Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Researcher | Burnout Preventionist



KEYNOTES
that Move the Body, Engage the Mind, and Feed the Soul
If you are looking for a inspiring and informative keynote that will energize your staff or organization, you are in the right place!
Explore the most IN-DEMAND mental health and workplace well-being topics below.
Connect with Jen to customize a keynote talk that aligns with your event theme, desired purpose, and length of session.
Every KEYNOTE includes
Direct instruction on current, evidence-based knowledge and research about the 5 core capacities of mental health, burnout awareness, stress resilience strategies, and adaptive approaches staff can immediately apply at work or at home.
A simple, yet effective, trauma-responsive exercise that strengthens the parasympathetic nervous system's relaxation response, soothes a busy mind, and reconnects your staff with their body's intelligence.
Beautifully illustrated Put Into Practice handouts that outline detailed integration practices they can immediately apply to their professional and personal lives to extend and deepen the keynote conversation.
Engagement and interaction! Every keynote will get your staff connecting to themselves, each other, and to the collective mission that animates their work.
Connect with Jen discuss how to customize a keynote that aligns with the mental health needs of your staff.

"Your keynote today was fantastic!!
It was just what I needed. I honestly felt like you were talking specifically to me. I love your style of presenting; you are a lovely teacher and human."
Special Education Teacher
Hot Topics in Mental Health
in the workplace
Every topic listed below will be customized to meet the unique role of your staff and align with your conference theme.
The Light You Cast
Your mental health is contagious and the catalyst for impact and inspiring others.
During our keynote, staff will engage and explore:
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How individual mental health is directly correlated with relational health and one's capacity to positively influence and impact another.
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The science of RESONATE relationships and how being in-tune with one's state of well-being allows one to better attune to another's invisible inner state so they feel felt.
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How toxic stress and mental dis-ease drives DISSONANCE, disconnection, and disempowerment in relationships.
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How to leverage science-backed stress resilience strategies that stoke the 5 C's of PRESENCE (clarity, capacity, commitment, curiosity, and connection).
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The science behind mirror-neurons and strategies for influencing positive mental health states in others though one's own mental health and social emotional well-being.
The Basics of Burning Balanced; not out.
There is a big difference between being tired after work and being burnt out. Balance is core to health, and at the core of balance is bringing opposing forces together to create harmony.
During our keynote, staff will experience and explore:
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The 5 core capacities of Mental Health and the 3 B's (breath, balance, and boundaries) of Burning Balanced.
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The neuro-science behind INTEGRATING stress into one's system in a way that develops necessary states of mental health and social emotional intelligence: flexibility, adaptability, meaning, stability, sustainable energy.
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The 7 primary stressors that drive DIS-INTEGRATION and lead to symptoms of burnout and mental dis-ease.
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The primary differences between burnout, compassion fatigue, sacrifice syndrome, and moral injury.
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Strategies for working toward work-life integration that keep burnout at bay and promote a sustainable way of expending energy at work so that one goes home feeling tired, but not burnout or depleted.
Stress to Strength
Stress can harm, but it is also the catalyst to healing and optional health.
During our keynote, staff will experience and explore
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The science of human resilience and how stress is a necessary catalyst for healing and mental health.
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The stress spectrum and the primary differences between tame, tolerable, toxic, and traumatic stress.
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The science of complex stress (the 4 E's - ENVIRONMENT, EVENT, EXPERIENCE, and EFFECT) and how to mange one's relationship to these 4 elements to magnify resilience and mitigate burnout and mental illness.
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The 5 core elements of their personal "stress appraisal system" and discover how their perception of the stressful EVENT influences their EXPERIENCE of the stressor and the EFFECT that stress has on their mind, mood, body, and sense of self.
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Body-based trauma-responsive techniques that can be immediately applied in any stressful situation to quickly activate the body's relaxation response to stop anxiety and overwhelm before it starts and promote clear thinking, emotional regulation, and an adaptive response that develops mental health.
Sourcing Your Light from the Dark
Hope is a significant psychological strength that is foundational to mental health and emotional well-being. It is also contagious and a core tenant of human-service work.
The thing is; it can only be developed during dark times.
In our keynote, staff will experience and explore:
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The science behind hope being the single best predictor of well-being.
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The different between Hope, Optimism, and Toxic Positivity in the workplace.
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The physical, psychological, and mental benefits of hope and how hope mitigates the onset and severity of low self-efficacy - a primary manifestation of burnout.
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A 4 step cognitive-behavioral cycle staff can engage to immediately stoke H.O.P.E in the midst of chaos, uncertainty, loss, and change to keep burnout at bay and increase the magnitude of their light when it is needed most.
The Regenerative Braking Impact
Regenerative braking is a hybrid/electric car principle where taking one's foot off the gas and/or putting the foot on the brake positively feeds energy back into the electric system to replenish the vehicle so that it has more range. This same principle works in human energy systems, too!
In our keynote, staff will experience and explore:
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A series of body-based trauma-responsive REST practices they can use throughout the day to develop interoception - one's ability to be aware of what is happening in the body in response to what is happening around the body - to gain awareness of the subtle (and not so subtle) sophisticated cues their body sends to indicate when rest is needed for active recovery.
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Human Systems Science research on the necessity of active REST practices that allow the body to engage its natural healing capacities and direct its self back to its natural set-point of health.
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Simple strategies to scan one's body, mind, and emotional system for individual signs and signals of stress or distress and how to instantly and efficiently soothe an over-active nervous system, calm a racing mind, and feel a sense of stability and clarity in less than 1 minute.
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How the ENVIRONMENT in which we work and live can directly and indirectly drive us to chronically override our body's cues for rest, and how to create sustainable REST practices that build healthy boundaries that protect our body's innate and intelligent process of renewal, revitalization, and regeneration.

