Where Community Becomes the Medicine

What We Offer
Upcoming Events
Free COmmunity Events
Somatic Peer Support Group: Bi-Weekly on Wednesdays
Trauma Informed Care Circles: Bi-Weekly on Wednesdays
FOUNDATION OF CARE SERIES MONTHLY WORKSHOP
Upcoming Workshop Theme: What is Trauma Responsive Care?
Our Next Collective pause Retreat
Friday, November 7 - Sunday, November 9
This retreat is a powerful, intentional pause designed to help you metabolize joy, reclaim your self-worth, and nurture a deeper connection with yourself and others.
Community Voices
This space held me when the world wouldn’t.
Fuel the Movement
@TEAO_CANADA

Interesting. “Winter isn’t the Problem Our Habits are”
Educational Perspective Shift repost from @earthymagnesium ♥️👏🏾
We call it cold and flu season as if the issue is the temperature itself, instead of our disconnection from nature.
But winter was never the problem. It’s the way we live through it.
Humans were designed to move. To breathe fresh air. To eat from local food from nature. To rise with the sun. To commune with the cold, not fear it.
Instead, we’ve insulated ourselves from everything that heals us.
And we wonder why our nervous systems are fried, our immune systems sluggish, and our sleep restless.
The home, once a sacred space of warmth, rhythm, and restoration, has become a box of invisible toxins. An altar to convenience. A place where we binge instead of breathe.
Consume instead of connect.
We forget that health is not found in a pill, a powder, or a protocol. It’s found in the choices we repeat daily. The subtle rituals we return to every season. The way we honour our bodies by aligning with nature, not fighting it.
This winter, don’t just survive.
Reclaim your biological intelligence.
• Walk after meals to move your lymph and digest your food.
• Air out your home — fresh air is medicine.
• Eat slow, seasonal, ancestral meals made with your hands.
• Ditch the LED haze and let your eyes rest in candlelight.
• Choose healing discomfort over comfortable disease.
The truth is: there’s nothing natural about being chronically unwell. It’s simply what happens when we forget who we are and what we come from.
Nature is waiting. Your body is listening. It’s time to remember.
#wellness #health #nature #healing #holistic #ancestral #knowledge #wisdom #consciousness #mindset #life

Educational Post Incoming: We love this ♥️
Reposted from @irinashakhova__
Want to try a different approach to bodywork?
✨ Come practice with me online 🌿
Start with my free 3-Day Body Reset (link in bio)
— or go further in the Life Alignment Circle, with a full library of practices, meditations & mindset tools + weekly live group calls with me (link in Bio).
________
Before you try to calm your mind.
Before you stretch your back.
Before you chase clarity.
👉 Check your feet.
They hold your stress.
They mirror your stability.
They carry your survival patterns, your emotional bracing, your daily overload.
When your feet are stiff, your nervous system can’t fully ground.
Because the feet are the only part of your body in constant contact with the Earth.
They absorb shock, hold trauma, and affect your posture, breath, and even your mood.
We ignore them — but they’re the key to feeling safe and steady.
These 6 simple movements ground won’t take much time and will release tension from the root up 🔝
🔹Tiptoes lifts — Energizes without overworking.
🔹Rock from heels to toes — Regulates your balance and your brain.
🔹Inner & outer edges — Rebuild stability from the ground up.
🔹Foot doming - Wake up the arches — your root support system.
🔹Ankle rolls — Loosens old patterns. Literally.
🔹Massage with a ball — Release tension you didn’t know you stored.
Healing doesn’t start in your head — it starts in your feet, your breath, your body.
Follow for nervous system resets and body-first tools for real transformation @irinashakhova__
#bodyreset #wellnessjourney #nervoussystemreset #holistichealing #embodiedliving

Tonight:Trauma-Informed Care Circles ♥️
TEAO Canada invites you to an evening of gentle presence and community care.
Trauma-Informed Care Circles are “bi-weekly”, accessible gatherings that offer space for reflection, grounding, and witnessing. Come as you are, with openness and care.
Time: 6:45 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: Cambridge Public Library - Hespeler Branch
Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/trauma-informed-care-circles-tickets-1528907817439 or link in bio #free
These circles are part of our commitment to fostering trauma-responsive, culturally grounded supports across Ontario, and are free to attend.
Feel free to bring a friend. All are welcome.
#CollectiveCare #HealingTogether #BelongingIsHealing #CommunityCare #TraumaInformed #InnerChildHealing #EmbodiedHealing #ConnectionIsMedicine #TEAOCanada

