TEAO - Trauma and Embodiment Association of Ontario

TEAO - Trauma and Embodiment Association of Ontario A nonprofit organization aiming to
"Transform Mental Health Care in Canada, One Community at a Time"

11/06/2025

“Do Better” — Introducing our first ever “Do Better” merch line — hats, beanies, shirts, hoodies, and notebooks — arriving just in time for our SOLD OUT Collective Pause Retreat this weekend. 🫶🏾♥️

“Do Better” isn’t just a slogan.
It’s a trademarked statement born from the work we do every day at Wounds 2 Wings Trauma & Embodiment Association of Ontario (TEAO Canada ) — a call to care more deeply, look inward more honestly, and show up for community with integrity.

For years, our organization has been dedicated to supporting educators, frontline workers, leaders, and community builders — especially those working alongside racialized and marginalized communities.

Through trauma-responsive training, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion rooted in embodiment, and conversations about impact over intention, we remind people that healing systems begins with healing ourselves.

Because we all carry stories.
Stories that live in the body.
Stories that shape the way we enter the room — even when we’re silent.

When those stories remain unconscious, they can show up as defensiveness, shame, guilt, fragility, or fear.
But once we see them, we can choose differently.

We can learn, repair, listen, and transform.
That is the heart of “Do Better.”
Not perfection.
Not performance.
But a commitment to growth, responsibility, and care.
If we want systems to change, we have to start with the parts of the system that live in us.

So wear it with intention.
Wear it as a reminder.
Wear it as a promise to yourself and to your community:

Do Better — for real
First drop: this weekend’s retreat.
More releases coming soon.

This Week at TEAO Canada: Three Pathways to Collective HealingThis week, we’re holding space for rest, regulation, and r...
11/03/2025

This Week at TEAO Canada: Three Pathways to Collective Healing

This week, we’re holding space for rest, regulation, and reconnection across three unique trauma-informed offerings. These are all free to attend and rooted in community, embodiment, and racial equity.

Sunday, November 2 – Collective Care Series (In Person)

Time: 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Location: The Branches, 9 Samuel Street, Kitchener, ON

Led by Nicole Brown Faulknor, this session blends somatic practices, group processing, breathwork, and psychoeducation. It’s designed to support emotional healing for those affected by systemic harm, offering space to be seen, heard, and held.
Register here https://lnkd.in/e8FQgy-5

Wednesday, November 5 – Somatic Peer Support (Virtual)

Time: 6:45 PM – 8:00 PM

This biweekly virtual space supports individuals navigating stress, trauma, or emotional dysregulation. Led by trained peer support facilitators, sessions provide somatic grounding and nervous system care.
Register here https://lnkd.in/ers_-D_J

Saturday, November 8 – Collective Pause Day Retreat (In Person)

Time: 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM
Location: Port Dover, ON (exact location shared after registration)

The 3-day retreat is now full, but spots remain for the day retreat. Participants will experience land-based care, somatic healing, movement, reflection, and trauma-responsive practices. This is a rare opportunity to slow down and tend to your nervous system in a community of care.
Register here https://lnkd.in/eE4hH6ki

All events are hosted by TEAO Canada as part of our ongoing mission to provide culturally grounded, trauma-informed, and embodied care across Ontario.

Supported by:
Waterloo Region Community Foundation ()

To learn more:
Visit: www.teaocanada.com
Email: info@teaocanada.com

10/31/2025

Big News 📣 — We’re Returning to Costa Rica! 🇨🇷
After a life-changing, heart-opening journey last year, we’re doing it again.

🇨🇷 The Collective Pause Retreat returns — January 3–10, 2026.

This immersive 7-day experience invites you to begin the new year grounded in rest, reflection, and renewal. Through trauma-responsive practices, community care circles, breathwork, and embodiment rituals, we’ll reconnect with what it means to pause — to listen inwardly, release what no longer serves, and return home to ourselves.

Hosted by TEAO Canada (), and Wounds2Wings () in partnership with Somerset Recovery Centre (), this retreat is more than an escape — it’s a reclamation of presence, wholeness, and joy.

💫 Expect:

•Somatic & trauma-responsive workshops
•Guided movement & restorative yoga
•Mindful excursions in nature
•Deep rest, reflection, and shared meals in community
•Transformative integration sessions

We left Costa Rica in 2024 forever changed — and we can’t wait to return with you in 2026.

🕊️ Spaces are limited. Registration details coming soon. Or DM for more details and registration & financial arrangement information.

10/30/2025

We love this: Educational Awareness ♥️

Repost from 🫶🏾🫶🏾

How do we encourage people who need help to seek therapy or counseling services?

♥️ Milestone Moment for TEAO Canada! 🫶🏾We are thrilled to announce that our first cohort has officially completed their ...
10/28/2025

♥️ Milestone Moment for TEAO Canada! 🫶🏾

We are thrilled to announce that our first cohort has officially completed their Peer Support Certification, becoming TEAO’s first Trauma-Responsive Care Personnel — ready to serve our community through crisis support, outreach, and embodied care.

This certification marks a major step in our vision to make mental health support accessible, relational, and rooted in lived experience.

Over the course of this training, participants explored:
1. Foundations of trauma-responsive care
2. Embodied practices for regulation and relational safety
3. The 5-Step Peer Crisis Support Model
4. Grounding, active listening, and curiosity-driven dialogue
5. Supporting without fixing — and caring without carrying

✨ What we witnessed: growth, reflection, compassion, and courage.

