How are we in this together? Relationscapes for healing our social nervous system | USABP Speaker Series

Description
Why aren’t we showing up, and how could we? When does a group become a community? How can belonging heal the polycrises?

We know it is not possible to separate the body from the mind, or the individual from their environment. We are social creatures- mammals wired for connection amidst a growing epidemic of loneliness. We need each other more than ever. Yet, precisely when we need to, it can feel scary to show up for ourselves and truly include each other. And our new future being crafted right now, depends on it.

In this session through dialogue, storytelling and discussion we will remember and apply what our ancestors knew, and explore how shifting attention from I to us can create psychological safety and networks of interdependence enhancing mental, emotional and spiritual health. We will discuss what furthers and severs a culture of mutuality and how inter-dependence can be harnessed and shaped, with intention.

Main Points of Presentation

Participants will learn to:

• Recognize the mammalian drive for connection and how the "epidemic of loneliness" affects the mind-body-environment continuum.
  
• Apply ancestral wisdom and storytelling as tools to reclaim a sense of belonging and bridge the gap between disconnection and community.
  
• Cultivate psychological safety within networks to enhance mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
  
• Harness intentional interdependence to move beyond mere survival and toward a sustainable state of collective thriving.

Learning Objectives

After completing this session, participants will be able to:

• Analyze the psychological and physiological impact of shifting attention from individual identity ("I") to collective interdependence ("Us").
  
• Identify defense patterns and behaviors that either facilitate or sever a culture of mutuality.
  
• Evaluate the role of belonging and social connectedness as notable interventions for trauma healing.
  
• Develop practical strategies to turn social networks into communities with intention.

> This event will be recorded and available for members and non-members who register for this event. This course will not include CEs.

Presenter Information

An unconventional guide for unusual times, Ishita Sharma lives in awe of Life, extending its deepest invitation— to live, love and lead from our center— rooted in our bodies, fueled by Grace!

A transformational embodiment coach and syncretic “human” teacher, she speaks and facilitates transformation world-wide. She is the founder of Come to Center, facilitator of The Body Class, and hosts the Come to Center Podcast.

Ishita is the quiet catalyst behind many realized seekers, renowned educators, creatives and visionaries, including leaders at Broadway, Google, MIT, NASA, Harvard etc. Clients come to her to realize their deepest longings, and find that “missing something.” They leave walking in wonder, aligned with Higher purpose, unlocking the freedom, flow and fullness that lies at their center.

Using a refined skillset and intuition, Ishita guides confusion into clarity, separation into wholeness, stuckness into flow, and fear into Love. She believes direct Self-knowledge and community are balm for our times and her work supports both. She studies and transmits what she calls the ‘relational meta-physics of Reality’ with an “old friend” like presence, and brings infectious joy, depth and precision to clear the core of long-standing issues efficiently.

Her core invitation is in meeting Life as and from Love. Raised in India, coming of age in post-9/11 USA, her approach is informed by Life-long investigations into how Life and people actually work, her origins in the Indian Himalayas, a lineage of seers and teachers, professional practice in corporate America, and deep study and initiation across multiple wisdom and healing traditions, including Core Energetics (somatic psychotherapy), the polyvagal system, pre/peri-natal attachment, relational dynamics, Reiki, Yoga, Dzogchen, shamanism and the direct perception of personal energy.

Ishita is a multi-disciplinary, award winning artist and architect. She enjoys walking home together— Human to Human. Presence to Presence. Power to Power. Heart to Heart.

This event is a part of our Authentic Conversations Speaker Series:

Authentic Conversations: Inclusion, Power, and the Practice of Belonging is a USABP community outreach dialogue series for practitioners committed to meaningful inclusion within our field.

This community has been meeting to explore a practical and clinically relevant question:

What does it take to create a professional culture where historically marginalized voices are not only welcomed, but centered and supported?

Each gathering features a guest presenter whose lens and lived experience shape that session’s inquiry.

This series engages the lived and embodied realities of exclusion, marginalization, and systemic inequity within our professional and community spaces, including our own.

This series engages the lived and embodied experiences of exclusion, marginalization, and systemic inequity across professional and community settings, including our own.

We examine how power operates in systems: interpersonally, institutionally, and culturally. We look at how belonging is either fostered or undermined through policies, language, leadership, and relational habits.

Participants are invited to:

• Identify how systems of power shape clinical and professional environments

• Recognize ways inclusion efforts can unintentionally reproduce exclusion

• Build the capacity to stay engaged when accountability feels uncomfortable

• Practice shared responsibility in embodied and relational ways