EMDR and Somatic Therapy
Integrating Body-Based Interventions Across the 8 Phases
Trauma lives in the body. Your clients know this, and so do you. But knowing it and knowing what to do about it in an EMDR session are two different things.
EMDR and Somatic Therapy is a two-day on-demand training with Alison Leslie, LCSW, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and EMDRIA-approved EMDR trainer. This course teaches you how to integrate somatic therapy across all eight phases of EMDR, so you can help clients attune to their bodies, expand their window of tolerance, and move toward healing with more ease and less fear.
If you have been relying on cognitive interweaves that are not landing, struggling to help clients track their internal experience, or wondering how to work somatically without derailing the EMDR process, this training gives you the framework and the clinical tools to do it well.
Why TTI
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Expert Clinical Training
Where Learning Meets Community
Practical Skills
Practical Interventions You'll Learn
- Pendulation and Titration: Core somatic techniques for safely navigating client activation and expanding tolerance for internal experience.
- Interoception and Somatic Awareness: How to develop client interoception as a Phase 2 Preparation tool, building the body-based foundation EMDR requires.
- Witnessing the Body as a Processing Channel: New ways of tracking and responding to somatic cues across all phases, including during Phase 4 desensitization.
- Implicit and Explicit Memory Mapping: How somatic cues and implicit memory patterns are held in the body, and how to use this understanding in EMDR case conceptualization.
- Threat Response Cycle Integration: Apply the threat response cycle to case conceptualization to identify where a client is stuck and how to support resolution.
- Somatic Interweaves for Stuck Processing: Body-based interweave techniques for Phase 4 Desensitization, including how to help the body register that it survived.
- Healthy Touch and Self-Touch Protocols: Evidence-informed strategies for self-touch with clients during preparation and processing phases.
- Working with Dissociation Somatically: Extra support for clients who override or disconnect from body experience, including somatic strategies for increased safety.
What You Get
What's Waiting for You Inside This EMDR and Somatic Training
Somatic integration across 8 phases
Pendulation and titration skills
Implicit memory and threat response
Q&A and Chat
Phase 4 somatic interweaves
Learn on your schedule
Expert clinical insight
Free community membership
Is This For You?
Who Is This Training For
This training is for EMDR-trained therapists who want to work more confidently with the body in trauma sessions. If you have completed EMDR Basic Training and are looking for concrete, somatic tools to bring into your EMDR practice, this course was built for you.
You will get the most out of this training if you are:
- Noticing that cognitive interweaves are not moving your clients forward, and want body-based alternatives
- Working with clients who struggle to connect with or tolerate internal sensations during EMDR
- Wanting a phase-by-phase somatic framework, not just standalone somatic techniques bolted onto existing practice
- Interested in how implicit memory, the threat response cycle, and Polyvagal Theory intersect with EMDR reprocessing
- Looking to build client capacity for interoception before moving into processing phases
- Seeking EMDRIA, NBCC, or ASWB continuing education in an on-demand format with a clinical application focus
Meet Your Trainer
About Your Trainer
Alison Leslie
LCSW
Alison owns her private practice, Empower Healing, in Bloomington, IN. She approaches therapy through the lens of presence and attunement, believing that the clinician's role is to guide clients toward their own internal healing capacity. Her background includes animal-assisted services and integrating the human-animal bond and nature into the therapeutic experience.
In consultation, Alison meets consultees where they are, supporting EMDR skill development and somatic therapy integration through openness, curiosity, and compassion. She brings that same embodied, attuned presence to her teaching.
Investment
Ready to Get Started?
Course Price
- Lifetime access to the course - Refresh your skills anytime at your own pace. Get on-demand access after the live date.
- Immediate clinical application - Walk away with tools you can use in your next session.
- CEs - Earn EMDRIA, ASWB and NBCC CEs.
Free Resource
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Additional Information
Course Details
Agenda
Day 1
- Welcome, Overview of Day 1, Creating a Nest
- History of Somatic Therapy and quick overview of EMDR
- Defining Trauma
- PVT and How the Body Remembers
- Threat Response cycle, video, and experiential activity
- Explicit/Implicit Memory and experiential exercise
- Faux Window of Tolerance, Co Regulation, joining vs. merging dynamics
- Phase 1 History Taking, through the eyes of the clinician, experiential activity
- Phase 2 Preparation and Somatic Therapy – Helping the body prepare for EMDR therapy and gaining a connection to the internal state with curiosity and more ease
Day 2
- Welcome back, overview of the day, Q&A
- Phase 2: Healthy Touch
- Phase 2 Somatic exercises to support increase capacity, video examples
- Coupling and Uncoupling dynamics in Phase 3
- Phase 4: Observing the Body in Phase 4 and supporting completion through interweaves
- Phase 4: Helping the Body know it Survived
- Phase 4: Completion
- Phase 5: Installation
- Somatic Exercise
- Phase 6, body Scan and Phase 7 Closure with Somatic techniques
- Phase 8 Re-evaluation; continuing to witness the body as a marker of change
- Working through stuck points: When clients override the body; extra support for increased safety with dissociation, and Q&A
Learning Objectives
- Integrate somatic therapy techniques throughout the eight phases of EMDR.
- Evaluate embodiment exercises to support clients coming into contact with the body in new ways
- Appraise the use of pendulation and titration techniques to expand a client’s window of tolerance.
- Apply somatic therapy interventions in Phase 4 Desensitization to facilitate target reprocessing.
- Support clients in developing interoception and somatic awareness as a vital Phase 2 Preparation technique.
- Identify how implicit memory, somatic cues, and patterns are held and experienced in the body.
- Apply the threat response cycle to case conceptualization and where a client is stuck in this cycle.
- Evaluate healthy strategies for self-touch with clients and how these skills can add to healing and preparation phases.
- Apply tracking of the internal experience and channels of processing to support a client’s healing process.
Prerequisites
- EMDR Basic Training
Continuing Education
8 CEs are available upon completion of all course material.
Trauma Therapist Institute is an approved continuing education provider. ACE, NBCC, and EMDRIA CEs are available for this course. APA CEs are not available for this course.
Participants must complete the full training to receive credit.
ACE Approved Provider
Trauma Therapist Institute, #1869, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 1/16/25 - 1/16/28. Social workers completing this course receive 8 clinical continuing education credits.
NBCC Approved Provider
Trauma Therapist Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7033. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Trauma Therapist Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
EMDRIA Approved Provider
Trauma Therapist Institute is an EMDRIA Approved Training Provider. TTI courses are individually approved. CE Certificate will contain course approval number.
Course Completion
Cancellation Policy
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