A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons
Mental Health & Wellness Training
For organizations seeking ways to provide the tools for their employees to work smarter
— not harder — on their mental health, their healing, and growth, this program offers a roadmap out of pain and fear and into the life they deserve.
The Benefits
In this certificate training program, developed and delivered by clinical psychologist and author of A Deeper Wellness, participants will learn powerful, life-affirming, and life-enhancing mental health psycho-education, tools, and strategies, including how to identify and understand the interplay between physical symptoms, negative thoughts, and maladaptive behaviors, and how to free themselves from past hurts and emotional debris. Participants will learn how to factor mental health and wellbeing into the equation of their life, and how to seek out and connect with opportunities for healing and growth, and build an authentic, happy life.
This unique and comprehensive mental health and wellness training program, created and developed by Dr. Vermani from her wellness book, A Deeper Wellness, is available in 3 in-person versions, with ongoing online program resources for participants, including a copy of the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety, and Traumas, by Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., and 6-month access to A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons
Mental Health & Wellness Training
8-Day Program
4-Day Program
1-Day Program
UPON SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF THIS TRAINING PROGRAM, PARTICIPANTS
WILL BE AWARDED THE A DEEPER WELLNESS CERTIFICATE OF ACHIEVEMENT
A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons
Mental Health & Wellness Training
8-DAY PROGRAM
For those willing to work smarter — not harder — on their mental health, their healing, and growth, this program offers a roadmap out of pain and fear and into the life they deserve. In this -part series, participants will learn: powerful, life-affirming, and life-enhancing mental health psycho-education, tools, and strategies, including how to identify and understand the interplay between physical symptoms, negative thoughts, and maladaptive behaviors, how to free themselves from past hurts and emotional debris, take steps to factor mental health and wellbeing into the equation of their life, seek out and connect with opportunities for healing and growth, and commit to leading a more authentic, happier life.
COURSE OUTLINE
Participants will be provided with course materials, including a source notebook, a copy of the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety, and Traumas, by Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., and an optional 6-month access to A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
DAY 1
Unit 1: An introduction to Mental Health and Wellness
This opening talk provides an overview of the structure of the training course and days and introduces the concepts of mental health, mental fitness, and wellness. And introduces the concept of the interrelationship between our physical symptoms and our mental health.
Unit 2: Putting Your Problems on the Table: PART 1
An introduction to the schematic ‘three-legged table,’ and its components: physical symptoms, negative cognitions, and maladaptive behaviors, including definitions and examples from each category.
Unit 3: Putting Your Problems on the Table: PART 2
Exploring the process of putting your problems on the table and the need to ‘break the legs of the table that support problematic physical symptoms, negative cognitions, and maladaptive behaviors at play. This unit will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Individual Work / Activities and Exercises
Participants will be tasked with a highly personal self-reflective exercise of listing the problems in their own life, going deeper into a problem that is troubling them, and identifying any physical symptoms, negative thoughts around this problem, and any resulting negative or maladaptive behaviors that are impacting their lives.
Unit 5: Putting Your Problems on the Table: PART 3
Day One concludes with a talk about how to know when our problems are a big deal, when and how to seek help, and the types of interventions available. This unit will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A.
DAY 2
Unit 1: Waving the Magic Wand
Day 2 begins with a short, and inspiring talk and a three-part challenge for participants, wherein they will be asked to imagine their ideal, best life, without any barriers or restrictions, and describe their ideal lives under a series of prescribed categories. Next, they will then take that same list of categories and describe where they are in their lives today, and finally, they will be challenged to make note of the gaps between their ideal and current selves, and asked to choose one category they would like to begin working on today, and imagine the steps they could take to move toward their ideal self in that area of their life
Unit 2: Understanding Stress
A look at exactly what stress is, its negative impact on our bodies and minds, and our choices around how we can manage the stress in our lives. This section concludes with the introduction of the four sources of energy we can control: the food we eat, and our sleep. Our exercise and breath, and our state of mind.
Unit 3: Integrating Self-care into Our Lives
Explore the four sources of energy in our lives, and how we can maximize and boost our energy levels through integrating self-care, healthy habits, and routines, and minimize the suboptimal behaviors, habits, and choices that lead to self-sabotaging of our energy levels.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Individual Work / Activities and Exercises
Participants will be tasked with undergoing a personal energy audit: examining their habits and choices around their four sources of energy, and listing strategies they could explore to boost their energy levels and improve their self-care habits and routines.
