Speaker

Ryan Gervasi LCSW, RYT

Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Registered Yoga Teacher

Ryan earned her undergraduate degree from Kean University in Psychology. During her time there, she studied Drug and Alcohol Use and Community Mental Health. She continued her education and was trained at Kean University’s School of Social Work where she graduated with a Master of Social Work specializing in the areas of Trauma and Healing, and Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Ryan is now a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW).

Ryan’s path of restoration and wellness was birthed through adverse life experiences that called her to the art of healing herself and others. Through conscious breathing and awareness of the prana (life force energy), Ryan has found that the breath is our best medicine for managing pain and suffering.

Ryan’s passion for healing the mind, body, and soul holistically aligns with her clinical approach as she integrates her knowledge and experience as a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT 200) and Reiki 1 practitioner into wellness and recovery practices by combining the clinical piece and intuitive healing methods. Specializing in Vinyasa flow as well as gentle, restorative, and yin-focused traditions, Ryan believes that joining the three parts through flowing as well as still movements is a beautiful and blissful foundation for self-exploration, self-love, and self-compassion, which inevitably facilitates forgiveness, healing, and growth. The practice of tuning out to tune in is a healthy way to disconnect from the material world and come back to our truest nature, but to do this we must listen to our body.

Ryan guides a gentle flow of movements concentrated on staying present for ourselves and proper alignment filled with loving instruction so all students may reach their greatest potential regardless of their fitness level. Ryan has many years of self-study in the practice of yoga, adding to her expertise in the area of holistic care. Ryan continues to be a faithful student of yoga and meditation practice, grateful for all of her teachers who continue mentoring and supporting her journey.

Ryan's Presentations

keynote

An Integrated Mental Health Wellness Care Plan

Integrating the Caring Collaboratively

Join us for lunch to explore how integrated mental health care can work to create a care plan that is truly integrated and innovative in approaching whole person, whole body and mind wellness. A multi-disciplinary panel of approaches involving psychiatry, psychotherapy, eco therapy, trauma informed yoga, sand play, art therapy, and breath work will explore a case presentation together in a grand rounds format. The panel will be demonstrating a practice model that moves integrated mental health care, from the periphery of “complementary and alternative” to the front-line treatment of choice. An outpatient “plus” level of care, where an integrated mental health team works to provide a client multiple sessions per week working collaboratively with the client and each other.

The grand rounds format will be utilized, where a complex client presentation, including intersectionality as a key element, will be examined first though the individual lens of each discipline. Following will be an active discussion of how the team would work to synthesize a comprehensive and cohesive wellness plan building and complimenting on the work of each discipline.

Together is always more, there are so many parts to the human experience, it is easy to become overwhelmed when working alone in support of a client so desperate for recovery. The panel will demonstrate the profound benefits of working collaboratively, where traditional western medicine meets holistic and expressive approaches under the same sky and in the same healing universe. The human condition is multiple, no symptom or suffering happens without many conditions also being present- our approaches need to mirror this truth effectively.

Workshop

The Mindfulness Toolbox

Foundational Mind-Body Practices for the 21^st Century Client

The technological, economic and political-social context of the 21^st century has exacerbated stress related disease and intensified the impact of suffering. We will explore the neuroscience of stress and trauma and its implications for the need of mind/body approaches, while also identifying the foundational approaches to a mindfulness toolbox with experiential practice opportunities. Customizing mind/body practice will be reviewing including how to assess the readiness of the client and how to engage the client in psycho-educational conversation around these approaches and why. The ethics, informed consent and liability around leading certain mind/body practices will also be considered. Specific focus on the alignment of mind/body approaches to trauma sensitive treatment will be highlighted.