Spotlight on CMBM Israel: Helping the Helpers Build Sustainable Resilience

When Dr. Rhonda Adessky, Clinical Director, CMBM-Israel, describes CMBM Israel’s work, she begins with a simple idea that has become increasingly urgent in Israel: people who help others need tools to care for themselves, and those tools need to travel back into the communities where they work. The model is not built around one-time relief or a single therapeutic intervention. It is built around capacity. As Adessky put it, the main focus is “train the trainers” and “help the helpers,” so that school psychologists, social workers, therapists, hospital staff, educators, and community professionals can learn the model and then use it with the people they serve.

The broader Center for Mind-Body Medicine was founded in 1991 by Dr. James S. Gordon, with a focus on making self-awareness, self-care, and group support central to healthcare, professional training, and education. CMBM Israel describes itself as a nonprofit specializing in training, implementation, and treatment using the CMBM model, which was developed in the United States and adapted for work in Israel beginning in 2004. In the Israeli context, that adaptation matters. The people CMBM Israel works with are not operating in an abstract trauma environment. They are often working in schools, hospitals, municipalities, welfare systems, and communities that have absorbed waves of stress, displacement, grief, and fear since October 7.

At the heart of the model is the idea that healing can be community-based. CMBM Israel trains professionals and helpers in mind-body skills, including tools that support self-regulation, emotional awareness, and resilience. The model is delivered in groups, but its purpose extends beyond the group itself. A school psychologist can bring the tools into a school. A hospital social worker can use them with staff or patients. A professional who serves evacuees, bereaved families, or trauma-exposed communities can first experience the tools personally and then learn how to carry them into their own setting. CMBM Israel’s public description of the model emphasizes small groups, mind-body skills, self-care, and self-empowerment. 

In practice, Adessky described several layers of activity. One is the Professional Training Program, which CMBM Israel has been offering to social workers, therapists, psychologists, and other professionals. She described current or recent trainings in Be’er Sheva with social workers from Soroka and the broader Be’er Sheva community, planned work with psychologists at Soroka, and training for educational psychologists in the north. She also described work with Ministry of Welfare social workers supporting children orphaned by October 7. These are not direct-service programs in the narrow sense. They are designed to strengthen the people who are already embedded in systems of care.

Another layer is direct work with frontline populations and communities that have been deeply affected by the war. Adessky described three-day programs at Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem for people from kibbutzim such as Be’eri and Kfar Aza, Nova survivors, bereaved parents, and reservists. In these settings, Adessky explained, the goal is not to train participants to become facilitators of the model. It is to give them practical tools they can use in daily life: to calm the body, notice what they need in a given moment, and regain some sense of agency in the middle of stress, grief, and uncertainty.

The distinction matters. CMBM Israel’s work moves between professional capacity-building and direct skill-building, depending on the population and the need.

A third area of work focuses on professionals in medical and rehabilitation systems. Adessky described CMBM Israel’s involvement in programs for staff from hospitals and related institutions, including settings such as Tel Hashomer and Beit Levinstein, where groups of roughly 30 to 35 participants come together for several days and learn the “classic mind-body skills groups.” These groups are structured, time-bound, and practical. Participants learn different skills over several days, often in smaller groups of 10 to 12. The point is not only rest and relaxation. It is skill acquisition, processing personal experiences, and the possibility of bringing those skills back into demanding professional environments.

What makes the model distinctive is its insistence that self-care is not a luxury or an add-on. It is the first step in being able to help others. Adessky described the first stage of training as “for themselves, the oxygen mask,” and only after that as training people “so that they can then teach the people in their communities.” This framing is especially relevant in the current Israeli context, where helpers are often asked to absorb nearly unlimited demand with finite personal and professional capacity. CMBM Israel’s work does not solve that systemic imbalance by itself, but it addresses a critical part of it: the internal resources of the people carrying the work.

The organization’s reach depends partly on its facilitator network. Adessky said CMBM Israel began trainings in 2006, at times training large groups of 150 people, and now has facilitators across the country. Not all are working directly with the organization at any given moment, but she estimated that about 25 are currently active in groups, trainings, and related programs. She also noted that CMBM Israel runs at least ten groups a week and could run more if funding allowed.

Since October 7, demand has grown. Adessky described requests from municipalities, hospitals, frontline communities, and organizations working with reservists and families. She also pointed to the particular importance of working with reservists, spouses, and families, noting that this population has been “so, so affected” by the current situation. The need is not only among those who survived direct attacks or lost loved ones, although those groups are clearly central. It is also among the helpers, families, professionals, and communities who continue to function under prolonged stress.

The constraints are equally clear. CMBM Israel has more requests than available funding. Adessky also noted that the organization has adapted its format in response to both cost and feedback. While some programs happen in retreat settings, she described a shift in some trainings toward intensive one-day sessions spaced over time, rather than several consecutive days. That spacing, she said, has sometimes been “much more helpful according to the feedback,” because participants have time between sessions to process and practice before moving to the next stage.

CMBM Israel’s broader contribution may be its ability to connect individual self-regulation with community and system capacity. Adessky was clear that the stress “is not going away,” and warned that without work at this level, the future medical and emotional costs will be enormous. The organization’s approach does not replace clinical treatment, nor does it remove the need for policy, workforce expansion, triage, or evidence-based PTSD care. But it offers something that many systems urgently need: a practical, teachable model that begins with the helper, moves through the group, and reaches back into the community.