Unit 5: Factoring Yourself into the Equation of Your Life
This final session of the day begins with participants sharing their greatest challenges and solutions to better managing, boosting, and caring for their energy levels, and concludes with a brief summary of integrating self-care, factoring your well-being into the equation of
your life, and cautionary wisdom about guilt, what it means when it shows up, and what you can do about it.
DAY 3
Unit 1: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 1
Day 3 begins with an introduction to the importance of our thoughts, and how our thoughts — both positive and negative — shape our lives. Participants are introduced to the concept of life as a series of experiences that we label and judge as positive and negative, and how experiences we judge as negative act as a catalyst for change.
Unit 2: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 2
All about core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas: how each of these elements come into our lives and develop over time., how the reality of our core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas is that there are times when they no longer serve us when they are not necessarily true or accurate.
Unit 3: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 3
How to identify problematic core beliefs, automatic thoughts about the way the world works, and our schemas, and what to do when our thoughts are holding us back from moving forward and creating the life we want. This unit will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Group Activity and Discussion
In this lively group activity, the instructor takes participants to the same party — three times. Each time, though a less than satisfactory introduction to a stranger, participants are asked to play out their thoughts and feelings, depending on a different thought about this interaction. This activity is followed by a discussion about the power of our thoughts to influence and impact our interactions and functioning with others.
Unit 5: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 4
This concluding session of the day explores the need to challenge our negative thoughts and make our faith in our skillsets bigger than our fear of the unknown. We explore that our thoughts matter because they affect our self-esteem, and as we strive to live life as our highest and best self, our thoughts count. This unit will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A.
DAY 4
Unit 1: Understanding the Purpose of Suffering
This session explores the purpose of suffering in our lives. We all suffer loss, disappointment, failure, and trauma. We all experience pain and hurt. It’s part of life. Participants are reminded that, in previous sessions, they learned that life is a series of experiences that we judge and label these experiences as positive or negative. It’s important to understand the purpose of suffering. Understanding our suffering enables us to regain the power we feel we have lost when we experience pain and grief. We all have suffering, pain, sorrow, and hurts. Here, the true purpose of suffering reveals itself: suffering is a catalyst for change. This unit will conclude with a brief Q & A.
Unit 2: Understanding Anxiety &the Cycle of Panic: Part 1
Situations that foster uncertainty and fear can trigger intense feelings of self-doubt. We then become unsure of ourselves and frightened, which leads to doubt about our ability to cope. Dread creeps in and triggers imagined worst-case scenarios and catastrophic outcomes... all of which can culminate in a panic state, better known as a panic attack. This session explores how panic and anxiety play out, and lays out the unhealthy cycle of panic, in full, from rising symptoms and a full-blown panic attack to the gradual decline of symptoms, and the negative aftermath of a negative memory.
Unit 3: Understanding Anxiety &the Cycle of Panic: Part 2
An exploration of the aftermath of a panic attack, anticipatory anxiety, and how it sets the stage for increased intensity and occurrences of incidents, and life-altering avoidance behaviors. This unit will conclude with a brief Q & A.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: The Healthy Cycle of Panic
In this session, participants learn about the healthy cycle of panic, strategies for building awareness and coping strategies when entering into triggering settings and events, healthy choices and actions when in the throes of a panic attack, and the positive aftermath of successfully riding out the cycle of panic. The session concludes with an overview of exposure therapy and other treatments, and a brief Q&A.
Unit 5: Individual Exercises
Part 1: Participants will be challenged to list the source of anxiety in their life, and describe their feared worst-case scenario outcome, and volunteers with be invited to discuss the likelihood of this worst-case scenario actually playing out.
Part 2: Participants will be asked to reflect on a painful experience, loss, or failure that propelled them forward in their life, facilitated a major change, and invited to share their experiences with the group.
This session will conclude with a brief outline of the following day’s starting subject — anger — and participants will be assigned the homework of coming to the following session with a brief written description of a recent event that made them angry.
