Attention: This page is for the Toronto Training. To view other locations, or to buy the on-demand version of the workshop based on the recording of the Montreal workshop (in English), click on the following links:

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN CANADA

Russ Harris: Trauma-Focused ACT

In Toronto, on July 3-4, 2025

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14 hours of Continuous Education

One of the best workshops I’ve ever been to! This has been a fantastic experience for me, both professionally and personally. The mixture of theory, interspersed with many practical skill exercises & handouts has helped me to discover new strategies for dealing with my own struggles and for assisting my clients to live the lives they want to.
Sharon Clifford, Psychologist

Offering Better Help to Heal Trauma

Traumatic events often bring significant suffering into individual lives and can lead to multiple mental health issues, whether depressive or anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, or or personality disorders such as borderline or others.

Consequently, trauma-induced suffering has an enormous cost on people's lives, affecting their social, professional, and intimate spheres, as well as profoundly impacting their relationship with themselves.

Due to the sensitive nature of trauma and the immense suffering it can cause, mental health professionals have need to become familiar with appropriate treatment methods related to these issues so as to better help their most affected clients build worthwhile lives.

Over the past ten years, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has become the preferred approach of the World Health Organization (WHO) for treating trauma-related disorders, and has even been used in several refugee camps around the world.

Thus, to provide you with the best possible training on Trauma-Focused ACT, we are pleased to welcome a special guest for the first time in Canada in nearly 10 years...

A very special workshop … truly excellent. The theoretical input and experiential activities were beautifully balanced, enabling an easy integration of the material (and a bit of personal growth along the way).
Jennifer Stewart, Social Worker

A World-Renowned ACT Expert, for the First Time in Canada!

If you're practicing Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), you've most likely heard the name Russ Harris, whether through your practical training, his clinical manuals, or his many popular books, such as The Happiness Trap.

Over the years, he has become one of the leading names in the field of ACT worldwide, having also led the WHO project to introduce ACT in refugee camps around the globe.

On July 3-4, 2025, we are pleased to welcome you to Toronto for an exceptional training with Russ Harris, who will be in Canada to give a two-day workshop the very first time!

In this workshop, you will have the opportunity to learn directly from Russ, through multiple dynamic presentations and experiential exercises, why ACT has become the approach chosen by the WHO for the treatment of trauma-related disorders.

If you are interested in participating in this exceptional experience and learning from an international authority in the field of psychotherapy, be sure to register quickly!
This is one of the few workshop experiences I have walked away from with readily accessible skills. Within days of the workshop I was able to apply these skills in a very powerful way with my clients.
Michael du Sautoy, Psychologist

What is Trauma-Focused ACT?

Trauma-Focused ACT (TFACT) is a flexible, comprehensive approach model for treating the entire spectrum of trauma-related issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, moral injury, chronic pain, shame, suicidality, insomnia, complicated grief, attachment issues, sexual problems, and more.

In this two-day advanced level training, you’ll discover cutting-edge strategies for healing the past, living in the present, and building a new future.

With this compassion-based, exposure-centered approach, you’ll learn how to help your clients:

  • Find safety and security in their bodies
  • Overcome hyperarousal and hypoarousal
  • Break free from dissociation
  • Shift from self-hatred to self-compassion
  • Rapidly ground themselves and reengage in life
  • Unhook from difficult cognitions and emotions
  • Develop an integrated sense of self
  • Resolve traumatic memories through “inner child” work and flexible exposure
  • Connect with and live by their values, and engage fully in life here and now
  • Experience post-traumatic growth


This will be an invaluable opportunity to learn from one of the best therapists in the world, so be sure to register while there's still some space!
Genuine, calming, centering. The presentation of this doctor, teacher, therapist is professional, sensitive, and all-encompassing. It’s a personal shake-up done in the most respectful way. Russ allows the work to evolve so everyone feels supported. You leave refreshed and eager to try the strategies in your own practice setting.
Kate Donaldson, Nurse

The Six Processes at the Core of Traumas

At the core of most trauma-related disorders there are 6 core pathological processes :

