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"Amanda's presentation to our school staff was both educational and practical.  Her information regarding stress and it's affects on both children and adults is researched-based, and she provides practical strategies for both the classroom and for all participants in this engaging workshop.  I highly recommend Amanda's workshops to anyone or any organization that faces the challenges that stress can bring in the workplace or in school."  Brian Beney - Elementary School Principal

 Offer a NEW way to take charge of stress

&

improve health and wellbeing.

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Stress - You see it every day in your work supporting others and know it is the underlying cause for so many issues, including chronic illness, pain and anxiety. You witness those who despite well-applied treatment plans, therapies and support continue the patterns of negative behaviours, thoughts and feelings that cause them to remain stuck and falling short of the potential you see in them.

Would you like to try a new approach to help the people you support to improve their response to stress and optimize their health and well-being?

Psychoeducation for the People you Work With

Address Your Stress is a 4-hour workshop designed by Dr. Amanda Ferris, Naturopathic Doctor. In her own practice, she recognized that in order to help her patients more effectively she needed better tools to consistently address the deep layer of stress that fuels health issues. Dr. Amanda wanted to support making a mindset shift for how people approach their wellbeing. After additional training from the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University to provide Trauma-Informed-Care and extensive research on toxic stress, trauma and brain science, she developed a program for her patients and the results have been profound.

Your clients will discover straight-forward, simple models for the following important scientific understandings:

  • “Your Brain On Stress” Uses Dr. Dan Seigel MD's hand model of the brain developed to explain how stress sabotages the body and the steps to take to tame the animal mind. 

  • Recognizing the Fight/Flight/Freeze response and how to better regulate the mind and body. A complete map of how the autonomic nervous system operates.

  • Understanding how trauma affects the nervous system. Dr. Stephen Porge’s Polyvagal Theory is explained simply with self-inventory practical exercises.

  • The Heart’s Electromagnetic role in health. The Heart/Brain Connection is explained by understanding the role of the Vagus nerve.

  • Practical applications like the Heart Math™ tool and app that provides instant biofeedback on how the body is regulating stress. Also, mindful movement and breathing exercises are practiced together throughout the workshop to solidify the teaching.

The strategies from this workshop can help with:

  • Stress and Anxiety

  • Depression

  • Digestive problems

  • Sleep issues

  • Auto-immune disease

  • Low energy

  • Thyroid and hormonal disorders

  • Physical pain

  • And more!

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Address Your Stress is a strength-based, simplified approach to educate for stress relief and provide motivation for positive change.

This workshop is ideal for:

  • Healthcare Practitioners and their patients

  • Therapists or Coaches and their clients

  • Managers and their team

  • Yoga Instructors and their students

  • Caregivers or support workers

  • Parental support groups

  • Mental health support groups

Empowering professionals with more options for conscious and sustainable support tools for stress.

  • Practitioner/Therapist- Feeling the overwhelm of stress often keeps people in patterns of self-sabotage and lifestyles that decrease compliance and health outcomes. This workshop will provide psychoeducation based on neuroscience and mind-body medicine to give added tools in addition to the personalized support given to them during their consultations with you.

  • Yoga Instructor or Support Services - Stress may lead people to feel overwhelmed preventing them from reaching their full potential. This workshop will provide a new evidence-based model in which to view their body and how they respond to stress. It provides additional tools to help them achieve their goals.

  • Manager/Human Resources - Creating a healthy work/life balance is essential to retaining productive employees. Stress can lead to more time off work from health concerns, lack of creativity and cooperation between employees. Your team can discover simple, work-friendly tools to take control of their stress and build a more cohesive team

The workshop will:

  • Provide a scientific framework of how the nervous system functions both normally, during trauma and with daily stress.

  • Provide and demonstrate the scientific basis for using simple and practical techniques of movement, mindfulness, meditation and the Heart Math™ tools.

  • Provide a psychoeducational approach to understand the stress response from a purposeful and self-protective role. Participants are gently led to shift their own response to stress towards a more self-compassionate and naturally more productive path to reach their health goals.

  • Support a new mindset for more compliance with medical/therapeutic recommendations and taking more ownership of personal wellbeing. Feelings of shame, overwhelm and confusion are decreased and a more empowered view of self emerges.

