Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Researcher | Relationship Scientist
Teaching Through Presence
Transforming classrooms through healing relationships
The most powerful factor in education isn’t a method or curriculum.
It’s an educator’s Presence.
One skilled, stable, and caring adult can profoundly shape a student’s path, even in the face of challenges. This phenomenon is known as the Turnaround Teacher Impact. Even in the context of adversity, a relationship-centered educator can serve as a protective factor, positively influencing academic, emotional, and behavioral outcomes and turning around the trajectory of student's life from surviving to thriving.
For youth to thrive, the adults who support them must also understand how to move from surviving to thriving themselves. By modeling healthy, healing relationships, educators provide the ordinary, but powerful, supports that help students move from “risk to resilience,” improving engagement, learning, and long-term well-being.
Because relationships are a primary driver of resilience and motivation in schools and classrooms, The Light You Cast™ focuses on developing Employee Wellness and Social Emotional Climate of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Collaborative Approach to Learning and Health.
When human-service professionals recognize their stress patterns, reclaim their energy, and embody empowerment, they don’t just feel better, they create the container and conditions for those in their care to transform from surviving to thriving.
The Light You Cast™ interdisciplinary curriculum equips educators and school staff with research-backed practices that strengthen self-efficacy, nervous system regulation, adult social-emotional (SEL) competencies, mental health, and restorative relationships. These core capacities support educational professionals in cultivating their own calm, coherence, and resilience while learning concrete strategies to mirror and model mental health and thriving states for the youth they serve.
By fostering healthy, healing relationships, staff create a reinforcing cycle: students experience stronger engagement, deeper learning, and improved mental health, which in turn supports educators’ professional fulfillment, emotional vitality, and long-term retention by reducing burnout and sustaining a sense of purpose and efficacy in the classroom.
The science of thriving shows that by regulating our own nervous system, metabolizing stress, and consciously attuning to our students, we can move beyond survival to embody resilience and create the relational health conditions that foster positive classroom climates, enhance student learning outcomes, protect student mental health, and retain and rejuvenate our Turn Around Teachers.
"My husband, who is also a teacher, could not praise this training enough for helping him stay in the job."
Elementary Teacher
TLYC | Signature Curriculum Elements
Trauma-Responsive
Approaches
Social Emotional Learning (SEL)
Competencies
Nervous System Health
Practices
Stress Metabolization
Interventions
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Practices
Healing Centered Engagement
Principles
Restorative Practice
Approaches
TLYC | Signature Practices
When educators model and mirror regulated, healthy ways of being, they create emotionally safe environments where students feel a sense of belonging and can engage their "thriving" brain. This modeling fosters inner harmonization, supports teacher work/life integration, and cultivates relationships that empower learning, connection, and resilience.
The Light You Cast™ curriculum centers on REST – RESTORATION -- REVITALIZATION, evidence-informed practices that nurture staff well-being while equipping educators to bring the same strategies into the classroom, fostering resilience, regulation, and connection for their students.
REST
NERVOUS SYSTEM HEALTH
Relax and Regulate the Body
Engage body-centered, trauma-responsive practices that gently regulate your nervous system, relieve patterns of tension and overwhelm, and replenis internal energy reserves. These practices invite your body out of survival mode and back into balance.
RESTORATION
MENTAL HEALTH
Making Meaning
Learn our signature, evidence-based Burn Balanced™ stress metabolization practice designed to sharpen clarity, counter the anxiety story, restore emotional balance, and rebuild a healthy sense of agency that helps you direct your energy toward what you can control while releasing the tight hold on what you cannot.
REVITALIZATION
RELATIONAL HEALTH
Connect with Others
Build the social intelligence and relational skills to respond with intention, create connections where others feel deeply seen and valued, and amplify your impact while staying peaceful and present.
Burn Balanced™
A Neuroscience-Informed, Trauma-Responsive Approach to Educator Mental Health, Stress Transformation, and Relationship-Driven Impact in the Classroom
Relational health is the cornerstone of educator mental health and the foundation for positive student outcomes
In education, relationships are everything. Mental health and relational well-being mean alignment—bringing your values, thoughts, feelings, and actions into harmony, and balance, managing the many demands on your energy. When educators achieve this integration, as Dr. Siegel describes, they cultivate clarity, presence, and resilience that strengthens every interaction with students, colleagues, and families.
Stress is inevitable in relationship-centered roles, but it can be transformed into a catalyst for resilience, social-emotional intelligence, and a more grounded, supportive presence in the classroom, benefiting both educators and the students in their care.
The Light You Cast™ experiences and curriculum equips educators with repeatable, evidence-informed practices that strengthen nervous system regulation, mental health, and relational resilience. Teachers and school staff learn to navigate daily challenges common in the school setting, "re-fine" their relationship with stress, and build social and emotional skills that transform how they care for themselves and fostering positive student mental health, engagement, and learning outcomes.
