This class examines how stored trauma dysregulates the autonomic nervous system, shaping survival responses, health outcomes, and psychological diagnoses.

• Neuroception of danger and life threat: Animal survival responses.

• The autonomic impact of trauma on physical health.

• The link between traumatic stress, autonomic nervous system dysregulation, and various DSM diagnoses.

• A holistic definition of trauma.

• Window of capacity as a model for mapping the autonomic nervous system.

This class explores how autonomic nervous system states shape perception and behavior, offering insights into regulation, dissociation, and integrative healing.

• The three main branches of the autonomic nervous system.

• Blended autonomic nervous system states.

• Common autonomic nervous system loops.

• How the state of your autonomic nervous system drives your story of the world.

• Combining Structural Dissociation of the Personality Theory with Parts work and trauma responses.

This class examines the neurobiological necessity of co-regulation, its role in the social engagement system, and the impact of trauma on relational safety and survival strategies.

• The cranial nerves that drive the social engagement system.

• How trauma impacts functioning of the social engagement system.

• Co-regulation as a survival imperative.

• What happens in the absence of co-regulation from a self-regulated caregiver?

• The importance of contextualizing behaviors as survival strategies.

We unpack the intersection of somatics, trauma, power, and social justice.

• What is neuroception?

• The distinction between fawning, appeasement, freeze, and dorsal vagal shutdown.

• The dynamics of domination and subordination in all forms of trauma.

• Recognizing the impact of historical, systemic, structural, institutional trauma on the present day.

• Decolonizing psychotherapy through engaging in anti-oppressive practices.

This class explores the distinction between safety and felt safeness, exploring orienting, fidgeting, and intellectual defenses as adaptive strategies for nervous system regulation.

• Orienting to our environment through the eyes, and then through the body.

• Softening the eyes - passively and actively - to reset the vagus nerve.

• Working with rising sympathetic energy of anxiousness: recognizing and resourcing the fidget response.

• Depathologizing and destigmatizing intellectual defenses: the find response as a pleasurable evolutionarily adaptive drive gone haywire due to traumatic stress.

This class explores dissociativeness and dorsal vagal dissociation, offering breath and somatic techniques to support self-regulation, co-regulation, and reconnect with vitality.

• Breath and non-breath techniques for self-regulation.

• Working with fright (the attachment cry response).

• Working with low-grade dissociativeness.

• Helping someone to come out of dorsal vagal dissociation.

This class explores the sensory patterns that exist at the confluence of trauma and neurodivergence, provides nuance in our healing approach through phase-oriented healing, and offers somatic techniques for tension release.

• An overview of sensory seeking, sensory avoidance, that arises due to disrupted pediatric neurodevelopment.

• How do I know what to do when? Resourcing trauma responses vs re-processing traumatic memories within a phase-oriented approach to healing.

• Releasing tension in the neck, shoulders, hips and diaphragm.

In this class, we will cover various somatic techniques to compassionately resource the sympathetic life force energies of flight, fight and freeze.

• Experiential, somatic techniques for resourcing the energies of flight, fight and frozenness.

In this class, we explore the interactive dynamics of alcoholic, dysfunctional, and under-resourced families which results in the formation of unmet developmental needs and adaptive survival strategies.

• Core physical and emotional dependency needs.

• Family systems within which unmet dependency needs are more likely to arise.

• The impact of unmet dependency needs upon character formation, self-organization, and the nervous system.

• Common behavioral and relational adaptations.

• The impact of the missing experiences of development.

• Alternative adaptive strategies.

Many of us needed to be silent in order to survive. Many of us learned that there was no one there. This class explores the sequalae of disrupted early attachment experiences of withholding the voice upon the neuromuscular patterns and character structures.

• The developmental actions of attachment (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen).

• The impact of trauma upon the development of attachment styles.

• A history of body-based psychotherapies.

• How our attachment history reflects in the neuromuscular-skeletal patterns of the body and informs the development of character structures.

• When caregivers are frightened and/or frightening: working with a truncated attachment cry (oral collapse and oral armoring).

In order to maintain a connection with the caregivers in our early lives, many of us had to learn to inhibit or have fearful expressions to certain developmental actions of attachment - pushing, reaching, grasping, pulling, and having. These actions of attachment form the basis for embodied asking, receiving, giving, and letting go that underscores our worthiness in our relationships.

• Trauma as over-coupled and under-coupled sensory fragments.

• Explore truncated developmental actions of attachment to gain insight into the missing relational experiences that carry forth into current relationships.

• Explore the somaticization of the truncated attachment cry by going to The Alien Planet of No Support.

• Reshaping the autonomic nervous system with self-gestures of support.

In order to survive neglectful and/or threatening early childhood environments, many children needed to adapt by creating a nourishment barrier.

• Discuss Pierre Janet’s psychology of action and Ron Kurtz’s sensitivity cycle and barriers to effective action.

• Appreciate the role and function of the nourishment barrier in order to survive unpleasant / unpredictable / threatening environments.

• Reshape the autonomic nervous system with small sips of nourishment and dignity.