Repost from @matriarch.movement
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💔 Suicide rates in Indigenous communities remain heartbreakingly high, especially among youth. These aren’t just numbers, they’re lives, families, and communities impacted by trauma and systemic inequities.
There is hope. Indigenous-led programs and supports are creating pathways to healing.
📞 If you or someone you love needs help, call the Hope for Wellness Help Line anytime: 1-855-242-3310 or visit hopeforwellness.ca.
#IndigenousMentalHealth #SuicidePrevention #HopeForWellness #EveryLifeMatters #SupportIndigenousCommunities

✨ A Repost from us at @teao_canada to remind our collective community #fridaymotivation
🪴 “We need to be weapons of mass construction, weapons of mass love. It’s not enough just to change the system. We need to change ourselves.” – Assata Shakur 🪴
This is an awakening call. True liberation asks us to move beyond dismantling what harms — it asks us to embody what heals.
🌱 Mass Construction — to repair, rebuild, and reimagine futures in our bodies, families, and communities.
❤️ Mass Love — to ground our actions in compassion, care, and connection, so change doesn’t replicate the harm we seek to end.
System change without soul change risks repeating the same cycles. Together, we are building new blueprints of belonging, justice, and collective care.
🔥 Be the healer. Be the builder. Be the love that transforms.
#AssataShakur #CollectiveHealing #Liberation #MassConstruction #MassLove #SomaticJustice #EmbodiedHealing #TraumaInformed #TEAOCanada #CommunityCare

We love this somatic collective practice - and if you’ve been in community with TEAO you’ve probably done this with us! #grounding #embodiedhealing #tryitout
Repost from @tinybuddhaofficial
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“Placing your hand on your heart while taking 5 deep breaths activates your parasympathetic nervous system and releases oxytocin. This gentle self-touch tells your brain that you are safe and loved.” ~Inspirology
#tinybuddha #quotes #dailyquotes #quotesdaily #quoteoftheday #wisdom #wordsofwisdom #wisdomquotes #dailywisdom #deepbreaths #mindfulness #nervoussystemregulation #safe #loved

🌿 Tonight & every week, our TEAO Canada community circles open their doors in various ways, virtually, or in-person.
👏🏾 These are not group therapy spaces.
There is no pressure to speak or share. Instead, they are gentle invitations into:
• Somatic practices to ground the body
• Collective regulation with others
• The simple gift of stillness and belonging
At TEAO Canada, we know: when love and belonging are missing, the wound doesn’t just fade with age. It lingers — shaping how we connect with others and ourselves. Healing begins when we find safe spaces to rebuild trust, re-learn belonging, and reclaim what was lost.
Our circles are exactly that: community care as trauma care. ♥️
➡️ Register & explore all upcoming events through the link in bio or QR code: [https://linktr.ee/TEAOCanada]
#CollectiveCare #HealingTogether #BelongingIsHealing #CommunityCare #TraumaInformed #InnerChildHealing #EmbodiedHealing #ConnectionIsMedicine #TEAOCanada

👏🏾WE SHOWED UP & SO DID YOU — MIND + HEART STYLE! ♥️ (🔈 sound on last video)
What a powerful day at the Elmira Multicultural Festival @heartsopenforeveryone ! TEAO Canada was honoured to be the Mental Health First Aid & Community Support Hub, offering pause, presence, and care for hundreds of individuals, families, youth, and elders who visited our Mind & Heart Booth throughout the festival.
— a calm space to pause, breathe, and connect. Our trained mental health first aiders and community team supported mindful practices, creative activities, and resources to support both body and heart. #CommunityCare
🫶🏾 From tears to laughter, deep conversations to playful connections — this wasn’t just a booth, it was a gentle movement.
✨ A space to breathe. A space to feel seen. A space to belong.
Led under the wings of our CEO & Founder, Nicole Brown Faulknor @wounds2wings, our growing team of Peer Support Facilitators and Summer 2025 Volunteer Outreach Staff stepped into community leadership with courage and compassion. This is the beginning of a season where TEAO will be walking with communities — not as service providers, but as kin, listeners, and system-shifters.
🎉 A huge congrats to our Spin-the-Wheel winners who secured FREE entry to our next Collective Pause Day-Retreat, happening the weekend of Nov 7–9:
💫 Karen
💫 Navita
💫 Megan
💫 Amandeep
We’ll be in touch soon with all the juicy details!
🙏🏾 And a very special shoutout to Abby from Hearts Open for Everyone @heartsopenforeveryone and team , the visionaries behind this incredible festival, who brilliantly and boldly recognized the need for not just physical first aid — but mental, emotional, and community-first aid too. Your forward-thinking leadership made space for this booth to exist. Thank you for seeing the need before it was named.
Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in community.
And when we honour both mind & heart, we all rise.
#TEAOCanada #HeartsOpen #MentalHealthFirstAid #PeerSupportInAction #CollectiveCare #CommunityHealing #ElmiraMulticulturalFestival #Summer2025Outreach #TraumaResponsiveCare #EmbodiedHealing #SpinTheWheelWinners #MindAndHeartBooth

