Community & Connection
Neurobiological research is clear: humans need safe-feeling connection in order to heal.
At OCC we intentionally create multiple opportunities for safe, predictable, authentic connection and community — because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. We’re biologically hardwired to require the support and acceptance of a “tribe” in order to survive. In our moden culture, that need for belonging is so often breached, but this is especially so when we experience long term, poorly understood health conditions. Our support systems are strained, we isolate more as we struggle to keep up and have to choose between competing needs. As this isolation intensifies, the autonomic nervous system’s state of protection intensifies, too, which inhibits our physiological capacity for healing and repair.
OCC’s groups provide the framework for the relational safety necessary to shift back into a state where health, growth and restoration in the body finally take hold.
Opportunities for Community and Connection
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Foundations of Health
Over 12 months, Members meet with the same group of peers twice monthly in a sequenced, deep exploration of the body through the lens of Functional Medicine. This education will serve your health journey both as co-detective at OCC, but also give you the foundation on which to steer your ship toward health for the rest of your life.
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Restoring
Learn, practice, and apply the tenets of Polyvagal Theory together, weekly, for six months, while encouraging the Autonomic Nervous System toward regulation with safe feeling connection and a sense of belonging.
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Open Office Hours
In this optional, weekly meeting, Members across cohorts connect in a more casual and open environment. Everyone brings questions and the generative discussions that arise offer useful perspectives, insights, and camaraderie as Members engage in their individual—and collective—healing journeys.
What People Are Saying
“When they told us about [the groups]…I wasn't sure that this was a fit for me because it was so out of my comfort zone to talk in front of other people and say my fears and my issues. I'm a very private person, I guess. But it wasn't like that at all. Everybody shares. It's comforting to hear other people's issues; that they can talk about it and we all can relate to it. It's a sharing. It's helping each other… We really feel connected, I think, and the connection helps in our healing process, I think.”
— Karen M.
“The entire OCC staff is compassionate and invested in the well-being of those entrusting them with their care. They work collaboratively, and each has an area of expertise that is needed on this journey. Use of their offerings — classes, individual appointments and Open Office Hours — maximizes the benefit received. With all three elements in every membership, nothing falls through the cracks.”
— Ann B.
“The group work, too, has been helpful for me. I'm not really a group person. I guess I'm not so interested in telling my own stories in a group context, especially with people that are, in a way, strangers to me. It takes longer to open up. But I've found my place in the groups, too, and I'm becoming more open. And that's just the approach, the methodology, the way in which everything is facilitated. It's really sensitive, coherent, comprehensive facilitation of all of the group meetings — and the one-on-one meetings, too.”
— Susan J.