Half‑Day Preconference Session with Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
Rhythms of the Natural World: Clues for the Healing Process
October 26 | 2:00–6:00 p.m. (MST) | $250 CAD
Join us for an exclusive half‑day preconference session featuring Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.. Dr. Perry will lead an engaging and thought‑provoking exploration of brain development, trauma, and resilience—offering insights that inform practice across health, education, and community settings.
About the Preconference
This workshop will highlight the roles of rhythm and relationship in health and wellness. An overview of the range of rhythms across the natural world – and rhythms that are fundamental to human function – will be provided. Disruption of these rhythms results in dysregulation and dysfunction and appears to be a primary underlying feature in all human neuropsychiatric conditions, including post-traumatic conditions. Activities that intentionally introduce rhythm can help reset dysregulated internal rhythms and have profoundly positive effects on health and wellness. We will suggest that restoration of internal rhythms is a central component of effective therapeutic experience.
How disruption in the rhythms in Nature and person create dysfunction
Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
This overview presentation will trace the origins of rhythm across the natural world and the role they have had in shaping the evolution of rhythmic physiological processes in living species. From circadian rhythms to brainwave rhythms to cellular and molecular oscillations, rhythm permeates the living, acting, feeling and thinking person. When these rhythms become dyssynchronous, functional compromise and dysfunction follow. Examples of rhythmic disruptions observed in human neuropsychiatric conditions and therapeutic use of rhythm to restore function will be provided.
Movement, Community, and Ritual: The Science of Collective Healing in Grief
With Myra Sack
Myra Sack is the founder and Executive Director of E-Motion, Inc. and author of Fifty-Seven Fridays. Her work grows out of lived experience of loss and is deepened through movement, community, and emerging science. In this session, Sack will share early insights from an IRB-approved study exploring how peer-led Grief Movement Communities—rooted in walking, running, and simple ritual—support emotional regulation, connection, and the lived experience of grief. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and wearable monitoring, the research begins to capture grief as it unfolds in daily life—its rhythms and patterns of change. Sack will explore how collective movement and “right-sized” rituals can gently bring into awareness what is often held beneath the surface. Participants may be invited into brief readings and embodied practices—gathering in circle, an ancient and enduring ritual form—offering a felt sense of how community and ritual can open space for healing beyond words.
Wired for More: Animal-Assisted Interactions and the Neurobiology of Rhythm and Relationships
With Michael Remole
"There is something about the outside of the horse that is good for the inside of man." — Winston Churchill
What practitioners have known intuitively for decades, neuroscience is now confirming. Animals regulate. Animals relate. They are not metaphors or mirrors for the natural world — they are the natural world. Biological, sentient, co-regulatory, relational beings whose nervous systems speak directly to our own. As we engage with animals, research shows shifts in heart rate variability, reduced cortisol, and decreased markers of depression and anxiety. These are not incidental outcomes. They are evidence of something profound happening across all levels of the brain.
Through the lens of animal-assisted interactions as a natural, bottom-up, sequential approach to healing — we explore what becomes possible when we recognize animals not as tools, metaphors, or mirrors, but as equal relational partners who unapologetically bring their own rhythm, presence, and instinctive wisdom to the therapeutic space.
At the intersection of nature, neuroscience, and relationship, we explore the power of entrainment, co-regulation, heart rate coherence, and the neurobiological foundations that make animal-assisted interactions not a supplement to trauma treatment, but a natural expression of the healing rhythms of the natural world.
Wildflowers: Nature, Healing, and the Wisdom of Wild Spaces
With Meghan J. Ward
Meghan J. Ward is an outdoor writer, filmmaker, and Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. Based in the Canadian Rockies, Ward has spent twenty years asking what it means to move through — and belong to — the natural world. Her books and documentary work examine how access to wilderness shapes identity and wellbeing, grounded in a belief that time spent in outdoor spaces is one of the oldest forms of medicine we have.
In the documentary film, Wildflowers, Ward traces the historic 1908 expedition of early 20th-century explorer Mary Schäffer Warren to investigate what it means to find healing in nature, reckon honestly with our colonial inheritance, and find our way back to the stories we have long left untold. The film screening will be followed by a Q+A.
This special session takes place October 26 from 2–6 p.m. (MST) at the Banff Springs Hotel and provides attendees with a unique opportunity to learn directly from one of the most influential voices in the field.
REGISTER HERE