STAR Institute for Sensory Processing

STAR Institute for Sensory Processing STAR Institute is the international leader for research, treatment, and education related to sensory integration and processing.
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STAR is a 501(c)(3) with a mission to impact quality of life by developing and promoting best practices for sensory health and wellness through treatment, education, and research. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, we are dedicated to improving mainstream awareness of sensory health and to providing life-changing support and resources for individuals and families across the lifespan. STAR Instit

ute supports all areas of sensory health including mental health, school success, child development, parenting, relationships, and vocational success. For some, disordered sensory processing profoundly impacts daily functioning. However, many differences in sensory processing do not need to be disabling. With more research, education, and awareness across the globe and throughout communities, schools, and workplaces we can make sensory health universally accessible.

⏰ One week out. And the question worth asking before you arrive:What does neuroaffirming practice actually require of yo...
06/03/2026

⏰ One week out. And the question worth asking before you arrive:

What does neuroaffirming practice actually require of you — not in theory, but in the room, in the relationship, in the system you work inside every day?

That's not a rhetorical question at Differently Wired Thriving. It's the dialogue. Researchers, neurodivergent professionals, and clinicians working through it together, out loud, in real time — because the honest answer is more complex than any single framework has acknowledged.

Want a special discount? 💬 Comment "THRIVING" and we'll send the offer straight to your DMs
🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

Sessions you won't want to miss:
→ Movement Differences in a Nonspeaking, Autistic Body — Damon Kirsebom
→ Fluid Embodiment — Dr. Nick Walker
→ Re-writing Negative Narratives — Dr. Toni Solaru
→ Understanding Non-belonging in a Changing World — Dr. Karen Gravett
→ Environment Matters: Those Most Impacted Leading Inclusive Design — Vesper Moore
→ Becoming a Neurodivergent-Serving Institution of Higher Education (IHE) — Dr. Alicia Broderick
→ Energy Accounting for Neurodivergent Thriving: The Smart Phone Analogy — Jodie Clark

🔹 Facilitated dialogues — not lectures
🔹 Application Labs — strategies you can use immediately

Most clinicians enter this field with a clear sense of what they believe about human potential and dignity. Then the rea...
06/03/2026

Most clinicians enter this field with a clear sense of what they believe about human potential and dignity. Then the real world arrives. You adapt. You compromise. You tell yourself it's temporary.

That drift is the predictable result of environments that reward compliance over conviction. The gap between what you believe and what you do is real, and it is costly. That gap is where burnout lives.

Differently Wired Thriving is for practitioners ready to close the gap - finding your footing in today's reality with the frameworks, evidence, and community that make principled practice sustainable. Your early idealism was telling you something true. This is how you build a practice around it.

These practitioners made the move. They stopped fixing. They started supporting. And they won't go back.

Join us for a live community event where you'll connect with OTs and neurodiversity professionals who've walked this path, deepen your practice with peers who get it, and reclaim the work you love. Register now.

What happens when the world tells you to hide who you are — and you believe it? ⏰ Next week at Differently Wired Thrivin...
06/02/2026

What happens when the world tells you to hide who you are — and you believe it?

⏰ Next week at Differently Wired Thriving, Dr. Toni Solaru unpacks masking, shame, and the power of rewriting the narratives neurodivergent people carry. Toni is the founder of People's OT — an OT practice rooted in disability justice and abolitionist care — and brings deep expertise in cognitive rehab, brain injury, and community-based mental health.

This session will change how you think about identity, self-perception, and healing. Don't miss it. 👇

Want a special discount? 💬 Comment "THRIVING" and we'll send the offer straight to your DMs

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

What if the most important voices in the room aren’t the researchers — they’re the people who’ve lived it?At Differently...
05/29/2026

What if the most important voices in the room aren’t the researchers — they’re the people who’ve lived it?

