Root Strength

Dr. Shannon Dames holds a doctorate degree in Education, and has worked in various capacities related to nursing, program development, and research over the last 20 years. She is a professor and researcher with the Nursing program at Vancouver Island University, and a forensic nurse examiner with Island Health. The program of research that she is focusing on centres on articulating the most significant factors that will enable meaningful and sustainable culture change in health care. Her efforts centre on seeding culture change from a bottom up (personal resilience) and top-down approach (systemic resilience).Dr. Dames is an academic journal article author, Elsevier text author and contributor, and a keynote speaker. She continues to facilitate workshops that focus on the experiential development of the core factors that enable humans to thrive. She comes to this work motivated to provide the tools necessary for us to address the international mental health crises we are facing in health care and beyond. Dr. Dames has received multiple grant awards to support her ongoing program of research, which includes collaborative endeavours with the health authority, academic institutions, and the BC Centre on Substance Use.

• About the AuthorPrefacePart 1: Coming to Know through the ResearchIntroduction1. Root Strength: Sense of Coherence and Congruence2. Coming to Know How to Thrive3. Coming to Know about StressPart 2: Coming to Know through the Felt Sense4. Attuning to Your "Roots”5. Strengthening Congruence With Self-Compassion6. Attuning to "Signal”: Clearing the "Noise” and Managing the Weather7. Strengthening Sense of Coherence: Mindful Reorientation8. Strengthening Our Roots as We Till the Soil of our Childhoods9. Strengthening Our Self-Soothing Capacities: Calm at the Roots10. Clearing Past Trauma: The Unresolved Weather of the PastPart 3: Aligning with Calling in Community11. Aligning With Calling: Roots Over Fruits12. Aligning in Community: Connecting Root SystemsAppendix A: Resourcing With Deep RootsAppendix B: How Practices Promote Sense of Coherence and Congruence DevelopmentAppendix C: Objectives Within the JourneyGlossaryReferences