Trauma Informed Workforce Wellness

P.A.C.E.
Starter Pack

Collective Steadiness. A brief team practice for the start of a meeting, shift, supervision, or check-in.

Choose four. One activity from each step.

Run them together. In order, in under 10 minutes.

Participation is voluntary. No personal disclosure is required.

Ready now

A starter sequence you can use as-is.

Step 1 of 4

Choose a Presence activity

Today's P.A.C.E.

Ready to run

Four activities. Read the instructions, do the activity, and move on. Processing is not required.

1 of 4

00:30

Sequence complete

Continue from here.

You can simply move into the work. If the sequence surfaced something the team wants to use, make one small adjustment before continuing.

Does anything need to change about how we work today?

Optional. Nothing here is recorded, and leaving this unanswered does not hold up the meeting.

Did this give the team anything useful today?

A useful moment can be small: an easier transition into the work, a shared rhythm, clearer limits, a reason to adjust something, or simply noticing that no change is needed.

Completely optional. If the team wants to answer, choose one response together. This saves one sequence-level answer on this device only. It is never tied to a person, and it becomes more meaningful after several uses than after one sequence.

Get Started

Keep it brief enough to become familiar.

P.A.C.E. is designed to be repeated, not performed perfectly. Put it somewhere work already happens, keep participation voluntary, and let familiarity do some of the work.

Facilitator quick start

  1. Choose the moment.Start a meeting, shift check-in, supervision, or another regular gathering with P.A.C.E.
  2. Choose four activities.One Presence, one Attune, one Connect, one Energy. Keep the total under 10 minutes.
  3. Tell people what to expect.Participation is voluntary. No personal explanation is required. People can skip any activity.
  4. Run the sequence.Read the instructions, do the activity, and move on. Processing is not required.
  5. Continue with the work.If the sequence gives the team useful information, let it affect pace, workload, or a stopping point. If it does not, keep going.

Try it for two weeks

The ask

Five to ten minutes at the start of regular team meetings or shift check-ins.

Why repetition matters

The first use may feel unfamiliar or awkward. P.A.C.E. is meant to become predictable through repetition. One sequence is not a fair test of whether it belongs in the team's routine.

Keep it voluntary

No required disclosure. No emotional monitoring. No participation score. Stop or skip anything that does not fit.

Rotate the lead

A different person can run it. The app carries the instructions.

The bigger question

After a few uses, and especially after the two-week pilot: Should we keep doing this?

What you are looking for over time

The aim is not a room full of visibly calm people. Look for whether the practice becomes an easy, repeatable way to arrive together, whether pace and limits become easier to name, and whether the team chooses to keep using it.

How to introduce it without a speech

“We're going to try a short P.A.C.E. sequence before we get into the meeting. It takes a few minutes. Nothing personal is required, and you can skip anything that does not work for you. The point is simply to give us a brief way to arrive and do something together before we move into the work.”

When the room gives you a problem

People do not want cameras on

Leave them off. Use activities that work without video.

You only have three minutes

Use the starter sequence or choose the shortest options. Keep transitions clean.

An activity does not fit this group

Replace it or skip it. Nobody needs to explain why.

The team thinks it feels awkward

Keep the first attempts short. Familiarity is part of the design. P.A.C.E. does not require belief or enthusiasm.

The group shows very low capacity

Do not turn that into a discussion about individual people. If the team wants to use the information, adjust the work: slow the pace, shorten the agenda, reduce something, or name a stopping point.

Optional · Device-local

Is P.A.C.E. earning its place?

This running count is most useful after several sequences. It stores one optional sequence-level response on this device, not individual employee responses or participant outcomes. Use the pattern to help answer the bigger question: Should we keep doing this?

No sequence check-ins recorded on this device yet. There is nothing to interpret until the team has used P.A.C.E. a few times.

P.A.C.E. for Organizations

For teams using P.A.C.E. regularly.

The Starter Pack stays open to anyone. Organizational P.A.C.E. adds the complete activity library and tools for facilitators and teams who want to use the practice as part of ordinary work.

Complete activity library

More options across Presence, Attune, Connect, and Energy.

Facilitator workspace

Build, replace, run, time, and explain activities without leaving the sequence.