At Differently Wired Thriving, both are at the table. Not in separate sessions. Not one validating the other from a distance. In actual dialogue — together, in real time.
That’s what makes this summit different. And it’s happening in two weeks.

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
💥 Advanced Tickets $139 (save $40!)
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

Hear from neurodivergent professionals, advocates, and researchers who aren’t just presenting alongside each other — they’re in genuine conversation about what regulation really means, what belonging actually looks like, and what systems need to change for neurodivergent people to truly thrive.

🔹 Day 1: What does regulation mean across different bodies and neurotypes?
🔹 Day 2: Co-regulation, belonging, and what real inclusion feels like vs. what it’s often sold as
🔹 Day 3: The systems, cultures, and environments that make or break neurodivergent lives
Plus Application Labs that turn those conversations into strategies you can bring back to your work immediately.

⚠️ Advanced pricing of $139 ends TODAY. After that, it’s $179.

,

What would it feel like if the systems around you were actually built for you?That's the question at the heart of Day 3 ...
05/28/2026

What would it feel like if the systems around you were actually built for you?
That's the question at the heart of Day 3 of Differently Wired Thriving — and this panel is bringing the vision, the research, and the lived experience to answer it.

Imagining Systems That Feel Like Home features:
🎙 Vesper Moore (he/they) — Chief Operating Officer of Kiva Centers and national leader in mental health and disability rights. Vesper has shaped policy at the U.S. government and United Nations level, centering trauma, intersectionality, and the voices of people with disabilities.

🎙 Lulu Larcenciel (she/they) — Autistic researcher and PhD student at Brock University whose work centers the experiences of neurodivergent young people within Canada's colonial care and education systems — and what self-determination could look like instead.

🎙 Dr. Diamond Rashad (she/her) — Occupational therapist, researcher, and advocate with nine years of experience in sensory integration and neurodevelopmental care. Diamond brings a culturally responsive, neurodiversity-affirming lens to everything she does.

Three perspectives. One urgent question: what does it take to build systems that don't just include neurodivergent people — but actually feel like home?

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
💥 Advanced Tickets $139 (save $40!)
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

⏰14 days. And the most important voices in the room have lived it.At Differently Wired Thriving, neurodivergent professi...
05/27/2026

⏰14 days. And the most important voices in the room have lived it.
At Differently Wired Thriving, neurodivergent professionals, advocates, and researchers aren't in separate sessions — they're in genuine dialogue, together, in real time.

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
💥 Advanced Tickets $139 (save $40!)
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

🔹 Day 1: What does regulation really mean across different bodies and neurotypes?
🔹 Day 2: Co-regulation, belonging, and what real inclusion feels like vs. what it's often sold as
🔹 Day 3: The systems and cultures that make or break neurodivergent lives
,
Plus Application Labs that turn those conversations into strategies you can use immediately.
⚠️ Advanced pricing of $139 ends May 29. After that, it's $179.

🎙️ CO-HOST ALERT — and we couldn't be more excited about this one! Kieran Rose is BACK — and he's with us for all 3 days...
05/26/2026

🎙️ CO-HOST ALERT — and we couldn't be more excited about this one! Kieran Rose is BACK — and he's with us for all 3 days!

If you've been to our events before, you'll know exactly what this means. Kieran doesn't just introduce sessions — he's in the room, in the conversation, challenging ideas, asking the questions that need asking, and bringing the kind of insight that only comes from living it, researching it, and advocating for it every single day.

Kieran is an internationally recognised Autistic author, researcher, and consultant. He's a parent of three Autistic children, diagnosed Autistic himself in 2003, and has spent years working at the intersection of lived experience and professional practice — training specialists, supervising clinicians, lecturing at universities across the UK, and consulting with organisations around the world. (The Autistic Advocate)

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand

💥 Advanced Tickets $139 (save $40!)
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

What makes Kieran so powerful at Differently Wired Thriving is what happens in the dialogues. Each day, he'll be guiding our reflections, sitting in the nuance, and helping us collectively make sense of what we're hearing and feeling. It's not just content — it's conversation. And Kieran is someone you want in that conversation.

