The Teaching and Learning Innovation Digest - May 2023

The stress of a pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic was stressful, for
many even traumatic. All of us, no matter
where we reside, experienced some level of
complex and multilayered stress that impacted
us in multiple and profound ways.
Uncertainty, uneasiness, and fear eroded that
sense of community many of us had built in
both our personal and professional lives.
Most of us were forced to isolate, which
meant a troubling increase in screen time
whether for work, school, and/or social
activities. Masks were mandated, further
heightening our growing anxiety. Words like
social distancing, vaccine mandates, hesitancy,
and self-care became part of our everyday
vocabulary. All the while people were managing
incredibly stressful events like losing their
livelihood, experiencing violence, addictions,
and mental health crises.
Hospitalization rates soared with many
dying devoid of the company of loved
ones. The thought of returning to campus
amidst, or after this level of chaos, was and still
is stressful.
Despite the stress and chaos, we had to show
up; it was business as usual. But was it?
The trauma of society seeped into our virtual
and physical classrooms with many students
unable to make it to class because they were
caught up in this chaos. For some the chaos
is ongoing, a bad dream that doesn’t seem to
TEACHING FROM THE
HEART
Rachel Larabee
Faculty, Commmunity Development Worker Program,
School of Community and Health Studies (SCHS)
end. I found myself asking how do I continue,
particularly when I felt bereft of my support
systems, that community of colleagues who
supported one another when it was business
as usual. Those communal spaces at the
college where we laughed, vented, and even
cried together, were no longer there. How could
we support each other so that we could fully
show up and support our students?
Stress is a barrier to learning and
community building
As someone who teaches within the
Community Development Work program 1 and
to whom the idea of community is not solely
theoretical but is embodied and lived, I felt
this loss more keenly and with it the urgency
to do something that could intersect our need
to engage heightened self-care and resiliency
building within our professional roles in the
office and especially in the classroom. I asked
myself how I could adjust my pedagogy to
make space for ways to support students in
releasing, or at least managing some of the
stress that presents barriers to learning in the
1I teach Community Development Work
at Centennial. There are so many broad and
encompassing ways to define this work, but for the
necessity of being succinct and for the purposes of this
share, Community Development Work is the practice
of engaging folx in a process of empowerment that
supports them in playing a more capacitated role,
collectively, in achieving the ability to initiate positive
change in any economic, social, environmental, or
cultural aspect of their lives and where they are, in
particular, facing barriers.
classroom, especially within a pandemic and
then pandemic-recovering experience?
I turned to a mentor of mine, transpersonal
psychologist, Dr. Beth Hedva. She developed
and validated a five-step trauma-informed
protocol in post-tsunami Indonesia (2004, rev.
2013), which she calls Embodied Awareness
(2012). In 2008 I was introduced to Embodied
Awareness in a training series delivered by
Dr. Beth Hedva (Hedva, 2008) and Elder
Grandmother Sara Smith (Mohawk First
Nation, Turtle Clan, Six Nations of the Grand
River, Ontario. Wisdom Keeper.
Personal communication, October 2008),
where I also connected with a helper of
Grandma Sara, Traditional Teacher, Barbara
Brant (Mohawk First Nation, Turtle Clan,
Tyendinaga, Ontario. Personal communication,
October 2008) at the “Roots 4 Peace
Sharing Center” on the sacred land of the Six
Nations. The methods and lessons I gained
from this training were centred on how we
bring Embodied Awareness into communal
spaces for the purposes of emotional healing
and community renewal. This training and
these Teachings were grounded in both
Indigenous Traditional Mohawk Wisdom
(Grandmother Sara) and transpersonal
psychology practices (Beth Hedva). Since that
time, those Teachings and further Teachings
imparted to me by Elder Grandfather, Ted
Silverhand (Tuscarora First Nation, Bear
Clan, Sagarissa Family. North Carolina.
Oral Teachings. Personal Communication,
October 2013-2022), and the training of
Embodied Awareness as a method, continue to
be transformative and integral parts of my own
journey and associated pedagogy in honoring
my deep connection, through heart and heartbased
ways of knowing and communing with
myself, others, and the natural world.
I felt not only myself but colleagues in my
department and students within our programs
could benefit from Embodied Awareness
methodologies. Through the support of
my Chair, I facilitated three workshops for
our colleagues to consider how Embodied
Awareness might be useful in their own selfpractice
as well as integrated within their
classroom pedagogy.
In this article I share why I turned to Embodied
Awareness to cope. It empowered me and
other faculty members to stay connected to
ourselves and each other to more fully show up
throughout the pandemic. I also will describe
how I am using this method to support students
as they return to the campus and physical
classrooms. The work of connecting with
each other and ourselves within academic
spaces is not just about physically showing
up. It is embodied work that requires supportive
learning environments that allow us to thrive
and build meaningful connections as we learn.
Embodied awareness as a
trauma-informed pedagogy
Prior to the pandemic, students were already
entering classrooms with trauma that was
impacting their ability to learn. The work of
my colleague Sama Bassidj (2018) on the
importance of trauma-informed pedagogy,
brought attention to how the trauma students
in the Community Services department
at Centennial College were bringing into
the classroom was often a barrier to their
learning. Bassidj (2018) highlighted the
importance of designing and delivering
pedagogical practices that hold space and
awareness for this trauma while employing
facilitation techniques to support students so
that their trauma does not become a barrier
to their learning. My colleague’s research
confirmed what many of us in our department
already knew and were responding to.
Fast-forward to pandemic recovery and
returning to the physical classroom: layers
of pandemic isolation, previous trauma, and
vicarious trauma all show up in the classroom
amongst teachers and students alike.
When I use Embodied Awareness in the
classroom, I am making space for students
to consider how their subtle intuitive senses,
their lived experiences, their thoughts, feelings,
spiritual orientations, and belief systems are
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