Date/Time:
Monday, March 30, 2026, 5:30 -7 p.m. ET
Location:
Live online via Zoom
Description
Historically, joy has functioned as a collective practice of resilience and resistance. For individuals impacted by trauma, particularly those navigating systemic oppression, racialized stress, and intergenerational survival patterns, joy can also feel unsafe or difficult to access. This interactive workshop explores joy as both an embodied experience and a pathway to collective liberation. Through a trauma-informed and culturally responsive lens, this training examines how trauma narrows the window of tolerance and conditions the nervous system to interpret joy, rest, intimacy, and success as potential threats. Using movement, reflection, and nervous system education, participants will explore how joy shows up in the body, how survival patterns impact its expression, how internal protective parts inhibit joy, and how expanding our capacity for joy can support personal and collective liberation.
Course Objectives
After attending this session, attendees will be able to:
- 1) Be able to define joy and describe how it may present physiologically and behaviorally.
- 2) Explain how chronic stress, intergenerational trauma, and systemic oppression influence an individual’s capacity to experience and express joy.
- 3) Describe the window of tolerance and apply it to understanding variations in joy expression.
- 4) Identify protective parts or patterns that may limit access to or expression of joy.
- 5) Demonstrate at least two experiential practices that support the safe expression and regulation of joy.
- 6) Articulate how practicing joy can contribute to both individual regulation and collective liberation.
Presenters
Nicolalita Rodriguez Melgar, LMSW, MSW ’17 and Kenisha Velez-Lopez, LCSW, MSW ‘15 Nicolalita Rodriguez de Melgar (she/ella) is the Director and Founder of Little People's Victory, co-founder of Liberated Wellness Center, a Community Health Worker and Trainer and an Adjunct Professor in the Social Work department at Buffalo State University. Nicolalita proudly wears many hats, and has worked in numerous non-profit organizations in the Human Services and Mental Health fields, primarily within schools and community settings. Nicolalita specializes in helping individuals, families and organizations in navigating their way through conflict, change, oppression, trauma, and abuse across personal, interpersonal and institutional levels. She is a lifelong dancer and integrates dance, movement, play, joy and love into all that she does. Kenisha Velez-Lopez (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker and trauma therapist. She is the Founder of Whole Soul Wellness and co-founder of Liberated Wellness Center. She specializes in the treatment of complex trauma and nervous system dysregulation, with particular attention to the lived experiences of racialized individuals. Kenisha’s work bridges evidence-based clinical practices with embodied and energetic approaches. She works at the intersection of trauma therapy, somatics, and holistic healing. Kenisha approaches healing as both clinical and deeply spiritual work and recognizes that trauma lives in the nervous system, in family systems, in systems of care and in inherited patterns. Her work is rooted in creating space for people to tend to all parts of themselves with honesty and care.
Quiz and Evaluation
- To verify participation and acquisition of knowledge, this live online course requires completion of a multiple-choice course quiz with a passing score of 80% or better to receive the NY social work contact hours certificate.
- In addition, the completion of a course evaluation is also required.
- Instructions will be provided for how to access the quiz and evaluation.
New York Social Work Contact Hours:
NYSED LMSW & LCSW contact hours are being provided through the University at Buffalo School of Social Work’s Office of Continuing Education. This Office is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Social Work as an approved provider of continuing education for licensed social workers #SW-0001. Full attendance is required; no partial credit will be awarded for partial attendance. 1.5 live online contact hours have been approved.
ADA Accommodations:
If you require any support for your ADA needs in the United States, please contact us by email at least 3 weeks prior to the event by email at kfranco@buffalo.edu or by phone at 716-645-1262.
Course Requirements:
All participants will be emailed the link to the Zoom meeting website.
All participants will need to have audio capabilities on their device.
All participants will be emailed all workshop-related materials at least 24 hours before the workshop (handouts, PowerPoint slides, etc…)
All participants will be sent a link to an online multiple-choice quiz that must be completed within 48 hours. (Passing score is 80%)
All participants will be sent a link to an online evaluation about the workshop.
Registration deadline is Friday, March 27
Fields with asterisk are required.
