Where Education meets Embodiment. 👏🏾👏🏾♥️ Join TEAO Canada for the launch of our new monthly series, Foundations of Care, a 45-minute workshop and orientation designed for both community members and new volunteers. Our October session explores: What Is Trauma-Responsive Care? How Does It Differ from Trauma-Informed or Trauma-Sensitive Care? Discover how trauma frameworks support safety, healing, and embodied awareness, and learn how TEAO applies these practices across Ontario. This session also includes a short volunteer orientation. Come connect, learn, and explore what volunteering within a trauma-responsive organization looks like. Date: Friday, October 24, 2025 Time: 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM (Online via Zoom) Cost: Free Access Needs: info@teaocanada.com Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/foundations-of-care-series-volunteer-orientation-community-workshop-tickets-1736294556759?aff=oddtdtcreator or LINK IN BIO Supported by the Waterloo Region Community Foundation (WRCF). #CommunityCare #EmbodiedLearning #TraumaResponsive #VolunteerWithTEAO #HealingTogether #TEAOCanada

Interesting. “Winter isn’t the Problem Our Habits are” Educational Perspective Shift repost from @earthymagnesium ♥️👏🏾 We call it cold and flu season as if the issue is the temperature itself, instead of our disconnection from nature. But winter was never the problem. It’s the way we live through it. Humans were designed to move. To breathe fresh air. To eat from local food from nature. To rise with the sun. To commune with the cold, not fear it. Instead, we’ve insulated ourselves from everything that heals us. And we wonder why our nervous systems are fried, our immune systems sluggish, and our sleep restless. The home, once a sacred space of warmth, rhythm, and restoration, has become a box of invisible toxins. An altar to convenience. A place where we binge instead of breathe. Consume instead of connect. We forget that health is not found in a pill, a powder, or a protocol. It’s found in the choices we repeat daily. The subtle rituals we return to every season. The way we honour our bodies by aligning with nature, not fighting it. This winter, don’t just survive. Reclaim your biological intelligence. • Walk after meals to move your lymph and digest your food. • Air out your home — fresh air is medicine. • Eat slow, seasonal, ancestral meals made with your hands. • Ditch the LED haze and let your eyes rest in candlelight. • Choose healing discomfort over comfortable disease. The truth is: there’s nothing natural about being chronically unwell. It’s simply what happens when we forget who we are and what we come from. Nature is waiting. Your body is listening. It’s time to remember. #wellness #health #nature #healing #holistic #ancestral #knowledge #wisdom #consciousness #mindset #life

Tonight:Trauma-Informed Care Circles ♥️ TEAO Canada invites you to an evening of gentle presence and community care. Trauma-Informed Care Circles are “bi-weekly”, accessible gatherings that offer space for reflection, grounding, and witnessing. Come as you are, with openness and care. Time: 6:45 PM - 8:00 PM Location: Cambridge Public Library - Hespeler Branch Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/trauma-informed-care-circles-tickets-1528907817439 or link in bio #free These circles are part of our commitment to fostering trauma-responsive, culturally grounded supports across Ontario, and are free to attend. Feel free to bring a friend. All are welcome. #CollectiveCare #HealingTogether #BelongingIsHealing #CommunityCare #TraumaInformed #InnerChildHealing #EmbodiedHealing #ConnectionIsMedicine #TEAOCanada

✨ A Repost from us at @teao_canada to remind our collective community #fridaymotivation 🪴 “We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It’s not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.” – Assata Shakur 🪴 This is an awakening call. True liberation asks us to move beyond dismantling what harms — it asks us to embody what heals. 🌱 Mass Construction — to repair, rebuild, and reimagine futures in our bodies, families, and communities. ❤️ Mass Love — to ground our actions in compassion, care, and connection, so change doesn’t replicate the harm we seek to end. System change without soul change risks repeating the same cycles. Together, we are building new blueprints of belonging, justice, and collective care. 🔥 Be the healer. Be the builder. Be the love that transforms. #AssataShakur #CollectiveHealing #Liberation #MassConstruction #MassLove #SomaticJustice #EmbodiedHealing #TraumaInformed #TEAOCanada #CommunityCare

We love this somatic collective practice - and if you’ve been in community with TEAO you’ve probably done this with us! #grounding #embodiedhealing #tryitout Repost from @tinybuddhaofficial • “Placing your hand on your heart while taking 5 deep breaths activates your parasympathetic nervous system and releases oxytocin. This gentle self-touch tells your brain that you are safe and loved.” ~Inspirology #tinybuddha #quotes #dailyquotes #quotesdaily #quoteoftheday #wisdom #wordsofwisdom #wisdomquotes #dailywisdom #deepbreaths #mindfulness #nervoussystemregulation #safe #loved

