The Road to Resiliency: A Pathway to the Life You Want to Live is a self-guided workbook that helps you understand the adversity you faced and how to heal from it. 
 
The workbook is divided into 5 parts:
 
Part I: The Healing Journey Begins
Donna Farhi writes in her book, “Bringing Yoga to Life,” that many people live their entire lives in exile from self. In practical terms this means that people go through life on autopilot and simply go through the motions without connecting the thoughts in their brain to the feelings and sensations in their bodies. This likely describes you and many people you know. 
 
In this first section, the impact of childhood adversity is explored. Learners begin to recognize how the use of drugs, alcohol, food or social media offered an escape from painful memories. 
 
This first section helps learners begin to create a life they don’t want to run away from, numb or avoid. Learners will begin to connect to the body’s intelligence and begin to make peace with the past. 
 
Part II: The Research
This section will dive into the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) research with a focus on its prevalence across all populations. Knowing how prevalent ACEs is in society will help the learner begin to understand that they AND the people they encounter in families, work and community environments have all experienced trauma. 
 
Knowing ACE’s prevalence engenders compassion and moves the conversation from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” 
 
This section will also explore PACES or Protective and Compensatory Childhood Experiences. PACES are people or experiences that helped offset traumatic experiences by providing positive experiences in relationships and the community. 
 
This section also explores trauma in communities and how trauma leads to toxic stress and resiliency. The hand model of the brain, developed by Dan Siegel, provides a learning tool that helps the learner understand the reptilian and mammalian brain in easy and memorable fashion.
 
Part III: The Brain-Body Connection
Trauma disconnects the brain from the body producing an overactive central nervous system and all sorts of hormonal imbalances. This section will teach how to regulate the central nervous system by identifying triggers. A PAIN (Pain Attention Inside Now) assessment is used to identify “where it hurts” when painful memories or triggers of painful memories occur.
 
Part IV: From the Research to the Me-Search
We move from the research to the “Me-Search” in this section by recognizing that the authentic self is written in our ACES scores. With the help of two theories, Attachment Theory and Internal Family Systems Theory, the application of ACE’s is explored even deeper. You will learn about attachment styles and how trauma impacts the way you relate to others and show up in the world.
 
Part V: Healing and Growth, Create a New Future
At the conclusion of the workbook, learners will confidently say, “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know who holds it.” And that is you, BEAUTIFUL YOU! Internal narratives and outward behavior shifts as learners begin to show up differently in the world. The concept of “contrary action” is explored as a means to move from maladaptive behaviors that once helped ease and manage stress to healthy practices. Learners will write about and take actions steps toward learning how to live as the "future self".
 
Let's begin this important work!