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Mental Health & Well-Being Global Summit
Day 3: WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH
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Your Day 3 Sessions
Sharon Salzberg
Easing Suffering from Within: A Process of Relating Differently to Life's Challenges
- How meditation practice enables you to experience arising emotions without becoming overwhelmed or defined by them
- Learning that, in difficult situations, turning compassion inward helps us develop a loving relationship with ourselves
- Discovering how to relate to our wounds in a way that honors the situation without adding more suffering
Kristin Neff, PhD & Christopher Germer, PhD
Warmth, Space & Connectedness: Holding our Suffering with Self-Compassion
- Debunking the myths surrounding self-compassion and releasing fears that keep us from showing ourselves kindness
- Learning the evidence-based physical and mental health benefits of maintaining a mindful self-compassion practice
- Finding that extending kind words and behaviors to yourself during times of anxiety and depression changes your relationship to these experiences
Ali Smith & Atman Smith
Reciprocity: Empowering the Community to Heal Itself
- What the reciprocal teaching model is and how it inspires participants to empower others to heal from the inside out
- How mindfulness empowers children and builds community
- Using contemplative practices to address the effects of trauma and systemic racism
Anthony Bean, PhD
Geeking Out: Video Games and Marvel Movies as Therapeutic Tools
- The therapeutic implications of video games, animé and pop-culture
- The power of myth in shaping our personal experience
- What we can learn from fictional characters we resonate with
Eranda Jayawickreme, PhD
Post-Traumatic Growth: Where Wisdom and Well-Being Can Bloom
- The timeline of post-traumatic growth and how it differs from toxic positivity
- How to respond when supporting someone through hard times
- Redefining growth in terms of recovery and practices that we can cultivate to heal
J Ivy
The Transformative Power of Creative Expression
- Examining the therapeutic power of forgiveness
- Making the decision to break the cycle of pain
- Speaking truth to heal emotional and psychological trauma and pain
Hayden Hurst
The Light in the Dark: Finding Hope in the Midst of Despair
- How mental health issues can have a profound impact on both your professional and personal life
- Recognizing the painful struggle of alcohol and drugs that can accompany a mental health crisis
- The healing power of journaling for releasing toxic thoughts
Jeezy
You Are Never Alone
- Realizing that, even when we think we are alone, we are always connected to a higher power and people we love
- Why everyone needs a good support system, and how we can create that for each other
- Understanding that the real battle is in our minds
Russell Brand
Anchoring Your Awareness: Meditation Practice and the 12 Steps of Recovery
- Practicing meditation to access consciousness, the divine, and to anchor your awareness
- Using the spiritual principles of 12-step recovery to elevate mood
- Why daily awareness and attuning to your feelings are key to maintaining the peace cultivated through the self-discovery process
Move Your Mental Health Daily Practice
Teddy Savage is the Director of Health & Fitness Excellence for Planet Fitness Headquarters. He helps people change their lives through the power of health & fitness, and believes potential, passion and commitment is all we need to achieve our ultimate fitness goals!
