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Elevate Your Occupational Therapy Practice With ACT

Practical ACT for OTs

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

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 discovered ACT about 9 years ago and was so excited to find a set of tools that worked well with the adult mental health population I work with and with principles of occupational therapy. I loved how flexible it was and the humanistic and compassionate nature of it. 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.

Learning ACT will add to your clinical skills and your personal skills. I believe you have to use the skills of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in your own life before trying to use it with your clients so get ready for a transformative experience.

Watch this video to learn a little about how learning to apply ACT in your own life can benefit you by creating more vitality.

What is ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy?

"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 is a great helper when clients are STUCK

As an occupational therapist, I endeavour to support my clients in doing the things that matter to them in order to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.

Often clients struggle to follow through with goals or engage in the occupations that they identified as important. OTs are good at identifying obstacles to engagement but WE often get stuck when what is preventing our client's occupational engagement is internal - thoughts, feelings, or sensations.

While it is natural to avoid the difficult experience of change. Fear, anxiety, pain, grief, disappointment, and risk shame feel awful but, when a person responds inflexibly to these challenging inner experiences by avoiding participating fully in what they want to, their worlds tend to shrink along with their repertoire of activities.

ACT helps clients build a more flexible relationship to those inner experiences and refocuses on the DOING. We love the doing, OTs, don't we?

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

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

In creating this course, I surveyed more than 100 interested OTs around the world and the feedback indicated you wanted choice.

Here are 3 options for enrolment in the Practical ACT for OTs course.

Basic Learning Pathway

8 Video Education Series
Access for 1 month, starting in March

$78 CAD

~$58 USD

Multimodal Pathway

8 Video Education Series
Indefinite Access
Certificate of Completion
PDF Slides & Worksheets
Facebook Group Discussion, Q & A March & April
2 Live Q & A and Case Study Zoom Calls

$248 CAD

~$185 USD

Interactive Growth Pathway

8 Video Education Series
Indefinite Access
Certificate of Completion
PDF Slides & Worksheets
Facebook Group Discussion, Q & A March, April & May
4 Live Q & A and Case Study Zoom Calls
Curated Multimedia resource library ($300 Value)
2 one-on-one ACT-based personal & professional development coaching sessions ($600 Value)
ACTivate Vitality Mastermind for 1 month ($500 Value)

$648 CAD

~$485 USD

Choose the depth, timeframe, and learning methods that suit your learning style and needs.

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

From the ACBS website:

"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."

Do you offer CEUs?

I will provide a certificate of completion if you complete the modules and are registered in the Multimodal and Interactive Growth Pathways. I am an OT who is registered in Alberta, Canada and I provide. I mentorship and education to international OTs. I am have not endeavoured to become certified or registered as a provider of different types of credits in the many regions OTs reside internationally.

When are the calls?

The educational videos are pre-recorded and you can watch them at any time during the month/s you've signed up for. The Zoom Q & A and Case Study calls have not been set yet and times will depend on the geography of the participants who register. I don't expect that everybody will be able to attend every call and recordings will be made available to the participants who have purchased pathways that include the calls.

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

This course is meant to give you the basics of ACT and focus more heavily on HOW to USE ACT in your OT practice. I won't spend a lot of time on the theoretical background. This course won't replace a comprehensive ACT training course. It will be useful if you've already taken a full ACT training course but are struggling to implement it into your OT practice. It will also be useful if you haven't taken an ACT training course but would like some cursory training so that you can learn practical ACT strategies to help in your specific area of OT.