👏🏾WE SHOWED UP & SO DID YOU — MIND + HEART STYLE! ♥️ (🔈 sound on last video) What a powerful day at the Elmira Multicultural Festival @heartsopenforeveryone ! TEAO Canada was honoured to be the Mental Health First Aid & Community Support Hub, offering pause, presence, and care for hundreds of individuals, families, youth, and elders who visited our Mind & Heart Booth throughout the festival. — a calm space to pause, breathe, and connect. Our trained mental health first aiders and community team supported mindful practices, creative activities, and resources to support both body and heart. #CommunityCare 🫶🏾 From tears to laughter, deep conversations to playful connections — this wasn’t just a booth, it was a gentle movement. ✨ A space to breathe. A space to feel seen. A space to belong. Led under the wings of our CEO & Founder, Nicole Brown Faulknor @wounds2wings, our growing team of Peer Support Facilitators and Summer 2025 Volunteer Outreach Staff stepped into community leadership with courage and compassion. This is the beginning of a season where TEAO will be walking with communities — not as service providers, but as kin, listeners, and system-shifters. 🎉 A huge congrats to our Spin-the-Wheel winners who secured FREE entry to our next Collective Pause Day-Retreat, happening the weekend of Nov 7–9: 💫 Karen 💫 Navita 💫 Megan 💫 Amandeep We’ll be in touch soon with all the juicy details! 🙏🏾 And a very special shoutout to Abby from Hearts Open for Everyone @heartsopenforeveryone and team , the visionaries behind this incredible festival, who brilliantly and boldly recognized the need for not just physical first aid — but mental, emotional, and community-first aid too. Your forward-thinking leadership made space for this booth to exist. Thank you for seeing the need before it was named. Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in community. And when we honour both mind & heart, we all rise. #TEAOCanada #HeartsOpen #MentalHealthFirstAid #PeerSupportInAction #CollectiveCare #CommunityHealing #ElmiraMulticulturalFestival #Summer2025Outreach #TraumaResponsiveCare #EmbodiedHealing #SpinTheWheelWinners #MindAndHeartBooth

Educational Awareness & Amplifying Voices: In our TEAO trainings, we teach through an embodied perspective because learning isn’t just something we know in the mind—it’s something we must feel in the body. To unlearn harmful conditioning and relearn ways of being that restore dignity, safety, and justice, we create space to notice our sensations, emotions, and nervous system responses. This embodied approach allows us to co-regulate together, rather than staying in patterns of isolation or hierarchy. It’s the foundation of what we call resistance education: an awareness that systems of oppression—including racism—are forms of violence that live in both our bodies and our institutions. By feeling and naming these impacts, we amplify voices, reclaim power, and practice trauma-responsive care rooted in collective healing. Reposted from @blackhistorystudies ⬇️ When we say “racism is violence,” it’s a statement that encompasses much more than just physical harm. It refers to the systemic, psychological, emotional, and physical harm inflicted upon individuals and communities due to racist beliefs and structures. ❤️💚🖤 #EmbodiedLearning #TraumaResponsiveCare #ResistanceEducation #SystemicImpactAwareness #CollectiveHealing

Come Find Us in Community - Multicultural Festival of Elmira #weareexcited #trainedpeersupport & #peereducator(s) of TEAO Canada will be out in community for the first time after their certification training this past July! 👏🏾🫶🏾♥️ Repost from @heartsopenforeveryone • 🌿 MFE 2025 Mind & Heart First Aid: Community Support Booth 🌿 At the heart of a Multicultural Festival of Elmira is the chance to connect, learn, and celebrate across cultures, and that includes caring for our minds and hearts as we do so. 💜 This year, we’re honoured to welcome the Trauma and Embodiment Association of Ontario (TEAO Canada), who will be offering a special booth beside the St. John’s Ambulance First Aid tent. Think of it as a mindfulness space within the festival. A calm and welcoming environment where you can pause, reflect, and seek support. Trained mental health first aiders will be available to listen, share resources, and help us better understand one another across differences. 🌍✨ Because caring for community means tending not only to our bodies, but also to the cultural and emotional connections that help us grow together. 📅 Saturday, September 20, 2025 ⏰ 11 AM–6 PM 📍 Gibson Park, 17 First St. W., Elmira 🎶 FREE ENTRY 🌐 Learn more: www.teaocanada.com FB: @W2WTEAO IG: @teao_canada #MultiFestElmira . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . #MulticulturalFestivalofElmira #TEAO #CommunitySupport #ElmiraOntario #WoolwichTownship #WaterlooRegion #HeartsOpenforEveryone #HOPE #WeAllBelong #MentalHealthMatters #CommunityFestival #CulturalCelebration #Wellbeing #MindAndHeart

A Look Back - And an Invitation Forward This past Sunday, our Collective Care Circle at The Branches @thebranchesyoga brought together a beautiful group of community members for a quiet hour of somatic healing, shared breath, and gentle presence. Led by Nicole Brown Faulknor, we moved together - through grief, through grounding, through joy. Thank you to everyone who showed up, held space, and allowed themselves to just be. If you missed it, we hope you’ll join us for the next session: Sunday, October 5, 2025 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM The Branches, 9 Samuel Street, Kitchener, ON Free and open to all Learn more + Register here: https://linktr.ee/TEAOCanada or link in bio. This offering is made possible through the generous support of the Waterloo Region Community Foundation @wrcommfdn , allowing us to keep community care free and accessible. Note from TEAO Canada: The Art of Community Care & Mutual Aid. Sometimes care isn’t loud or obvious-it lives quietly in the spaces where we unknowingly support one another. Through resourcing together-learning to feel an internal sense of safety alongside each other-something shifts. Isolation breaks. Humanity is shared. Community care reminds us that even in moments of solitude, we are not alone. #CommunityCare #MutualAid #Traumalnformed