The Resilience Toolkit Facilitator Certification Program

A 70 contact-hour professional training that prepares you to facilitate first-stage trauma healing and real-time stress navigation for individual and collective transformation.

The Resilience Toolkit is a framework that fosters embodied self-awareness, supports stabilization from the impacts of personal and collective trauma, and nurtures adaptive capacity. It is informed by science, shaped by lived experience, and rooted in an ecologically sensitive and justice-oriented approach.

Learn About the Resilience Toolkit

This Work Matters Now

Across the world, people are navigating overlapping crises—ecological breakdown, systemic oppression, widening inequity, and political polarization. These forces, along with the stress and trauma they generate, shape our institutions, our bodies, relationships, and communities.

Whether you are a therapist, teacher, coach, social worker, organizer, or leader within an organization, you have experienced how stress and trauma hold people in cycles that hijack growth, connection, and meaningful change.

Most of the tools we have for managing stress assume individual problems in stable conditions. They fall short in realities marked by chronic instability and systemic harm. We need practices that honor both personal and collective trauma, and that keep us steady and connected during turbulent times.

This is the Resilience Toolkit. It is specifically designed to manage overwhelming stress and for first-stage trauma healing: stabilization before processing and transformation.

Your path to Certification

Becoming a Facilitator

The Resilience Toolkit Facilitator Certification prepares you to facilitate first-stage trauma stabilization and real-time regulation to individuals and groups. Through a rigorous, cohort-based program, you’ll integrate the Toolkit personally before building the competence to guide others with skill and integrity.

What sets the Certification apart:

Experiential learning: You will engage in supervised facilitation, peer practice, and case consultation that build genuine confidence and competency.
Community of practice: Train alongside a global cohort and remain connected through the Resilience Toolkit Training Alliance, where facilitators continue to learn and evolve the work long after certification ends.
Flexible application: No clinical license required. Bring these practices to private practice, organizing spaces, workplaces, classrooms, and communities.

Cohort 19 begins Tuesday, 2 February 2027

Register by Tuesday, 19 January at 11:59pm UTC-07h

The Resilience Toolkit Certification Program equips you to recognize activation patterns and guide people into coherence, help groups shift from reactive responses back to strategic action, and embed stabilizing practices in the spaces where you work—creating environments where people can reconnect to themselves, one another, and a shared future.

Program Details

The Resilience Toolkit Facilitator Certification program is a rich experiential process that gives you the tools to take the Toolkit into the world. In an all-virtual format, the program consists of recorded and live lectures, small-group mentoring and discussion, peer and independent practice sessions, suggested reading and reflective writing, supervised teaching, and case consultation. Interactive and cooperative learning foster responsibility, self-awareness, and competency.

Program Requirements

Admission requirements: The Resilience Toolkit Facilitator Certification Program is open to anyone interested in working with stressed and traumatized people.

Prerequisite:

Attendance in The Resilience Toolkit 3-part series OR 3 individual Toolkit sessions
Completion of the Resilience Toolkit Workbook or similar reflective journal
Completion of two months of active membership in Lumos’ the Alchemical Resilience Collective practice group,which includes a minimum participation in 8 sessions

Enrollment:

Cohort 19 enrollment is open and closes Tuesday, 19 January 2027 at 11:59pm UTC-07h (find in your time zone) – Register here!
- Note: Both the dates and curriculum for Cohort 19 are subject to change as we continue refining the program.

Program Length:

23 weeks

Average Time Commitment:

Approximately six hours weekly, PLUS three 4.5-hour workshop sessions

Program Requirements:

Orientation session
Three online 4.5-hour weekend workshop sessions on the Saturdays of weeks 9-11
Online pre-recorded lectures
Individual mentoring sessions (online or in-person)
Two session facilitating Toolkit w/ individuals (*The Certification Trainer may add extra sessions or assignments at their optional discretion).
Two sessions facilitating Toolkit w/ small groups (*The Certification Trainer may add extra sessions or assignments at their optional discretion).
Eight virtual 2-hour small group meetings with Trainer every other week
Minimum of 13 weekly virtual 0.5-hour peer group practice and facilitation sessions
Minimum of two peer individual facilitation
14 weekly written journal reflections on personal practice
Independent and peer-based writing and presentations
Selected articles and media study
Case study
Closing gathering