Core Curriculum
The Light You Cast™
is research based, teaches the science of relationships, and draws from
Social Emotional Cultural Learning (SECL) Theory
Restorative Practice
Conscious Discipline
Interpersonal Neurobiology
Trauma-Responsive Practices
Healing-Centered Engagement
Somatic (mind-body) Practices
Mindfulness
Nervous System Health
Core Experiences
NERVOUS SYSTEM HEALTH
PRACTICES
designed to melt tension, reduce cortisol levels, regulate and "re-fine" nervous system, soothe an overactive mind, and elevate the mood while strengthening the physical body.
We will also integrate specific movemindfully® practices by Kathy Flaminio to expand your tool kit of strategies to metabolize stress and trauma reactions in your own body, and you can take these practices forward and use with your students, clients, or patients.
CURRENT RESEARCH and BEST PRACTICE on STRESS TRANSFORMATION
designed to help you recognize early signs of burnout, compassion fatigue, and chronic stress fatigue, this program guides you in navigating the stress cycle, preventing toxic stress from building up and blocking your body’s natural healing and repair capacities. Through our signature, trauma-responsive Burn Balanced™ process, you’ll learn how your thoughts shape your emotions and actions. By gently reframing unhelpful patterns, you restore clarity, emotional steadiness, and choice—learning to respond with intention rather than react from stress.
"PUT INTO PRACTICE"
HANDOUTS
that detail concrete, transformational tools and reflective practices with beautiful illustrations by Minneapolis-based artist, Jinjer Markley, that can be immediately implemented and applied to one's professional and personal context and used with the youth you serve.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT
Community support reduces stress and strengthens mental health by offering space for reflection, care, and shared connection. Belonging nurtures resilience and sustains the relational health that holds the whole community in balance.
"Because of this training, I have now proclaimed that I am in my age of restoration—
professionally, personally, and spiritually.
You have helped me more than you will ever know. You helped me get back to myself."
High School Teacher
CARE + HEALING + SUPPORT
Cohort-Based, Differentiated, Sustained
TLYC Training | ON-SITE
This is our flagship curriculum offered in person, on-site, and in community. This immersive experience embodies the full depth of The Light You Cast™ curriculum tailored to the specific role of your group and elevated by the energy, connection, and support that only shared learning can provide.
Ideal for cohorts with similar roles or PLC groups
New Teacher Induction Support | Leadership | Mentor Teachers
School Counselors | Behavior Support Teams | Cultural Liaisons
Restorative Practice Leads | Paraprofessionals/ EAs |
TLYC | Communities of Practice
Looking for a "light touch" The Light You Cast™ experience? Our TLYC | Communities of Practice are designed to be optional DROP-IN, 60–90 minute support circles where those seeking community, healing, and practice strategies to shed stress and restore energy gather to engage The Light You Cast™ core practices in a non-instructional, community engagement format.
Ideal for informal after-school support
Individualized, On-Going, and Choice-Driven
TLYC Training | ON-DEMAND
TLYC | In MOTION
The Light You Cast™ ON-DEMAND features eight mini–master classes that translate the latest research on mental health, stress resilience, and nervous system regulation into accessible strategies designed specifically for human-service professionals. Each 35-minute module offers evidence-based body and mind practices to balance your energy, prevent burnout, and renew compassion and connection...
whenever you need it most.
Experience The Light You Cast™ in motion. TLYC Somatic Movement sessions—30, 60, or 75 minutes—use body-first practices to calm the nervous system, release tension, boost energy, and integrate core curriculum principles—all while fostering connection and releasing stress!
Ideal for informal after-school support
Obtain a building license to support staff engagement or a single administrator license to support a small cohort or PLC group
Single Session ---- Event-Based
TLYC | Professional Development
Gift your staff an engaging, interactive professional learning experience that helps them feel seen, valued, and supported. They’ll gain practical, trauma-responsive strategies to manage stress, safeguard their mental health, and enhance social-emotional well-being as they continue their work of empowering others.
TLYC | Keynote
Explore how Jen engages large audiences, sparks meaningful reflection, and leaves participants energized, empowered, and saying:“In my 26 years in education, this was the single best hour of professional engagement I have ever experienced!”
The Light You Cast™
Impact Data
40+
school districts and private schools who have engaged and integrated The Light You Cast™ professional development for their educators and educational caregivers
26,000
views of the On-Demand | Self-Paced The Light You Cast™ content and yoga videos by educators and educational caregivers.
