Community Teacher Spotlight
A Gathering of Students and Teachers
June 18-19, 2021
You're invited!
In honor of Academy of Therapy Wisdom’s first birthday, we are celebrating YOU, our community, a global group of practitioners who care about making a difference in the world.
We want to uplift the new generation of therapists who are both students and teachers.
For this unique event, we received over 60 presentation proposals covering the broad spectrum of the intersection of Psychotherapy, Spirituality, and Social Change. With this brilliant array of topics to choose from, our team selected 14 presentations that stood out to us:
Day 1 - June 18, 9am-5pm PDT / 12pm-8pm EDT / 5pm-2am BST:
- Sydnor Sikes and Tori Olds: Secure Attachment to God: A Deeper Resource for Therapy
- Kimberly Howell: Navigating Body Marginalization: Making Space and Taking Space
- Lisa Lackey: Put Your Oxygen Mask On First: Practicing Spiritual Integrity as a Therapist
- Alycia "Ally" DeGraff: Financial Wellness for Therapists
- Laurie Ure: A Body/Mind Journey From Depression & Anxiety to Vitality: The Bioenergetic Approach
- Farah Nasir: Art as Therapy for Mental Health Wellbeing
- Kathryn Ryder: Counseling Larger-bodied Individuals Through Body-image Concerns, Diet Culture, and Medical Weight Stigma
Day 2 - June 19, 9am-5pm PDT / 12pm-8pm EDT / 5pm-2am BST:
- Anarah Sharif: How to be in a Conscious Connected Relationship
- Dana Mays: An Introduction to Neurodiversity
- Christopher Brown: Anti-Racism as a Therapist: What and How?
- Adekemi Oguntala: Teen Emotional Health: The Critical Task of Teaching and Healing
- Antonieta Contreras: Personality, Self, and Trauma
- Cheryl Dolinger Brown: How to Listen—When You'd Rather Not: Bridging Divides
- Alex Iantaffi: The Traumatic Nature of Rigid Gender Binaries
The Community Teacher Spotlight is a gathering place for our whole community. Each presentation will be followed by Q&A, and then we will open a breakout room where you can continue the conversation with the presenter and your peers.
Please join us in celebrating the unique and inspiring voices in our community.
Warmly,
Academy of Therapy Wisdom
P.S. Academy of Therapy Wisdom is proud to sponsor this event as our heart-offering so it can be 100% free for all to attend. We will be sharing links for each of our presenters so you can donate directly to them in appreciation for their offerings. Please consider their effort and expertise and give generously!
Our Annual Community Teacher Spotlight Is...
Community-led Learning
Come learn from and support your colleagues in our global therapist community. This is a celebration of our collective wisdom.
Hand-picked Teachers and Topics
Fifteen presenters have generously offered to share their teachings with you in 14 presentations. The Academy team has selected these from among over 60 intriguing submissions.
100% Free to Attend
There is absolutely no charge to attend any part of this event, and you will get the recordings for free in our membership site. You will be given the opportunity to donate directly to our presenters to support them.
Here’s Everything That’s Included with Our
Community Teacher Spotlight
Two full days of sessions
The event will run from 9am-5pm PDT / 12pm-8pm EDT / 5pm-2am BST on June 18 and 19. We will have seven 50-minute sessions each day, each with time for both lecture and Q&A.
Post-lecture ‘in the hallway’ breakout rooms
After each session, we will make a breakout room available to anyone who wants to continue the discussion in a smaller group with the presenter.
Lifetime access to recordings
You will see all the recordings in the Academy of Therapy Wisdom membership site within one week of the event.
Donate directly to the teachers
Our presenters have put a lot of effort into submitting their proposals and sharing their knowledge with you. Academy of Therapy Wisdom is sponsoring this event so it can be 100% free for all to attend, and you can show your appreciation to the teachers for their work and wisdom by donating to them directly.
Meet Our Presenters
Day One, June 18th
9am-5pm PDT / 12pm-8pm EDT / 5pm-2am BST
Syndor Sikes, Ph.D. & Tori Olds, Ph.D.
Secure Attachment to God: A Deeper Resource for Therapy
Many of our clients have a secure attachment to God even before entering therapy. Typically in our training, we are not taught how to incorporate connection to spiritual sources as a resource for the therapy work, but this is leaving a deep well of support and security untapped. In The Three Pillar's Approach to Attachment work, Dan Brown outlines using imaginal work to create an ideal parent as an inner source of support. In a similar way, God or the Divine can be woven in as a template of security and truth. When God is the ideal parent, even deeper steps can be taken around expanding consciousness of the deeper realities of unity and perfection. In this talk, we will explore why, how, and when to incorporate a spiritual dimension into the therapy work—and when not to as well.