Day 2: CORE PRACTICES FOR MENTAL WELL-BEING
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Your Day 2 Sessions
Tara Brach, PhD
Make It RAIN: A Core Practice For Mental Well-Being
- Introducing the RAIN meditation and how it allows for a shift into a larger sense of being and an awakened heart space
- Finding that we suffer when we forget our belonging to ourselves, to each other and to the living world
- Discovering that when we do RAIN meditation, we widen our sense of who we are, and in that spaciousness, we gain clarity
James Doty, MD
Compassion in Action: Changing the Lens Through Which We View Ourselves and the World
- How empathy, compassion, and altruism can help you change your personal narrative and the way you interact with the world
- Understanding why we find it easy to care for others but difficult to apply unconditional love to ourselves
- Finding that we can develop skills to find peace and transformation in suffering as we cultivate the tools to navigate our challenges
Amishi Jha, PhD
Minimum Effective Dose: Discover the Beneficial Effects of Mindfulness in Just 12 Minutes a Day
- Recognizing that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be trained for optimal functioning
- Discovering the three systems of attention, how they function, and how they can be hijacked by stress, physical or psychosocial threat and negative mood
- Discerning between dysfunctional mind wandering and mind meandering, and how the latter promotes creativity and allows us to experience more positive emotions
Andrew Weil, MD
From Breath to Plate: Living With Intention
- The 4-7-8 breath practice and how intentional breathing can change the function of the involuntary nervous system
- Foods that have medicinal properties
- How gardening can be a core practice for well-being
Julia Rucklidge, PhD & Bonnie Kaplan, PhD
From the Soil to the Brain: Understanding the Role of Nutrition in Mental Health
- Understanding that a broad spectrum of micronutrients and phytonutrients are required to nourish the brain and make us resilient to stressors
- Discovering the research that shows diet is an accurate predictor of the risk of emerging mental disorders
- Shifting the focus from intervention to prevention and recognizing proper nutrition as a means to improving mental well-being
Gianpietro Zampogna, MD
Empowering People With Resources for Mental Health
- Exploring ways of addressing the crisis of accessibility to mental health resources and support
- Recognizing that diet and exercise are effective modalities to address mental health, and are best implemented before a crisis develops
- Finding that, by combining the tools for self-care with healthcare, we can give people what they need to address mental health challenges
Eli Puterman, PhD & Rebecca's Hasson, PhD
Increasing Mental, Social and Emotional Health with Movement
- Exploring the broad range of positive psychological and physical effects of exercise
- Understanding the benefit that short bursts of movement and activity breaks can have in regulating emotions in school children
- The importance of increasing access to opportunities for movement in schools, workplaces and communities, while overcoming socio-economic disparity in program design and implementation
Daniel Gutierrez, PhD, Nora Gimpel, MD & Mark DeHaven, PhD
Assets and Access: How Underserved Communities Can Capitalize on What’s Working
- Recognizing that health is a social outcome based on access to resources, food security, collective responsibility and informed social interaction
- The importance of listening to the lived experience of community members, respecting their sovereignty, and integrating the existing community assets that contribute to well-being
- How fostering hope and inspiration in underserved communities can create a sense of agency
Peter Coyote
Meditation Practice: A Gateway to the Limitless
- Why it is important to adjust the lens of your perception through meditation
- How paying attention to our physical form stops the mind and enhances our meditation experience
- What is meant by dependent origination and the interconnectedness of all things
Charlie Engle
Running the Race in Front of Us: Moving Forward Through Life’s Obstacles
- How movement makes your body feel good and your brain work better
- Learning to harness obsessive qualities to point them toward something meaningful
- Realizing ideas that seem crazy shouldn’t automatically be discarded because you never know what good things might come out of them
Move Your Mental Health Daily Practice
Master Mingtong Gu brings ancient wisdom to the west for better health and happiness in contemporary times. Trained at the largest qigong hospital in China, where he helped people with major physical and emotional challenges, he leads retreats and workshops worldwide.
Present...
A NEW SELF-PACED COURSE from one of the leading voices in integrative mental health and well-being today, Cassandra Vieten, PhD
The New Mental Health: Building Your Own Ecosystem of Well-Being
Would you like to feel more mentally and emotionally strong, balanced, and resilient? Would you like new tools to help elevate the mental well-being of your family members, colleagues, or clients?
This course brings together the most cutting-edge whole-person evidence-based tools to help you build your own personalized ecosystem of mental health and well-being, and learn how to help others create their own.
A BRAND-NEW COURSE from one of the leading voices in integrative mental health and well-being today, Cassandra Vieten, PhD
The New Mental Health: Building Your Own Ecosystem of Well-Being
Would you like to feel more mentally and emotionally strong, balanced, and resilient? Would you like new tools to help elevate the mental well-being of your family members, colleagues, or clients?
This course brings together the most cutting-edge whole-person evidence-based tools to help you build your own personalized ecosystem of mental health and well-being, and learn how to help others create their own.
Here’s the thing: Mental Health and Well-Being are not what you think. Or, not only what you think...
