Trauma Training

Body-Based Healing, Polyvagal Theory, and the Threat Response Cycle

Trainer: Alison Leslie
On-Demand: Available with lifetime access for asynchronous learning. | This course was recorded on May 30-31st, 2024.

Trauma lives in the body. Most therapists know this. The harder question is what to do about it in an actual session with an actual client whose nervous system is stuck, whose words are disconnected from their body, and whose healing isn't moving the way talk-based approaches suggest it should.

This two-day somatic therapy training with Alison Leslie, LCSW and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, gives you a comprehensive, experiential framework for doing exactly that. Drawing on Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory, and the Threat Response Cycle, the course moves from the history and research foundations of somatic therapy through specific, hands-on clinical techniques: pendulation, titration, the Felt Sense, Language of Sensation, the Trauma Vortex and Counter Vortex, somatic boundary work, healthy touch, co-regulation, and the Neuroceptive Menu of Safety.

This is an experiential training. You will practice the techniques as you learn them, coming away with embodied knowledge of what these approaches feel like from the inside, not just a conceptual understanding of how they work. No EMDR training or somatic certification is required.

In this somatic experiencing and trauma therapy training, you'll learn how to:

• Apply the Threat Response Cycle to case conceptualization, identifying where a client's trauma is stuck in the body and what the nervous system needs to move toward completion
• Use the Trauma Vortex and Counter Vortex to help clients safely discharge lingering trauma responses and restore a sense of balance and agency in their bodies
• Work with the Felt Sense and Language of Sensation to help clients connect with internal somatic cues and develop a more embodied relationship with their own healing process
• Apply pendulation and titration to move clients safely between states of activation and relative ease without overwhelming the nervous system
• Use the Neuroceptive Menu of Safety to build capacity for ventral vagal access and create the internal conditions for healing
• Implement somatic boundary work to support new patterns within the client experience and strengthen the therapeutic container
• Apply healthy touch protocols and co-regulation skills to increase safety and nurture in the beginning phases of somatic trauma therapy
• Track internal experience and channels of processing across explicit and implicit memory networks to support a client's healing process

Alison is a licensed clinical social worker who lives in Bloomington, IN and owns her own private practice, Empower Healing.

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 and consultant, advanced trainer, Basic Training facilitator, and EMDR Basic Training trainer-in-training with Trauma Therapist Institute.

In consultation, Alison likes to meet the consultee where they are at and support helping the consultee become embodied in the work they are doing and lean into their own internal guide as she supports growth in EMDR skills and Somatic Therapy through openness, curiosity, and compassion.