Trauma Treatment Course

Somatic Therapy

Supporting Healing Through the Body-Mind Connection

Trainer: Alison Leslie

 Available on-demand

Join us for an immersive two-day event led by Alison Leslie, LCSW, SEP, where you’ll be guided through the body’s intricate journey with trauma and healing. Somatic Therapy taps into the body’s deep wisdom, helping both therapists and clients move through trauma in ways that talking alone can’t reach. This workshop is crafted to engage your curiosity and support your practice with tangible techniques to help clients safely reconnect with their bodies.

Somatic Therapy isn’t just about understanding trauma; it’s about experiencing transformation through the body. This course encourages you to follow the rhythm of your body’s story—its sensations, boundaries, and need for safety. Through guided exercises and discussions, you’ll learn how to witness the body’s signals, support co-regulation, and harness the power of movement to bring clients back to balance.

Throughout this event, we’ll dive into concepts like Polyvagal Theory and the Threat Response Cycle, grounding them in practical, body-centered exercises. You’ll gain insights into how the nervous system responds to trauma, how “felt sense” shows up in the body, and how to use these observations to foster healing. Be prepared to see somatic work in action and discover new ways to help clients safely move through difficult experiences.

This experience is not only informative but transformative. Alison’s approach will help you feel the profound shifts that somatic work brings, giving you the tools to support your clients in reconnecting with a sense of safety, agency, and resilience. Join us, and step into the journey of somatic healing.

COURSE DETAILS

This two-day intensive workshop provides a deep dive into the somatic approach to trauma therapy, blending theory with experiential practices that you can immediately bring to your sessions. We’ll begin with the history and evolution of somatic therapy, from early concepts like “Character Armor” by Willeheim Reich to Peter Levine’s influential work on trauma and neurobiology. Understanding these roots gives context to how and why the body holds trauma—and how somatic methods can release it.

One core focus of the course is on trauma’s physical impact and how somatic therapy uniquely addresses it. Trauma often shows up as chronic physical tension, a loss of connection, or a feeling of disassociation. We’ll cover the Threat Response Cycle, helping you recognize when and where trauma gets “stuck” in the body. Through somatic exercises, we’ll explore ways to bring clients back into a balanced state, working through concepts like the Trauma Vortex and Counter Vortex to discharge lingering trauma safely.

Our exploration of Polyvagal Theory will deepen your understanding of how clients’ nervous systems respond to safety and threat. We’ll discuss the body’s intricate, involuntary reactions to trauma, including the ventral vagal, sympathetic, and dorsal circuits, and look at how these states shape the mind-body connection. You’ll learn techniques for identifying these responses in clients and tools for guiding them toward a place of safety and social engagement.

The hands-on portion of the course introduces practical somatic techniques, including boundary-setting, co-regulation exercises, and grounding methods. We’ll guide you through practices that strengthen resilience in both the therapist and client, like using the “Felt Sense” approach to understand internal cues and safely move through trauma. With these techniques, you’ll be able to hold space for clients as they navigate their own healing paths and reconnect with their bodies in powerful, new ways.

ABOUT YOUR TRAINER, ALISON LESLIE

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.