A Rooting Leadership workshop series for social impact leaders who want to lead from the inside out.
Right now, the stakes are high and the pressure is relentless. Resources are shrinking and teams are exhausted. You already know why this work matters and what it demands of you. This series exists to help you stay resourced enough to keep leading with clarity and purpose.
Rooted in Action is a three-workshop series designed for leaders who want to stay grounded while dealing with overwhelm and urgency. Each session combines practical frameworks with somatic practices because knowing something is not the same as practicing and embodying it.
The workshops are designed so you can join one or all three.
Each workshop will be two hours and consist of
Tools/Framework
Embodied practice (with alternative options)
Pair or small group conversation and individual reflection.
Workshops
The Stretch Zone: Building Capacity for Discomfort
May 14, 12:00 – 2:00 pm EST
Right now, you may be moving between numbness and overwhelm. Neither is where effective leadership lives.
This workshop introduces the space between comfort and overload, where real growth becomes possible. You’ll learn and practice embodied, practical ways to stay with uncertainty, complexity, and change without pushing past your limits. This is how we build nervous system capacity without pushing through.
In this session, you will:
- Learn to identify where you are on the comfort-to-overwhelm spectrum in real time — and why that awareness matters
- Build your capacity to stay present and act with intention even when conditions are difficult
- Practice an embodied technique for extending your stretch zone in sustainable ways
Your Inner Compass: Re-patterning Your Response Under Pressure
May 21, 12:00 – 2:00 pm EST
When stress rises, we all default to familiar patterns. We may over-function, shut down, spin, or go numb. Most of us don’t notice the pattern until we’re already in it and it’s running the show. This is especially challenging when we are navigating high-stakes decisions, difficult conversations, or chronically unstable environments.
This workshop helps you map your own stress response in specific situations. You will identify what it looks like, what triggers it, and what it’s trying to protect. You’ll also practice a somatic approach to work with your own pattern.
In this session, you will:
- Identify your personal stress response pattern
- Learn to catch yourself earlier — before the pattern has taken over
- Shift your relationship with your stress response so that it no longer hijacks your leadership
Deeper Ground: Rooting into the leader within
May 28, 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST
Burnout doesn’t come from individual shortcomings. Urgency, impossible workloads, and the pressure to constantly do more aren’t personal failures but part of the systems we work within.
This workshop brings context to your personal responses within a wider systemic context and helps you reconnect with the grounded, values‑rooted part of yourself that knows how to lead from clarity rather than pressure.
In this session, you will:
- Understand how urgency culture and systemic pressure show up in the body
- Connect your personal stress patterns to the structural conditions that shape them
- Access your inner leader – the grounded, clear, values-rooted part of you that can navigate complexity with care
Who is this series for?
Social impact leaders at any level — executive directors, managers, board members, and those stepping into leadership roles.
If you’re doing work that matters in a moment that’s demanding more of you then before, this series is built with you in mind. It’s for people who want to lead with clarity and steadiness in the midst of uncertainty, pressure, and systemic demands that can feel relentless.
Why this series?
“When we fall in love with practice, we are less prone to the frustration and despair that come from repeating behaviors that don’t work for us” – What It Takes To Heal, Prentis Hemphill
To create sustainable and thriving leadership, it is essential to equip leaders to move beyond traditional archetypes that are rooted in white supremacy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism.
As queer people of colour, we (Karishma and Taashi) strongly believe that we can’t just talk or think our way out of the systemic inequities that continue to perpetuate harmful cultures within our communities. We need practices to deepen embodied leadership presence for a stronger mind-body connection. We also need spaces to feel connection, support, and understanding. Together, these empower us to take risks and try new things.
Drawing on Taashi and Karishma’s professional experience, this program fosters a community of practice focused on mutual learning, collective imagining, and building interdependence to move theory into practical application in a supportive environment. Because understanding something mentally isn’t enough for real change, our work together is grounded in somatic and embodiment practices to ensure that learning is integrated and actionable.
Why us? Who we are.
Karishma Kripalani (she/her)
I work with leaders and changemakers who are often close to, or already experiencing, burnout. These are often people who go above and beyond in their roles because the work they do in the world is an extension of their personal commitments. I wanted to create a program to support leaders to build connections, skills, and capacity to transform their relationships to this culture of burnout. Rooting Leadership is designed to equip you to create a sustainable and values-aligned work life. Together, we will practice embodying the conditions for this systems shift.
Bio
Karishma Kripalani, MA, SEP, PCC (she/her) is a practitioner and teacher of relational somatics for systems change. A nervous system specialist and professional coach, she supports individuals and groups to shift the things that are keeping them stressed and stuck, so that they can have more alignment, ease and joy.
