The Academy for Community Behavioral Health: Embodied Presence with People Navigating Migration: Cultivating Mindfulness and Somatic-Based Skills

This multi session course is designed for NYC non-profit care providers who witness and can help address the emotional, psychological, and systemic challenges experienced by individuals and families navigating migration. It expands on the brief course, Responding to Immigration-Related Trauma, by offering opportunities for deeper engagement with the embodied and relational practices introduced in that course.

As humans, there is a universality in the ways we experience stress, distress, and trauma. Threats to our survival or connection with others activate a range of automatic responses, including fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop. As providers who serve people navigating migration, you may witness the impacts of stress and trauma on your clients and participate in their care, “holding the rim” of their suffering, while processing your own.

Through this multi-session course, we explore how the impacts of pre-migration adversity, displacement, acculturation stress, family separation, and ongoing legal uncertainty show up somatically in our individual and collective bodies. We will also explore ways to meet the most common responses to trauma, using mindfulness and somatic-based practices to self-regulate and be present with clients.

We will practice grounding and containment skills as a form of resistance and resilience to oppression.  A central focus of this course is the role of providers in witnessing, holding, safely discharging, and somatically transforming distress. These are essential skills for supporting clients who carry complex trauma while also tending to your well-being as providers. Through a trauma-informed and culturally grounded lens, this multi-session course emphasizes relational safety, attuned communication, and strategies that foster empowerment, stabilization, and healing.

WHAT TO EXPECT

This multi-session course is experiential in nature and has a dual focus on client and provider care. Participants are invited to explore with their bodies the somatic-based tools and techniques that will be offered each week. Through repeated and gentle practice, learners will increase confidence in how to effectively meet clients who are experiencing distress or trauma. You will also gain tools to protect yourself as you witness trauma, and reduce burnout and compassion fatigue.

During the course, participants can expect to be on camera, speak aloud, use the chat, and physically move your bodies (as you are able). You will engage with others in a large group and pairs or small groups. Please note that there may be participants with personal and direct experience with migration and immigration. Self-disclosure is neither required nor expected.

COURSE OUTLINE

Each session includes:

• An arriving practice
• Defining the trauma response
• Somatic signs and symptoms in our clients
• How each trauma response shows up at work and the impact on providers
• Somatic tools
• Closing practice

Apply by October 22, 2026.

The Academy for Community Behavioral Health, part of the CUNY School of Professional Studies, launched in June 2021 with funding from the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health and Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity. The Academy puts behavioral health tools in the hands of community-based organizations and others who have meaningful opportunities to start conversations and provide help.