In this powerful video course combination, Dr. Arielle Schwartz and Miriam Taylor bring together a comprehensive exploration of trauma through the body’s lens. Together, their approaches offer therapists essential tools to expand beyond traditional cognitive and emotional methods by delving into somatic psychology and relational trauma.

Dr. Schwartz’s course, Let the Body Talk, introduces therapists to a unified approach in somatic psychology. It offers a rich understanding of how pre-verbal trauma, attachment wounds, and somatization can manifest when clients suppress their emotions. Therapists will gain insights into integrating body-centered interventions into EMDR and other trauma therapies, enhancing the treatment experience by addressing the dysregulated arousal states often associated with trauma. Through practical techniques, the course empowers therapists to help clients engage with their bodies, unlocking deeper levels of self-regulation and embodiment.

Miriam Taylor’s course, The Story the Body Tells, expands on these principles by focusing on the body’s implicit storage of trauma and how relational wounds are often somatically held. This course introduces therapists to the neurobiological and experiential aspects of working with trauma, emphasizing the ‘bottom-up’ approach that centers on arousal, sensation, and movement. Additionally, Taylor provides valuable insights into how relational trauma imprints affect the therapeutic relationship, offering techniques to recognize and work through attachment issues, shame, and dissociative experiences.

Together, these courses provide a unified and practical framework for therapists to help clients navigate their trauma by using the body as a primary tool for healing. From somatic interventions to relational dynamics, therapists will gain an integrated perspective on trauma therapy that bridges the body-mind connection.

Learning Highlights:

• Explore the principles of somatic psychology and neurobiology in trauma treatment.
• Understand how pre-verbal trauma and attachment wounds are held somatically.
• Learn practical interventions for working with somatic symptoms in trauma therapy.
• Develop techniques to help clients reconnect with their embodied selves and enhance their tolerance for affect and sensation.
• Recognize the role of relational trauma in therapeutic dynamics and how to address attachment ruptures and repair.
• Deepen understanding of therapist embodied countertransference and the role of mutual regulation in healing.

This combination course is essential for therapists looking to broaden their skills and approaches to working with trauma at both the somatic and relational levels. It is a compelling blend of theory, experiential practice, and case studies that will enrich your trauma therapy practice.

This video resource pack contains two complete workshops (CPD hours: 12 / CE credits: N/A) that cover:

Part 1: Let the Body Talk: a unified approach to enhancing embodiment in Trauma Therapy (Dr Arielle Schwartz, CPD hours: 6 / CE credits: N/A)
When clients suppress emotions or trauma related material, they can present somatically. While traditional approaches to therapy attend to the cognitive and emotional aspects of clients’ lives, the somatic experience may often remain unattended. As therapists, we may find that modality-specific therapeutic approaches that do not incorporate non-verbal and somatic communications can have limited effectiveness for clients with somatization symptoms, developmental trauma, dissociative defences, or debilitating feelings of shame. At the same time, we recognise that therapeutic interventions aimed at enhancing embodiment in trauma therapy can significantly expand the therapeutic experience beyond where words can take a client.

At this unique and therapeutically oriented workshop, Dr Arielle Schwartz, who is well known for her integrative, mind-body approach to Trauma Therapy, specifically explains therapy considerations that allow psychotherapists and counsellors to address pre-verbal trauma memories, attachment trauma, and somatization symptoms. She uses Somatic Psychology principles as the starting point and explains how we can effectively integrate these with interventions from a wide range of somatic psychotherapy modalities including EMDR, Integrative Body Psychotherapy, The Hakomi Method, Body-Mind Psychotherapy, Authentic Movement, Formative Psychology, Focusing, The Moving Cycle, Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. She also illustrates the science of embodiment and helps us comprehend why somatic psychology is essential for helping clients work with dysregulated affect and arousal states that accompany trauma.

Through case studies, illustrations and discussions, delegates will be introduced to the underlying principles that comprise a unified approach to somatic psychology as a therapeutic approach for Trauma & PTSD, while a key focus of the workshop will be on how we can integrate body-centred interventions into EMDR therapy.