Mental health is not just limited to our insides. It relies on our outsides as well – our relationships, our surroundings, our communities, environments and society. In short, mental health is everywhere.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to focus only above the neck to cultivate mental and emotional balance and resilience. Mental health and well-being rely on a whole bunch of stuff, like your:
- biology – including “hard-wiring” and genetics, but also your hormones, blood sugar, microbiome (gut health), neurotransmitters, vitality, brain function, structure and more…all of which are affected by and can be influenced by:
- exercise and movement
- what, how and when you eat
- sleep quality, cycles of activity and renewal
- time in light/sunshine vs. dark
- exposure to heat and cold
- and much more
- strong relationships, friendships, social support and community
- connection to nature, animals, and the Earth’s elements and seasons
- connection to religion or spirituality for some, and for others important human values such as truth, justice and beauty
- experiencing and expressing virtues such as honesty, gratitude and love
- having a sense of meaning and purpose
- engaging in art, music, creativity and play
- being able to contribute or be of service to others, society and the world
- taking time in contemplation, reflection, mindfulness, meditation and quiet time
Given what we know now, focusing solely on the head (like, only addressing brain chemistry, or only addressing thinking patterns) to treat mental health issues or cultivate mental well-being — in ourselves, in our loved ones, in society — just doesn’t make sense.
Our mental health and well-being rely on an interlocking set of practices and conditions (an ecosystem) that we can gradually build over time to create the optimal conditions for our well-being in body, mind and spirit. The great news? We know what these practices and conditions are, and we can build a personal system that supports our thriving.
What will you get in the course?
Straight talk, inspiration, and science-based information and tools you can start to use right away to elevate your psychological, behavioral, social and spiritual well-being.
A whole new view of mental health and well-being that is optimistic, heart-centered and evidence-based that empowers you to create the next chapter of your life.
Who is the course for?
This course is for people on their own, in families, neighborhoods, communities, or workplaces, or for professionals who work with clients, customers, or patients who want a brand-new toolbox to elevate their mental and emotional well-being.
Mental health and well-being affect us all. We all live on a spectrum of mental health and well-being and move up and down the spectrum at different points in our lives.
Some of us experience mental health symptoms or disorders most of the time for most of our lives. This can qualify for what we call a mental health disability. Some of us will never or hardly ever have mental health symptoms or disorders. But we all live on the mental health spectrum, and most of us move up and down the spectrum at different points in our lives.
- 1 in 4 people meet the criteria for a mental health disorder in any given year
- That doesn’t count everyone who experiences mental health symptoms
- A substantial proportion of us will experience some level of mental health symptoms at one time or another
- Nearly every one of us will have a friend or family member who experiences mental health symptoms or disorders
- That means nearly everyone reading this either have themselves or knows someone who’s faced depression, abuse, substance dependence, bipolar mood, obsessive-compulsive disorder or others this year
- And all of that doesn’t even count the people who are languishing, feel lonely or disengaged, or have other dysfunctional behaviors
If you’ve ever dealt with your own or loved ones’ mental health challenges, you know it can feel impossible – like banging your head against the same wall over and over again. The new mental health gives us reason for hope, and not just hope – but actual evidence-based pathways toward greater mental well-being.
Each of our minds is a completely unique tapestry that has been woven together from the threads of our genetics, our life experiences, karma/destiny (if you believe in such things), and both beautiful and deeply odd patterns. For some the threads have become quite tangled, for others, it may be necessary to unravel and re-weave, and for many, we can learn to love and live with the patterns we have and gradually feel empowered to become the weavers of the next chapters of our lives – making choices about the patterns we want to create. This course will help you do that.
Beyond Mental Health...
Regardless of whether we have mental health symptoms or disorders, every single one of us can work toward greater mental health and well-being.
This means greater thriving, flourishing, a stronger sense of meaning, purpose and connection, a more robust resilience in the face of life’s ups and downs, and more authentic and genuine engagement with others and the world – more contentment, happiness, compassion and lovingkindness.
This kind of life is available to everyone, everywhere, by paying greater attention to creating the conditions and practices that both science and the world’s wisdom traditions tell us work.
