We know that the last three years have been difficult for many of us in the world. In our society many were already struggling with feeling lonely, anxious or stressed, and the pandemic has made things worse.
For those of us in social change, the stress is heightened because we already deal with people’s pain in our work – whether it’s through fighting an eviction or a deportation, helping work through a political campaign or people’s traumas, or being a first responder to a crisis. This was true even before the pandemic.
When we feel stressed, we use whatever tools are available to deal and cope. But sometimes, many of us realize that we need more personal tools if we’re going to deal with so much pain, and that we also need tools in our groups or organizations.
Sometimes in that journey we need a refresher, and other times we need a whole new set of tools and practices so we can be more resilient in the face of isolation, stress, anxiety, trauma, etc.
At Ayni, for some years now and alongside many others, we have been thinking about creating more tools for people to do just that. This is what our Mending the Heart Cohort is for. It is tailored for people who are doing social change work, whether you’re just starting or have many years of experience, so you can get a framework (an understanding or perspective) on emotional resiliency that is based on psychotherapy, neuroscience, Indigenous wisdom, and community work. That can honor all of these perspectives and addresses both individual and group resiliency. Where we can also learn simple, key practices that you can do regularly to build resiliency for yourself and for a group.
Our Mending the Heart cohort is a free, two month group experience where we will:
- Learn frameworks that will help us understand our anxiety, stress, loneliness, and group tensions better.
- Be together – sharing stories, doing rituals, and trying on practices to mend our hearts. We want this experience to give you some love and healing, where you will be tenderly supported and challenged to grow.
- Reflect and do some self-inventory to face some of what you are struggling with, get support from others, and find ways to intentionally build emotional resiliency for yourself.
- Come up with small things we can do to create better results for the group work we already do.
Who is the Mending the Heart Cohort for?
- If you want to feel more connected, you need support in letting go, you want to strengthen your heart muscles, or you want to address some things that came up during the pandemic through a group process, please come! We hope this can be a balm of love to your heart where you’ll be able to connect with others doing social change work.
- If you want to learn some new tools or rethink how you think about individual and group resiliency, join us to hear our frameworks and try some things out.
- If you want to think about resiliency and how it affects your group or organization and some of the small things you can do to increase group resiliency, this is also for you!
If you still have questions, come to our Q&A on March 7th from 6:30-7:30pmEST. Sign up and we’ll send you the link to join!
Cost: Free
Location: Online (virtually) for everyone with the option of a cohort who can take it in in-person in East Boston.
Number of participants: We’re going to have a maximum of 30-36 participants, with a priority on those who are applying in groups. We’ll be accepting people through our application on an ongoing basis until March 15th.
