma of stigma.