This workshop is designed for psychotherapists, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, and allied professionals who want to learn about somatic approaches to trauma treatment.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy integrates cognitive and somatic interventions in the treatment of trauma, emphasizing body awareness,practicing new actions and building somatic resources.

Key components of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy will be illustrated using videotaped excerpts of sessions with traumatized individuals and brief experiential exercises: uncoupling trauma-based emotions from body sensations; promoting collaboration between client and therapist; teaching mindfulness; building somatic resources; and developing a somatic sense of self. Since clients with complex trauma can be easily triggered by interventions that access the body too quickly, attention will be given to pacing, boundaries, and safe, gradual re-connection with the body.

The videotapes show how to help clients discover and describe how past traumatic experiences are affecting their current bodily experience--which in turn contributes to difficult emotions and beliefs--and also show how to integrate cognitive and somatic interventions to change the meaning of traumatic event(s) and regulate both emotions and arousal.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is conducted within a phase-oriented treatment approach and this presentation will address interventions for all three phases: stabilization and symptom reduction, work with traumatic memory, and re-integration.

in the Whitfield Center (Whitfield is bldg # 3)

Registration: $135 if paid by 9/15/08, $150 thereafter. Please contact Lawrence Nieters, Ph.D. to register.

Local Contact: Lawrence Nieters, Ph.D. at 913-469-6069 or by email at lnieters@juno.com