The Somatic Intelligence of Dissociation
(co-creating the conditions for safety in trauma therapy) 

An in person offering on Coast Salish Land (so-called Seattle)
10am-5pm
7/20/24

CEUs Pending

Dissociation is a very wise, very human and very ancient trauma pathway. When we first learn to dissociate, it is a brilliant idea that effectively helps us avoid feeling what is literally intolerable. What we know, from the wisdom of our own bodies and from those of our clients, is that dissociation–once learned–is a pathway we travel again and again, diverted there by cues of danger that are often (though not always) more about our inner experience than our outer one. 

Wise dissociation is a reliable protector in therapy and is a part of someone’s survivorship that will reliably show up in the therapy room.  Our job as trauma therapists is to co-create the conditions of safety so that we can help our clients reach for the felt safety their wise nervous systems need to be able to metabolize what has so-far-been-unmetabolizable. This is the body of work we achieve in trauma therapy. 

In trauma therapy we help clients reach for the healing that is their birthright. We do this by knowing that healing is possible, by deeply attuning to our clients and their lived experience, by compassionately holding hope, by lovingly contradicting the burdens our clients carry, and by helping them remember how to listen to the deep wisdom of their body. Our birthright access to healing follows a resilient, meandering, familiar-but-ancient pathway we were born knowing how to reach for, in relationship. Despite living in a wounded culture that asks us to forget what is possible and who we truly are, we can unlearn the lies we have learned about ourselves, about our dignity and worth, and about what is truly possible–replacing these lies with something that is whole and true. 

Part magic, part neuroscience, this offering teaches liberation-aligned  trauma therapists how to reliably and repeatedly co-create the relational conditions for healing with clients whose wise nervous systems bring them adaptively away from the moment and whose intuitive capacity for connection can bring them back again.  Drawing from the rooted wisdom of relational neuroscience, the brilliance of queerness, the vibrancy of liberation-rooted therapy, the effectiveness of trauma specific therapies and the ancient knowingness of folk medicine, this offering will help participants trust their own somatic knowing of how to travel the bridge between the compassionate present (regulation) and the traumatic past (dissociation) while creating the relational conditions for transformative healing. This, afterall, is where the magic happens. 

This workshop draws on the body intelligence of ego state/parts work and includes a hands-on practicum, teaching tangible skills that will increase effective practice and create more safety working with client’s dissociative systems.

Cost:
Early Bird rate, $279 (through June 10th)
Full rate, $329
Justice rate available for BIPOC and/or trans/nonbinary folx $229
Access rate available for folx working in community MH & group practice employees $229

COVID precautions: We’ll gather indoors in a 450 square feet movement room. We will all take covid tests at the beginning of the day Saturday. Folx may choose to unmask with a negative covid test or may choose to remain masked. We ask that folx with a positive test not join the class.

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