DAY 5
Unit 1: Communication, Anger & Blanket Emotions: Part 1
This session is all about blanket emotions, and how improving communication — with ourselves and others — can facilitate positive change in our lives. Participants learn how learning to communicate well, with others, and most importantly, with themselves. What do we do when we get angry? We spill over onto others. We blame others for our anger. But it’s not others who are making us angry. What is making us angry is our interpretation of what’s going on.
Unit 2: Communication, Anger & Blanket Emotions: Part 2
Happy, sad, nervous, scared... these are blanket emotions. This session explores how anger and other blanket emotions cover a lot of territory but don’t give us a clear picture of what’s really going on. Anger is one of these blanket emotions. Most people demonize anger. They misinterpret it, personalize it and categorize it as extreme. But, as a blanket emotion, anger doesn’t reveal the depth of what someone in a state of anger is actually going through. But anger, it turns out, is not that hard to break down. Participants are introduced to the anger funnel as a means of breaking down what is underneath the anger and discovering what is really happening when we’re upset or angry. This unit will conclude with a brief Q & A.
Unit 3: Individual Work & Group Discussion
Using the Anger Funnel, participants will be challenged first to explore what might be going on in an example of an angry exchange provided by the instructor, and then to explore what was truly going on beneath the blanket emotion of their anger, and invited to share their insights with the group.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Communication, Anger & Blanket Emotions: Part 3
This session explores how we can examine our problematic relationships with other people through the use of the anger funnel. Participants learn how to place someone they struggle within the bubble at the bottom of the funnel and ask: what do I like about this person? What do we have in common? What traits do I dislike? This session concludes with the exercise of exploring the dynamics of an individual with whom they struggle using the funnel.
Unit 5: Meditation
The final session of the day switches to Mediation… what it is, what it isn’t, and how most of us do it every day, even though we may not know it. This instructor-led discussion demystifies meditation, highlights its many benefits, explores ways participants may already be meditating, and the many ways in which meditation can be integrated into everyday life. This session concludes with a brief Q&A and a 10-minute meditation. Participants are tasked with the homework of reviewing their notes from Day 2, on Waving the Magic Wand
DAY 6
Unit 1: Worthy of Love
There’s an ultimate need each and every one of us has in life; to feel worthy of love. We place conditions on ourselves to feel acceptable and worthy of people and life and love, and in doing so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. In fact, it’s the first of many conditions we place on ourselves in life. This session is all about being worthy of love and examining the conditions that we place on ourselves. These conditions can be endless and lead an individual into leading an inauthentic life of pleasing others. This session concludes with a brief Q&A.
Unit 2: Individual Work & Group Discussion
Part 1: Our very first experience of looking for validation of worthiness — otherwise known as the external validating the internal — is seeking the approval of our parents. If Mom and Dad say we’re a good girl or boy, we feel worthy of their time, attention, and affection. Our first addiction is the approval of our parents. And it’s only the beginning. We then get entangled in a web of placing conditions on our value, and our worthiness. As we move through our lives, our circles and cycles of validation continue to expand. Participants will be challenged to explore the terms and conditions we place upon themselves to feel worthy of love.
Part 2: Having revisited their work from lesson two, where they envisioned their ideal self, participants will be challenged to go even deeper, explore their authentic interests, goals, and desires, and be tasked with preparing an inventory of their authentic interests, passions, and dreams.
Unit 3: Guilt Part 1: Following Your Ow Truth
We often struggle with feelings related to guilt. We rarely sit with our guilt or attempt to deconstruct, explore, and understand its components. What is guilt really about? Why does it keep happening? We often find ourselves enmeshed in guilt, and feeling distressed, overwhelmed, and angry. In this session begin to explore what guilt is all about... and how to identify and manage it.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Guilt Part 2: Our Part in the Problem
Many times, we remain stuck in patterns from our childhood, of caving in, people-pleasing, seeking affirmation. But our purpose in life is not to please others at our expense. When we do, we disappoint ourselves. This is where the harm occurs. This type of conflict occurs not only with family and friends but with society at large: your boss, your colleagues, your partner, and your children. This session explores how to confront and resolve guilt, and how, when someone needs to be wants something from you, you do not automatically need to bend to their expectations. Remember, as we mature we develop a sense of independence, and we find fulfillment in making our own choices.