Technology Requirements:

Computer with webcam
Stable internet connection
Basic proficiency with Google documents

Curriculum

Program Objectives

At the conclusion of the program, trainees will:

Demonstrate embodied knowledge of their personal bodymind system with an ability to discern relaxation, stress, and trauma responses.
Identify and attune to others’ bodymind systems with an ability to discern relaxation, stress, and trauma responses.
Analyze the impact of historical, cultural, and ecological context on relaxation, stress, and trauma responses with individuals and groups.
Competently and safely teach the Resilience Toolkit framework and facilitate Resilience Toolkit skills to others for regulation, resourcing, and stabilization.
Commit to consistently use the trauma-informed approach and demonstrate ethical conduct.
Foster the development of robust, sustained personal Resilience Toolkit practice in others.

Program Curriculum

Embodied self-awareness
Stress and resilience from multiple lenses:
- Ecology and ethology
- Evolutionary neurobiology
- Anatomy and physiology
- Biopsychosocial and social ecology
- Neurophysiology
- Sex and gender
- Race, culture, and history
Instruction and facilitation of Toolkit mindfulness and movement practices with individuals and groups
Trauma-informed facilitation principles
Facilitation in virtual settings
Ethics and professionalism
Behavior change theory
Lessons from Motivational Interviewing
Habit formation

Enrollment & Schedule

Cohort 19

Enrollment Deadline: Tuesday, 19 January 2027 – Register here!

*Note: Both the dates and curriculum for Cohort 19 are subject to change as we continue refining the program.

Certification Schedule:

Cohort 19 of The Resilience Toolkit Facilitator Certification Program has a maximum cohort size of 36 trainees, divided into mini-cohorts with a maximum of 18 trainees per group. One mini-cohort meets at timings more convenient to the Americas and the other meets at timings more convenient to Africa and Europe. You choose which mini-cohort you’d like to join.

Here are the required virtual meeting times. Click here to find in your time zone.

Certification course opens 2 February 2027

Opening Gathering: Meet the Faculty and Students	Tuesday, 2 February at 1700-1900 UTC
2 hour Mini-cohort meetings: Americas	23 Feb, 9 Mar, at 0100-0300 UTC 23 Mar, 4 May, 18 May, 1 June, 15 June, 29 June at 0000-0200 UTC
2 hour Mini-cohort meetings: Africa/EU	23 Feb, 9 Mar, at 1700-1900 UTC 23 Mar, 4 May, 18 May, 1 June, 15 June, 29 June at 1600-1800 UTC
Weekend Workshops	Saturdays 3 Apr, 10 Apr, 17 Apr at 1400-1830 UTC
Closing Gathering	Tuesday, 6 July at 1630-1900 UTC

Cost & Payment

Program Costs and Payments

You can opt-in to enroll with a full pay option or a 6-part payment plan. CEU certificate cost is $30 USD for weekend workshop (optional).

Cohort Tuition

Tuition Total is $4,100 USD

*Note: Both the dates and curriculum are subject to change as we continue refining the program.

Enrollment Policies

* Cancellation Policy: Registration fee is fully refundable prior to beginning program ONLY with at least 10-day written notice, minus a $100 USD administration fee.

* Withdrawal Policy: Trainees who cancel with less than 10-day notice or withdraw early from the Program will receive a prorated refund based on the number of weeks remaining at the point of withdrawal at $218 USD per week, minus an early withdrawal fee of 10% of the remaining balance.

* Program Extension Policy: Participants who do not complete the program in 23 weeks, will incur a $200 USD monthly charge until program completion or withdrawal, whichever comes first. The monthly charge will not be prorated. If the Certification Trainer determines that extra supervisions are needed for the trainee to meet basic competency, the extra supervisions will be billed at $175 USD per hour.

* Transfer Policy:

Up to 8 weeks – Trainees who opt to transfer to a later cohort will receive a prorated refund based on the number of weeks remaining at the point of transfer at $218 USD per week, minus a transfer fee of $370. At re-enrollment, Trainees will pay $109 USD per week for the weeks up to the original point of transfer and $218 USD per week thereafter.
After 8 weeks – Trainees who opt to transfer to a later cohort will receive a prorated refund based on the number of weeks remaining at the point of transfer at $218 USD per week, minus a transfer fee of $550. At re-enrollment, Trainees will pay $218 USD per week from the original point of transfer through the remainder of the Program.