Sydnor Sikes, Ph.D., co-founded Deep Eddy Psychotherapy, a training and counseling center in Austin, TX, that houses over forty clinicians. Sydnor sees clients in her private practice and has over 50 years of clinical experience. She earned her master's in spiritual ministry from the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism and enjoys integrating spiritual work into her approach to psychotherapy.
Tori Olds, Ph.D. is co-owner of Deep Eddy Psychotherapy, a training and therapy center housed in Austin, TX. She teaches four weekly training groups focused on the integration of experiential theory and techniques into clinical work. She also has developed four online training courses focused on using mindfulness, somatic tracking, and therapeutic presence in clinical work. She has studied Sufism for twenty years and is a deep lover of the interior world of the human mind and heart.
Kimberly Howell, Ph.D.
Navigating Body Marginalization: Making Space and Taking Space
This presentation focuses on body diversity, starting with deepening our understanding of marginalization. We will discuss ways to support those who feel "othered" by the stigmas and "-isms" permeating our society (making space), and discover ways to dismantle patriarchal thinking and media influences that send messages that our bodies are unworthy and not enough (taking space).
Dr. Kimberly L. Howell is a body activist, consultant, and author. Kim’s approach to learning and activism is one that combines irreverence toward the status quo and using radical compassion to experience change and transformation. She has spoken and published work on the topics of body image, celebrity culture, and feminist consumerism, including her contributions to Seeing in the Dark: Wisdom Works by Black Women in Depth Psychology.
Lisa Lackey, MA, LCPC, CSAT, CMAT
Put Your Oxygen Mask On First: Practicing Spiritual Integrity as a Therapist
Therapists are not required to take a course that teaches whole being self-care in graduate school. When therapists leave themselves outside of the circle of care, burnout comes – and can come quickly. In this presentation, you will recognize the signs of burnout, understand spiritual integrity as presence, and create a personal oxygen mask as a reminder. Therapists’ tendency to focus exclusively on other people’s well-being and the fact that we spend long hours in this mode account for the high rates of stress, substance abuse, depression, and (yes, even) suicide among members of our ranks.
Lisa Lackey, MA, LCPC, CSAT, MCAT, is a clinician and CEO who has over 20 years of experience as a trauma expert, speaker, coach, and conversation starter. She is passionate about increasing the quality of relationships by looking beyond the surface to discover patterns that are no longer useful.
Alycia “Ally” DeGraff, Ph.D., LMFT-S
Financial Wellness for Therapists
Mental health providers are notorious for ignoring money topics both personally and professionally. This presentation invites mental health provides to engage in "self of the therapist" work and explore personal money schemas that impact both themselves and their work with clients. Examination of these personal values, beliefs, and biases around money can help therapists become more open to examining the ways in which money and finances affect individuals, couples, and family dynamics.
Dr. Alycia “Ally” DeGraff is the Promises Behavioral Health Director of Clinical Operations for the Austin/San Antonio area, and a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. Dr. DeGraff earned her bachelor’s degree in Community, Family, & Addiction Services and her master’s degree in Family Therapy from Texas Tech University; her doctorate degree is in Human Development and Family Science from the University of Georgia where she studied how military couples’ financial wellness impacts their relationship health and mental health. Dr. DeGraff specializes in addiction disorders and recovery, financial therapy, and military family studies. Dr. DeGraff is a former executive board member of the Financial Therapy Association, has published and presented on the practice of financial therapy, and has been interview by NPR’s Shots, New York Magazine’s The Cut, creditcards.com, Right About Money, and Golden Girl Finance.
Laurie Ure, LICSW, CBT
A Body/Mind Journey From Depression & Anxiety to Vitality: The Bioenergetic Approach
Laurie Ure, LICSW, Certified Bioenergetic Therapist, practices bioenergetic therapy in Gloucester, MA. She has trained bioenergetic therapists for the past 10 years and currently leads training in Massachusetts, Florida, and internationally. Laurie has been involved with bioenergetics since 1986 and studied with Alexander Lowen, M.D., founder of Bioenergetic Analysis. She has directed the Massachusetts Society for Bioenergetic Analysis and taught at Salem State College School of Social Work. Laurie has published articles on the blog of Psychotherapy Networker, in the NASW Focus magazine, on Medium, and on the blog of her website. She is working on a book about the bioenergetic approach to treating depression.
Farah Nasir, MPhil
Art as Therapy for Mental Health Wellbeing
This workshop focuses on using art and play as therapy for mental health wellbeing in terms of expressing and releasing anger/stress/anxiety, concentration issues, and hyperactivity.
