The Art of Pausing™: Intersectionality, Burnout, and the Future of Practice
Topic(s): 
Anti-Oppressive Practice
National Social Work Month
Professional Practice
Webinar event date: 
mar 27, 2026 12:00 pm EDT
Webinar link

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Webinar Presenters: 
Dayirai Kapfunde MSW RSW RCSW-S

Dayirai Kapfunde, MSW, RCSW-S, is a Registered Clinical Social Worker and psychotherapist based in Edmonton, Alberta, and the creator of The Art of Pausing™, a justice-centered approach to ethical sustainability in the helping professions. She is registered with the Alberta College of Social Workers (ACSW), the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW), the Nova Scotia College of Social Workers (NSCSW), and the British Columbia College of Social Workers (BCCSW). Her work focuses on burnout, moral injury, and intersectional workplace harm, particularly as they affect equity-denied professionals working within under-resourced systems that were not designed with them in mind. The Art of Pausing™ centers the reclamation of humanity in environments that have normalized depletion, postponed joy, and fused identity with performance. Grounded in interdisciplinary scholarship spanning social work, public health, psychology, organizational studies, and African philosophy, Dayirai holds space for individuals navigating inequitable conditions and partners with organizations to address structural factors that compromise practitioner wellbeing and ethical practice.

Description

Social workers are experiencing high levels of burnout, with 28–52% reporting significant emotional exhaustion and rates rising in under-resourced settings. Burnout, however, is not experienced uniformly. Equity-denied professionals often carry additional burdens, including racial battle fatigue, code-switching strain, diversity labour, and heightened scrutiny, that compound occupational stress. Traditional burnout interventions frequently focus on individual resilience while overlooking the structural and intersectional conditions that produce practitioner exhaustion.  

The Art of Pausing™ is a justice-centred framework for ethical sustainability in helping professions. Informed by interdisciplinary scholarship across social work, public health, psychology, organizational studies, and African philosophy, the framework reframes pausing as a deliberate response to systemic depletion. It rests on four anchors: Structural (burnout is organizationally produced), Intersectional (identity shapes exposure to harm), Embodied (nervous system regulation supports ethical practice), and Spiritual (Ubuntu philosophy, “I am because we are”, centers collective care).  

In this interactive 90-minute webinar, participants will explore personal, relational, and structural strategies to address burnout, engage in brief grounding practices, and identify collective, ethics-aligned approaches to practitioner wellbeing and organizational accountability.

By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

  • Describe The Art of Pausing™ framework and identify indicators of personal and collective rest deficits using research-informed criteria.
  • Explain how intersecting identities (e.g., race, gender, immigration status) shape differential exposure to burnout, vicarious trauma, and moral distress in social work practice.
  • Critically examine dominant professional narratives that pathologize rest and normalize overwork, recognizing structural drivers of practitioner exhaustion.
  • Apply intersectional, trauma-informed, and anti-oppressive strategies across three levels of intervention: personal practices, relational care, and structural change.
  • Identify systemic contributors to burnout and outline collective, ethics-aligned approaches to organizational accountability and practitioner sustainability.