Scholarships

In an effort to increase representation, equity, and access, our hope is for this scholarship to make an impact in the lives of people who hold historically and systemically marginalized identities, and who live and work in geographical areas that are also historically and systemically marginalized, that are part of the Global South, or where there are currently no Resilience Toolkit Facilitators.

Scholarship description

Currently there are two $500 USD scholarships, which decreases the certification cost to $3,600 USD.

Application Process:

Submit application here: https://forms.gle/24ERREWj57SzDfHa8
Scholarship applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis by the Resilience Toolkit Certification Training Team. To be considered for Cohort 19, applications must be received by 8 January 2027.
Preference will be given for applicants who:
- Have completed Resilience Toolkit Certification Program prerequisites
- Hold historically and systematically marginalized identities
- Live and work in geographical areas and with individuals, organizations, and/or communities that are historically and systematically marginalized
- Live and work in the Global South
- Live and work in areas where there are no Resilience Toolkit Facilitators
- Describe a clear plan for using their Resilience Toolkit training with marginalized individuals, organizations, and/or communities
- Agree to complete a post-certification quarterly survey tracking the impact of their Resilience Toolkit work, including demographics and numbers of people reached.
Applicants will be notified of their selection by email before the start of each training cohort. For Cohort 19, applicants will be notified by 15 January 2027.
Applicants who are not selected will have the option to roll their application over for the subsequent training cohort.

Continuing Education Credits

Professional Continuing Education Credits for Registered Nurses

Participants are eligible for 70 continuing education contact hours from the California Board of Registered Nursing for completing the full certification program. Please note that no partial credit is offered; participants must complete the entire program to receive the continuing education contact hours.
Provider approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing, Provider #CEP15871, for total of 70 Contact Hours

Certification Levels

Level I Certification

Requirements
- Completion of the foundational Level I Certification course
Benefits
- Lifetime Level I Certification
- Lifetime access to the foundational Level I Certification course online content (Cohorts 13 and beyond)
- Listing in the Certified Facilitator database on The Resilience Toolkit website indicating certification level
- Membership in private online community for Certified Facilitators
- Eligibility to license The Resilience Toolkit Workbook for clients

Level II Certification

Requirements
- Level I Certification
- Completion of a minimum of four mentorship hours or approved continuing education per calendar year
Benefits
- All benefits of Level I Certification
- One free post-certification group mentorship session annually
- Fifty free usages of The Resilience Toolkit Workbook for clients

Level III Certification

Requirements
- Level II Certification
- Initial application
  - 60 individual sessions, at least 20 of which must be with unique clients
  - 15 small group (3-6 people) and 10 med-large group (7 or more people) sessions, with a minimum of 125 total combined group participants
  - Two case studies over 4-session period OR one case study over 8-session period
  - Interview with a Certification Trainer
  - Completed application
- Renewal – Completion of a minimum of eight mentorship hours or approved continuing education per calendar year
Benefits
- All benefits of Level I Certification
- Two free post-certification group mentorship sessions annually
- Unlimited usages of The Resilience Toolkit Workbook for clients

Upcoming Opportunities

Sign up for a FREE Info Session to learn everything you need to know about The Resilience Toolkit Certification Program.

Or select an upcoming cohort for details and registration.

If you need additional assistance or have any questions, please contact us at info@theresiliencetoolkit.co.
We’re here to help you on your journey to becoming a Resilience Toolkit Facilitator.

Facilitators in Action

Facilitators are already bringing the Toolkit into a wide range of global contexts where stabilization is essential:

Therapists, counselors, and social workers using stabilization practices with clients experiencing individual and/or systemic trauma..
Community organizers building embodied capacity to effectively strategize and work in coalition while responding to constant crises.
Organizational development coaches weaving the Toolkit into equity-focused corporate culture change.
Teachers and school counselors using the Toolkit in classrooms where Black, global majority, queer, and neurodivergent students face hostile structures.
Healthcare workers and physician educators utilize Toolkit skills to foster clinical empathy and address the burnout epidemic.
Humanitarian aid workers and NGO staff delivering the Toolkit across languages and cultural frameworks in crisis and displacement contexts.
Artists and writers accessing imagination and generative creativity through deeper embodiment.