Spots are filling fast. If you haven't registered yet — now is the time. We're ONLY 2 WEEKS AWAY!

Surface-level inclusion isn't the same as belonging — and it can cause just as much harm as overt exclusion.On Day 2 of ...
05/20/2026

Surface-level inclusion isn't the same as belonging — and it can cause just as much harm as overt exclusion.

On Day 2 of Differently Wired Thriving, Nyck Walsh, Dr. Karen Gravett, and Dr. Monique Botha are sitting down for a powerful dialogue: Validating Not Belonging.

Because sometimes the most honest, affirming thing we can do is acknowledge when a space wasn't built for someone — and ask what it would take to change that.

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
💥 Advanced Tickets $139 (save $40!)
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA 15 contact hours)

Nyck Walsh, MA, LPC (he/they)
Autistic somatic psychotherapist, counselor educator, and creator of the Neurodivergent Somatics model. Nyck brings a whole-person, anti-oppressive lens to supporting late-identified neurodivergent folx. 🧠

Dr. Karen Gravett (she/her)
Associate Professor at the University of Surrey and author of Relational Pedagogies. Karen's research digs into what belonging — and not belonging — really means in educational and social spaces. 📚

Dr. Monique Botha (they/them)
Neurodivergent psychologist and Associate Professor at Durham University. Monique's research centers minority stress, dehumanization, and inclusion — and what it truly takes to make spaces safe for autistic people. 🏆 Recipient of ASAN's "Nothing About Us Without Us" award.

Have you ever felt like you were performing your own body for an audience that never asked to see you?That's exactly wha...
05/19/2026

Have you ever felt like you were performing your own body for an audience that never asked to see you?

That's exactly what Dr. Nick Walker is exploring in his upcoming presentation, Fluid Embodiment — and we couldn't be more excited to share it with our community.

Dr. Walker is a professor at CIIS, author of Neuroqueer Heresies, and one of the most influential thinkers in neurodiversity today. In this session, he'll unpack how social expectations about physical behavior shape — and constrain — how neurodivergent people move through the world. And more importantly, what becomes possible when we stop masking and start moving freely.

This is one of those talks that has a way of changing how you see yourself. Come find out why.

🗓 June 10–12 | 8:00am-1:30pm MT
📍 Virtual | 3 days live + 60-day on-demand
💥 Advanced Tickets $139 (save $40!)
🔗 https://bit.ly/star-thriving2026
✅ CEU add-on available (AOTA/ASHA)

🎲 Something strange is happening this summer… A missing gnome. Crops that move. Creatures that think. A darkness that kn...
05/18/2026

🎲 Something strange is happening this summer… A missing gnome. Crops that move. Creatures that think. A darkness that knows you're there.

This summer, teens and young adults ages 13–21 can step into an immersive role-playing adventure — and build real social skills along the way.

Roll, Play, Grow summer groups are now enrolling! Online sessions start in June.
✨ Communication. Problem-solving. Teamwork. All wrapped in an epic quest.

Spots are limited — https://sensoryhealth.org/basic/roll-play-grow
Group 1 | Ages 13-15 | June 2-July 21 | Tuesdays | 4:30pm-6:00pm MT
Group 2 | Ages 16-18 | June 5-26 & July 10-31 | Fridays | 4:30pm-6:00pm MT
Group 3 | Ages 19-21 | August 6-September 24 | Thursdays | 4:30pm-6:00pm MT

Address

6911 South Yosemite Street
Centennial, CO
80112

Opening Hours

Monday 8am - 6pm
Tuesday 8am - 6pm
Wednesday 8am - 6pm
Thursday 8am - 6pm
Friday 8am - 5pm

Telephone

+13032217827

Website

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