Taashi Gupta (they/them)
I’ve spent the last few years healing and reconnecting with the practices that ground me, to recover from burn out as an Executive Director. What has sustained me most is deepening my embodiment and sense of community. As a Trans leader of colour, I often lacked spaces where I could feel safe and supported, which made the journey even more isolating. That’s why I created a program that brings leaders – especially BIPOC and 2SLGBTQIA+ leaders – together to feel resourced, connected, and hopeful about shifting our cultures toward our shared values.
Bio
Taashi Gupta (they/them) has spent the last 20+ years facilitating organizational and individual change focused on fostering environments where everyone can feel supported. Taashi co-founded Grounding Solutions to support individuals and organizations to imagine possibilities to thrive and feel sustainable, including prioritizing joy, care, and rest.
What does it cost?
These workshops are designed as professional and personal development opportunities for leaders, with the assumption that your participation will be partially or fully covered through your organization. Our rates are informed by our intended audience, number of participants, length of program, and to ensure a sliding scale rate for grassroots organizers and individuals that may not currently be employed.
Workshop Series
- Full Cost: $400
- Solidarity: $200
Individual Workshop
- Full Cost: $150
- Solidarity: $75
Currency: Workshop pricing is in USD. Equitable pricing applies for Canadian residents and organizations (e.g. US residents pay USD 400; Canadian residents pay 400 + HST).
Refund or Transfer Policy: Rooted in Action is offered by two community-based facilitators who depend on a minimum expected revenue to host this program. Program fees are non-refundable. If we need to cancel a session due to unforeseen circumstances, we will reschedule for a later date. If you cannot participate, you can transfer your registration to a different participant. Please let us know by email at rootingleadership@gmail.com.
Other payment methods: If you require an invoice or payment in a different format, please email us.
Access Information
Participation
Each workshop has engagement activities. We strongly encourage participants to come prepared to have their camera on to participate in pair, small group, and large group discussions. We strongly encourage using a computer, rather than a cell phone or tablet. Each workshop will also have embodiment practices, always offered with options (and no requirement to have cameras on for this part of the session). At times, we will also offer the option to solo journal instead of joining a group discussion.
Program Delivery
All sessions will be hosted on Zoom using video, voice, and chat functions. Each session is two hours long with a break.
Captions, Transcripts, and Recordings
We will use Zoom captions for the sessions. You will receive a recording of each session, available for 60 days.
Accessibility
We ask questions in our registration to better understand your access needs and work to best meet them. We encourage early registration to support our ability to connect with you, and/or adapt the workshop to meet access needs not covered in this section.
Please email us at rootingleadership@gmail.com with any questions or access support.
Frequently Asked Questions
While leadership can mean many things and many individuals are leaders in their communities, these workshops prioritize leaders (e.g. ED’s, Directors, Managers, Board Members) with responsibilities towards an organization’s decision-making systems and sustainability. This can include individuals who are on leave or taking a break between leadership roles, or individuals looking to take on organizational leadership roles.
Yes. These are not traditional leadership development workshops. If the invite speaks to you, then this program is for you.
This workshop series is designed for non-profit leaders, prioritizing and centering the experiences of BIPOC folks. It is informed by our experiences as queer, brown settlers on Turtle Island / North America. We recognize that our embodiment limits our knowing of the lived experiences of Indigenous and Black folks. We also recognize the challenges/shortcomings of IBPOC/BIPOC and, more generally, race-based terminology. For this series, we are using this imperfect shorthand.
No. While this program will prioritize the experiences of BIPOC leaders, non-BIPOC folks are encouraged to apply. We also recognize that identification can feel complicated, including mixed race and white-presenting folks. We encourage you to share what is true for your experience.
Yes. Building an embodied practice is about learning the language of the body, and strengthening our awareness of how we have more than one way of accessing information. The practices are intended to be simple and accessible ways to be in connection with yourself for greater alignment between your values and actions. The experience of coming into relationship with our bodies is different for everyone, and is a life-long process. The practices are designed to meet you where you are in your journey today.
This is a high-engagement program! You will be asked to have your camera on to participate in pair, small group, and large group discussions. Most weeks will also have embodiment practices, always offered with options (including no requirements to have cameras on for this part of the session).
Each workshop will be no more than 16 participants.
Yes. Recordings will be available within 48 hours and participants will have access for 60 days. You will also receive a document with the tools shared in each workshop.
If you are in an active trauma state then these workshops might not be appropriate and we recommend working with a mental health professional. While the facilitators will support participants through practices, we are not psychotherapists.
Grounding Solutions 