Introduction Workshops
Workshop Dates
(Click on a workshop for more details)
This two-day Introduction is oriented to participants of diverse backgrounds and will offer skills and tools they can use immediately in their personal and professional lives to support self-regulation and to reduce the symptoms of a dysregulated nervous system. Skills will be built progressively through experiential exercises, demos, and theory to provide a safe toolbox for working with dysregulation.
Somatic Experiencing® offers a new and hopeful vision of trauma. It views the human animal as a unique being, endowed with an instinctual capacity to heal as well as an intellectual spirit to harness this innate capacity. It asks and answers an intriguing question why are animals in the wild, though threatened routinely, rarely traumatized? By understanding the dynamics that make wild animals virtually "immune" to traumatic symptoms, the mystery of human trauma is revealed.
Somatic Experiencing is a naturalistic approach to the resolution of post-traumatic stress. It is based on the observation that animals in the wild manage to regulate and neutralize the high levels of stress that they often experience without suffering the long term debilitating affects that humans in similar threatening situations often experience.
The workshop will be a combination of theory, lecture and experiential exercises, and will cover the following topics
Definition of trauma from an SE perspective
What is SE and why is it different from other therapies?
The key concepts and foundational principles of SE
The Autonomic Nervous System and the physiological bridge to psychology
Resilience and self-regulation
Core skills and practice in groups
Demos and videos
Experiential exercises
Adequate time will be allowed for questions.
For those wishing to take their studies of SE further, this Introduction fills the requirement for acceptance in most SE trainings worldwide. A pdf of Giselle’s powerpoint will be emailed to all students after the workshop to allow them to focus on the embodiment of the skills during the class. Come wearing comfortable clothing, and bring your willingness to explore!