Through this video course we will:

• describe at least three principles that are part of the unified approach to somatic psychology
• recognize the key principles of somatic psychology including awareness, resourcing and self-regulation interventions
• discuss a phase-oriented, evidence-based approach to trauma treatment as a structured approach to therapy
• Explain how mutual regulation serves as a precursor to self-regulation in treatment
• Identify how somatic counter transference deepens our understanding of therapist / client relationship
• engage practical mind-body therapy tools to help clients feel resourced and prepared for trauma processing.
• describe how to help clients build affect and sensation tolerance in preparation for trauma processing
• recognize how working within the “Window of Tolerance” can help reduce the likelihood of re-traumatization
• describe how “top-down” and “bottom up” interventions can speed up or slow down the pacing of trauma treatment
• identify how holding patterns within the body can block the client’s processing in Desensitization Phase in EMDR Therapy
• practice at least three interventions for working with somatic symptoms in trauma treatment
• understand how to work with pre-verbal memories by attending to somatic sensations
• identify self-care practices for therapists to manage somatic countertransference and vicarious trauma

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the key principles of somatic psychology including awareness, resourcing and self-regulation interventions
• Explain a phase-oriented, evidence-based approach to trauma treatment as a structured approach to therapy
• Explain how mutual regulation serves as a precursor to self-regulation in treatment
• Apply practical mind-body therapy tools to help clients feel resourced and prepared for trauma processing.
• identify how holding patterns within the body can block the client’s processing in Desensitization Phase in EMDR Therapy
• identify self-care practices for therapists to manage somatic countertransference and vicarious trauma

Part 2: The Story the Body Tells: Somatic Markers & Relational Wounds (Miriam Taylor, CPD hours: 6 / CE credits: N/A)
Because trauma is fundamentally and implicitly stored in the body, major contemporary therapeutic approaches advocate somatic interventions. It is often the case that the body tells the story for which words cannot be found, and we need to find ways to listen to the story behind the symptoms. For many therapists trained to work verbally or from the ‘top-down’, working with the body is unfamiliar and this workshop aims to encourage therapists to work from the ‘bottom-up’ as well. This first seminar will introduce some of the ideas and techniques which can lead to understanding and resolving some of the somatic markers of trauma.

Starting from a strong theoretical foundation developed both from neuroscience and existential phenomenology, the Body will be considered as the primary organiser and integrator of traumatic experience. A particular focus will be on experiential aspects of working with arousal, sensation and movement, and consideration will be given to trauma-based fears associated with connecting with the bodily self. Through experiential elements and case vignettes, the workshop helps us comprehend:

• Principles of neurobiology in trauma
• Somatic memory – implicit and procedural learning
• Embodied resonance and the therapist – reading the story
• Understanding phobias of bodily experience
• The ambiguous relationship many trauma victims have with pain
• Shame and the body
• Dissociation as disconnection from bodily experience
• Reconnecting with the lived body – the phenomenological method
• Self-harm and the body
• The embodied self: identity, fragmentation and integration

We will consider the relational body and how it conveys its wounds into the therapy setting and beyond. Many people live in or grow up in unsafe relationships which leaves an imprint on their sense of self and their way of being in the world. Such an imprint is primarily embodied. This impacts their ability to form a secure relationship with others, including their therapists. To this extent, it is helpful to think in terms of trauma being ‘relational’.

In this session we will be looking at some of the relational patterns that typically emerge in the therapeutic relationship. These can include some of the most challenging elements of our work as therapists, as well as the most rewarding. Firstly, we will make sense of some of the adaptations that reinforce relational difficulties intoadulthood, and this thinking will be explored through the push and pull of attachment issues in the therapeutic relationship. To illuminate this, we will focus next on the therapist’s embodied countertransference. Finally, we will consider effective interventions to help clients transform their relational wounds.

Specifically, the workshop considers:

• Understanding the significance of the locus of control shift
• Attachment in the context of survival defences
• Understanding disorganised attachment
• Working with shame and shame avoidance
• Rupture and repair: a protocol for facilitating repair
• Recognising and working with therapeutic enactments: control, boundaries
• Developing therapist embodied awareness, presence and support
• The Window of Tolerance as a relational model
• Earned adult attachment

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the somatic memory – implicit and procedural learning
• Discuss the embodied resonance and the therapist – reading the story
• Explain the ambiguous relationship many trauma victims have with pain
• Explain the significance of the locus of control shift
• Discuss recognising and working with therapeutic enactments: control, boundaries
• Discuss The Window of Tolerance as a relational model