Educational Awareness & Amplifying Voices: In our TEAO trainings, we teach through an embodied perspective because learning isn’t just something we know in the mind—it’s something we must feel in the body. To unlearn harmful conditioning and relearn ways of being that restore dignity, safety, and justice, we create space to notice our sensations, emotions, and nervous system responses.
This embodied approach allows us to co-regulate together, rather than staying in patterns of isolation or hierarchy. It’s the foundation of what we call resistance education: an awareness that systems of oppression—including racism—are forms of violence that live in both our bodies and our institutions. By feeling and naming these impacts, we amplify voices, reclaim power, and practice trauma-responsive care rooted in collective healing.
Reposted from @blackhistorystudies ⬇️
When we say “racism is violence,” it’s a statement that encompasses much more than just physical harm. It refers to the systemic, psychological, emotional, and physical harm inflicted upon individuals and communities due to racist beliefs and structures. ❤️💚🖤
#EmbodiedLearning
#TraumaResponsiveCare
#ResistanceEducation
#SystemicImpactAwareness
#CollectiveHealing

Come Find Us in Community - Multicultural Festival of Elmira #weareexcited #trainedpeersupport & #peereducator(s) of TEAO Canada will be out in community for the first time after their certification training this past July! 👏🏾🫶🏾♥️
Repost from @heartsopenforeveryone
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🌿 MFE 2025 Mind & Heart First Aid: Community Support Booth 🌿
At the heart of a Multicultural Festival of Elmira is the chance to connect, learn, and celebrate across cultures, and that includes caring for our minds and hearts as we do so. 💜
This year, we’re honoured to welcome the Trauma and Embodiment Association of Ontario (TEAO Canada), who will be offering a special booth beside the St. John’s Ambulance First Aid tent. Think of it as a mindfulness space within the festival. A calm and welcoming environment where you can pause, reflect, and seek support.
Trained mental health first aiders will be available to listen, share resources, and help us better understand one another across differences. 🌍✨ Because caring for community means tending not only to our bodies, but also to the cultural and emotional connections that help us grow together.
📅 Saturday, September 20, 2025
⏰ 11 AM–6 PM
📍 Gibson Park, 17 First St. W., Elmira
🎶 FREE ENTRY
🌐 Learn more: www.teaocanada.com
FB: @W2WTEAO
IG: @teao_canada
#MultiFestElmira
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#MulticulturalFestivalofElmira #TEAO #CommunitySupport #ElmiraOntario #WoolwichTownship #WaterlooRegion #HeartsOpenforEveryone #HOPE #WeAllBelong #MentalHealthMatters #CommunityFestival #CulturalCelebration #Wellbeing #MindAndHeart

Yesterday was a powerful day ♥️
Before the evening speaker lineup, our CEO & Founder @wounds2wings, Nicole, took the stage at the Recovery Community Celebration to share The Missing Link in Recovery: Trauma-Informed Embodiment Practices for Lasting Healing.
✨ Nicole spoke about how trauma is stored in the body — and how healing requires more than talk therapy or symptom management. She led the community through embodiment practices, creating a moment of collective grounding and regulation together.
We also hosted an info booth with our Toronto Volunteer Outreach, Kelly (whose honestly, the best human ever! #weloveu 🫶🏾) , where we connected with so many of you about TEAO’s healing retreats, trauma-informed training, and peer support circles.
🌱 Big takeaway: The body isn’t just part of recovery… it’s the missing link to lasting healing.
🤝 Thank you to the Toronto Sober Living Network & Addiction Rehab Toronto @addictionrehabtoronto for this partnership.
We’re excited for what’s ahead!
#TEAOCanada #TraumaRecovery #AddictionRecovery #HealingJourney #EmbodimentInRecovery #TraumaInformedCare #RecoveryCommunity

