The Heart of Healing

A Community of Practice for Helpers, Healers & Changemakers

One Year of Monthly Gatherings, Community, and Collective Care

Join us for one month or the whole year-long offering | In Person & Virtual

A place to be held while you hold so much.

You are holding grief. Responsibility. Stories. Systems. You are holding people.

The Heart of Healing is a monthly gathering space where you don’t have to hold alone.

In a culture that rewards urgency, overgiving, and disconnection from the body, this gathering offers something different.

This is a slow, intentional practice of embodied care rooted in relationship, shared values, and collective responsibility.

A place to pause.
To breathe.
To feel your feet on the ground again — alongside others who understand the weight of justice-rooted work.

Shaping the Conditions for Healing

Helpers are being asked to hold more than ever — personally, professionally, collectively.

Many of us are supporting others through harm, grief, and systemic violence while navigating our own exhaustion, tenderness, and uncertainty — often without spaces that truly hold us in return.

When care is constant but care for the caregiver is scarce, something begins to fray.

We are shaping something different.

The Heart of Healing grew from the understanding that healing is not an individual project — healing is a collective practice.

When we say justice-rooted, we mean care that is attentive to power, harm, dignity, and belonging — and open to learning, reflection, and repair.

This space exists so that healing is not something you facilitate alone.

It is something we practice together.

What This Is

The Heart of Healing is a monthly community of practice for therapists, wellness practitioners, educators, yoga teachers, activists, and others engaged in care work.

Each gathering offers:

  • Somatic, nervous system-guided practices that support grounding and a return to choice — without forcing calm or bypassing what’s real

  • Relational community-building with like-hearted practitioners navigating grief, responsibility, contradiction, and hope

  • Shared reflection on how our values live in the body — through boundaries, rest, accountability, presence, repair, and care

  • Space to be seen and honored for who you are — not just what you offer or hold for others

  • Gentle structure and thoughtful facilitation rooted in trauma-responsive, justice-centered practice

Healing here is not about fixing.

It is about remembering — together.

What This Isn’t

This is not a clinical training.
This is not a certification program.
This is not resilience-as-endurance.
This is not a productivity strategy.
This is not about becoming “more optimized.”

This is a practice space. This is community.
A place to land.

A place to be held.
A place to be human.

  • Embodiment: Coming Home to Yourself

  • Grounding in Individual & Collective Values

  • Reclaiming Rest, Pleasure & Aliveness

  • Resourcing for Times of Upheaval

  • Belonging & Mutual Care

  • Grief & Joy in Collective Healing

  • Burnout Recovery & Prevention

  • Tending Boundaries with Compassion

  • Generative Conflict & Sacred Rage

  • Sustainable Activism & Decolonizing Healing Practices

  • Embodied Liberation & Collective Care

  • Dreaming New Futures — Together

Themes We Explore

The 12 Gatherings

This year-long community practice unfolds across twelve monthly gatherings. Each session has its own focus while building toward deeper connection, embodiment, and collective care.

Sign up to be a part of this year-long program, or select individual workshops to sign up for. More details below.

  • We're a team of passionate thinkers and doers, dedicated to building with purpose and clarity. Collaboration and curiosity drive everything we do.

  • June 12 - Led by Tiger

    Our values are expressions of our unique paths that manifest in our interactions with others and the world. By making space for difference in values across the collective, we create space for shared authentic leadership that endures.

    Justice work is inherently a practice of healing, yet this work can generate its own suffering when we grip too tightly, hoping others will share our precise values to reach our collective goals. Through guided somatic practice and courageous dialogue, participants will explore what it feels like to hold their interior value system with open hands and to navigate where collective values are both shared and differ. We'll feel into the discomfort and tension in this open-handed practice, and explore the opportunity in the space between our individual values and collective values.

  • July 10 - Led by Laurie

    As a healer, you often bravely hold the suffering and emotional experiences of others. This work can feel especially heavy during times of upheaval and uncertainty, personally or collectively.

    This 90-minute experiential session offers grounded, accessible practices drawn from yoga, including breathwork (pranayama), gentle movement, meditation, and mudra (intentional hand gestures). We’ll explore how to balance the nervous system, reconnect with the wisdom of the body, and cultivate steadiness in order to stay connected to self and stay present with your work even in challenging times. 

    Alongside these practices, you’ll be invited to reflect on your strengths and values as sources of inner and relational support. We'll focus on resourcing toward collective care, exploring how tending to your own needs and capacity encourages the ability to care for others and your community. You’ll leave with some practical tools to stay grounded in your work and life and a clearer sense of what sustains you, especially when the world feels unsteady.

  • August 14 - Led by Alicia

    Drawing on the wisdom of the elements, and the wisdom of our emotions, this practice is a landing place to wiggle, rest, and reconnect. It is often the case that in times of great upheaval, we pull away from glimmers and feel guilty over experiencing joy while so much around us causes sorrow. In the same vein, we often pull away from slowing down when there is so much to fight for and protect. But both pleasure and rest are vital parts of expressing our humanity, and being present and embodied in all the moments that matter most.

    The spirit of this session is inspired by activist Dan Savage who wrote, “During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.” No matter the crisis or the way you ‘dance,’ this gentle movement and Restorative practice is designed to help reignite and keep alive the spark of joy inside us all. (All equipment and props will be provided.)

  • September 11 - Led by Gayla

    Belonging is not something we have to become worthy of — it is something we remember. This 90-minute gathering invites you to gently shift from the busy mind into the wisdom of the heart through slow, accessible movement and breath. Together we will soften the nervous system, creating space to notice what it feels like to be here — in our bodies, in this moment, and in community. The theme of Belonging and Mutual Care guides our practice, reminding us that healing happens in connection, not isolation. 

    We begin with somatic practices to help move our energy from our heads to our hearts.  Then we will circle together for guided reflection and the opportunity for heartfelt sharing, cultivating a space where every voice matters. We close with a restorative sound meditation with singing bowls, gongs, and chimes. This offering is an invitation to experience the truth that we belong — to ourselves and to one another — and that care flows both ways when we gather with intention.

  • October 9 - Led by Kryssi

  • November 13 - Led by Laurie

    As a healer, you may often stretch beyond your limits to provide compassionate care. Over time, this overextension may take a toll on your energy, focus, and joy in the work. This workshop offers a supportive space to gently turn that same care inward and explore ways to sustain your healing work without depleting yourself. Through restorative yoga, nourishing breathwork, self-compassion meditation, and guided reflection, you’ll be supported in softening accumulated tension, settling the nervous system, and reconnecting with your deeper intentions that first brought you to your work. 


    Through a lens of yoga philosophy, we'll look at burnout, vicarious trauma, and moral injury and explore balanced effort, acceptance, and non-attachment to honor both dedication and limits in your healing work. You will be guided to develop a personalized plan for ongoing awareness of your own warning signs of burnout, alongside consistent practical tools, supporting nourishing and sustainable healing work.

  • December 11 - Led by

  • January 8 - Led by Deanna

    Anger and rage that arises as a result of experiencing & witnessing injustice, violence & systemic oppression is a Sacred Container for necessary conflict, necessary revolutionary change. Patriarchal conditioning & mainstream wellness culture teaches suppression of anger, which dilutes embodied agency, and diminishes ancestral & intergenerational wisdom. To be in power-*with* anger is to reclaim the full expression of Sacred Rage as a vehicle for liberatory choice, speech & action. All essential ingredients in our principled struggle together, and to engage skillfully with conflict to generate liberatory conditions instead of repeated cycles of patriarchal harm.

    In this workshop, participants will be guided through a practice of body & sense-based exploratory movement, connecting with the 4-elements of nature as a way to reclaim self-agency and power-with anger. Through a “sites of shaping/sites of change” mapping exercise, participants will unlock pathways to tap into embodied Sacred Rage, and engage through ritual to transmute suppressed fire into Collective Sovereignty.

  • February 12 - Led by Deanna

    The nervous system frequencies of saviorism, shame, guilt, hyper-independence, hyper-control & burnout that are prevalent in healing & justice work all rely on the same underlying cause - white supremacy. Decolonizing & unsettling white supremacist principles from healing practices is a necessary, though often too intellectualized, conceptual discussion. How do we actually find our place & “embody” margins-to-center liberation? How do we take concepts and put them into choice, action & consistent practice in context through real life relationships?


    Through frank, facilitated discussion, a “sites of shaping/sites of change” mapping exercise, and somatic accessible movement practice, participants will be guided through detangling white supremacists patterns from the inter-relational nervous system. Taking this workshop a step further from simply mapping or understanding colonial & patriarchal patterns, participants will also be guided through creating a community-relevant, plan of praxis (that’s theory into practice) towards leveraging privilege for hyperlocal systemic change. 


    *An affinity group for People of the Global Majority may be created to parallel portions of this workshop based on registrants with these identities preferences & desires for private healing space.

  • March 12 - Led by Kryssi

  • April 9 - Led by Tiger

    The future isn't something we dream into existence alone - it's heavily influenced by our reactions to the world around us and what we choose to do in response. In this session, participants will move beyond abstract visioning to explore what it means to materialize a future grounded in present reality and collective desire. 

    Through creative reflection and public expression, we'll evoke our innermost gut and soul responses - speaking our visions aloud to discover where will meets dream, and where the body confirms what we're genuinely ready for. This session creates space for weaving visions with teeth - dreams aligned with the will to walk them into being, grounded at the right level for where we actually are, and discovered in collective rather than solitary imagination.

This Space Is For You If:

You hold space for others — and are longing for a place where you don’t have to be the strong one.

Your nervous system has been working hard to hold it all together.

You feel the weight of care work in your body.

You care deeply about justice, dignity, and collective liberation — and want those values to be practiced, not just discussed.