Reusable team sequences

Save combinations your team uses regularly and share them with authorized facilitators.

Implementation resources

Practical guidance for introducing P.A.C.E., piloting it, and deciding whether it is useful.

No employee wellness dashboard. Organizational P.A.C.E. is not designed to score people, monitor emotions, or track individual participation.

About P.A.C.E.

Why the sequence is built this way

P.A.C.E. is a brief, repeatable team practice that uses orientation, permission, shared rhythm, and visible limits before the work begins. It draws from several bodies of research and practice. No single theory is presented as proof that P.A.C.E. itself has been clinically validated.

The four-part sequence

P · Presence

Begin with the here and now. External orientation gives the body concrete, current information before the group asks for attention, connection, or problem-solving.

A · Attune

Make room for different levels of readiness and capacity without requiring anyone to explain what is behind them.

C · Connect

Add one brief coordinated action: shared timing, rhythm, attention, or movement. The point is a small experience of doing something together without personal content.

E · Energy

Bring pace, limits, workload, and stopping points into the shared space so regulation is connected to how the work is actually carried.

Research and practice foundations

Regulate, Relate, Reason

Bruce Perry's Regulate, Relate, Reason heuristic helps explain the sequencing logic: regulation and connection support access to thinking and problem-solving. P.A.C.E. borrows that order-of-operations idea and adapts it for a brief team practice.

Repetition and communal practice

Resmaa Menakem's somatic work emphasizes body-based practice and repeated “reps,” including communal reps. P.A.C.E. shares the emphasis on repetition and collective embodied practice; it is not a Menakem protocol.

From solo regulation to team practice

Steffannie Roaché's Cool-Ah and later Rock, Sway, and Cool-Ah use sensation, breath, rhythm, and movement as brief workday practices. P.A.C.E. carries the same body-first, low-disclosure logic into something a team can do together.

Interpersonal synchrony

Research on coordinated action and synchrony has found associations with social bonding, cooperation, social cognition, and positive affect. P.A.C.E. uses this literature as support for brief shared rhythm, without claiming one specific neural mechanism.

Resources and visible limits

Conservation of Resources theory describes stress in part through threatened or depleted resources. P.A.C.E. makes time, energy, workload, and stopping points legitimate group information rather than private endurance tests.

Trauma-informed choice

Choice, collaboration, transparency, attention to power, and resistance to retraumatization shape the practice. Participation stays voluntary and no personal disclosure is required.

What P.A.C.E. does not claim: it is not a clinical treatment, a substitute for organizational change, or a promise that everyone will feel calm. Polyvagal Theory and co-regulation language have influenced TIO materials, but P.A.C.E. does not depend on one theory or one proposed neural mechanism.

Selected references and practice influences

  1. Neurosequential Network. Sequence of Engagement: Regulate, Relate, Reason.
  2. Menakem, R. (2017). My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies.
  3. Mogan, R., Fischer, R., & Bulbulia, J. A. (2017). To be in synchrony or not? A meta-analysis of synchrony's effects on behavior, perception, cognition and affect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72, 13–20. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2017.03.009.
  4. Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44(3), 513–524. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.44.3.513.
  5. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2014). SAMHSA's Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach.
  6. Roaché, S. (2012). The Cool-Ah [practice]. See also Roaché, S. (2024), “Stress Reducing Techniques for Work Days: The Rock, Sway, and Cool-Ah Technique,” Trauma Informed Oregon.

Accessibility

Built for different ways of participating

P.A.C.E. is designed to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA accessibility standards. Final conformance should be checked again in the production environment.

In the app

  • Keyboard access and visible keyboard focus
  • Screen-reader labels, headings, landmarks, and status messages
  • Text and controls that reflow on smaller screens and at larger text sizes
  • Color is never the only way a step, choice, or status is identified
  • High-contrast text and controls
  • Large touch targets for primary controls
  • Reduced-motion support when the device requests it
  • Timers never automatically move the group forward

In the practice

  • Participation is voluntary
  • No personal disclosure is required
  • Many activities work with cameras off
  • Activities can be skipped without explanation
  • Movement is not required for every activity
  • Facilitators can read instructions aloud while keeping them visible

If something in this app creates a barrier, contact info@traumainformedoregon.org.