Specialized Trainings

november 15-17, 2024
training for all healthcare professionals
barbara ruzansky + jen leavitt

This 20-hour weekend training is specifically specifically for mental health clinicians seeking to incorporate holistic and somatic practices into their work with clients.

Learn more >>

20-hour training for all healthcare professionals
(no yoga experience necessary)
•••••••••••••

Barbara Ruzansky… E-RYT 500, owner/director of West Hartford Yoga (WHY)
Jen Leavitt… MSW/JD, RYT 200

The Intersection of Mental Illness, Holistic Healing, and Community:
Supportive Training for Healthcare Professionals

Friday, November 15, 2024: 5:15 - 9:00 pm (break included)
Saturday, November 16, 2024: 1:00 - 9:00 pm (break included)
Sunday, November 17, 2024: 12:30 - 5:30 pm (break included)

Join Barbara Ruzansky, author and owner of West Hartford Yoga (WHY) and Jen Leavitt, MSW, JD and trauma informed yoga teacher, for this weekend workshop designed specifically for mental health clinicians seeking to incorporate holistic and somatic practices into their work with clients.

The workshop is inspired by Barbara’s decades long struggle with mental health, addiction, and eating disorders, as chronicled in her book Bad Hair Day on Planet Earth and her recovery through holistic health practices.

Learn how yoga, meditation, nutrition, and community building can provide a complementary approach to mental health treatment. This training will provide powerful tools to support your clients’ healing along with a deepened sense of hope, possibility, and engagement in your work as a clinician.

•••••••••••••

The weekend will include experiential exercises and psychoeducation.  You can expect the following:
- Yoga postures and flows that promote healing through somatic connection
- Meditation practices to expand capacity for self-reflection & self-compassion
- How specific foods impact mood and the impact of nutrition on brain health
- The latest research on the benefits of incorporating whole-body practices into traditional therapy
- An experiential journey into the healing power of community

$375, registration required / no yoga experience necessary

•••••••••••••

This program has been approved for ten (10) Continuing Education Credit Hours by the National Association of Social Workers, CT and meets the continuing education criteria for CT Social Work Licensure renewal.

Approval also meets the continuing education criteria for CT LMSWs, LMFTs, LPCs, and licensed psychologists.

about the instructors

Barbara Ruzansky, E-RYT 500, founder and director of West Hartford Yoga (WHY), is widely known throughout Connecticut for her challenging yoga classes as well her compassion, support, and humor. As a teacher and community leader, Barbara encourages self-acceptance while helping her students strive to reach their personal best. Her conviction that yoga can spark health and fulfillment is at the heart of her teaching.

Barbara is author of the recently-released memoir, Bad Hair Day On Planet Earth, a story spanning three decades living with serious mental health issues, including depression, addiction, and eating disorders. After years of therapy, she began a companion journey into the world of yoga, whole foods eating, and holistic living, through which she eventually found healing. This book — told entirely through a compilation of “found objects,” such as journals, letters, artwork, and audio tapes — chronicles her struggles and her messy, nonlinear journey through recovery.

Additionally, Bad Hair Day On Planet Earth lays down the roots of Barbara’s holistic practices, from the moment she began to practice yoga through her integration into the macrobiotic cooking community to the opening of WHY, a culmination of her lifelong dream to help people, break the stigma surrounding mental illness, and hopefully forge a new path of awareness, understanding, and compassion.

Jen Leavitt, MSW/JD, RYT 200, is WHY’s former studio manager and she also teaches WHY Power classes at the studio. A 2011 graduate of the WHY Teacher Training program, she is a certified Therapeutic Yoga Instructor and Yin Yoga Teacher.

 Jen creates an energetic, vigorous, sweaty practice for those looking to move and breathe. She has explored many different paths along the yoga road, including Bikram, Ashtanga and Kripalu. Her classes combine many of these traditions with the challenging WHY Power flow, encouraging students to move safely beyond their edge. 

Her personal practice has served as an anchor through various life experiences, including divorce, recovery, and spiritual growth. Trained as both a social worker and a lawyer, Jen has worked for many years in the juvenile court system. Jen also offers training in trauma-informed yoga for yoga teachers and mental health practitioners.

trauma informed yoga teacher training
•••••••••••••

Jen Leavitt… MSW/JD, RYT 200
Annie Keating-Scherer… LCSW, RYT 200

Friday, January 17 - Sunday, January 19, 2025
Learn the art of teaching yoga to individuals with a trauma history and the science of the impact of trauma on the brain and body. Explore the role of yoga and mindfulness as a healing tool for those with a trauma history.

Friday: 5:30 - 9:00 pm
Saturday: 1:00 - 9:00 pm
Sunday: 1:00 - 8:00 pm

•••••••••••••

This training includes:
- Training on trauma sensitive practices
- Training on the science of trauma and the brain, nervous system dysregulation, and yoga’s relationship to this process
- Self-reflective inquiry
- Practice teaching
- Large and small group processes

You will leave this Training equipped to incorporate Trauma informed practices into your yoga teaching and other healing modalities. This Training is open to 200-hour trained yoga teachers of any discipline. Health care workers, movement professionals, mental health clinicians, and advanced students welcome with prior permission of instructor.

$350, registration required

•••••••••••••

This program has been approved for Continuing Education Credit Hours by the National Association of Social Workers, CT.

about the instructors

Jen Leavitt, MSW/JD, RYT 200, is WHY’s former studio manager and she also teaches WHY Power classes at the studio. A 2011 graduate of the WHY Teacher Training program, she is a certified Therapeutic Yoga Instructor and Yin Yoga Teacher.

 Jen creates an energetic, vigorous, sweaty practice for those looking to move and breathe. She has explored many different paths along the yoga road, including Bikram, Ashtanga and Kripalu. Her classes combine many of these traditions with the challenging WHY Power flow, encouraging students to move safely beyond their edge. 

Her personal practice has served as an anchor through various life experiences, including divorce, recovery, and spiritual growth. Trained as both a social worker and a lawyer, Jen has worked for many years in the juvenile court system. Jen also offers training in trauma-informed yoga for yoga teachers and mental health practitioners.

Annie Keating-Scherer, LCSW, RYT-200, is a psychotherapist and yoga teacher and the founder of Sage Therapy and Wellness, a small therapy and holistic wellness center in West Hartford.  Annie loves working with her clients, helping them connect to their innate self-worth, building resilience, strength and skills to navigate trauma, stressors and hardships. Through mindfulness, evidence-based psychotherapy and yoga, Annie supports adult and adolescent clients through their healing journeys. Annie holds an MSW from New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and a BFA in Acting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Most importantly and most magically, Annie is the mother to two amazing girls who remind her daily to connect to wonder and awe.