It’s kind of like a garden. This course will help you figure out the right soil, nutrients, water, amount of sunshine, shade and the stakes in the ground that will help your personal garden grow. Just like this, you can build environments, activities, practices, people, animals, places, and things that interact to support your “garden” of mental well-being. The more you build this ecosystem, the better you can thrive and flourish, no matter what genetic and life-experience hand you’ve been dealt.
Why now?
We’ve all heard that we are in a mental health crisis. But what you may not have heard is that we are also at the beginning of a mental health renaissance. A huge breakthrough in how we view psychological well-being is underway. Our methods of cultivating mental, emotional and spiritual well-being are rapidly expanding.
And YOU can be one of the first to bring them all together in a plan for mental health and well-being that is customized to you, and you can track over time, as well as learning how to help others create their own plan.
Are you ready to take your life to the next level?
Course: Live 6 Week Course Begins May 2nd
Meet Your Teacher
Cassandra Vieten, PhD
Cassandra Vieten, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and researcher specializing in integrative health. She is an internationally recognized public speaker and course leader, specializing in integrative approaches to psychological well-being.
She is a Senior Advisor at the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation, who is co-hosting this course, co-chair of their Scientific Advisory Board, and served as their Executive Director from 2019-2022.
Currently she is a Clinical Professor at the Centers for Integrative Health at the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where she directs the Center for Mindfulness. At UC San Diego, she is also the Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and the co-founder and Clinical Psychology Director of the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative.
She is author of Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life; Mindful Motherhood: Practical Tools for Staying Sane During Pregnancy and Your Child’s First Year; and Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Clinical Practice: Guidelines for Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals.
Meet Your Teacher
Cassandra Vieten, PhD
Cassandra Vieten, PhD is a licensed clinical psychologist and researcher specializing in integrative health. She is an internationally recognized public speaker and course leader, specializing in integrative approaches to psychological well-being.
She is a Senior Advisor at the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation, who is co-hosting this course, co-chair of their Scientific Advisory Board, and served as their Executive Director from 2019-2022.
Currently she is a Clinical Professor at the Centers for Integrative Health at the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California, San Diego, where she directs the Center for Mindfulness. At UC San Diego, she is also the Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, and the co-founder and Clinical Psychology Director of the Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative.
She is author of Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation in Everyday Life; Mindful Motherhood: Practical Tools for Staying Sane During Pregnancy and Your Child’s First Year; and Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Clinical Practice: Guidelines for Psychologists and Mental Health Professionals.
What People Say About Cassandra Vieten
“After attending 40+ years of transformational course, it is rare to find an experiential course that is THIS immediately applicable, useful and grounded in scientific research.”
– Alexandra H, Palo Alto, CA
“Cassi’s presence, knowledge, amiability, and acceptance of everyone and every question was an extraordinary example of how to BE. Truly, I felt inspired from the first day!”
– Karen B, San Francisco, CA
“What a wonderful course! So happy to be a part of this community. A truly enlivening experience.”
– Kameron T, Portland, OR
How the course will work
Course + Summit
Summit
Full Refund Available for 14 Days from Purchase
9 APA CE credits available at checkout for an additional fee with your purchase of the Course. APA CE credits accepted by California Board of Behavioral Sciences for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal. Professionals in other states need to check applicability for their licensure.
What will you learn?
It includes science-based methods for boosting mood, regulating negative emotions, staying balanced, and dealing with symptoms. It also includes experiential practices from the world’s wisdom traditions for stress reduction, equanimity (or being less reactive), mind-body awareness, connection and healing, and building resilience.
Session 1: The New Mental Health
This session makes it clear how and why it really is a new day for mental health and covers some of the key tenets of the mental health renaissance.
It busts some myths of mental well-being and introduces some surprising new ways of thinking about and approaching psychological wellness. It delves into how we can reframe the spectrum of mental health symptoms, moving from a pathologizing, stigmatizing view, to one that embraces psychological neurodiversity.
It introduces the ecosystem approach and gets you started on how to build one for yourself (or for loved ones or clients). It also covers how self-care and health care interact for mental wellness: reducing stigma, asking for help and what roles counseling, crisis support, medication and intensive treatment can sometimes play as part of your ecosystem.
