EMDR Advanced Training
EMDR and the Human Animal Bond
Trainer:Â Alison Leslie
Live: May 8th, 2025 - 8:30 AM - 1:00 PM MTN | Available on-demand after.
The human-animal bond is more than just companionship—it’s a powerful source of safety, regulation, and attachment. For many trauma survivors, animals serve as co-regulators, providing a sense of stability that traditional therapeutic approaches may struggle to replicate. But how do you ethically and effectively integrate this bond into EMDR therapy? This course bridges that gap, giving you the tools to honor and incorporate the deep connection clients have with their animals into trauma processing.
You’ll learn how to recognize when an animal’s presence or memory can serve as a resource, how to weave attachment-based interventions into EMDR, and how to navigate grief and loss when a client’s animal has passed. Whether you work directly with therapy animals or simply want to integrate the human-animal bond into your practice, this course provides a framework for deepening the healing process in an ethical and trauma-informed way.
This course will be recorded on May 8th, 2025.
Available synchronous live learning on the live date and on-demand after.
Free resource to help integrate the Human Animal Bond and EMDR!
COURSE DETAILS
The power of the human-animal bond has been proven to support healing across the lifespan and is an essential part of many of our clients’ lives today. Animals support us psychologically and physiologically and can be an integral part of the therapeutic experience, whether the therapist has their own therapy animal or begins exploring the client's relationship with their own animals. This presentation will focus mainly on dogs, cats, and small animals. Throughout this course participants will learn the neurobiological impact animals have on our lives through a polyvagal lens and identify how to enhance the eight phases through our experience with companion animals/therapy animals.
Participants will walk away with easy-to-use strategies to:
- Improve their therapeutic relationship with clients
- Increase adaptive neural networks
- Build relational allies and explore resource development strategies
- Increase presence and safety throughout the desensitization phases
- Increase playfulness in closure
- Deepen ways to support clients who have lost a pet
- Understand calming signals of our companion animals
- Quick intro to insurance related questions and competencies in the field of AAS (animal assisted services)
Please note: there is no requirement for you to include therapy animals in your practice to participate
SCHEDULE
- 8:30 – 9:20: Introduction to the Human Animal Bond and Animal Assisted Services, including companion animals neurobiological impact across the lifespan and Experiential Exercise (Phase 1 History Taking exploration)
- 9:20 - 9:30: Break
- 9:30 – 10:45: Understanding and creating adaptive neural networks through experiential work with animals and deepening our relationship with at home pets; Experiential Exercise (Phase 2 preparation)
- 10:45 - 10:55: Break
- 10:55 – 11:40: Exploring Interweaves, dual attention, and closure strategies through the lens of the human animal bond (Desensitization phases and closure)
- 11:40 - 11:50: Break
- 11:50 – 1:00: Special Topics including supporting a client through the loss of a pet, understanding calming signals in our animals, exploring next steps in animal assisted services
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
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Examine the application of human-animal interventions throughout the 8 Phases of EMDR.
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Analyze at least three Phase 2 Preparation interventions to support the development of adaptive memory networks.
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Assess the impact of the human-animal bond on memory networks throughout a client's lifetime.
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Analyze at least three human-animal bond based interweaves to apply to Phase 4 Desensitization.
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Prepare a treatment plan that integrates the human-animal connection as an intervention for reducing and stabilizing symptoms.Â
ABOUT YOUR TRAINER, ALISON LESLIE
Alison is a licensed clinical social worker who lives in Bloomington, IN and owns her own private practice, Empower Healing Counseling and Consultation.
Alison approaches therapy through the lens of presence and attunement and believes in being a guide to help clients find their own internal healing powers. She has a background in animal-assisted services and includes the human-animal bond and nature in the therapeutic experience. Alison Leslie is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Transforming Touch Therapist as well as an EMDRIA-approved therapist, consultant, and trainer.
In consultation, Alison likes to meet the consultee where they are at and support helping the consult become embodied in the work they are doing and lean into their own internal guide as she supports their growth.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
