Check-in begins, arrive, settle and connect.

Join us for a warm and welcoming pre-conference dinner where we’ll gather to explore meaningful conversations around mental health, self-care, resilience, and the power of connection. This evening offers a space to reflect, share, and support one another. Let’s build a stronger, more compassionate community, together.

Agenda

Nourishment

Sound Bath

Connection

Location: Room A160 & A130

Check-in begins, arrive, settle and connect.

Reclaiming Joy: Laughter, Self-Compassion & Embodied Resilience

Laughing Yoga Session

For those feeling the heaviness of the moment—personal stress as well as concerns about the deep unrest surfacing through national and world events—you are not alone. In this experiential session, we’ll gently release some of that mental and emotional weight through Laughter Yoga, GriefYoga®, joyful embodiment, and self-compassion practices that help the body process stress and reconnect to a grounded sense of aliveness.

Anchored in the neuroscience of connection and emotional regulation, we’ll explore how joy and shared laughter can shift our physiology—activating positive chemistry in the brain, reducing stress hormones, and strengthening our natural resilience. This session invites participants to meet their difficult emotions with compassion while also reconnecting to joy and community. By bonding through positivity rather than stress, participants experience how humans are naturally wired for connection, leaving with practical tools to support emotional well-being in daily life.

Facilitator:

Carla H. Brown | Joyful Coaching and Training

Lunch hour

Healing Burnout with a Wise and Tender Heart

An Interactive Workshop with Meena Srinvasan

Burnout has become a defining experience of our time. For many students, faculty, and community members, especially in community college settings where people are balancing work, family responsibilities, and school, the pressures can feel relentless.

In this interactive workshop, contemplative educator and author Meena Srinivasan offers a grounded and hopeful approach to understanding and healing burnout. Rather than offering quick fixes, this session acknowledges the systemic realities that contribute to burnout while helping participants reconnect with their own agency and inner resources.

Drawing on research in burnout and self-compassion, participants will explore the three core drivers of burnout, lack of community, emotional exhaustion, and loss of efficacy, and learn practical strategies that support resilience and well-being.

Through reflection, small group conversation, and practical exercises, attendees will leave with concrete tools they can begin using immediately to support themselves and those around them.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will walk away with:

• A clearer understanding of what burnout is and what causes it
• Practical self-compassion strategies that build resilience
• A personal commitment to one concrete practice that supports well-being
• A renewed sense of agency, hope, and possibility

This workshop is designed to be highly interactive and accessible to a diverse audience of students, educators, and community members.

Length:

90-120 min

Learn more about Meena Srinivasan | Founding Executive Director of Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL)