You know that exercise can support your patients’ and clients’ physical and mental health, and yet how often do you find that there seems to be obstacles preventing your patients and clients from bringing more exercise and movement into their lives? Many people have complicated relationships with exercise and their bodies. For some, gyms and fitness studios can feel intimidating or unwelcoming. Others do know the gym can be a place to feel better, but no one is teaching them how to reap all the mental health benefits from their movement practice. And if your clients and patients are living with trauma, contending with systemic discrimination, or coping with stress, they likely have another obstacle to contend with—they may be disconnected from their body and not even know it. This disconnect can lead to frequent feelings of overwhelm, illness, chronic pain, and injuries—even if our patients and clients are trying their best to tend to their well-being.

Using both written and simple movement exercises, teachings about trauma informed movement practices, and her gift of storytelling, Laura will show you how to help your patients or clients reframe how they think about and approach movement and wellness, and she will do it with a sense of humor and compassion.

By the end of the program attendees will be empowered to show their patients and clients how to incorporate mindful movement into their lives, not as another to-do, but as a grounding and empowering practice that fits into their daily routines as they are right now.

>> learn how to use a strengths-based approach within a trauma-informed framework to help clients and patients turn any movement they already do (even chores!) into a healing practice that allows them to begin to reconnect with themselves

>> learn how increased embodiment through mindfulness helps clients and patients build tools for having conversations around challenges in the practitioner's office and in the greater world, as well as increase their overall capacity for curiosity and self-knowing

>> explore what “wellness” means

>> discover how teaching clients and patients how to create a simple shift in their approach to daily movement can foster a deep mind-body connection, which begets increased access to a tremendous amount of knowledge about the self and the world, boosts their communication skills, and taps into their agency.

Laura Khoudari is a pioneer in trauma-informed strength training, a certified Positive Psychology-based Well-Being Coach, speaker, and the author of Lifting Heavy Things: Healing Trauma One Rep at a Time. She is passionate about giving people the tools they need to heal from trauma and cultivate mental health and wellness. Her work has been widely recognized by the trauma and fitness community, and she has been featured by The New York Times, NPR, Buzzfeed, UpWorthy, Outside Online, Medium, Vice, and Nike.com. She has presented her work for Somatic Experiencing International, The Breathe Network, Reebok, Les Mills, Fitness4AllBodies, and conferences, schools, and fitness studios in the US and Canada.

The mission of the Ner Jersey Integrated Mental Health Conference (NJIMHC) is to grow into an annual conference that provides a forum for integrated mental health care professionals to foster curiosity and learning, to inspire creative solutions to care for inequity, and to promote the building of a community of long-lasting, collaborative relationships. This conference will develop and promote a practice model that affirms wholeness and wellness and will work towards ending the illusion of separateness and the trauma of stigma.

This one-day conference will be filled with thought-provoking keynote speakers, engaging panel discussions, and immersive workshops designed to inspire critical conversations and take a deeper dive into exploring collaboration between psychiatry, psychotherapy, and mind-body modalities to effectively treat mental wellbeing of patients.

Our inaugural theme - Integrated Care for a Disintegrated World - explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has been the singular shared adverse community experience of our time. The impact of the pandemic created an environment of chronic stress that closed the window of tolerance and resulted in a society more fragile and brittle in managing distress.

However, the pandemic also presented an opportunity to revisit the conventional model of mental health initiatives and reimagine one where the whole person is seen and heard, with approaches that bring the whole person into understanding; building beyond general medicine and psychiatry. Proposing a truly whole person, whole life experience perspective to clinical care, incorporating psychiatry, psychotherapy, integrative approaches, and mind-body modalities required for the recovery of self, family, community, and a world so worthy of rescue.

This conference will develop and promote a practice model that affirms wholeness and wellness and will work towards ending the illusion of separateness and the trauma of stigma.