This Integrative Toolkit to Manage Challenging Emotions Includes:
Experience therapist-guided somatic techniques for engaging the body and mind, including breathwork, enlisting the five senses, and self-tapping for immediate anxiety reduction. Megan Barbera has developed a unique clinical practice over the past three decades with a focus on guiding her clients towards a sense of calm and greater wellbeing with the techniques listed above. Rooted in an understanding of the symbiosis between emotions, thoughts, and behavior, the techniques presented in this workshop will offer valuable tools for disrupting the anxiety feedback loop that occurs between brain and body. Together, we will explore and practice how to guide our minds and bodies to a sanctuary of non-judgment and quiet awareness.
Megan will open the workshop with a valuable self-soothing technique that can be used anywhere, anytime. Then she and Carole Addison-Goyne will deconstruct some of the key elements involved in working through generalized anxiety and panic beyond this workshop. We will explore the importance of inherent resources we have available to us (such as breath, meditation, visualization, attunement with our five senses, and the ability to connect the left & right hemispheres of our brain through focused movement). The intentional incorporation of essential oils will be woven throughout the entire workshop, as well. We will uncover the mechanism behind how essential oils help us to calm our central and parasympathetic nervous systems in the moment. We will also explore how they can be a wellspring of comfort any time we access them afterwards, based on their ability to connect us so deeply with memories, emotions, and instinctual drives.
You will walk away with an integrative toolkit to manage challenging emotions and invite a sense of calm wherever you are. Throughout your journey, we invite you to receive Megan's guidance, along with the aromatherapy knowledge that Carole brings to our group, empowering you with a specialized understanding of essential oils so that you can benefit from them as your unique botanical allies.
Learn more about Megan & Carole below.
Megan Barbera is a New York-based clinical social worker and founder of Wellness + Creativity, which specializes in collaborative mental health therapy for adults. Megan is also a performing songwriter. She holds a master's degree in social work from the University of Denver's Graduate School of Social Work. She has dual clinical licensure in Colorado and New York and brings over twenty years of experience to her work. She especially enjoys helping healers, teachers, seekers, visionaries, and artists of all mediums. In both facets of her work, Megan strives to model warmth, kindness and authenticity.
Megan’s post-graduate education has been on anxiety reduction, mood regulation, whole person wellness, and body-centered trauma resolution. She is a contributing author to Reverence in the Healing Process: Honoring Strengths Without Trivializing Suffering edited by esteemed clinical psychologist and former director of the New York Association for Play Therapy, David Crenshaw, PhD. She has also trained with Bessel van der Kolk, MD and Bruce Perry, MD, renowned neuroscientists, whose work on the impact of trauma on the developing brain have guided clinical practice, programs and policy across the world. Megan is a long-time practitioner of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and has received advanced training in Somatic Experiencing, Internal Family Systems Theory, and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), all powerful treatment modalities that promote trauma resolution. Currently, Megan serves as a trustee on the Rhinebeck Board of Education in New York’s Hudson Valley, where she is a member of their K-12 Mental Health Advisory Committee.
As a songwriter, Megan explores themes of relationships, the meaning of life, and the passage of time. She is a 2021 International Songwriting Competition semi-finalist and a 2021 featured artist for the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. Her songs have earned ad placements with brands such as Naturalizer Shoes, San Miguel Beverage Co. and Australian clothing line Mela Purdie. She has been honored to offer her time and music performance to numerous non-profit agencies focusing on equity, child advocacy, public health, animal welfare, and environmental conservation. Her fourth studio album, a collaboration with fellow songwriter, Brad Armstrong, will be released on Cornelius Chapel Records in Spring 2024.
Learn more about Megan here
Our Nomad Botanicals Founder, Carole Addison-Goyne, has been in the aromatherapy, botanical perfumery, and natural products field for the past three decades. She has been fortunate to study with world-renowned mentors along her path, including Kurt Schnaubelt, PhD and Mandy Aftel, who are both international authorities and best-selling authors in their fields. Carole apprenticed and worked with Kurt Schnaubelt, PhD for years, teaching aromatherapy certification seminars and overseeing his essential oil business. Carole has also received several Natural Perfumery Slow Scent® Certifications from Mandy Aftel and continues to find some of her greatest joy in teaching about this timeless craft. Additionally, Carole was influenced by the pioneering botanical legacy of Horst Rechelbacher during her 15-year tenure as an executive with Aveda.
Through the years, Carole and her husband, Scott, have distilled essential oils in Northern California, and they were also engaged in the development of bringing to market medicinal and aromatic plants from Morocco, through a USAID project. In the midst of all of these endeavors, Carole earned her MBA and also followed her nose to Aveda where she led teams across the Pacific Northwest. Through Carole's collective experiences, the concept of Nomad Botanicals was born. With a dream team beside her, the Nomad journey continues to evolve with vibrancy each day. Creating and sharing high quality aromatherapy lifestyle products with people around the world is Carole's dream come true.
Outside of Nomad Botanicals, Carole is a Director on the Board of Directors for HenHouse Brewing Company, which she and her husband co-founded after converting some of their essential oil stills into brewing equipment. She has also dedicated herself to community service, from chairing the MBA Alumni Forum at Sonoma State University in recent years to her current stewardship, serving as Secretary on the Board of the Sonoma Valley Certified Farmers' Market. Carole's involvement in her local community reflects her core values of being grateful and giving back.
