Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® Workshops

The Community Resiliency Model (CRM)® Workshops introduces participants to six wellness skills. CRM Workshops help create “trauma-informed” and “resiliency-informed” individuals and communities that share a common understanding of the impact of trauma and chronic stress on the nervous system and how resiliency can be restored or increased using this skills-based approach.

The two fundamental goals of CRM are to help adults and children learn to track their own nervous systems in order to bring the body, mind and spirit back into greater balance, and to encourage people to pass the skills along to family, friends and their wider community.  CRM can be used as self-care for those community members who are the front-line workers, responding to crisis situations or who live in highly traumatized and/or marginalized communities.  In addition, CRM can be taught as a peer-to-peer program, called the Teacher Training program, where community members can be trained to help themselves and others.  For more information about CRM Teacher Trainings, please CLICK HERE.

 
 
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CRM Essentials: 1-Day

The CRM Basic course teaches community members the philosophy of CRM and the basic skills in a one-day course (7 hours).

  1. Participants will be able to identify the 6 basic skills of the CRM.

  2. Participants will create self-care plan with regard to how they could incorporate the basic skills into the tasks of daily living.

  3. Participants will identify two or more ways CRM skills can help stabilize the human nervous system

  4. Participants will identify the autonomic nervous system and its relevance to trauma.

  5. Participants will identify one or more methods of how to bring CRM skills into the community.

  6. Participants will identify the three organizing principles of the brain.

 
 
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CRM Enhanced: 2-Day

The CRM Enhanced course teaches community members the philosophy of CRM and the basic skills in a two-day course (14 hours).

Day 1 orients the learners to all six skills of the model.  Day 2 is a practice day where all six skills are practiced in small structured groups to increase proficiency in using the skills.  Day 2 also provides an opportunity for further dialogue about how to bring CRM Skills to a wider community.

  1. Participants will be able to discuss how CRM skills are based upon current neuroscience.

  2. Participants will be able to list 5 common reactions resulting from trauma and stress.

  3. Participants will be able to describe how CRM reduces trauma symptoms.

  4. Participants will be able to explain the terms “trauma-informed” and “resiliency-informed.”

  5. Participants will be able to utilize the six skills of CRM.

  6. Participants will be able to describe explicit and implicit memory.

  7. Participants will be able to describe the autonomic nervous system.

 
 
 

Goals of CRM

  • To learn simple biologically based skills, based upon current neuroscience, to help individuals get back into balance in body, mind and spirit.

  • To educate about common reactions resulting from individual or communal traumas/stresses such as poverty, racism and family violence.

  • To reduce common human reactions related to stressful/traumatic experiences.

  • To shift perceptions that reactions are biological rather than mental weakness in order to reduce shame and increase hope.

  • To encourage individuals to integrate wellness skills into their daily life.

CRM has largely been used with individuals and communities, which have been marginalized either by economic challenges, ethnicity, natural and human-made disasters. Applying CRM proactively with an entire community or neighborhood that is chronically stressed can alleviate the symptoms of chronic stress placing the community and its members in a better position to change their situation by increasing their resiliency. There is a substantial and growing evidence base for the efficacy of CRM in reducing anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms and hostility indicators (State of California, Mental Health Act, CRM Innovation Project, 2013).

CRM skills have been used worldwide in varied locations, including the Philippines, Nepal, the Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Haiti, China, the United States, Kenya, Tanzania, Haiti, Darfur, the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Trinidad, St. Vincent, Japan, Uganda, Somalia and Guatemala. CRM training has been offered at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center’s Annual Conference. The Department of Defense named the wellness skills a promising practice in 2011.

CRM is an example of “Appropriate Technology,” a term which is defined as “technology that ordinary people can use for their own benefit and the benefit of their communities, that doesn’t make them dependent on systems over which they have no control” (J.Turner). 

Providing educational materials such as the iChill app available for smart phones and PCs and MACs to support a community-oriented approach is an important way we promote independence as well as education about the biology of the human body and how it responds to traumatic events and most importantly, how to restore or enhance resiliency. 

TRI implemented a State of California, Mental Health Services Act project in San Bernardino County, CA, through its Department of Behavioral Health Innovations Department, which organized CRM county wide via a teacher training program. Community members from 7 underserved groups (designated by the Department of Behavioral Health) participated in training to become CRM Skills Teachers. The 3-year project completed December 31, 2013.  Due to early successes in year 1, TRI received an extension to the Innovations Funding, which provided CRM training and a teacher training program to 44 active duty service members, veterans and their families. The research has demonstrated a reduction in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and hostility at statistically significant levels. Over 80% of participants were people of color. Go to Research tab for more information about ongoing research.

TRI conducts CRM Skills Teacher Training programs in order to create capacity in local communities.  Communities throughout the world are encouraged to infuse their unique cultural lens in order to increase the efficacy of the CRM Skills.  CRM workshops have been offered in many languages and the materials are available in English, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Somali, 4 dialects of the Philippines, Japanese, Simple Chinese, Kreyole.  Translations are underway for French, German, Swahili and Kurdish.

In the United States, Vera House in Syracuse, New York, Peace over Violence in Los Angeles and the Center for Community Solutions in San Diego, three organizations that are leaders in healing families effected by domestic violence sponsored trainings. In North Carolina, MAHEC sponsored the first Community Resiliency Model (CRM) Teacher Training on the East Coast. TRI trainers have completed trainings for OnCare and Headstart for the Syracuse New York Community. Buncombe County Schools (NC), Wake County Schools (NC) and El Monte School District (CA) have sponsored trainings for their school counselors, administrators and teachers. Loma Linda University, through their partnership with TRI, has conducted trainings internationally. Go to Projects tab to see information about some of our other projects.