Session 2: Move Your Mental Health
This session describes how exercise and movement are linked to mental health, which forms are most important for mental well-being overall, as well as which are best for depression, anxiety, etc.
It describes ways of approaching exercise that work best when we are feeling down, includes how to leverage gamification, affect-based exercise and individual and app-based personal training. We will explore ways to include movement in your mental well-being ecosystem.
Session 3: Nourishing Mental Well-Being
This session discusses the evidence for how eating, nutrition, gut health and enjoying food is related to mental health and well-being. It provides food recommendations for specific mood and mental/emotional situations, and general ways of eating that can be helpful.
This session focuses specifically on food enjoyment as a strong support for mental wellness. It promotes an “additive” model focused on ADDING new foods with increased nutrient density and reduced caloric density, rather than a “subtractive” model, which focuses on what you can’t eat. It also provides information on supplements and improving gut health, adding another core element to your ecosystem.
Session 4: Expanding Mental Well-Being
This session focuses on how we can expand our practices for mental well-being to include such things as spending time in nature, being outdoors, interacting with animals, engaging in art, music and creativity.
These activities might seem like “luxury items” – things that can be added once we get all our ducks in a row. But in fact, they are actually core building blocks of mental wellness, and amazing antidotes to the stuff that causes anxiety, stress, or low-mood.
We will review the science, recommend practices, and work together on what role these will play in your ecosystem.
Session 5: Connection and Purpose
The focus of this session is how friendships, peer-support, groups, volunteering and other forms of getting connected to others, are essential to mental well-being, as well as how to navigate social anxieties or conflicts with more ease.
We’ll also dive into the science of meaning and purpose, and how those can be key drivers of both cognitive, emotional and behavioral health; in other words, what we think, how we feel and what we do.
As our ecosystem continues to build over each session, practices for connection and purpose will take their place in a growing set of resources to support our well-being.
Session 6: Quiet Time, Contemplation, Spirituality and/or Meaning
In this final session, we examine the crucial role that rest, mindfulness and other contemplative practices, as well as spirituality or meaning, will play in your ecosystem of mental well-being.
We review the robust evidence emerging for practices of breathing and deep rest, as well as the evidence for mindfulness and contemplation (different from rest and relaxation), in cultivating mental well-being.
We also touch into the relationship between spirituality (for many), and meaning making (for everyone), in mental wellness.
Finally, we pull together the complete ecosystems we’ve developed, and review how to use them and continue to craft them on an ongoing basis.
Other possible “what you’ll get”
- Reduce stress, distress, and mood disturbance
- Improve emotion regulation & increase positive emotion
- Encourage mindful eating, body movement, and an active lifestyle
- Increase your ability to tolerate and regulate stress without resorting to unhealthy behaviors
- Treat yourself and others with kindness and compassion, including healthy boundaries
- Increasingly approach your experiences, regardless of their content, with acceptance, and willingness to meet things as they are, with open eyes and an open heart
- Make decisions and take actions that are in alignment with your values and long-term goals
Course: Live 6 Week Course Begins May 2nd
Course + Summit
Summit
Full Refund Available for 14 Days from Purchase
9 APA CE credits available at checkout for an additional fee with your purchase of the Course. APA CE credits accepted by California Board of Behavioral Sciences for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal. Professionals in other states need to check applicability for their licensure.
What People Say About Cassandra Vieten
Your teachings and imparting of practices were with such clarity, openness and care. Each week unfolded into the next, keeping the practices alive and understandings deepening and growing. It was one of the most well integrated and integratable programs that I have experienced.
– Carolyn A.
My course leader was excellent in every way - organized, thorough - the course was nothing less than inspirational. I walked away informed, with an array of new tools, filled with love, and more intelligent. I offer my highest recommendation
– James A.
Course + Summit
Summit
Full Refund Available for 14 Days from Purchase
9 APA CE credits available at checkout for an additional fee with your purchase of the Course. APA CE credits accepted by California Board of Behavioral Sciences for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal. Professionals in other states need to check applicability for their licensure.
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