EMDR Advanced Training
EMDR and Somatic Therapy
Integrating Body-Based Interventions Across the 8 Phases
Trainer: Alison Leslie
On-Demand: Available with lifetime access for asynchronous learning. | This course was recorded on October 24-25th, 2024.
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.
Practical Interventions You Will Learn
This training introduces specific somatic skills and body-based interventions that integrate directly into your existing EMDR practice across all 8 phases. Each technique is taught with clear clinical rationale and practical application.
- 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'll Learn in This EMDRIA-Approved Somatic EMDR Training
By the end of this training, you will be able to:
- Integrate somatic therapy techniques across all eight phases of EMDR, from history taking through reevaluation, so body-based work is woven throughout treatment rather than added on
- Apply the threat response cycle and polyvagal framework to understand how trauma is stored and experienced in the body, and use this to inform your clinical decisions at every phase
- Develop client interoception and somatic awareness as a core Phase 2 preparation strategy, building the internal attunement clients need before reprocessing begins
- Use pendulation, titration, and tracking of the internal experience to support clients in tolerating and processing somatic material without overwhelm
- Support Phase 4 completion through body-based observation and somatic interweaves, including helping the body register safety after reprocessing
Identify how implicit memory, somatic cues, and self-protective responses are held in the body, and apply that understanding to case conceptualization and stuck-point work
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 clinical application focus
About Your Trainer, Alison Leslie, LCSW
Alison Leslie is a licensed clinical social worker, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), Transforming Touch Therapist, and EMDRIA-approved therapist, consultant, and advanced trainer. She is also a Basic Training facilitator and EMDR Basic Training trainer-in-training with Trauma Therapist Institute.
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.
Additional Information
Agenda
Learning Objectives
Prerequisites
Continuing Education
Course Completion
Cancellation Policy
Free resource from Alison Leslie
Download this free resource by Alison Leslie. This offers a guided worksheet to help your client with this practice.