Unit 5: Individual Work & Group Discussion
The final session of the day begins with participants sharing with the group the last time someone made them feel guilty. In each example, the group identifies the source of guilt, how what another person wanted of them was out of alignment with what they wanted for themselves, and how the situation played out. Group members will be asked to contribute possible alternate responses to an unwelcome request.
The session will conclude with a discussion of imagined future situations in which guilt might show up, and a discussion of how to respond more authentically when it does.
DAY 7
Unit 1: Sharing the Burden
In this lesson, we’ll talk about the importance of sharing our burdens with others, and supporting one another. In life in large cities, we often find ourselves alone. But in many different societies and cultures, cultures, and in smaller urban centers, there is a greater sense of community... greater family involvement and support in raising children, and conflicts like divorce, job loss, and bereavement. There is a strong sense of community, helping and supporting each other, to help you share your burden. We can become overwhelmed with physical symptoms and negative thoughts. Unhealthy behaviors or habits emerge.
When we share our burden by connecting with others, we can sort out our physical symptoms, and negative thoughts and behaviors, and begin taking baby steps to change. Self-help and wellness are about awareness. This session concludes with a brief Q&A.
Unit 2: Forgiveness: Part 1
This lesson is all about forgiveness, how it works, why it’s important to learn how to forgive, and how to forgive those who have caused you harm. We all struggle with forgiveness because we do not really understand it. Forgiveness is not something we do for others. It’s about us processing our pain and understanding the hurts that we internalize resulting from experiences that we have judged as negative.
Unit 3: Forgiveness: Part 2
Part 2 of this exploration of forgiveness is all about exploring our own patterns of behaviors and choices, and the value of learning how to look at ourselves in our many contexts and settings, how people are mirrors for us, and reveal ourselves to us in many ways. We also need to look at the games we play with ourselves, with clarity and compassion. When we do this, we bring ourselves to a place of forgiveness. This session concludes with a brief Q&A
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Forgiveness Part 3: The Forgiveness Letter/ Individual Work
Participants are introduced to the process of writing a forgiveness letter, including describing the story of a past hurt full, the good, the bad, the lessons learned from the experience, and a closing statement of release and forgiveness. Participants are then tasked with writing a forgiveness letter to someone who has hurt them in their life.
Participant Unit 5: Forgiveness Part 4 & Group Discussion
Participants learn the value of recognizing that all suffering, hurts, pain and sorrows are catalysts for change, and that forgiving those who have hurt them means that they are letting go of the personalization of a negative experience, and allowing themselves to move forward by understanding its lessons and opportunities for growth … and how getting caught up in the pain can lead to their own demise.
The session concludes with a group discussion on the challenges and rewards of forgiving and letting go of past hurts.
DAY 8
Unit 1: Gratitude
In this lesson we’ll explore the value of practicing gratitude More often than not, we tend to focus on what we are missing in life. Rather than see the glass as half full we are constantly looking at what we lack. It is important for us to look at life accurately. Gratitude is a way to do just that — to look at our life clearly and with accuracy. It’s about replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. Participants will learn simple ways to bring the practice of gratitude into their daily lives. This session concludes with a brief exercise in creating a Gratitude Log.
Unit 2: Obstacles as Lessons
This lesson explores the benefits as the obstacles as lessons that challenge us to change and grow. We tend to judge obstacles — certain life experiences — as negative. Such experiences tend to inconvenience us. But from day to day, what may inconvenience us can shift and change. We need to start removing the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ labels from our experiences in our lives. We need to begin looking at our obstacles and challenges in life as lessons, or as a pause where we can choose to do something differently. This session concludes with a 15-minute discussion of times when obstacles taught participants valuable life lessons.
Unit 3: Becoming a Higher, Version of Yourself
According to the tenets of Buddhism, it is important to create interest in life. No matter what age or stage you are in life, whether you’re 21 or 121, this lesson is all about creating interest in life as you strive to become your highest and best self. No matter what stage of life you’re in, it is important to strive to become a better version of yourself, and how to do so. This session concludes with a brief Q&A and a discussion of what this means to individual participants.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Your Authentic Self
Each and every one of us has a battle going on inside. Our authentic selves struggle with what is expected of us. Each and every day, we need to strive to bring in reminders of our authentic self, our true self, the one we were born with, in high self-esteem. We need to recognize that each and every one of us has a true, unique, authentic self. We are unique in our expression of ourselves, our interests, and our passions. In this lesson, we’re going to talk about the importance of following our truth and fighting for our authenticity. This session will conclude with a brief discussion and Q&A about exploring some ways participants can reconnect with their authentic selves.
