Calm in The Storm: A One-Day Team Retreat to Build Trust, Resilience, and Connection

In today’s fast-paced world, leaders are navigating an overwhelming storm: overlapping crises, economic instability, AI disruption, climate emergencies, and more. It’s “everything, everywhere, all at once” and it’s reshaping how teams work, connect, and lead. Stress, burnout, fear of the unknown, and chronic urgency are now part of the landscape. In the urgency and busyness, essential conversations are often skipped over or avoided altogether. Too often we end up living in reactivity and leave intentionality behind. The pressure of important decisions compels us to keep our heads down and keep moving, but sometimes stopping everything to pause and reconnect is exactly what is needed to move forward in alignment with our values and purpose.

This experiential one-day retreat offers a pause.

Grounded in neuroscience, experiential leadership development, The Work That Reconnects, Calm in the Storm offers teams an immersion into emotional resilience and relational intelligence. The retreat allows teams to step back from the busyness in order to reconnect with one another and resurface the deeper purpose that drives each individuals’ work. When we each connect with our own values and purpose, group potential is unlocked and navigating complexity actually becomes easier.

Neuroscience of Inclusion

We will not be teaching abstract models during this day. Rather we will spotlight embodied, practical tools teams can immediately use at work. Some of the tools we will cover include,

  • Self-Management Techniques Learn and practice simple nervous-system regulation techniques that leaders and teams can use to interrupt reactivity and restore clarity.
  • Build Discomfort Tolerance by practicing staying connected when things get challenging, which is a critical skill for giving and receiving feedback and addressing issues head-on.
  • Make Space for Stress Learn how to acknowledge and process pressure, uncertainty, and difficult emotions instead of pushing them aside. This reduces burnout and frees up energy for clear thinking.

What to expect

The day centers around activities from The Work That Reconnects, originally put forth by environmental activist Joanna Macy. This work offers a transformational approach to help people face systemic stress, uncertainty, climate crisis, or overwhelm, so they can act with clarity, collaboration, and values alignment. Over the course of the day, your team will move through four phases:

  1. Ground in Gratitude
     Begin by recognizing what’s working. This simple shift helps expand perspective and create the conditions for resilience.
  2. Make Space for What’s Hard
     Guided practices allow pressure, uncertainty, or tension to be acknowledged rather than ignored. Teams often find relief and clarity when stress is named instead of suppressed.
  3. See with New Eyes
     Through structured dialogues, participants explore challenges from fresh angles, unlocking more creativity and collaborative problem-solving.
  4. Reconnect with Purpose The day closes with practices that realign teams around shared values and practical next steps, so reflection naturally translates into purposeful action.

This retreat is not just a day away from work — it’s an investment in a healthier, more resilient, and more effective workplace culture. It’s a hands-on, experiential day that can shift how your team shows up for one another. 

Details:

  • Who: Teams, organizations and schools
  • Length: Full day 
  • Format: Experiential sessions, reflection practices, partner work, micro-teaching, and group dialogue
  • Location: In-person. We work with you to find an off-site location with access to nature

Program Facilitators

With combined 40+ years of facilitation experience from the fields of intercultural leadership, psychology and experiential education, Emily Braucher, MA, MA, and Eva Jahn, MA, LPC, bring a rare depth of expertise to resilience-building for leaders and teams. Emily, Founder of ReFresh Communication, has spent over twenty years helping professionals and organizations build trust across differences, navigate conflict, and transform culture through courageous conversations. Eva, Executive Director of the Climate Emotional Resilience Institute, is a licensed psychotherapist and leadership consultant who equips teams with neuroscience-informed tools for regulation, connection, and sustainable performance. Together, they blend cultural anthropology, climate psychology, and experiential facilitation methods so that groups not only withstand disruption, but also grow stronger, more connected, and more effective because of it.