Cultural Sensitivity Trainings
in partnership with Sarah Cruse
Sarah and Kristen work with trauma informed tools to offer spaces for educators to train in equity and inclusion work.
Our trainings begin with somatic resonance and preparedness exercises within one’s own soma (body)
and within a given teaching team (as applicable).
Our work supports educators to embody the living principles of self-regulation, co-regulation and group coherence. These living principles are in service of developing capacity for cultural responsiveness within anti-racist practices, and for working with groups with diverse cultural backgrounds.
We offer embodied practices as well as a tool kit of practices to bring into teaching environments.
Our programs offer:
Curriculum & facilitation designed for each organization's unique needs
Cultural responsiveness within de-colonizing and anti-racist practices
Embodiment of Black body / white body relational & collaborative facilitation
Trauma informed skill building for tracking Self, Other, Group
Learning through embodied experience
Principles and topics we including in our teaching:
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Speaking to be in relationship
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Window of Tolerance & it’s importance in cultural responsiveness
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De-colonization and its relationship to team building, art making, and the culture of a space
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Racialized trauma and de-contextualized trauma
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How to notice what’s happening and how to relate to it (ie. Fear, colonial relationship to the body, etc.)
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Communication skills for company members, teaching teams, and with oneself
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Frames of listening within group dynamics - Ex: Notice if I am listening from a part of Self (taking their honest expression personally), or listening from the integrity of the container/group field (Listening for how I/we can support the person in the place/reactivity that they are in).
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Accountability and repair practices and processes
In working with organizations we offer:
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Initial consultation with representatives from the organization
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Design process to address organizational goals
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Facilitation and training with participants from the organization
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Take home toolkit of embodied practices
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Review & debrief with the organization
A series of 6 sessions includes:
Session 1. Entering the equity conversation - Themes of belonging. Somatic skills of listening, sensing, tracking.
Session 2: Collective Trauma & De-contextualized Trauma
Session 3. Expanding the Somatic Toolkit - Window of Tolerance & Practices for tracking Self, Group & Other
Session 4. Working with Shame
Session 5. Personal Accountability & Collective Accountability
Session 6. Culture Building - What does repair look & feel like? Practices for moving forward with collective integrity.
We are also available for consultations & trainings for organizational leaders on how to bring trauma informed awareness, design, & practices into your organization.
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Sarah Cruse
Sarah Cruse is an African American woman of mixed race. Her mother is Scotch Irish and her father is African American. Consciously and unconsciously she has spent her life exploring the dynamics of race and power through the lens of relationship, and learning to engage discomfort and confusion with love and curiosity, in live time. She attributes her perspective to her relationship with poetry, which she calls her first language. The curious, bold and introspective lens, that through creative writing, could turn pain into wisdom. She stands on this ground when engaging individual and group conflict. Whatever is here came from some place for a reason and there is a great potential for wisdom awaiting us. Sarah has worked with the Reverence Project in Watts California, studying the Truth and Reconciliation Process that came out of South Africa, and engaging the local community in conversations around truth and forgiveness. She studied Sound Healing at CIIS where she deepend her understanding of the underlying patterns of trauma and the relational signature of healing. Sarah has studied in depth with the Luminous Awareness Institute which has heightened her ability to track individual and group processes and navigate into coherence with grace. Currently Sarah works as a senior mindfulness educator with Mission Be, a trauma repatterning specialist with Yes You Can Speak, and has a private healing practice called Postures of Grace. She is interested in supporting communities and organizations in the conversation of power and race dynamics through the lens of relationship. Everything we need is right here, in the space between us.
Kristen Greco
Kristen Greco’s passion is facilitating experiences for individuals and groups that create space for a felt sense of embodiment, choice, and aliveness to emerge. Kristen (they/she) is a white -bodied 3rd generation American of Italian, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. As a socially engaged somatics practitioner for the past 20 years, Kristen has developed a unique hybrid of therapeutic work that integrates the physical, emotional, and intergenerational aspects of personal and collective trauma and healing. Kristen consults and facilitates trainings for organizations implementing her innovative research in neuro-physiology, attachment dynamics, somatics, & trauma informed practices. Kristen’s background as an artist and as an environmental and social justice activist informs her teaching practices. Kristen is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner ® along with an Advanced Bodyworker & and adjunct faculty at the Luminous Awareness Institute. Their private practice is based in Oakland, CA.