A Note on Heartwork

Heartwork is not hard work, but it is a little bit like artwork…

It’s here to help you connect to yourself and give you tools to help you navigate your future career working to help or support people with your health and wellbeing as a priority, rather than an afterthought.  These activities and assignments have been designed using trauma-informed pedagogy with the intent to create a toolkit that will support you in building a more sustainable career. This series also allows you the opportunity to be creative at your own comfort-level.  Connecting to the creative parts of ourselves can also help to build our own resiliency and fortify our sense of self and identity, which is so important when we are giving so much of ourselves to others by our choice of career.

Expressive art, emotional intelligence and regulation, executive function skills, and building trusting relationships are just some of the foci of these Heartwork experiences.  Some of these assignments were created in consultation with Indigenous Elder and Knowledge Keeper, Liz Osawamick, whose pedagogical philosophy is deeply rooted in the importance of spirit in the learning process and the view that the land, water, animal, and plant relations we all see around us are also our sacred teachers.

Heartwork allows you work at your own pace and ability, in whatever location you find yourself on the Earth.  In completing it, we hope you will feel like you are helping your future self by laying a path forward that is grounded in wellness and self-compassion.