A Look Back - And an Invitation Forward
This past Sunday, our Collective Care Circle at The Branches @thebranchesyoga brought together a beautiful group of community members for a quiet hour of somatic healing, shared breath, and gentle presence.
Led by Nicole Brown Faulknor, we moved together - through grief, through grounding, through joy. Thank you to everyone who showed up, held space, and allowed themselves to just be.
If you missed it, we hope you’ll join us for the next session:
Sunday, October 5, 2025 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM
The Branches, 9 Samuel Street, Kitchener, ON
Free and open to all
Learn more + Register here: https://linktr.ee/TEAOCanada or link in bio.
This offering is made possible through the generous support of the Waterloo Region Community Foundation @wrcommfdn , allowing us to keep community care free and accessible.
Note from TEAO Canada:
The Art of Community Care & Mutual Aid.
Sometimes care isn’t loud or obvious-it lives quietly in the spaces where we unknowingly support one another.
Through resourcing together-learning to feel an internal sense of safety alongside each other-something shifts.
Isolation breaks. Humanity is shared.
Community care reminds us that even in moments of solitude, we are not alone.
#CommunityCare #MutualAid #Traumalnformed

♥️ We’re excited to be part of the Recovery Community Celebration! 💫
📅 Friday, Sept 12, 2025 | 11 AM – 8 PM EST
📍 Art Facility, Etobicoke | In-Person & Virtual Hybrid
TEAO Canada will be there all day with our booth — come find us, connect, and learn about our work at the intersections of trauma recovery, community care, and systemic change.
Our CEO & Founder, Nicole Brown-Faulknor @wounds2wings, will also be a featured speaker presenting:
💬 The Missing Link in Recovery: Trauma-Informed Embodiment Practices for Lasting Healing
Workshop Focus:
✔️ A practical and interactive session introducing accessible body-based tools for nervous system regulation, emotional safety, and sustainable healing from trauma.
You’ll Learn:
✔️How trauma impacts the nervous system and recovery
✔️Simple somatic tools for stress and trigger regulation
✔️Ways to build inner safety and resilience
✔️How to create your own “Safe Resource Toolkit” for daily recovery
Who Should Attend:
☑️Individuals in recovery • ☑️Sober-curious community members • ☑️Loved ones supporting someone in recovery • ☑️Recovery professionals seeking trauma-informed, body-based tools
🧠 Why it Matters:
60–90% of people in addiction treatment have trauma histories. Healing the body is as essential as healing the mind — this workshop bridges that gap.
📌 FREE Event – Registration Required
🎟 RSVP here: Event Link @addictionrehabtoronto or QR Code from Poster
We can’t wait to see you there! ♥️
#RecoveryCommunity #TraumaInformedCare #SomaticHealing #AddictionRecovery #TEAOcanada

🚨 Something powerful is coming… 🚨
On Sept 12, I’ll be at the Toronto Sober Living Network’s Recovery Community Celebration leading The Missing Link in Recovery — a trauma-informed embodiment workshop that bridges the gap traditional treatment often leaves behind.
💡 60–90% of people in addiction treatment have trauma histories. Yet, many recovery programs overlook the body’s role in healing.
In this session, I’ll share simple, body-based tools to help you:
✨ Release stored trauma
✨ Regulate your nervous system
✨ Build safety & resilience from the inside out
🎥 Watch the teaser above and tag someone who needs to know about this!
📍 Save the date — Sept 12 in Toronto (hybrid event).
Let’s change the way we think about recovery.
🤝🏾 Proud to partner with @addictionrehabtoronto and TorontoSoberLivingNetwork to bring this conversation to our communities.
Cross-posting this teaser helps us expand our reach, build engagement, and make a bigger impact together.
#TraumaRecovery #Embodiment #AddictionRecovery #HealingJourney #MentalHealthAwareness #SomaticHealing #RecoveryCommunity #TraumaInformedCare















THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS

