Introduction to Somatic EMDR: From Survival to Flourishing
Trainer: Alison Leslie, LCSW, SEP
Live Virtual Training: April 8th | 1 pm Central | Available for synchronous, live learning
On-Demand: Available one week after the live event
Your clients are doing EMDR. Their bodies are doing something else entirely.
You follow the protocol. You pace carefully. You do everything right. And yet some clients go blank the moment you approach a target. Others flood hours after a session. Some stay stuck in the same place for weeks, no matter how thoughtful your preparation.
This isn't a failure of your training. It's a signal from the body that standard protocol alone isn't reaching everything that needs to be reached.
This free one-hour course is an introduction to Somatic EMDR: what it is, why it matters, and how integrating somatic awareness into your EMDR practice can open new pathways to healing for the clients who need it most.
Taught by Alison Leslie, LCSW, SEP, clinician and somatic EMDR specialist, this course gives you a grounded foundation in the principles that bridge body-based therapy and EMDR's evidence-based protocol, without abandoning fidelity to either.
It is also the starting point for the full Somatic EMDR Practitioner Program, an EMDRIA-approved advanced training for EMDR therapists ready to bring the body fully into their work.
What You'll Learn in This Free Course
In this one-hour introduction, Alison walks you through the foundational concepts that make Somatic EMDR different from standard EMDR practice and more responsive to the full range of how trauma lives in the body.
You'll come away understanding:
- How EMDR and somatic therapy complement each other, and why integrating both supports bottom-up and top-down healing
- The Nest Metaphor: a compassionate, body-based framework for understanding how a client's history shaped their nervous system, how present-day triggers connect to that history, and how to use this map across EMDR phases and treatment planning
- Escapable vs. inescapable threat: why clients who grew up in chaotic or poorly built Nests often carry incomplete threat response cycles, and how that shows up as stuck or dysregulated EMDR processing
- Curiosity as the clinical guide in Phase 2: slowing the pace of therapy so the body can lead, drawing on both interoception and the felt sense
- Finding the Whispers: helping clients notice comfortable sensations alongside uncomfortable ones to build the interoceptive capacity needed for deeper processing
- Finding the Edge: using curiosity to gently identify the boundaries of activation, and staying just at the edge to observe what unfolds without flooding
- Naming What’s Different: teaching clients to track moment-to-moment body changes to build internal awareness, drawing on Kathy Kain’s naming and noticing skills
- What Are You Witnessing In You: somatic self-of-the-therapist awareness, tracking countertransference in real time so you can stay grounded and present with your clients
- Why flourishing, not just symptom reduction, is the goal of somatic EMDR work, and what the Embodied Future Self looks like in practice
This course is introductory. It gives you real clinical concepts you can start thinking about immediately, along with a clear picture of where the full Somatic EMDR Practitioner Program takes you next.
Who Is This Course For?
This free course is designed for EMDR-trained therapists who sense that something more is possible with their most complex clients. It is for you if:
- You're trained in EMDR and committed to fidelity, but you're noticing the protocol isn't fully reaching some clients' trauma
- Your clients go numb, freeze, or flood during or after EMDR sessions, despite careful preparation
- You're working with developmental trauma, attachment wounds, or pre-verbal experiences that don't fit neatly into standard targeting
- You notice the somatic impact of your clients' trauma on your own nervous system in session and want a clearer framework for working with that
- You've heard about somatic therapy and want to understand how it integrates with EMDR before committing to advanced training
- You want to move your practice beyond symptom management toward genuine, embodied healing for your clients
If you're just starting to explore somatic approaches, or you're a seasoned EMDR therapist looking for your next evolution, this hour is a good place to begin.
Note: Prerequisite for the full Somatic EMDR Practitioner Program is completion of EMDR Basic Training.
About Your Trainer, Alison Leslie, LCSW, SEP
Alison Leslie, LCSW, SEP, is a trauma-informed clinician, trainer, and consultant based in Bloomington, IN. She is the owner of Empower Healing Counseling and Consultation and one of a small number of practitioners working at the intersection of EMDR, somatic therapy, and the healing power of the human-animal bond.
Alison is known for her warm, curiosity-based teaching approach and for creating learning environments where therapists feel genuinely supported, not evaluated. She specializes in helping mental health professionals reconnect with their clinical confidence and trust their intuitive wisdom, especially when working with complex cases.
She leads the Somatic EMDR Practitioner Program at the Trauma Therapist Institute, an EMDRIA-approved advanced training for EMDR therapists ready to integrate somatic principles into their full clinical practice.
Additional Information
Prerequisites
Learning Objectives
Continuing Education
Schedule
Course Completion
Cancellation Policy
Withdrawal & Refund Policy
What Happens After This Course?
This free course is the foundation for the Somatic EMDR Practitioner Program: a 5-session, EMDRIA-approved advanced training with Alison Leslie that takes these concepts into full clinical application.
In the full program, you will learn to:
- Pendulate autonomic activation so clients can process trauma without flooding or shutdown
- Use somatic orienting and grounding to stabilize dysregulated clients in real time
- Unblock stuck EMDR processing with targeted somatic interweaves
- Track subtle body cues to guide moment-to-moment clinical decisions
- Design individualized Phase 2 preparation plans using body-based regulation tools
- Support completion of unfinished fight, flight, and freeze responses without retraumatizing clients
The full program includes 15 EMDRIA, ACE, and NBCC-approved CEs and is available in live virtual format with on-demand replay.