  1. Cognitive fusion : the problematic dominance of cognition over behaviour
  2. Inflexible attention : distractibility, disengagement, and problems with sustaining, shifting or directing attention.
  3. Experiential avoidance : problematic attempts to avoid or get rid of unwanted thoughts and feelings
  4. Remoteness from values : lack of clarity about or disconnection from core values
  5. Unworkable action : patterns of ineffective behaviour that in the long term make life worse rather than better
  6. Fusion with the conceptualised self : the problematic dominance of self-image and self-concept over behaviour


In this training, Russ Harris will show you how to effectively manage these pathological processes in order to better address difficult thoughts and emotions, modify clients' behavior, and train their attention, so they can build and engage in a more fulfilling life.
Definitely one of the best workshops I have attended during my career! Very worthwhile and informative, and useful for my clinical practice. Russ presents the material in an accessible and enjoyable way, using both didactic and experiential approaches.
Elizabeth Ditton, Psychologist

Training Objectives

In this training, you will have the opportunity to...

  1. Learn how the core processes of TFACT (Trauma-Focused ACT) apply to all trauma-related disorders
  2. Learn key concepts, methods, tools and techniques for therapeutic intervention with trauma-related disorders
  3. Learn how to do ACT-congruent exposure
  4. Learn strategies for emotion regulation
  5. Learn how to create and apply trauma-sensitive mindfulness practices
  6. Learn how to integrate TFACT with other trauma-relevant models, such as Attachment theory and Polyvagal theory
  7. Learn trauma-sensitive brief interventions
  8. Learn how TFACT has been successfully used in refugee camps by the WHO
An excellent workshop that I’d recommend to anyone. Highly experiential, so you come away really understanding ACT in practice, yet at the same time Russ gives clear and helpful explanations.
Koa Whittingham, PhD Candidate in Psychology

14 hours of Continuous Education

Most Professional Order of Psychologists require all members to complete at least 50 hours of continuing education every five years.
  
The current market for continuous education can be very expensive, often costing thousands of dollars for just a small fraction of those hours.

Besides, some of those trainings are so dense with information that practitioners often leave having retained very little of the material, with no real sense of how to apply it with their clients.

This training will be given by Russ Harris, one of the biggest names in the ACT community around the world. An equivalent training with him anywhere else can cost the same without necessarily giving you CEUs, and without having to travel all the way to Australia!

Therefore, if you are interested in covering your required hours of Continuing Education with a training you'll be able to immediately put into practice, want to learn directly from an international leader in the field, and would like to help your clients free themselves of the pain and limitations caused by past traumas, this training may be for you!
I found Russ to be an inspiring, lively, creative and authentic presenter. The experiential nature of the workshop provided a reflective and helpful process for personal growth and I found the material immediately applicable and constructive in working with clients. 
Lilian Wissink, Psychologue

In short...

Trauma-Focused ACT

An Exceptional workshop with Russ Harris, An international authority on ACT

  • An exceptional opportunity to learn the latest developments in Trauma-Focused ACT from one of the biggest names in the field, for the very first time in Canada
  • Two full days of training, a total of 14 hours, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
  • A certification to obtain Continuous Education Credits from your professional association
WORKSHOP VENUE

Residence & Conference Centre - Toronto Downtown

80 Cooperage St Toronto, Ontario, M5A 0J3

Exclusive discount on your room at the workshop venue.
Full details upon registration.

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Russ Harris

[EN] Russ Harris is a medical doctor and psychotherapist working in private practice for over 25 years with adult clients suffering from a wide range of trauma-related disorders. He has supervised psychotherapists for more than 15 years in acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), and has written 4 textbooks and 5 self-help books based on the model, including The Happiness Trap and Trauma-Focused ACT: A Practitioner's Guide to Working with Mind, Body, and Emotion Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. 

In 2015 Russ wrote an ACT protocol for the World Health Organisation, for use in refugee camps around the world. The WHO have now published three randomized control trials on the protocol, which has been shown to not only reduce PTSD and depression, but also to prevent the onset of mental health disorders in those at risk. The cartoon-based book that
Russ wrote as part of that protocol (titled ‘Doing What Matters In Times of Stress’) has become the most downloaded document ever from the WHO website : now close to 1 million downloads.
Patrick Jones - Course author
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