Imagine if the people you worked with were calm, focused, more creative, cooperative and open-minded? How much more could you help them reach their true potential and the team's collective goals?

"When we are traumatized, disillusioned, or grief-stricken we lose a part of ourselves. How can we ever get it back? Many of us need a guide and a facilitator to help with this critical process of recovery. Since the path to recovery is different for everyone, the guide must have a wide array of tools and skills to offer; tools that can address our wounds, and the defences we create to protect those wounds. The guide must be able to work effectively with body, mind, soul, and the unconscious, since all are deeply affected. Dr. Amanda is such a guide. Her compassion and wide-ranging experience enable her to accompany people on a journey of growth and change. She is more than a doctor, she is an expert at teaching and sharing practices that can open the way to healing and the return to wholeness."

Dr. Chris Sowton, ND

"One of the most common, unrecognized, challenges of living with a chronic health condition is the sense of feeling alone. Along with that feeling, often your doctor doesn't really understand and can't help you enough.  So you're left to figure it out by yourself. 

 Dr. Amanda Ferris has the rare, lovely qualities of kindness, compassion and knowledge combined with the experience of having walked this path of healing from chronic illness. She can teach you the science showing that your nervous system is a key to healing. She’ll help you get a set of tools to begin to heal and support for implementing approaches you can do at home.  You’ll also have an ally. All of these will help you access the sense of wholeness and peace that is your birthright."

Dr. Veronique Mead, MD, MA

TESTIMONIALS

Teresa:

"Taking this course has had a substantial impact on the quality of my life. I am able to let things go easier, some of my physical ailments have significantly reduced as well. I also react to stressful situations with more ease.  And I'm still learning!

Understanding how stress affects us is an eye-opener that everyone should have, and there is no better way to learn than with Dr. Amanda.  Taking her course is like sitting at the kitchen table listening to a trusted friend tell you what you need to hear.

It's a wonderful gift to give to yourself ! "   -Teresa T.

After being sick with auto-immune issues for over three decades this is the FIRST program that has made a difference.  A difference in my sleep, anxiety, bodily aches and general well being -- with no gimmicks, no supplements and no add-ons to buy.  

 

Amanda's gentle and motivational approach along with her incredible knowledge of the many aspects (mental, emotional, biological) of disease and how they interact is astounding.  I have never met a doctor or a specialist who was so well versed and up to date.  There is perfect timing in the introduction of new information as the program unfolds.  She has laid out the program perfectly so that just when you begin to wonder or feel something new, bam, that's somehow intuitively the next module.

 

The program is very eye-opening and refreshing as it is the first time I have been told that my body is not working against me and that it is doing what it is supposed to be doing under the circumstances.  It was life-changing to know that I am not a victim of my auto-immune condition and its liberating to know that my body is 'not against me'.  I have never felt so safe, so informed and have never slept so well.     -Lori D

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Amanda came into my life at the most perfect time! I had been struggling with severe anxiety for years. Her naturopathic knowledge helped to improve my mental and physical health. She recommended resources to read as well as simple tools such as meditation, yoga and breathing exercises. Amanda is always available and very supportive when I need to talk. Amanda is such a gentle soul and is always willing to help. I would not be as healthy, mentally and physically without her expertise. I am forever Grateful!    -Loretta Y:

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This program has been a game-changer for me.  I have let stress control my life---it has been my way of coping/existing for many years now.  I am learning to slow down and just enjoy the little moments.  I am trying to be more compassionate with myself.  It is difficult for me to turn off my analytical brain.   

 

I have eaten a very strict/healthy diet for over 3 year with very little improvement.  Since starting Yoga and meditation, my gut health has improved significantly.   I have spent thousands on supplements, books, doctors, etc. with little to no help. When I look in the mirror now,  I see a person that enjoys smiling more.  I see a person that is looking forward to the future instead of constantly thinking of the past.  I see a person that is compassionate and full of love and forgiveness.  I see a person that has realized that being positive is so much better than being negative.  The world is an easier place to live when you live in the present and not in the past.

     Thank you for teaching me the skills I need to get my life back.    -  Kim F

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