With her profound interest in facilitating children, teenagers, and adults in finding clarity, Farah Nasir pursued her MPhil degree in Educational Psychology. She is currently associated with two Pakistani universities, Institute of Business Management also known as "CBM" and Bahria University. Farah also worked as a Trainer in the institute to assist Intellectually Disabled individuals by providing them with job-related training and making their life meaningful for potential independent living. She completed an Art as Therapy program conducted under the Child and Adolescent Development Program in collaboration with the University of Leicester, UK.
Kathryn Ryder, LPC
Counseling Larger-bodied Individuals Through Body-image Concerns, Diet Culture, and Medical Weight Stigma
This presentation will focus on:
- Exploring the impact of diet culture and the social construct of attractiveness that results in personal dissatisfaction, and implementing trauma-informed and effective interventions for improving body image
- Examining medical weight bias, which unnecessarily perpetuates anxiety and shame, minimizes the influence of social determinants of health, and inhibits optimal health outcomes
- Advocating for education and social change related to the influence of weight stigma and discrimination
- Using mindfulness and spirituality to re-establish body trust and to engage in attuned eating and joyful movement, and CBT and assertiveness skills to navigate social pressures and move toward body acceptance
Kathryn J. Ryder is a Licensed Professional Counselor working in a small private practice in Blacksburg, Virginia, and specializing in the treatment of trauma, body image concerns, anxiety and depression, self-esteem, and life transitions. Kathryn’s experience includes many years working in community mental health in both clinical and administrative roles, where she served some of the region’s most vulnerable populations with co-occurring serious mental illness, substance use, and/or developmental disabilities. She draws from both her personal and professional experience to bring compassionate advocacy to those in larger bodies, with a recognition that health and happiness come in all shapes and sizes. She is a member of the Association for Size Diversity and Health as well as the Health at Every Size® community.
Day Two, June 19th:
9am-5pm PDT / 12pm-8pm EDT / 5pm-2am BST
Anarah Sharif, BA, CHt
How to be in a Conscious Connected Relationship
How do we attract, create, and enjoy Conscious Connected relationships? Most of us who are aware want to be in relationships that reflect the inner work that we have done to become conscious and individuated. Anarah will explain how to view relationships as vehicles to greater self-love and mastery, as well as how to work with dynamics that come up like projections or emotional triggers. And all of this can be done in a gentle and empowered way.
Anarah believes in lifelong learning and has dedicated herself to mastering and embodying the principles of personal transformation and healing. Anarah is a Prime Potential® Facilitator, a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist, a graduate of the Practitioner’s Program from The Clearmind Institute, and a Facilitator and Instructor with the Identity Development Institute. Because of this specialized set of tools, she has developed a unique healing technology that she refers to as “Consciousness Coaching”. This brand of coaching combines her intuitive abilities with the best of all her learning from many modalities.
Dana Mays
An Introduction to Neurodiversity
This presentation focuses primarily on Autism and ADHD. We will:
- Define neurodiversity and other relevant terms
- Explore the various aspects of executive functioning and understand the differences in executive functioning for neurodivergent individuals
- Differentiate between a meltdown, shutdown, and tantrum
- Gain support strategies for neurodivergent individuals
- Learn alternatives for outdated and noninclusive language
- Discuss what allyship and advocacy for the neurodiversity community looks like
Dana ‘Kame’ Mays will be graduating from California State University, Fullerton’s M.S. in Counseling program in Fall 2021. She has been interning as a therapist trainee at the LGBTQ Center OC since September 2020, where she primarily works with neurodivergent, trans, and nonbinary individuals. As a biracial, Autistic individual, she understands the struggle of figuring out how to find one’s place in the world. Through counseling, she strives to provide a space where clients feel safe and understood. She has previously led support groups for children ages 4-6 years old with traumas such as parent incarceration, domestic violence, and divorce.
Christopher Brown, MS, LPC
Anti-Racism as a Therapist: What and How?
This presentation will provide a basic understanding of what Anti-Racism is and how it is relevant to the field of Mental Health. Additionally, we will examine the role of the therapist in embodying Anti-Racist principles and we will expand upon the foundation to accept that you cannot be an effective therapist, advocate, doctor, or professional in this field if you are not Anti-Racist yourself.
As the Executive Director of Full Being Services, a Wellness Collective that specializes in providing qualitative holistic services to People of Color, Christopher ensures that clients receive culturally responsive services in a fashion tailored to their needs. He oversees community partnerships to ensure that more clients and families are able to benefit from the services offered and has fostered relationships with entities to increase access to services. He also provides trainings, workshops, and consultations on DEI, Anti-Racism, trauma-informed care, secondary traumatic stress, and other public health initiatives. Christopher has previous leadership experience in Community Mental Health agencies as well, including school-based, outpatient, and crisis.