Participant Unit 5: Flow
In this final session of this series, we explore, attention, energy and flow. Throughout this program, participants have worked on setting life goals and planning to manifest what they want in life. From letting go of past hurts and trauma, improving family, peer, and work relationships, setting goals to become a higher, more authentic version of themselves ... anything they want, or intend to bring into their life.
Closing remarks focus on planning is planting the seed of where we want to go in life, paying attention to what we want to bring into our life, listing goals, creating a vision for where we want to be in life, and bringing forth the changes we want to make.
Participants are encouraged to make a weekly appointment with themselves to check in on their goals and their commitment to becoming a higher version of themselves and to identify, pay attention to, and address the obstacles that hold them back from achieving the goals they’ve set for themselves. Finally, participants are instructed to return to their notes, exercises, and lessons from this program, as they encounter challenges and need to refresh and renew their commitment to creating a deeper wellness for themselves, and living their most authentic, highest, and best life.
The program concludes with an overview of how to work with course materials, the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, and (if optional online program is included in the package) the 18-part self-directed online program, A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
Start Living Corporate Wellness
A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons
4-DAY PROGRAM
For those willing to work smarter — not harder — on their mental health, their healing, and growth, this program offers a roadmap out of pain and fear and into the life they deserve. In this -part series, participants will learn: powerful, life-affirming, and life-enhancing mental health psycho-education, tools, and strategies, including how to identify and understand the interplay between physical symptoms, negative thoughts, and maladaptive behaviors, how to free themselves from past hurts and emotional debris, take steps to factor mental health and wellbeing into the equation of their life, seek out and connect with opportunities for healing and growth, and commit to leading a more authentic, happier life.
COURSE OUTLINE
Participants will be provided with course materials, including a source notebook, a copy of the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety, and Traumas, by Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., and an optional 6-month access to A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
DAY 1
Unit 1: An introduction to Mental Health, A Deeper Wellness
& Putting our Problems on the Table
This opening talk provides an overview of the structure of the core learning tools of the course, the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety, and Traumas, by Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., and the 18-part self-directed online program, A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons, and introduces the concepts of mental health, mental fitness, and wellness. An introduction to the interrelationship between our physical symptoms and our mental health, and the process of putting our problems on the table.
Unit 2: Waving the Magic Wand
Unit 2 begins with a short, and inspiring talk and a three-part challenge. Participants will be asked to imagine their ideal, best life, without any barriers or restrictions, and describe their ideal lives under a series of prescribed categories. Next, they will then take that same list of categories and describe where they are in their lives today, and finally, they will be challenged to make note of the gaps between their ideal and current selves, and asked to choose one category they would like to begin working on today, and imagine the steps they could take to move toward their ideal self in that area of their life.
Unit 3: Understanding Stress & Integrating Self-care into Our Lives
A look at exactly what stress is, its negative impact on our bodies and minds, and our choices around how we can manage the stress in our lives. This section concludes with the introduction of the four sources of energy we can control: the food we eat, and our sleep. Our exercise and breath, and our state of mind. An exploration of the four sources of energy in our lives, and how we can maximize and boost our energy levels through integrating self-care, healthy habits, and routines, and minimize the suboptimal behaviors, habits, and choices that lead to self-sabotaging of our energy levels.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Individual Work / Activities and Exercises
Participants will be tasked with undergoing a personal energy audit: examining their habits and choices around their four sources of energy, and listing strategies they could explore to boost their energy levels and improve their self-care habits and routines. This unit will include a 20-minute discussion of the exercise, and Q&A.
Unit 5: Factoring Yourself into the Equation of Your Life
This final session of the day begins with participants sharing their greatest challenges and solutions to better managing, boosting, and caring for their energy levels, and concludes with a brief summary of integrating self-care, factoring your well-being into the equation of
your life, and cautionary wisdom about guilt, what it means when it shows up, and what you can do about it.