Each participant showed up not just to learn, but to unlearn — practicing how to hold space with empathy, boundaries, and deep respect for the human experience.

As these newly certified Peer Support Personnel begin their journey with TEAO Canada, they will be available to provide community crisis and outreach support, walking alongside others in moments of need with gentleness, safety, and solidarity.

To our cohort — thank you for your presence, your stories, and your unwavering heart for this work.
To our community — this is just the beginning.

🤲🏾 Together, we’re shaping trauma-responsive systems of care — one embodied conversation at a time.

🪴 Foundational Care Series: Building the Future of Trauma-Responsive CommunitiesThis past Friday, TEAO Canada proudly la...
10/26/2025

🪴 Foundational Care Series: Building the Future of Trauma-Responsive Communities

This past Friday, TEAO Canada proudly launched our Foundational Care Series — a monthly space (every 4th Friday) dedicated to nurturing & educating onthe roots of trauma-responsive, community-centered care. 🫶🏾

Our inaugural session set the tone beautifully. Together, we:

✨ Revisited TEAO’s mission — to bridge gaps in mental health care and make trauma-informed, embodied support accessible for all.

✨ Welcomed new volunteers, including psychotherapists, community advocates, and emerging leaders committed to collective healing.

✨ Explored what it means to offer care with communities, not to them — embodying compassion, responsiveness, and anti-oppressive practice.

✨ Discussed how trauma-informed, trauma-sensitive, and trauma-responsive approaches shape the spaces we hold and the systems we hope to transform.

Our dialogue also touched on exciting initiatives ahead — from local healing retreats to data-driven community collaborations like the Rhythm & Blues Cambridge survey amplifying Black and racialized voices across Waterloo Region.

💫 Next Steps for Volunteers & Community Members:

➡️ Complete your volunteer portal registration (if you haven’t yet).

➡️ Join our newsletter via www.teaocanada.com for updates.

➡️ Participate in two volunteer activities this season.
Share the Rhythm & Blues Cambridge Pulse Survey to help reach 1,000 community responses. Visit their IG link in bio or website for more instructions for our with them too! 🫶🏾

The Foundational Care Series is more than a meeting — it’s a practice of belonging, accountability, and collective care in action. Join us next month as we continue deepening this work, one embodied conversation at a time. 🪴

Educational Awareness:   ♥️       Repost from •If we want a spiritual revolution, we need to stop bypassing the systems ...
10/21/2025

Educational Awareness: ♥️

Repost from

If we want a spiritual revolution, we need to stop bypassing the systems that keep people stuck in survival.

🌿 Day Two Complete 🌿: Trauma-Responsive Care & Embodiment Training for Racialized LeadersLast night’s session deepened o...
10/17/2025

🌿 Day Two Complete 🌿: Trauma-Responsive Care & Embodiment Training for Racialized Leaders

Last night’s session deepened our collective exploration into the tender terrain of vulnerability, shame, and survival.

We unpacked how:

💔 Vulnerability reveals the unmet needs and misattunement injuries that live beneath our wounds.

🕊️ Shame acts as an invisible veil—protecting us from ever feeling that deep fear, sadness, guilt, or rejection again.

🛡️ Survival strategies—like overworking, controlling, fixing, or withdrawing—once sheltered our pain, but can now soften as we learn to feel, listen, and trust our bodies again.

Through body mapping, grounding, and somatic reflection, participants connected the emotional landscape of trauma with the physical sensations of safety, power, and release. We honored how racialized bodies hold both generational pain and generational wisdom—and how healing begins when we meet our wounds with compassion instead of judgment.

This training is a reminder that embodiment is not a luxury—it’s liberation.
To feel is to reclaim.
To slow down is to resist.
To connect is to heal.

With deep gratitude to all who showed up with courage, presence, and truth. ♥️

Stay connected for upcoming retreats and community offerings through

🔗 linktr.ee/TEAOCanada
🌐 www.teaocanada.com

🌿 Day One Complete 🌿Trauma-Responsive Care & Embodiment Training for Racialized LeadersLast night, we gathered as racial...
10/16/2025

🌿 Day One Complete 🌿

Trauma-Responsive Care & Embodiment Training for Racialized Leaders

Last night, we gathered as racialized leaders, caregivers, and change-makers to explore what it means to lead from a trauma-informed, embodied, and culturally grounded place.

Together, we:

✨ Rooted into the wisdom of our bodies.
✨ Reflected on protection, shame, and resilience.
✨ Honoured the ways our systems adapt to survive—and how awareness helps us reclaim choice, safety, and connection.

This space reminded us that healing is both personal and collective — and that embodied leadership begins with nervous system regulation, compassion, and community care.

Thank you to everyone who joined us with open hearts and presence. ♥️

Day Two continues tonight— same link, same grounding energy.

Learn more about our work and upcoming trainings:

🔗 linktr.ee/TEAOCanada ( )
🌐 www.teaocanada.com

Educational Post by  ♥️Here, we learn how to feel, speak, and reclaim ourselves because our ancestors didn’t have the pr...
10/15/2025

Educational Post by ♥️

Here, we learn how to feel, speak, and reclaim ourselves because our ancestors didn’t have the privilege, but we do 🔥






Where Education meets Embodiment. 👏🏾👏🏾♥️Join TEAO Canada for the launch of our new monthly series, Foundations of Care, ...
10/10/2025

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).

Where Education meets Embodiment.Join TEAO Canada for the launch of our new monthly series, Foundations of Care, a 45-mi...
10/10/2025

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).

Address

Kitchener, ON

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