Social Health Facilitation Training (SHFT) is an immersive online course that empowers helping professionals, heart-centered leaders, and community builders to develop leadership confidence.
Students learn how to create sustainable healing connection experiences one-on-one and in groups without overgiving, burning out, or carrying the burden of others’ mental health and recovery alone.
We are not currently accepting applications for SHFT.
Join the SHFT waitlist to be the first to know when we open applications for the next cohort, and to qualify for special discounts
You dedicate your time to making a difference, but leading your team and managing connections with the people you serve often feels like an uphill battle.
Maybe you notice:
• A lack of cohesion among staff or volunteers.
• Struggles to foster genuine trust and mutual support.
• Burnout among those who give so much to your cause.
You know that strong, socially healthy relationships are critical to the success of your mission. But as a leader, creating spaces where everyone feels safe, supported, and connected can be overwhelming when the facilitation of those connections falls solely on your shoulders.
Whether you're a therapist, social worker, team lead, or healer, you’re often the one that people rely on to navigate their pain.
While you find purpose in your work, you may struggle with:
• Constantly giving without receiving.
• Feeling like the sole source of support for those around you.
• A lack of tools to create truly mutual, empowering relationships.
You want to facilitate healing and transformation, but the burden of doing it all alone is leaving you exhausted.
You're passionate about bringing people together to create meaningful change, but as a leader, facilitating collaboration and connection can be challenging.
Perhaps you’ve faced:
• Polarization and conflict among group members.
• Difficulty creating spaces where vulnerability feels safe.
• A lack of strategies to empower people to support one another effectively.
You know that the key to collective success is in the strength of the connections between individuals, but you’re seeking reliable facilitation tools to foster and sustain those connections across your group.
Whether you’re a nonprofit leader, helping professional, community organizer, or just want to level-up your facilitation skills, Social Health Facilitation offers the tools you need to create safe, trauma-informed, and empowering spaces for connection.
If you...
Struggle with creating deeper connections within your team or community, Social Health Facilitation can help you build strong, reciprocal relationships where everyone feels supported and heard, reducing burnout and fostering a cohesive, collaborative environment.
Feel drained by carrying the emotional weight alone, Social Health Facilitation offers strategies to empower mutual support, co-regulate emotions, and distribute the emotional labor within your team or client base, allowing for healthier, more balanced interactions.
Face conflict or polarization on your team, Social Health Facilitation teaches you how to navigate differences, create spaces where vulnerability feels safe, and empower group members to support each other effectively—creating lasting trust and respect.
Social Health Facilitation helps you lead in a flexible, present, and reciprocal way, fostering environments where people feel safe to be vulnerable, relationships are nurtured, and everyone shares responsibility for their emotional well-being.
At the heart of this training is a belief that true leadership comes from a place of connection, not control. We help you build the skills to facilitate with intention, compassion, and clarity.
Are you ready to transform the way you lead, support, and connect?
"For me, the biggest thing that I am still getting out of this is that it has just really widened my heart. I feel so much compassion welling up inside myself, for others as well as for myself."
Koriander, SHFT Alumni
You’ll learn the Relational Model for Social Health, a framework for creating genuine, supportive connections that help address trauma and loneliness.
Explore the essentials of ethical facilitation and social health, including how to consciously hold power, foster mutual respect, and dismantle traditional power structures.
By understanding and integrating your own healing into your facilitation journey, you’ll lead with integrity, creating spaces where everyone feels valued, safe, and respected.
Topics Covered
Develop the core skills you need to hold space for powerful group experiences. With trauma-informed facilitation tools, you’ll be equipped to guide your group or team into deeper connection.
These skills help you balance deep listening with clear, compassionate feedback, creating spaces where participants feel safe to share with each other.
Topics Covered
Learn to cultivate authentic leadership that’s both impactful and sustainable. This part of the course helps you find your voice as a facilitator, balance giving and receiving, and prevent burnout.
You’ll explore how to invite others into their own strength while confidently guiding the group.
This approach empowers you to create a culture of generosity, reciprocity, and shared growth that supports you and the communities you serve.
Topics Covered
SeekHealing is a 501(c)(3) social health nonprofit based in Western North Carolina, born from a shared urgency to address the rising deaths of despair in our community—suicide, overdose, alcoholism, and burnout. We believe that a compassionate, listening ear from a neighbor, friend, or colleague is the best form of medicine—one that’s becoming increasingly rare in a disconnected world.
Our mission is to create spaces for meaningful human connection, offering free support to those who need it most: individuals struggling with addiction, mental health challenges, and those who feel excluded by traditional systems—LGBTQIA, BIPOC, Latine, youth, the homeless, and other communities disproportionately impacted by loneliness.
And the need for intentional human connection extends beyond those who are outwardly struggling. It's something we all need—whether we're dealing with personal challenges or navigating the complexities of work and life. Yet, it’s often something we often don’t know how to ask for or offer to each other. That’s why it’s more important than ever that those who help others are equipped with the tools to hold space, resolve conflict, and facilitate healing.
Learn more about our work here.
Sydney (she/her) is passionate about the magic and healing that's possible when humans come together with truth, vulnerability, and presence.
She has been devoting herself to learning and teaching others how to remember that human connection is an essential need, one in which many parts of society have strayed away from. Sydney is a certified Social Health Facilitator, Authentic Relating Facilitator, and has a decade of training and experience facilitating social connection and embodiment arts.
Adrian Engstrom von Alten (he/him) believes that the best thing he can do with his life is to foster connection and healing.
Having taken many rides around the wheel of suffering - having been hurt and having hurt others - he wants more healthy avenues for all of us to express ourselves and be known exactly as we are, especially in our difficulty and shame. He is passionately committed to creating environments of cooperation, mutual benefit, and mutual acceptance, and expresses this passion in his role as a certified Social Health Facilitator with SeekHealing and as a Getting Real Coach certified by Susan Campbell.
Lauren Tevelow (she/her) serves on SeekHealing's board of directors and as a social health facilitator and educator for the organization.
Her journey in social health began through her dual undergraduate focuses in communication and sociology, leading to a curiosity in how interpersonal relationships impact larger community outcomes and trends.
The course runs for 12 weeks and meets from 12 - 3 pm EST every Thursday online via Zoom from Thursday, March 6, 2025 to Thursday, May 22, 2025.
During class, you’ll engage in discussion of the course material and practical exercises to hone your facilitation skills.You’ll receive 1-2 hours of video training content each week that provides you with the models and tools you need to successfully hold space and power as a trauma-informed leader. You’ll be assigned to a small practice group with whom you’ll meet 3 or more times during the course to put what you learn into practice and get the real experience that you need to be an effective and confident social health facilitator.
Paying standard pricing allows for us to maintain our scholarship program for low-income participants and helps support our offering of Connection Practice and Listening Training on a pay-what-you-can basis, with no one turned away for lack of funds.
SeekHealing is committed to reducing financial barriers to entry as much as possible. Inquire about need-based scholarships, early enrollment discounts, and payment plans during your Enrollment Interview.
Apply
Take 15 minutes to fill out the Application Form - we’ll review it to see if you're a good fit and contact you to schedule an interview. Applications are open through September 3rd.
Enrollment Interview
You'll spend 45 minutes with an Enrollment Specialist to understand your needs and answer your questions about the course.
Facilitation Excellence
Over this 3-month masterclass in human connection, you'll develop the leadership skills to heal past trauma collectively and facilitate safe and socially healthy spaces of emotional intimacy and community support.
We are not currently accepting applications for SHFT. Join the SHFT waitlist to be the first to know when we open applications for the next cohort, and to qualify for special discounts