You love your work and also feel tired, tender, overwhelmed, or stretched thin.

You believe healing is relational and collective.

You are seeking community that honors your full humanity and makes room for rest, boundaries, and honest presence.

You do not need prior experience with somatic practice.
You do not need the right language.
Curiosity and willingness to engage at your own pace are enough.

If you are longing for a slower, more sustainable way to stay engaged in your values — and to nourish your heart while doing so —

you belong here.

This offering may not be the right fit if:

You are looking for a certification or clinical training.

You want quick fixes or strategies to push through burnout.

You are seeking a space focused on performance or optimization.

You are not open to exploring justice, equity, and collective care as foundational to healing.

You are hoping for a purely passive experience without reflection or relational engagement.

This space is intentionally slow, relational, and values-driven.

It asks for presence rather than perfection — and participation rather than expertise.

If this isn’t the right season or fit, that’s okay.

We trust you to know what your system needs.

Facilitated by the Teaching Collective at Empowered Spaces

The Heart of Healing is led by the members of the collective at Empowered Spaces — trauma-responsive, justice-rooted practitioners grounded in somatic, relational, and community-based approaches to healing.

Each session offers gentle structure, shared practices, and thoughtful facilitation — without hierarchy, performance, or pressure.

Together, we explore pathways that nourish the heart, steady the nervous system, and support more sustainable, embodied ways of showing up in the world.

  • Kelly Caul, MSW, LCSW, SEP (she/her)

  • Laurie Brockhaus, LCSW, E-RYT500 C-IAYT (she/her)

  • Tiger Rahman, M.A.Ed, 500-CYT (they/he)

  • Krystle Crayton-Day, M.A.T., CYT-200 (she/her)

  • Deanna Sophia Danger (they/them)

  • Alicia Delaney, E-RYT 200, YACEP (she/her)

  • Gayla Downey, RYT-500 (she/her)

Gathering Details & Investment

When We Gather

Second Friday of each month | 6:30–8:00 PM Central

This is a year-long community of practice.

You are welcome to attend in person or virtually.

Our virtual space will be intentionally co-facilitated by another teacher so those joining online feel connected, included, and supported — not secondary.

Ways to Participate

You are welcome to join in the way that feels right for this season.

🌿 Drop In (Monthly Option)

Come as you are, when you can.
Each gathering stands on its own while contributing to a larger arc.

🌿 Full Year Series (12 Gatherings)

When you enroll in the full series, you are choosing something deeper than attendance.

You are choosing to be part of a community that we will co-create over the year.

A place to be held.
A place to turn for support.
A place to be honest in the messiness of navigating justice-rooted healing work.
People to rely on — and to be relied upon by.

Healing is a collective practice.
The year-long container allows that collective to take shape slowly, steadily, and relationally.

Full Series Includes

In addition to the monthly gatherings, full-series participants receive:

Access to a private _____________ community to stay connected between sessions, ask questions, and share reflections

A curated PDF after each gathering with bonus content, practices, and integration reflections

A 5–10 minute recorded somatic practice each month aligned with the theme

A community potluck gathering during the year to deepen connection in person

These offerings are designed to gently support integration — without adding pressure, homework, or performance.

Investment

At Empowered Spaces we value community care. We are committed to making our offerings accessible, and to leveraging privilege and resources when we can to support one another.

We offer equity pricing as a small practice of economic and racial justice. Because of systemic injustice, racialized policies, land theft, and generational exclusion, access to financial resources is not evenly distributed. Our ability to pay for services, and to access them, varies widely.

This sliding scale acknowledges that reality.

We invite you to choose the tier that reflects both your current financial capacity and your commitment to collective care.

Paying at the higher tier is not about charity. It is about solidarity.

When you choose the upper tier, you help fund scholarships, reduce barriers, and expand access for practitioners who might not otherwise be able to participate.

Equity pricing is a practice of mutual responsibility. We are building something together.

Drop-In (per session)

  • Sustainer Rate - "I can pay my way" - $45

  • Community Rate - "I can use support from my community" - $30

  • Supporter Rate - "I can help support my community" - $60

Full Year Series (12 Gatherings)

  • Sustainer Rate - "I can pay my way" - $450 (comes out to $37.50 per session)

  • Community Rate - "I can use support from my community" - $300 (comes out to $25 per session)

  • Supporter Rate - "I can help support my community" - $600 (comes out to $50 per session)

Full & Partial Scholarships

At Empowered Spaces, we believe healing spaces must be intentionally accessible—not just in theory, but in practice. Our Equity Scholarships prioritize access for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, as well as others who have faced systemic or financial barriers to participating in yoga and other healing modalities. This is part of our ongoing commitment to equity, collective care, and justice-rooted healing. To inquire about the Empowered Spaces Equity Scholarship, please contact Kelly at kkcaul@yahoo.com.

Ready to learn more?

Reach out to us and we will be in touch within 48 business hours to learn about Empowered Spaces and to share a bit more about your practice orientation and needs.