DAY 2
Unit 1: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 1
Day 3 begins with an introduction to the importance of our thoughts, and how our thoughts — both positive and negative — shape our lives. Participants are introduced to the concept of life as a series of experiences that we label and judge as positive and negative, and how experiences we judge as negative act as a catalyst for change. Participants learn about core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas: how each of these elements come into our lives and develop over time., how the reality of our core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas is that there are times when they no longer serve us when they are not necessarily true or accurate.
Unit 2: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 2
This unit begins with a How to identify problematic core beliefs, automatic thoughts about the way the world works, and our schemas, and what to do when our thoughts are holding us back from moving forward and creating the life we want. In this lively group activity, the instructor takes participants to the same party — three times. Each time, though a less than satisfactory introduction to a stranger, participants are asked to play out their thoughts and feelings, depending on a different thought about this interaction. This activity is followed by a discussion about the power of our thoughts to influence and impact our interactions and functioning with others.
Unit 3: It’s the Thought That Counts: PART 3
This concluding session of the morning explores the need to challenge our negative thoughts and make our faith in our skillsets bigger than our fear of the unknown. We explore that our thoughts matter because they affect our self-esteem, and as we strive to live life as our highest and best self, our thoughts count. This unit will conclude with a 15-minute Q&A.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Understanding Anxiety & the Cycle of Panic:
Situations that foster uncertainty and fear can trigger intense feelings of self-doubt. We then become unsure of ourselves and frightened, which leads to doubt about our ability to cope. Dread creeps in and triggers imagined worst-case scenarios and catastrophic outcomes... all of which can culminate in a panic state, better known as a panic attack. This session explores how panic and anxiety play out, and lays out the unhealthy cycle of panic, in full, from rising symptoms and a full-blown panic attack to the gradual decline of symptoms, and the negative aftermath of a negative memory. Participants learn about the healthy cycle of panic, strategies for building awareness and coping strategies when entering into triggering settings and events, healthy choices and actions when in the throes of a panic attack, and the positive aftermath of successfully riding out the cycle of panic. The session concludes with an overview of exposure therapy and other treatments, and a brief Q&A.
Unit 5: Understanding the Purpose of Suffering
This session explores the purpose of suffering in our lives. We all suffer loss, disappointment, failure, and trauma. We all experience pain and hurt. It’s part of life. Participants are reminded that, in previous sessions, they learned that life is a series of experiences that we judge and label these experiences as positive or negative. It’s important to understand the purpose of suffering. Understanding our suffering enables us to regain the power we feel we have lost when we experience pain and grief. We all have suffering, pain, sorrow, and hurts. Here, the true purpose of suffering reveals itself: suffering is a catalyst for change. This unit will conclude with a brief Q & A.
DAY 3
Unit 1: Communication, Anger & Blanket Emotions: Part 1
This session is all about blanket emotions, and how improving communication — with ourselves and others — can facilitate positive change in our lives. Participants learn how learning to communicate well, with others, and most importantly, with themselves. What do we do when we get angry? We spill over onto others. We blame others for our anger. But it’s not others who are making us angry. What is making us angry is our interpretation of what’s going on. Participants explore how anger and other blanket emotions cover a lot of territory but don’t give us a clear picture of what’s really going on. Anger is one of these blanket emotions. Most people demonize anger. They misinterpret it, personalize it and categorize it as extreme. But, as a blanket emotion, anger doesn’t reveal the depth of what someone in a state of anger is actually going through. But anger, it turns out, is not that hard to break down.
Unit 2: Individual Work & Group Discussion
Participants are introduced to the anger funnel as a means of breaking down what is underneath the anger and discovering what is really happening when we’re upset or angry. Using the Anger Funnel, participants will be challenged first to explore what might be going on in an example of an angry exchange provided by the instructor, and then to explore what was truly going on beneath the blanket emotion of their anger, and invited to share their insights with the group. This session concludes with an explanation of how to use the anger funnel to examine our problematic relationships with other people.
Unit 3: Worthy of Love
There’s an ultimate need each and every one of us has in life; to feel worthy of love. We place conditions on ourselves to feel acceptable and worthy of people and life and love, and in doing so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. In fact, it’s the first of many conditions we place on ourselves in life. This session is all about being worthy of love and examining the conditions that we place on ourselves. These conditions can be endless and lead an individual into leading an inauthentic life of pleasing others.