Adekemi Oguntala, MD
Teen Emotional Health: The Critical Task of Teaching and Healing
Adekemi's work with teens has taught her that they do not have a functioning emotional awareness or vocabulary to know they are anxious or depressed. She has found that, when teens understand concepts like attachment theory and internal family systems, it helps them understand their emotional pain, and that changes who they become to themselves, their parents, and the world. This is because, like learning any language and its culture, teaching teens what is happening to them emotionally allows self-empathy. Only then can they truly be empathic with others. This allows healing, evolving, and movement up the Maslow’s needs that encourages self-actualization.
Dr. Adekemi Oguntala, or Dr. O, is a teen physician who received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley. She earned her medical degree from what is now Drexel University and her pediatric residency at St. Christopher’s hospital for Children, both located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She completed her adolescent medicine fellowship at Stanford University. She also sees clients in her private practice helping teens and parents communicate and connect emotionally while helping teens self-actualize. She focuses on raising the emotional intelligence of the teens with the sub-focus of improving their sense of self-worth, livability, and personal value. She does speaking appearances in schools, conferences and educates parents, teachers, and clinicians on enriching their teen awareness and knowledge.
Antonieta Contreras, LCSW-R, BCN, CCP
Personality, Self, and Trauma
With a deeper understanding of the Self and its separation from personality, it’s becoming more accessible to understand the factors and circumstances that can alter our personality to the extent of it becoming ‘abnormal,’ or better yet, dysfunctional. There is also a much deeper understanding of how alterations in the way our autonomic nervous system operates have a huge impact on the way we perceive reality, and therefore, the way we interact with the world. Trauma affects the way our nervous system functions; there are emotional reactions that are a product of a poor sense of self and distorted reality that get repeated over and over, not necessarily because they are traits we are born with, but because they become habitual strategies to navigate specific environments, especially toxic or unsafe ones. There is a high correlation between trauma, the development of self, and unhealthy or unpredictable behavior that could end up categorized as what the psychiatric field calls personality disorders.
Antonieta Contreras holds a postgraduate trauma studies program from ICP (Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy). She is trained as a Gestalt clinician and a Contemplative psychotherapist. A board-certified Neurofeedback clinician, she takes a strong neuroscience-based foundation to her approach. She is currently the Chair of the Curriculum at the ICP Trauma Studies Program and a regular lecturer at NYU SSSW. She teaches, supervises, consults, and writes extensively about trauma, focusing on communicating the relevance of trauma to a wider audience.
Cheryl Dolinger Brown, LCSW
How to Listen—When You'd Rather Not: Bridging Divides
Why is it so difficult to listen to the "other," especially when our values, beliefs, and personal realities clash? How can we use our therapist skills to help families on opposite sides of the political divide deeply listen to each other and also use our skills in the larger community to decrease the pernicious polarization in our country (and the world)?
Cheryl Dolinger Brown, LCSW, has been practicing as a psychotherapist in New York City for over 40 years with individuals, couples, and groups, in addition to presenting workshops and supervising therapists. She has written articles for the magazine, Social Work Today, and was an advisor on their editorial board. She believes in life-long learning and has been certified as a Psychoanalyst, Imago Relationship Therapist (Advanced Clinician and Consultant), Somatic Experience Practitioner, and PACT therapist (two years).
Alex Iantaffi, PhD, LMFT
The Traumatic Nature of Rigid Gender Binaries
Rigid gender binaries are part of the legacies of settler-colonialism and cis-hetero normative patriarchal norms that systemically impact all bodies, albeit in a range of different ways. In this session, we will explore how the ways in which our bodies are gendered also intersect with the ways in which we are racialized, classed, categorized, normed, and read in the dominant culture and how these intersections of identities and experiences can impact our mental health. By the end of this training, participants will be more aware of how pervasive and somatically held cisgenderism is, and begin to reflect on how to approach this in their therapy practice.
Alex Iantaffi, Ph.D., MS, SEP, CST, LMFT is a writer, family therapist, WPATH certified gender specialist, certified sex therapist, Somatic ExperiencingⓇ practitioner, clinical supervisor, and independent scholar. Alex is currently the Chair of the Trans and Queer interest network of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) and President-Elect of the Minnesota Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (MAMFT). Alex was the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Sexual and Relationship Therapy for eleven years and has researched, presented, and published extensively on gender, disability, sexuality, relationships, and HIV. Alex is passionate about education, healing justice, and community-based and engaged scholarship. Alex is a transmasculine, nonbinary, bi queer, disabled, Italian immigrant who has been living on Dakota and Anishinaabe territories, currently known as Minneapolis, MN (US) since 2008.
Our courses are
At the Intersection of Psychotherapy, spirituality, and social change
WE BELIEVE LEARNING SHOULD CHALLENGE YOU AND CHANGE YOU.
Here's Everything You'll Receive With the
Community Teacher Spotlight
1) 14 presentations over 2 days
2) Lifetime free access to recordings
3) Live community dialogue and participation