Meet our Graduates

Certified facilitator

Facilitator Feature: Meet Panthea Lee

Facilitator Feature: Meet Char Kasza

Meet Vanessa Micale. "I seek to work with tender-hearted people."

Facilitator Feature: Meet Vanessa Micale

Meet Salina Gray. The Resilience Toolkit saved my life - literally - and has allowed me to thrive.

Facilitator Feature: Meet Salina Gray

Facilitator Feature: Kyla Thorne

Facilitator Feature: Juliet Hwang

Facilitator Feature: Alison Novelli

Facilitator Feature: Camille Barton

Facilitator Feature: Sheila Diggs

Facilitator Feature: Chantal Donnelly

Certification Facilitation Team

Director of Certification

Nkem Ndefo, MSN, CNM, RN, (she/they) is the creator of The Resilience Toolkit and founder of Lumos Transforms. She is a skilled practitioner, dynamic speaker, and valued strategist. She is known for her unique ability to connect with people of all types by holding powerful healing spaces, weaving complex concepts into accessible narratives, and creating synergistic and collaborative learning communities that nourish people’s innate capacity for healing, wellness, and connection. Read more…

Certified Trainer

Mary P. Shriver, CMT, (she/her) is a Certified Provider of Trauma Release Exercises (TRE®), Licensed Massage Therapist, Certified Compassion Fatigue Educator, and holds a B.S. in Psychology from Denison University. Additional training includes the Trauma Resilience Model and Community Resilience Model through the Trauma Resource Institute, Motivational Interviewing for Behavior Change (MINT), and Level 1 Resistance Flexibility with Bob Cooley. Read more…

Certified Trainer

Devika Shankar (she/her) is a transnational feminist, organizer, and passionate advocate for justice. For over 12 years, Devika has worked with youth, women of color, immigrant, and LGBTQ survivors providing counseling, support services, and advocacy, and over the past 4 years, has worked with individuals who do harm in relationships, as well. Read more…

Certification Mentor

Mikaela Lynn (she/they) is a Certified Facilitator of The Resilience Toolkit, Certified Massage Therapist, Certified Birth and Postpartum Doula, Lactation Educator, Yoga Instructor, and Reiki Master living and working in Los Angeles. She is trained in a wide range of modalities to support health and healing for people from all walks of life, with a special focus on reproductive health, pregnancy, and postpartum care. Read more…

Certification Mentor

Kiara Lee-Benton, MSW (any pronouns with respect) is a holistic trauma healing coach and dynamic speaker and facilitator with over 15 years of experience supporting survivors of trauma. Known for their unique ability to connect with people from diverse lived experiences, Kiara creates powerful individual and community healing spaces that blend heart-centered support with pragmatic efforts to facilitate meaningful change. Read more…

Certification Mentor

Gia Hasan (she/they) is a Certified Facilitator of the Resilience Toolkit, a leadership coach, a meditation instructor, and works in clinical and functional nutrition. She works with populations experiencing chronic pain, and chronic disease, and works across sectors designing school and after-school programs for youth, and working with survivors of sexual abuse. She uses a whole-person, whole systems-framework in coaching leaders and executives to invite in new, more inclusive and liberative visions on the micro and meso scale. Using the principles of trauma-informed care, Gia aims to create containers for her clients to explore the complex intersections of our human experience. Read more…

Certified Trainer

Jane Courtney, RN, RTC, SEP, (she/her) is a Registered Nurse, Registered Therapeutic Counsellor, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. She holds a degree in Nursing from The University of Michigan and has worked in a variety of hospital and clinical settings in the US and Canada. Most recently, Jane completed Somatic Touch Training for Resilience and Regulation, which focuses on early developmental trauma. Read more…

Certified Trainer

Ije Ude, MA (she/her) is a Certified Life Coach and Wellness Strategist. She holds a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and has worked in the gender violence and social justice movements for the past 20 years as an organizer, trainer and youth worker. Read more…

Certification Coordinator

Franceli Izaguirre (she/her) is a Los Angeles native with management experience in diverse sectors and a passion for health and wellness. She has a BA in Sociology from California State University, Los Angeles, and is currently pursuing a nutrition certification. Franceli believes in life-long learning and is always striving to set goals that allow for personal growth. Read more…

