Full Course Description

Integrative Somatic Psychotherapy Master Class: Step-by-step embodied trauma healing with Abi Blakeslee and special guest Peter Levine

Program Information

Objectives

Articulate what is unique about Somatic Psychology from Cognitive Based Therapy.
Formulate questions that invite conscious awareness of bodily sensation.
Identify the Threat Response Cycle with traumatized clients and learn interventions to shift survival physiology.
Observe biological markers and interoceptive experiences of the Sympathetic, transitional states, and parasympathetic nervous system.
Develop observational skills of transitional states and polyvagal states in the ANS.
Assess how building impulses increases agency toward action potential which can aid a traumatized client’s completion of a survival and defensive response.
Identify ways to work with attachment and transgenerational trauma patterns in the body and ANS.
Develop skills to support clients embodied affect.
Develop some understanding about somatic approaches to working with Near Death Experiences and the embodied emotion of terror.
Use strategies to help traumatized clients connect the physiological changes in their body to new non-traumatic experiences.
Identify trauma-focused strategies of how to use the relational field through social engagement and ventral vagal intervention.
Describe how to use the Emotional Motor System and the body’s physiology to improve interpersonal dynamics.
Implement tools to increase your clients ability to safely experience a wide range of emotion following a trauma.
Articulate the difference between implicit and explicit timelines related to traumatic events and the therapeutic impact.
Demonstrate how to use imagery to help a client effectively respond in traumatic situations.
Gain Interventions that engage and support your client’s felt sense and neuroception of safety.

Copyright : 15/02/2023

Consultation Call with Abi Blakeslee

Copyright : 15/11/2023

The Body as Healer: Working from the Bottom Up

One of the keys to helping clients move beyond trauma into empowerment and mastery is to help them learn how to access safety and positive embodied resource states. This contrasts with reliving traumas and repeatedly experiencing threats that no longer exist. Learn specific tools from Somatic Experiencing for reading clients’ physical and emotional cues, while using their natural instincts to rebalance their physiology and inner feelings. You’ll discover how to:

Integrate clients’ awareness of their internal experience and your observations of their nonverbal behaviours, including involuntary gestures, posture changes, and external indications of shifts in the autonomic nervous system
Develop your capacity to read your own somatic cues as a means of resonating and connecting with the client’s experience
Assess the often-fleeting physical cues of clients’ internal states that indicate crucial resources they can access as they move toward healing

Program Information

Objectives

Integrate the clients’ awareness of their internal experience and your observations of their nonverbal behaviours, including involuntary gestures, posture changes, and external indications of shifts in their autonomic nervous system.
Develop your capacity to read your own somatic cues as a means of resonating and connecting with the client’s experience.
Assess the often-fleeting physical cues of their internal states that indicate crucial resources clients can access as they move toward healing.

Somatic Interventions in Couples Therapy

Somatic Intervention skills are an essential addition to every relationship therapist’s toolbox. There is no conversation worth having if the nervous system isn’t in a settled state. When couples become emotionally charged it’s because they’re feeling threatened. Their nervous systems become alert, ready to defend. This defence serves to keep vulnerable feelings buried and interferes with their ability to effectively engage with their partner. In this presentation, I will offer strategies to enable couples to settle their nervous systems in order to delve more deeply into the sources of distress so that constructive solutions can emerge.

The body “holds” so much emotional information that isn’t always accessible through words. Participants will learn to identify subtle physical signs that one or both partners are feeling threatened or distressed and be able to intervene on a somatic level. Where words alone often fail, these interventions can lead to a deeper exploration of what underlies their unhappiness.

Program Information

Objectives

Apply three techniques designed to engage the parasympathetic nervous system at the beginning of a session that facilitates establishing a safe atmosphere between partners.
Distinguish three early signs of activation that indicate one or both partners are feeling threatened and be able to use strategies to intervene effectively such that the therapeutic work can continue.
Integrate three interventions that utilize a focus on body sensations to further the therapeutic process when working with couples in session.