Our experience of feeling seen, heard, known, and valued is learned in relationship and community. That's where we begin... and where all of our work returns.
I'm Lu Hanessian. For more than two decades, my work has lived at the intersection of science, interpersonal neurobiology, collective resilience, and the transformative power of story. In a nutshell, I'm interested in how we tend, defend, and mend. How our bodies and our stories orient us toward awareness, toward healing, toward growth... and how, when embody curiosity, conflict can become a conduit to deeper understanding and connection.
I work with leaders, educators, students, practitioners, clinicians, organizations, and communities who are trying to stay present, embodied, curious, and connected to each other under conditions that push us into disconnection, isolation, and despair.
My path into trauma-informed, neuroscience-based, and dignity-centered education and facilitation was forged through study and training, embodiment and practice, research, perpetual learning and teaching, and lived experience.
In my work and practice, resilience is not as "bouncing back"...but an inner and relational restoration of safety - resilience as flexibility, capacity, and resistance. Resilience as generative, reparative, and transformative.
Education & teaching
I design and teach graduate courses at NYU's Center for Global Affairs and the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc School for Peace Studies - on trauma literacy, the neuroscience of conflict and emotion, stress resilience, trauma-informed fieldwork, healing-centered leadership, and restorative justice. Drawing from interpersonal neurobiology, traumatic stress studies, attachment and affective neuroscience, somatics, and expressive healing arts, my courses are based on the premise of "do no harm, beginning with ourselves" and designed as interdisciplinary, experiential, multi-sensory collaborative learning communities. Inside these spaces, learning is non-linear, connecting interpersonal neurobiology and poetry; trauma, grief and joy; the science of loneliness and the biology of belonging; mapping nervous systems and systems change. I am perpetually in awe of the transformative power of learning in community. Truly. I believe learning is a radical act of hope.
Facilitation & consulting
I work with companies, organizations, non-profits, educational institutions, and communities across sectors - designing and facilitating programs in trauma-informed leadership, collective care, conflict transformation, nervous-system-informed workplaces and cultures, and the science and practice of relational resilience.
Journalism & media literacy
As a veteran NBC anchor, Discovery Health Channel host, and host of more than thirteen shows across 25 years of national and international broadcast journalism, I've spent a career thinking about what I call the "neuroethics of news" - how the stories we receive about crisis shape our nervous systems, our relationships, and our capacity to act in generative ways. I teach, train, and consult on trauma awareness and stress resilience for journalists and media organizations navigating vicarious trauma.
Global Parent Education: Parent2ParentU
Since 2010, I've been the founder and executive director of Parent2ParentU - an online educational community supporting parents and families through strengths-based education grounded in cross-cultural attachment science, interpersonal neurobiology, neurodiversity-grounded nervous system literacy, and the science of embodied relational safety. Because our earliest relationships are where we first map our felt sense of safety, trust, and mutual belonging, where we develop our empathic lens, and where we learn to discern invisible ruptures and the restorative power of repair.
Communities of Practice
I facilitate communities of practice for people who are curious to explore the power of story, lived experience, the wisdom of the body, the science of how we heal and grow (and write new stories) - and what it takes to "keep the light on" within and between us. I see these as living, ongoing opportunities for gathering, accompaniment, cocreating safety, cultivating relational resilience and wellbeing.
I'm working on creating an online learning community - unique courses, living labs, and mindful gatherings — for people across sectors who want to gather, wonder, explore, and grow. In these times, we need to be in active, connective practice with people... lifelong learners, practitioners, educators, leaders, and communities whose work touches these questions as portals to collective wellbeing. If you're curious, reach out. I'd love to connect.
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