Somatic Therapy emphasizes body awareness as an essential part of psychotherapy. This is especially beneficial in the treatment of PTSD when symptoms involve physiological distress, affect dysregulation, or dissociation. Traditional approaches to therapy attend to the cognitive and emotional aspects of clients’ lives, while the somatic experience is often left out of the room. Our bodies need to process stressful and traumatic events through breath and movement. Unfortunately, we are often taught to sit still and override movement impulses. As a result, the biological effects of stressful or traumatic events tend to persist long after events have passed. Talk therapy can perpetuate this culture of stillness unless the therapist has the training and skills to integrate the body into psychotherapy. Interventions to enhance embodiment in trauma treatment expand the therapeutic experience beyond where words can take a client.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) is a therapeutic modality for trauma and attachment issues. SP welcomes the body as an integral source of information which can guide resourcing and the accessing and processing of challenging, traumatic, and developmental experience. It is a holistic approach that includes somatic, emotional and cognitive processing and integration. As SP enables clients to discover and change habitual physical and psychological patterns that impede optimal functioning and well-being; this modality renders itself especially helpful in working with dysregulated activation and other effects of trauma, as well as the limiting belief systems of developmental issues.

This video resource pack contains two complete workshops (CPD hours: 6) that cover:

Part 1:

In this engaging and informative seminar by Dr. Arielle Schwartz, we learn the science of embodiment and why somatic psychology is essential for helping clients work with dysregulated affect and arousal states that accompany PTSD. We discuss the key principles of modern-day somatic psychology modalities including the value of working mindfully, relationally, and experientially. We will discuss the difference between top-down and bottom-up interventions and how they can be used to strengthen clients’ window of tolerance. We will also explore how somatic processing of traumatic events can be combined with other trauma treatment modalities (e.g. EMDR Therapy, Trauma Focused CBT, Narrative Exposure Therapy).

The seminar will be especially useful for psychotherapists, psychologists and counsellors who are interested in learning how to integrate somatic psychology interventions into their work with clients. Specifically, we will consider:

• The theoretical and scientific bases of somatic psychology
• The cognitive, emotional, and physiological impact of stress, trauma, and PTSD
• Why working in the “Window of Tolerance” is essential to successful trauma treatment
• Examples of top-down and bottom up interventions in trauma treatment
• The importance of mutual regulation as a precursor to the development of self-regulation of affect and arousal
• Specific interventions to enhance embodiment in trauma treatment
• How somatic processing of traumatic events can be combined with other trauma treatment modalities (e.g. EMDR Therapy, Trauma Focused CBT, Narrative Exposure Therapy)

Specifically, this seminar covers:

1: The Science of Embodiment

• The theoretical and scientific bases of somatic psychology
  • A unified approach to somatic psychology
  • Sensory systems and embodiment
• The cognitive, emotional, and physiological impact of stress, trauma, and PTSD
  • Beyond Fight and Flight
  • Mobilization and Immobilization
  • Dysregulation and Dissociation
• Why working in the “Window of Tolerance” is essential to successful trauma treatment
  • “Top-Down” and “Bottom-Up” interventions in trauma treatment.

2: Somatic Interventions and Applications

• Affect and arousal regulation in trauma treatment
  • The role of mutual regulation as a precursor to the development of self-regulation
• Interventions to enhance embodiment in trauma treatment
  • Awareness Interventions
  • Resourcing Interventions
  • Trauma Processing Interventions
  • Integrating Interventions
• Combining Somatic Psychology with other trauma treatment modalities
  • EMDR Therapy, Trauma Focused CBT, Narrative Exposure Therapy

Part 2:

The core principle underlying Somatic Psychotherapy is that the body’s intelligence is largely an untapped resource in psychotherapy. Few psychotherapy or counselling methods incorporate the body’s healing potential to support therapeutic change, leaving therapists dependent on the client’s verbal narrative.  Yet the story told through gesture, posture, tone of voice, facial expressions, gaze, and movement is more significant and more accurate than the story told by the words. And this somatic narrative implicitly conveys early experiences encoded in the brain and body long before the acquisition of language.  To omit drawing upon the wisdom of the body deprives clients of a much-needed avenue of self-knowledge and change.

Although SP incorporates body-oriented interventions common to other somatic psychology approaches – it is its own unique methodology in the way that it combines somatic psychology theory and practice with interpersonal neurobiology, neuroscience, trauma and attachment research. Dr Ogden’s approach for this webinar is that the techniques that underpin SP can be adapted by therapists in conjunction with their primary modalities – to support the unique needs of each client and the dynamics of the therapeutic dyad. At the webinar, she uses lecture, case examples, and brief experiential exercises to demonstrate how we can actively incorporate the body to change the physical actions and reactions that keep clients stuck in the past and support a more unified approach to the treatment of the effects of trauma and attachment.

Understanding the need that adapting Sensorimotor Psychotherapy to an online format presents particular challenges and opportunities, this webinar will also address these difficulties including managing office set-up, use of props, tips to maintain an emotional connection and special considerations in working with posture and movement in a telehealth format.