Have you become accustomed to living in a state of chronic stress and activation? A healthy nervous system is one that is able to "dance" within a range of activation and settling, in response to perceived cues from the environment. When we experience a traumatic event that remains unprocessed, our systems can remain overactivated or underactivated, losing the ability to self-regulate into a relaxed state of calm.

Our next art and nature mini-retreat, on Friday, May 4, will be "trauma-informed". That means, we will become conscious of how our nervous systems have adapted to survive the particular circumstances of our lives, and explore how being in nature and creating with art materials can help us self-regulate into a state of awake, relaxed engagement.