Part 2: Having revisited their work from lesson one, where they envisioned their ideal self, participants will be challenged to go even deeper to explore their authentic interests, goals, and desires, and be tasked with preparing an inventory of their authentic interests, passions, and dreams.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: Guilt
We often struggle with feelings related to guilt. We rarely sit with our guilt or attempt to deconstruct, explore, and understand its components. What is guilt really about? Why does it keep happening? We often find ourselves enmeshed in guilt, and feeling distressed, overwhelmed, and angry. In this session begin to explore what guilt is all about... and how to identify and manage it. Participants learn that it is not our purpose in life to please others at our expense. When we do, we disappoint ourselves. This is where the harm occurs. This type of conflict occurs not only with family and friends but with society at large: your boss, your colleagues, your partner, and your children. This session explores how to confront and resolve guilt, and how, when someone needs to be wants something from you, you do not automatically need to bend to their expectations. This session concludes with a brief Q&A.
Unit 5: Meditation
The final session of the day switches to Mediation… what it is, what it isn’t, and how most of us do it every day, even though we may not know it. This instructor-led discussion demystifies meditation, highlights its many benefits, explores ways participants may already be meditating, and the many ways in which meditation can be integrated into everyday life. This session concludes with a brief Q&A and a 10-minute meditation. Participants are tasked with the homework of reviewing their notes from Day 1, on Waving the Magic Wand
DAY 4
Unit 1: Forgiveness: Part 1
This lesson is all about forgiveness, how it works, why it’s important to learn how to forgive, and how to forgive those who have caused you harm. We all struggle with forgiveness because we do not really understand it. Forgiveness is not something we do for others. It’s about us processing our pain and understanding the hurts that we internalize resulting from experiences that we have judged as negative. Participants learn that forgiveness is all about exploring our own patterns of behaviors and choices, and the value of learning how to look at ourselves in our many contexts and settings, how people are mirrors for us, and reveal ourselves to us in many ways. We also need to look at the games we play with ourselves, with clarity and compassion. When we do this, we bring ourselves to a place of forgiveness. This session concludes with a brief Q&A
Unit 2: The Forgiveness Letter/ Individual Work
Participants are introduced to the process of writing a forgiveness letter, including describing the story of a past hurt full, the good, the bad, the lessons learned from the experience, and a closing statement of release and forgiveness. Participants are then tasked with writing a forgiveness letter to someone who has hurt them in their life.
Unit 3: Obstacles as Lessons
This lesson explores the benefits as the obstacles as lessons that challenge us to change and grow. We tend to judge obstacles — certain life experiences — as negative. Such experiences tend to inconvenience us. But from day to day, what may inconvenience us can shift and change. We need to start removing the ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ labels from our experiences in our lives. We need to begin looking at our obstacles and challenges in life as lessons, or as a pause where we can choose to do something differently. This session concludes with a 15-minute discussion of times when obstacles taught participants valuable life lessons.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: : Gratitude:
In this lesson we’ll explore the value of practicing gratitude More often than not, we tend to focus on what we are missing in life. Rather than see the glass as half full we are constantly looking at what we lack. It is important for us to look at life accurately. Gratitude is a way to do just that — to look at our life clearly and with accuracy. It’s about replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. Participants will learn simple ways to bring the practice of gratitude into their daily lives. This session concludes with a brief exercise in creating a Gratitude Log.
Unit 5: The Authentic, Highest and Best Self
In this final session of this series, we explore the authentic self. Each and every one of us has a battle going on inside. Our authentic selves struggle with what is expected of us. Each and every day, we need to strive to bring in reminders of our authentic self, our true self, the one we were born with, in high self-esteem. We need to recognize that each and every one of us has a true, unique, authentic self. We are unique in our expression of ourselves, our interests, and our passions. In this lesson, we’re going to talk about the importance of following our truth and fighting for our authenticity. This session will conclude with a brief discussion and Q&A about exploring some ways participants can use the Magic Wand exercise to reconnect with their authentic selves. From letting go of past hurts and trauma, improving family, peer, and work relationships, setting goals to become a higher, more authentic version of themselves ... anything they want, or intend to bring into their life.