Graduates Say

“

“I loved the thoughtful design and pacing of the content, and the ability to choose how deep I went in each module. I also appreciated the ways that support structures were built in, via the practice groups, mini cohorts, and my trainer. I never once felt like I was doing this on my own. Having those different layers and types of support was really special, as it allowed me to explore different aspects of the practice in different containers. Each space was held with so much love and care, and even in my cohort (among much more experienced somatic facilitators) I never felt like I was asking a 'dumb' question. That sense of community—and Lumos' commitment to politicized somatics—fueled my own learning, showing me what embodied transformation looks and feels like, and how I can support others in their journeys.”
Panthea LeeWriter and Facilitator – Taipei

“

“The pedagogy of the course really worked for me—moving from relatively open and with medium expectations of the course to feeling really changed and inspired by the experience. I loved the one on one work and the move into practical which really felt like it came at the right time, building on, integrating, and challenging all of the theoretical info that had come before. I also loved the peer practice element, finding it supportive in many ways. I was able to develop closeness with folks in my cohort, and as we continued, our meetings helped me to understand my own practice and my developing work as a facilitator.”
Ame HendersonPsychotherapist and Artist — Canada

“

“I’m so grateful for this as my entry to somatic work. I appreciate that as a beginner in the field, I was able to enter through the ecological and systematic lens of the nervous system, and not only the physiology of the individual. Grateful that I didn’t enter the field through learning spaces that don’t hold the on-going conditions of a person and community at the center of their practice.”
Katrina SiladiChildcare, Artist, and Farmer Educator — US

“

“The Resilience Toolkit Facilitator Certification shifted my paradigm regarding online learning. I had no idea it could be such a high level of education. It was intense, but the teaching team’s ability to comprehend and share that comprehension in layers is a rare quality. It is one thing to know, another to teach. Nkem and Mary are top-notch educators who walk their talk. They are present, embodied and calm. I am eternally grateful for this experience and it is my intention to change lives with this much-needed Resilience Toolkit. I hold them in the highest of esteem.”
Sandra LarsenWellness Consultant and Mental Health Advocate — United States

“

“I find the program coherent, complete, with a clear arc. I appreciated the balance of theory and practice and the fact that we learn to facilitate and apply the tools, while having empirical based theories to support our work. The collective resilience and liberatory aspect of the work was one aspect that attracted me to this particular training and it met my expectations and beyond because we have concrete tools to work collectively.”
Camille BergonCommunity Worker — France

“

“The programme deeply opened me up in many ways. There was no way, in this cauldron, that I could escape my life, the ecological challenges, my personal patterns of struggle within that and the opportunity to experience daily what it felt like to develop resilience: not as a linear upward or downward journey, but by falling and slowly rising, over and over again (knowing that here I could fall with dignity and rise with grace), with the supports of beautiful people, simple yet profound practices and a justice-grounded political orientation that let me know that I would not let myself and us down because I have a purpose for this work. And the purpose for the programme, gives wings to my own purpose.”
Yasmeen RubidgeEmbodied and Politicized Facilitator and Coach — South Africa

“

“Experiencing what it's like to let go of being performative to learn more powerfully. Letting go of perfectionism and years of conditioning to perform a certain way. I made a conscious choice to take Lumos at their word for being a learning organization. The minute I suspended my hardened cynicism (years of habituation working in corporations), I freed myself up to an incredible world of learning. I felt like I went from a black and white film to technicolor, that my synapses were sparking and making new connections. I also felt incredibly supported in a way that gives a whole new meaning to psychological safety.”
Lori VanHolmesLeadership Consultant — United States

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“I really appreciated the pedagogy of the programme - the thought and intention that had gone into our learning journey through all the different modes of engaging with the content, particularly the high-touch elements that gave us lots of practice opportunity, the supported application and the peer practice elements. It really worked for me in landing the content at a deeper level and I felt well held in developing the skills to safely facilitate the Toolkit.”
Julia OërtliFacilitator and Consultant - London

Enroll in Cohort 19

Cohort 19 begins Tuesday, February 2, 2027

Register by Tuesday, 19 January at 11:59pm UTC-07h

Enroll in Cohort 19

Questions about Certification?

We welcome questions. If you’re wondering about prerequisites, the program experience, accessibility, how the training relates to your work, or anything else about Certification, send us a message.

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