THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN COMPLETED; PLEASE CONTACT US TO EXPRESS INTEREST IN A FUTURE OFFERING OF THIS TRAINING
Traditional psychotherapy addresses the cognitive and emotional elements of trauma, but lacks techniques that work directly with the physiological elements, despite research findings that trauma profoundly affects the body and that many symptoms of traumatized individuals are somatically driven.
Level I of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Training presents simple body-oriented interventions for tracking, naming and safely exploring trauma-related somatic activation, creating new competencies and restoring a somatic sense of self. Students will learn effective, accessible interventions for identifying and working with disruptive somatic patterns, disturbed cognitive and emotional processing, and the fragmented sense of self experienced by so many traumatized individuals. Techniques are taught within a phase-oriented treatment approach, focusing first on stabilization and symptom reduction. The length of this training is between 80 and 90 hours.
Curriculum (Level I)
- Including the Body in Psychotherapy Practice How to track and name somatic experience and work with physical action.
- Trauma and the Body The role of the body in perpetuating PTSD symptoms.
- Developmental and Attachment Issues The effects of trauma, attachment failure, and developmental arrests on mind and body.
- Hierarchical Information Processing Somatic interventions that expand the capacity to integrate traumatic experience.
- The Use of Mindfulness The role of mindfulness in the treatment of trauma and how to teach mindfulness to clients.
- Self-Regulation How to stabilize traumatic activation and restore autonomic equilibrium.
- Somatic Resources Identification of missing somatic resources and interventions to help clients develop new resources.
- Boundaries How trauma affects boundary styles and techniques to restore healthy somatic and psychological boundaries.
- Orienting and Defensive Responses Interventions to reinstate effective orienting and defensive responses truncated in the wake of trauma.
- Treatment of Traumatic Memory Somatic approaches to overcoming the fear of traumatic memory and interventions to process and integrate memories.
- Dissociation Interventions to work with alterations of consciousness and structural dissociation of the personality.
The 2010-2011 training has been completed. Please add your name to our interest list if you may want to attend the next time this training is offered. Once sufficient interest has been registered, the program will be scheduled. Adding your name to the interest list is not a commitment to attend, but does help us estimate the pool of potential participants.