Program Overview
The primary focus of this workshop series is on developing tactile skills, somatic awareness, and other touch-related skills in the context of working with the resolution of trauma. Mental health providers, touch therapists, and other somatic practitioners will find this training useful for increasing their skills for more directly including the body in the resolution of traumatic stress symptoms.
The workshops are designed to progressively build the participants’ understanding and confidence in being able to incorporate different types of touch, different body systems and tissues, and different somatic practices into their trauma recovery practice.
While the course presumes that participants are open to incorporating touch into their practice in some form, the same skills can be adapted for use in practice settings that do not support actual physical contact with clients.
Prerequisites
Completion of the Somatic Experiencing Beginning year, or equivalent.
About Kathy L. Kain
Continuing Education
Continuing Education credits may be offered for this program, depending on date and location. Please click “Learn More” below to see our Continuing Education page, or see the registration page for scheduled trainings, for further information.
- Introduction to a regulation-based approach to working somatically with traumatic stress
- Developing somatic presence
- Expanding your somatic vocabulary and capacity for somatic resonance
- Supporting clients in developing their somatic awareness and skillfulness
- The autonomic nervous system (ANS) and its relationship to visceral support
- The ANS and vagal responses in the digestive system
- Working with the kidney/adrenal system, brain stem, and digestive system to support bottom-up regulation
- Practitioner alignment, focus of attention
- Different types of touch, palpation skills
- Monitoring client responses via somatic observation and touch
- Refining skills for touching different body layers and structures
- Scope of practice
Trauma Categories addressed in this module:
- Scars/surgery
- Physical injury
- Stabilizing highly activated/dysregulated physiologies
- Understanding the somatics of threat response
- Sensory-motor development and its relationship to the threat response
- Self-protective responses
- Perception of threat and non-threat
- Restoration of orientation, equilibrium and self-protective responses
- Understanding the role of interoception and the amygdala in perception of threat and safety
- Interoceptive recalibration
- Supporting greater accuracy in perception of threat, non-threat
- Neuroception: building a felt sense of safety
- Enhancing the interoceptive/somatic vocabulary of the client
- Interoceptive recalibration
- Overview of categories of coupling dynamics – somatic patterns
- Client skills development for working with coupling dynamics
- Supporting skills of differentiation
- Supporting skills for recognition of connection and similarities
- Working with a localized somatic focus
- Working with a more global somatic focus
- Resolving tissue stress of high velocity injury; restoring somatic orientation
- Coherence between different body systems
Trauma Categories addressed in this module:
- Falls
- High-velocity injury
- Global High Intensity Activation (GHIA) and the Threat Response Cycle
- Developmental/complex trauma and somatic symptoms
- The somatics of trauma structures
- Client alignment and focus of attention in resolution of symptoms
- Understanding the dynamics of traumatic stress and somatic symptoms in varied physical systems
- Visceral Systems
- Endocrine system
- Immune system
- Digestive system
- Reproductive system
- Mediastinum – working with the heart space
- Body diaphragms – understanding dynamic somatic responsiveness
- Fluids – poisoning, other fluid-based traumas
- Treatment planning with a regulation-focused approach
Trauma Categories addressed in this module:
- Complex medical and physical injury, complex trauma structures
- Early trauma, developmental disturbances at the somatic level
- Syndromes
This class is designed to be completed with all modules in sequence, at the same location. While it is sometimes possible for students to start with earlier modules at one location and then complete in a different location, we ask that you contact us to request special scheduling of this type.
In a case where Module 1 is full with a waiting list, we reserve space in Modules 2 and 3 for students who started the training at that location. We cannot guarantee space for students who did not begin Module 1 in the same group.
Program Overview
The primary focus of this program is on developing tactile skills, somatic awareness, and other touch-related skills in the context of working with the resolution of trauma. Mental health providers, touch therapists, and other somatic practitioners will find this training useful for increasing their skills for more directly including the body in the resolution of traumatic stress symptoms.
The program is designed to progressively build the participants’ understanding and confidence in being able to incorporate different types of touch, different body systems and tissues, and different somatic practices into their trauma recovery practice.
While the program presumes that participants are open to incorporating touch into their practice in some form, the same skills can be adapted for use in practice settings that do not support actual physical contact with clients. It is designed primarily for Somatic Experiencing providers who have completed the Intermediate year or beyond, but other types of practitioners will be considered for the training.
The following topics will be covered in the course of the three modules of the training, in this approximate order:
- Different types of touch, palpation skills
- Monitoring activation via touch
- Refining skills for touching different body layers and structures
- Legal, ethical and scope of practice issues
- Resilience, resourcing, building capacity for self-regulation
- Polyvagal theory and the enteric nervous system
- Somatic metaphors
Trauma Categories addressed in this module:
- Scars/surgery
- Physical injury
- Stabilizing highly activated/dysregulated physiologies
- Sensory-Motor Development and its relationship to orienting and defensive responses
- Alignment and the client/practitioner’s matrix of attention
- Titration and pendulation in physical forms
- Palpatory literacy
- Coupling dynamics in somatic form
- Keystone systems
Trauma Categories addressed in this module:
- Falls
- High-velocity injury
- Global High Intensity Activation (GHIA) and the Threat Response Cycle
- Fluids – poisoning, other fluid-based traumas
- Visceral systems and deep shock
- Body diaphragms and deep shock
- Mediastinum
- Trauma structures
- Immune response and traumatic stress
- Coherence between different body systems
- Working with somatic shame
- Treatment planning
Trauma Categories addressed in this module:
- Complex medical and physical injury, complex trauma structures
- Early trauma, developmental disturbances at the somatic level
- Syndromes
Prerequisites
Completion of the Somatic Experiencing Beginning year, or equivalent.
About Kathy L. Kain
Continuing Education
Continuing Education credits may be offered for this program, depending on date and location. Please click “Learn More” below to see our Continuing Education page, or see the registration page for scheduled trainings, for further information.
