Hello! And welcome to this webpage, a space for learning about ways you can work with your body and your nervous system to help ease anxiety, depression, and trauma, and to feel better over all.
I’m especially interested in making mental health information and resources accessible for people, and free whenever possible. To begin with, here are links to two educational resources: slideshows on the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) and on Complex Trauma and Body Centered Healing:
- A pdf slideshow on the Community Resiliency Model (CRM), a non-yoga approach to community mental health developed by Elaine Miller-Karas at the Trauma Resource Institute. CRM offers a set of body centered activities and skills that support mental health, and combines them with accessible information about the nervous system and its role in mental health and well being.
The skills and educational portions of CRM are designed to be easily understood and easily shared, so that in challenging circumstances people can use these as tools to help ease anxiety and depression, strengthen resilience to trauma, and support their mental and physical health, each other, and their communities.
This isn’t the official CRM presentation created at the Trauma Resource Institute for training CRM teachers; rather it’s a resource I’ve made for clients I work with, and for people who want to explore CRM Skills on their own, or share them informally with others. I’ve tried to make it engaging and accessible, with parts that can be used by people of different ages, including families, kids, youth and elders, etc. I hope to offer it in Spanish at some point, as well.
Here’s a link to a pdf of this complete CRM slideshow in English:
The Community Resiliency Model–simple practices to support mental health and well being
And here are links to pdfs of each part of the slideshow individually, in case you’d like to access them this way:
The Community Resiliency Model, Introduction
The Community Resiliency Model, Part A–The CRM Zones
The Community Resiliency Model, Part B–CRM Skills
The Community Resiliency Model, Part C–How CRM works with your nervous system
Part C is about the neurobiology of anxiety, depression, trauma, and ways to work with your autonomic nervous system to alleviate symptoms of them–so it may be helpful even if you’re not interested in CRM.
If you take yoga classes with me, this last part of the CRM slideshow might help you to understand the purpose behind some of the practices that we do and the things that I emphasize. And since all of my yoga teaching is based in Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY), if you’d like to learn more about that you might also take a look at parts 4 and 5 of the slideshows below, Complex Trauma and Healing in the Body.
2. Links to narrated slideshows on Youtube and links to pdfs, from a presentation I made in 2019 about Complex Trauma and Healing in the Body:
Part 1 What is trauma? / Trauma in the nervous system
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuAzNPPovX4&t=14s
Complex Trauma and Body Centered Healing Part 1 pdf
Part 2 Neuroplasticity, and trauma in the brain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_tQVJKlLKc&t=14s
Complex Trauma and Body Centered Healing Part 2 pdf
Part 3 Trauma vulnerability and resilience / Kinds of trauma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4GN8M4V5t0
Complex Trauma and Body Centered Healing Part 3, pdf
Part 4 Body-centered approaches to healing complex trauma
Part 5 Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga, and other healing resources
For further support for mental and emotional well-being, you might also check the pages on this website entitled:
Trauma and Healing in the Body: https://clarenorelle.com/trauma-and-healing-in-the-body/
Calendar: where you’ll find links to free online live sessions of bilingual yoga for mental wellness–offered on Saturday mornings: https://clarenorelle.com/calendar
Experience working with mental illness and mental health
Early in life I struggled with abusive relationships, trauma, anxiety, depression, suicidality, alcohol and drug dependence, loss and grieving. Later I worked in domestic violence and homeless shelters, as an educator, food pantry coordinator, bilingual resource specialist in the schools, and as a musician. Since 2007 I’ve become increasingly focused on using and offering yoga for mental health. I was trained and certified to teach yoga in 2007, and since 2015 have been studying, taking trainings and getting certified in various approaches that use yoga and also non-yoga techniques to support mental health and wellbeing.
Among these are certifications in Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY, a 300 hour training with David Emerson in this evidence-based adjunct treatment for trauma); The Community Resiliency Model (CRM, a 30 hour training and longer certification process with Elaine Miller-Karas); MindBody Yoga for Disabilities (levels 1 and 2, 32 hours with Matthew Sanford), The Neurobiology of Feeling Safe (15 hours with Juliane Shore), The Treating Trauma Master Series (10 hours with Bessel van der Kolk, Ruth Buczynski, Pat Ogden, Stephen Porges, Ruth Lanius, and others); Inside and Outside Threat: Mind Body Approaches to Fear and Danger (8 hours with Janina Fisher); A Therapist’s Path for Exploring Implicit Bias and Racial Trauma (6 hours with Janina Fisher, Gliceria Perez & Debra Chatman-FInley); and The Role of the Vagus Nerve in Health and Healing (3 hours with Marlysa Sullivan).
Since 2018 most of my work has become offering TCTSY and CRM in individual sessions for people with mental health or drug and alcohol diagnoses, as a Service Provider with Dane County Comprehensive Community Services in Wisconsin, under the name of Greenroot Yoga LLC. I’ve learned so much from the people I do yoga with through CCS, and I especially value and love this work.