Elevate Your Occupational Therapy Practice With ACT

Practical ACT for OTs

Learn to Apply These Psychosocial Skills in All Areas of OT Practice

Registration is now OPEN

for our Self-Paced July - October Cohort

The first 50 learners to register will receive a free Digital ACTivate Vitality Personal Development Planner.

Let's bring Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to life in your practice through education that is:

  • Practical - More application than theory

  • OT-Congruent - As a modality in OT frameworks

  • Experiential - Apply ACT to your life first

  • Applied - Use ACT with your clients vs. teaching ACT to your clients

"I've done ACT courses before and the occupational lens was always missing."

-2024 Participant

“This is one of the best courses I’ve taken online in 5 years.”

-2025 Participant

Why you need ACT in your OT Toolbox

ACT is a great tool for all areas of OT practice... NOT just mental health.

Do your clients struggle to follow through with therapy goals?

As OTs, we are good at identifying obstacles to engagement but WE often get stuck when our clients aren't moving forward due to painful inner experiences.

ACT helps us help our clients UNHOOK from difficult:

Thoughts

Feelings

Sensations

Memories

Images

SO that they can engage in what matters most to them.

ACT helps clients build a more flexible relationship to those inner experiences and refocuses on the DOING.

... and we love the doing don't we, OTPs?

My life changed personally and professionally 10 years ago when I learned ACT.

Initially, I was just excited to find a set of evidence-based tools that worked well in my mental health OT practice.

FLEXIBLE - COMPASSIONATE - OCCUPATIONAL

What I didn't know was that it would change how I show up in my personal life and how helpful it would be in other practice areas, beyond mental health.

Since Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is best learned experientially, get ready for a transformative personal experience.

Watch this video to hear how applying ACT can create more vitality in your life.

What is ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?

Here's my take on it as an OT:

ACT is an evidence-based approach to helping clients build a more flexibile relationship to the difficult thoughts, feelings, and sensations that tend to drive their actions so that they can do more of what matters. It uses mindfulness-based tools to facilitate more flexible engagement in meaningful occupations.

A formal definition from Dindo et al:

ACT, which begins with the fundamental understanding that pain, grief, loss, disappointment, illness, fear, and anxiety are inevitable features of human life. The goal of ACT is not elimination or suppression of these experiences. Rather, ACT emphasizes pursuit of valued life areas and directions, such as intimate relationships, meaningful work, and personal growth, in the face of these painful experiences. Increased engagement in meaningful life activities, even while experiencing negative thoughts and emotions or other difficulties, is accomplished in ACT by cultivating psychological flexibility.

Dindo L, Van Liew JR, Arch JJ. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: A Transdiagnostic Behavioral Intervention for Mental Health and Medical Conditions. Neurotherapeutics. 2017 Jul;14(3):546-553. doi: 10.1007/s13311-017-0521-3. PMID: 28271287; PMCID: PMC5509623.

ACT gives us tools to help clients build psychological flexibility so that

they can fully participate in their lives in a values-aligned way.

Course Feedback from OTs

"I just love Carlyn's delivery of complex material. Her pacing, tone of voice, reflections are top notch."

Here are the Details

  • 8 Pre-recorded ACT educational videos made for OTs

  • Indefinite access to the videos

  • Certificate of completion

  • PDFs, worksheets & GIANT resource library, curated with OTs in mind

  • Facebook group discussion and resource sharing to for 4 months

  • Live mentorship support for 4 months

  • A single investment of $288 CAD (Convert to your currency here)

Ready to enhance your OT practice with ACT?

Not sure you can get it done this summer/fall?

LIFETIME ACCESS is the answer. While the cohort runs for 4 months, your access to the course videos and resource library don't end after four months. It's unlimited. Only the Facebook group and live mentorship are running July to October and the intention is to offer really flexible office-hours-style support, relying more on the asynchronous support of FB group to make it really flexible for the many time zones and summer holidays... or winter if you're in the southern hemisphere!

✴️ You can also join the list to be notified🔗 next time it opens up and I'll send you my ACT Unhooking Strategies Infographic. I'm not sure when that will be at this point.

More Feedback from OT Participants

Confidence in ACT Application

"I have written about ACT on my blog...

I talk with clients about neurodivergent children often living with anxiety and OT won't remove the anxiety but can help them still do what they want to do even with it's presence."

Personal & Professional Value

"I've used it a lot personally!

I practice ACT principles almost daily and am working on applying these principles with the family.

We navigate chronic illnesses so this has been the perfect approach with managing those."

Clinical Impact

"ACT has helped give me a framework to engage with otherwise hard to reach clients...

I have also used more directly ACT material with patients, most notably using dropping anchor for patients who are experiencing high levels of anxiety."

"This has been the best delivery for any course I've ever taken."

ACT will elevate your OT skills and enhance your personal growth.

FAQ

Will I be certified in the use of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?

As stated by the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS), "There is no ACT certification process. ACBS, as a community, has decided to forego this, as it could create a hierarchical and closed process which would be antithetical to our values. Rather, we aim to foster an open, self-critical, mutually-supportive community which, working together, builds a progressive psychology more adequate to the challenges of human suffering. There is no such thing as an officially certified ACT therapist."

How will live mentorship be delivered?

I will schedule mentorship office hours based on the time zones of those who register in the cohort. These will be shared in the Facebook group where we can continue the conversation.

How much prior ACT training or experience is needed to benefit from this course?

Whether you are new to ACT or have taken an ACT course but haven't started using it, this course will give you the skills and confidence to put ACT into practice in your OT work.

This course is meant to give you the basics of ACT and focus more heavily on HOW to use ACT in your OT practice. This course doesn't replace a comprehensive ACT training course or text book but it will help you start to apply ACT right away.

Do you offer CEUs?

You will automatically be sent a certificate of completion when you complete the modules. The learners who register create a rich international community that makes it impossible to seek CEU certification with the many regulatory organizations represented.

*Your instructor, Carlyn Neek, is a Canadian OT who values lifelong learning and comes from a professional culture of continuing competence where the OT is responsible for their own continuing competence and professional development, including self-evaluation through reflective practice, determination of one's own learning needs, and independence in choosing ongoing professional enhancement opportunities through learning in a variety of ways. This naturally differs from regulatory environments where CEUs are central in continuing competence programs.

What is the time commitment? How many educational hours are included?

Minimum of 4 Hours of Recorded Material:

There recorded modules contain approximately 4 hours of video.

Optional Learning Enhancement Time:

Because there will be a number of times offered for each of the live mentorship office hours, you'll have access to multiple live discussion calls if you choose to participate in them. Each learner's time investment in the online community will vary. In the past, the online community has stimulated rich asynchronous discussion, reflection, sharing, and sharing of resources that complement the course. The resource library contains several resources the instructor has created but also contains links to other extensive collections of ACT resources. In combination, there are endless opportunities for ongoing learning. Ideally, this course will set you on a path of lifelong ACT learning. 🤓

More questions?

Email Carlyn at cneek@balanceworksot.ca.

Balance Works Occupational Therapy Consulting Ltd.

Copyright ©2022 | All Rights Reserved