Presenter: Heather Mroch, BA, Certified Peer Specialist, Parent Peer Specialist, Registered Yoga Teacher, Facilitator/Trainer, Consultant, PEERspective Wellness and PEER Ashtanga, PEERspective Training and Support Services, LLC.
Yoga is more that physical poses! Come find ways to explore the landscape of the imagination through a simple, accessible peer led yoga practice and discover how to translate the principles of yoga and peer support into your work and life to improve wellness.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will have a simple yoga practice to walk away with to support decision making and discernment.
- Participants will get a basic understanding and 'how to' on leveraging lived experience to support flexibility - even if one is not working in a peer role.
- Participants will have a clear understanding of the role of a peer worker, as well as, a broader definition of what yoga is in practice.
Presenter Biography
Presenter: Cassandra (Cassie) Walker, LCSW, CCTP, Founder and Owner of Intersections Center for Complex Healing PLLC and Host of the Woke Mental Wellness Project
Many times, we are supporting people and ourselves through difficult events and emotions so it can be hard to connect with our joy. This session will discuss ways that we can care for ourselves and our communities through joy and play while avoiding the pitfalls of toxic positivity and overemphasis on capitalistic joy. We will address the interactions of capitalism, colonialism, somatics, self-care, play, and joy. Come ready to engage with both discussion and play!
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will learn how to explore their personal and professional relationship to joy.
- Participants will be able give example of “capitalistic joy” versus “liberatory joy.”
- Participant will be able to integrate aspects of joy and play into their work with peers.
Presenter Biography
Presenter: Lynn McLaughlin, Peer, Trainer, Advocate, Consultant, Ebb & Flow Connections Cooperative and Karen Iverson Riggers, Peer, Trainer, Advocate, Consultant, Ebb & Flow Connections Cooperative
In this workshop, participants will learn how emotional expression and emotional wellness are the key components missing in suicide prevention, mental health and wellness programs. They will deepen their understanding on why all emotions are important to our human experience, and the many ways that we avoid being with our emotions. Participants will be introduced to The Change Triangle—a tool that helps move past our defenses and connect with the emotional body inside each of us.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will understand what emotional wellness is.
- Participants will understand why all emotions—even the most painful—have value.
- Participants will understand the defenses we use against feeling emotions and utilizing the change triangle tool.
Presenter Biographies
Presenter: Carmella Glenn, Certified Peer Specialist, Peer Services Peer Respite Coordinator, Department of Health Services and Deborah Mejchar, Certified Peer Specialist, Department of Health Services and Deborah Mejchar
This session will explore the possible dualisms that exist among identities in Peer Support and why it matters. Many providers in the United States are taught to approach mental health substance abuse and lived experiences based on white, middleclass norms and beliefs. Others assume that their beliefs (whatever they may be) about what causes and reduces emotional difficulties are universally true. Peer supporters, with their lived experience of mental health challenges, are often no exception. Additionally, they may have limited experience with people who do not share their particular background. Since peers are the foundation of self-help and mutual assistance, their cultural skills are critical for engaging and supporting people with mental health issues, AODA, and incarceration. These skills stem from shared experiences of mental health problems and social stigma. Peer supporters and leadership who come from diverse backgrounds themselves benefit from culturally competent recruitment, retention and promotion practices. Remember, enhancing cultural competency is not for white peer providers alone. Everybody—no matter what their background—has things to learn about how people from diverse communities view their mental health experience and how they wish to be treated. This is why cultural competency should be required of all peer providers, their leaders, and the programs they run.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will learn that one of hardest things about addressing a program’s cultural competency is learning that “color blindness” can be off-putting to people of different cultures, even if they don’t tell you this directly.
- Participants will learn that many people from systemically minoritized communities feel that treating everyone the “same” obscures the ways their unique backgrounds affect their ability to use and benefit from peer support.
- Participants will learn that when helping people deal with stress and hardship, we need to know and acknowledge how prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia, and institutional discrimination have an impact on their recovery.
Presenter Biographies
Presenter: Katerina Klawes, Educator, Community Convening & Outreach Advocates & Marquette University
Each year over 10,000 bills are introduced in the legislature. Learn from a bill author and community organizer how to advocate for better mental health and addiction recovery and prevention policies. The session will include how to contact elected officials, who to contact, how to assess legislative policy, and how to use your experiences and voice to make an impact and create change.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will gain tools to understand and assess legislative policy and be able to define local, state, and national issues.
- Participants will practice and learn how to contact decision-makers.
- Participants will use community organizing tools to involve and inspire others.
- Participants will learn and demonstrate how to use lived experiences to help enact change.
Presenter Biography