17,000 +
hours invested by educators in their mental health, emotional wellness, body health, and soul well-being through the On-Demand | Self-Paced The Light You Cast™curriculum
8,000 +
educators and educational caregivers that have invested in their mind, body, and soul health through
The Light You Cast™ in-person and on-demand experiences
Our Signature, Interdisciplinary Curriculum
Customized Learning for Collective Growth
Each of the six core topics in The Light You Cast™ curriculum is delivered through interactive learning experiences and practical application tools. “Put Into Practice” handouts translate key concepts into role-specific strategies, ensuring that every participant can immediately integrate new knowledge and skills into their professional context
Burnout is Protective; not Defective
Learning to read the symptoms of burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary traumatic stress as meaningful signals of your body’s way of showing you what inner resources need strengthening, replenishment, or protection.
The Science of Safety & Your Stress Appraisal System
Learning how your nervous system works, how it perceives and responds to stress, and how to balance the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses; protecting yourself from burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma.
Stress, Tension, and Transformation
Discover how resilience is built through the stress cycle, learning to work with tension and failure, rather than against it, so it becomes a catalyst for inner growth, wisdom, and self-actualization.
Compassion | The Reset that Reinforces Connection
Practicing self-compassion protects against exhaustion and overwhelm and transforms your connections with those in your care.
The Wisdom of Wounds
How your history of your resilience and the wisdom forged through your wounds is the very compassion and empathy that empowers your service to others.
Mirroring and Modeling Mental Health through Resonant Relationships
How to read another's behavior through a nervous-system lens [seeing them as signals rather than problems] and practice co-regulatory ways of relating that help others feel safe, understood, and emotionally supported.
"Thank you for reminding me of how much power I have over myself. You brought me back to the present, put me back in touch with my body, and made things real for me again. I am left with the mindset that whatever role I play with my students, my light will shine through, and I will connect with them, guide them, help them, and still be me no matter the situation."
Middle School Orchestra Teacher
Outcomes
Through the The Light You Cast™ for Educators and Educational Caregivers,
we will enact the cycle of healing and mindbodysoul restoration:
RECOGNITION
Validate teachers need for sustained and systematic support in monitoring and assessing their physical, emotional, mental, and soul health within the system of education and everyday teaching.
EDUCATION & AWARENESS
Explore the 3 R's of teacher mindbodysoul healing and health - REST, RESTORATION, REVITALIZATION;
raise awareness of the primary sources of toxic stress in teaching and how to leverage stress to heal (vs. cause soul and self harm);
explore the stages and manifestations of burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury.
AWAKENING
Discover and engage trauma-responsive principles, practices, and perspectives to REGULATE and soothe the nervous system so to RELATE to stress in a healthy way in order to cultivate REASON and wisdom from overwhelm, uncertainty, stress, and anxiety that occurs in teaching.
EMBODIMENT
Experience slow and gentle body-based movement poses designed to activate the parasympathetic nervous system to melt tension while providing moderate amounts of healthy stress to boost mental and emotional energy, improve balance and body-awareness, and help to reduce inflammation that leads to disease; cultivate brain-health through mindfulness-based visualizations that activate the self-regulatory part of the brain to soothe stress, alleviate anxiety, and over-ride overwhelm.
RESTORATION
Learn how to engage our signature Burn Clean CyleTM for metabolizing stress into mental strength and agility, emotional health and vitality, value-based self-agency and action, and post-traumatic wisdom.
SUSTAINED SUPPORT
Engage in strategic school-based support and peer networking so to continually manage and mitigate the onset of burnout, secondary trauma, and moral injury while magnifying collective healing and individual restoration and rejuvenation of teachers.
What educators are saying after engaging The Light You Cast trainings
I believe...
“I can re-story a threat to be a challenge.”
“My perception of a situation creates my feelings in that present moment. What I am feeling directly influences what I say and do. I should go into each moment knowing that I have a deep well of kindness, calmness and caring to bring to that next moment or next interaction with students.”
“My joy comes from seeing the beauty of each child when they are learning and feeling successful!! I also feel joy when children come to see me with such love and excitement!!!"
“If I am feeling stressed, just taking a few moments to focus on my breathing will help reset my body.”
“How important gratitude is. Asking how I want to be today and recognizing my breath.”
“That we have to be intentional about creating opportunities to connect with and show compassion for students.”
“Creating micro moments in the day to stop the fast pace and connect with those in my care - miracles are more like changes in perspective, so I realized I have more control than I thought."
“In order to truly affirm my students, I need to affirm myself first.”
“I am naturally resilient, and that resilience within is cultivated in relationships with others, and hence as a teacher I am critical in building resiliency in my students. Embracing and honoring trauma is at the heart of allowing fear to turn into love.”
"I am enough."
"This training, while it addresses the very personal needs of avoiding burnout and coping with stress, finds its way into improving our relationships with everyone we encounter on our mission to teach. Self-love as the cornerstone of racial justice seems simple, cutting edge, and essential all at once. "