The program concludes with an overview of how to work with course materials, the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, and (if optional online program is included in the package) the 18-part self-directed online program, A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
Start Living Corporate Wellness
An Introduction to A Deeper Wellness Life Lessons
1-DAY PROGRAM
For those willing to work smarter — not harder — on their mental health, their healing, and growth, this program offers a roadmap out of pain and fear and into the life they deserve. In this -part series, participants will learn: powerful, life-affirming, and life-enhancing mental health psycho-education, tools, and strategies, including how to identify and understand the interplay between physical symptoms, negative thoughts, and maladaptive behaviors, how to free themselves from past hurts and emotional debris, take steps to factor mental health and wellbeing into the equation of their life, seek out and connect with opportunities for healing and growth, and commit to leading a more authentic, happier life.
COURSE OUTLINE
Participants will be provided with course materials, including a source notebook, a copy of the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety, and Traumas, by Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., and 6-month access to A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
Unit 1: An introduction to Mental Health, A Deeper Wellness & Putting our Problems on the Table
This opening talk provides an overview of the structure of the core learning tools of the course, the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, Conquering Stress, Mood, Anxiety, and Traumas, by Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., and the 18-part self-directed online program, A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons, and introduces the concepts of mental health, mental fitness, and wellness. An introduction to the interrelationship between our physical symptoms and our mental health, and the process of putting our problems on the table.
Unit 2: Waving the Magic Wand
Unit 2 begins with a short, and inspiring talk and a three-part challenge. Participants will be asked to imagine their ideal, best life, without any barriers or restrictions, and describe their ideal lives under a series of prescribed categories. Next, they will then take that same list of categories and describe where they are in their lives today, and finally, they will be challenged to make note of the gaps between their ideal and current selves, and asked to choose one category they would like to begin working on today, and imagine the steps they could take to move toward their ideal self in that area of their life
Unit 3: Understanding Stress & Integrating Self-care into Our Lives
A look at exactly what stress is, its negative impact on our bodies and minds, and our choices around how we can manage the stress in our lives. This section concludes with the introduction of the four sources of energy we can control: the food we eat, and our sleep. Our exercise and breath, and our state of mind. An exploration of the four sources of energy in our lives, and how we can maximize and boost our energy levels through integrating self-care, healthy habits, and routines, and minimize the suboptimal behaviors, habits, and choices that lead to self-sabotaging of our energy levels.
LUNCH BREAK
Unit 4: it’s the Thought that Counts!
The importance of our thoughts, and how our thoughts — both positive and negative — shape our lives. Participants are introduced to the concept of life as a series of experiences that we label and judge as positive and negative, and how experiences we judge as negative act as a catalyst for change. An introduction to core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas: how each of these elements come into our lives and develop over time., how the reality of our core beliefs, automatic thoughts, and schemas is that there are times when they no longer serve us when they are not necessarily true or accurate. How to identify problematic core beliefs, automatic thoughts about the way the world works, and our schemas, and what to do when our thoughts are holding us back from moving forward and creating the life we want.
This unit includes a 15-minute self-reflective exercise and Q&A session.
Unit 5: A Pathway to A Deeper Wellness
The final session begins with a talk about how to know when our problems are a big deal, when and how to seek help. We explore the types of support and interventions available, and the importance of creating positive, incremental change by freeing ourselves from past hurts and emotional debris, connecting with opportunities for healing and growth, and committing to creating a happier, healthier, more authentic life.
The program concludes with an overview of how to work with course materials, the eBook, A Deeper Wellness, and the 18-part self-directed online program, A Deeper Wellness Online Life Lessons.
Course Creator and Instructor Dr. Monica Vermani, C. Psych., Clinical Psychologist, author of A Deeper Wellness, and founder of Start Living Corporate Wellness
Dr. Vermani is a clinical psychologist specializing in treating trauma, stress, mood, and anxiety disorders, and a well-known public speaker, teacher, author and advocate in the fields of mental health, wellness, and corporate wellness. Dr. Vermani’s Start Living Corporate Wellness programs were created out of her belief in the importance of good mental health in the workplace. These in-person and online programs are a product of her dedication to helping people cope more effectively with mental health issues and challenges in every aspect of their lives, providing continuous, ongoing support and resources. Start Living Corporate Wellness programs support and facilitate individuals’ efforts to overcome the barriers that prevent them from living their best and most authentic life.