(Course starts Oct. 2; early bird special ends Monday, August 31)
Anatomy, physiology, and mutual aid for trauma therapists and embodiment educators
Friends, the time has come for me to create a post that is 100% marketing. If you have read past the header, you may be interested! If you don’t like watching videos, feel free to read the transcript below (which I did veer off from a little).
Thanks for being a reader here on the blog and I will be returning with more educational content in a couple of weeks!
This course brings somatic educators and trauma therapists of all stripes together:
- For mutual aid.
- To build the skills necessary for undoing dissociation one delicate thread at a time.
- To apply the principles of the Alexander Technique to study of and practice with the 12 cranial nerves that help us orient in this world.
- To restore our own sensory appreciation as a foundational tool for working with others
The price we pay when we dissociate from sensory awareness:
When we stop feeling, we suffer dissociation. It’s a protective state for any living organism, intended to facilitate pause, protection and healing. To undo it is a delicate, nuanced activity. The course will give anyone interested in this process a whole new toolbox for a successful restoration of feeling.
Because I’m so excited about that, I want to be clear about:
WHO:
Somatic educators, therapists, and counselors who are on the front line of trauma treatment and education.
WHY:
To center those who have been most traumatized and facilitate their healing.
WHY THE ALEXANDER TECHNIQUE?
Because it facilitates conscious agency in ones body, and because it restores sensory appreciation, healthy coordination, and freedom of movement.
WHY THE CRANIAL NERVES?
Because they are responsible for how we orient ourselves in the world, and to a large extent all of our reactions to what we experience: voluntary, involuntary, autonomic, sympathetic and parasympathetic….and everything in between.
Each nerve links orienting organs of our head (nose, eyes, mouth and tongue, vestibular and auditory organs) with our brain and body, guiding us in our relationship with ourselves, others, and our environment. These nerves – including the vagus and the vestibulochochlear nerve – are the lingua franca of trauma treatment.
In fact, every current protocol for treating trauma uses more than one cranial nerve.
However, there is a problem in the education around those protocols, because they all assume that you can separate out the nerve or part of the brain you want to work with.
The truth is you cannot isolate or treat one part of the nervous system. That’s why it’s called a system! When you stimulate one part of this system, all the other parts respond. We need to understand the whole system to fully appreciate it’s brilliance and access it’s healing powers.
Scientific theory seems to trump plain old anatomy, physiology, and somatic experience most of the time. I have a problem with that, and I suspect you might be having one too. The learning itself is all top down, and that’s affecting how the protocols are actually applied in real life.
The Alexander Technique is the “plug in” that helps solve this problem.
WHAT:
What you will get:
- A total of 18 practice hours: 8 week course, 2 hours per week; 1 private session; and 1 free open class.
- A 145+ page document with information and imagery supporting the class content. It’s basically a book!
- Facilitated sharing and discussion with like-minded colleagues.
Most 2 hour classes goes like this:
- 5 minutes Alexander Technique guided practice to fully arrive
- 20 – 30 minutes (estimated) of visuals and information
- 30 minutes of long form guided practice exploring each concept or nerve
- 5 minutes of rest/digest/personal reflection
- 30 – 45 minutes sharing reflections, answering questions, exploring further
- 5 minutes Alexander Technique practice to close
There are two whole classes built into the structure of the course for review, long-form practice with all the nerves learned so far, and explication of the AT principles in context.
Here is the curriculum:
Week 1: intro to the central nervous system; cranial nerves 0 and : breathing and smell
Week 2: cranial nerves 2, 3 & 4; light reception, eye motion, vestibulo-ocular reflex
Week 3: cranial nerves 5 & 6; facial sensation, jaw/head motion, visual system integration, brainspotting
Week 4: review, practice, dialogue
Week 5: cranial nerves 7 & 8; facial expression, vestibulocochlear system integration, DBR and “The Where Self”
Week 6: cranial nerves 9 & 10; befriending autonomic activity, breathing, swallowing
Week 7: cranial nerves 11 & 12; Flexion and rotation of head, relation of head motion to whole body mobility, integrating 4 nerves of the tongue, sound and speech
Week 8: review, practice moving through cranial nerves 0 – 12 in sequence, reflections
HOW:
We’ll experientially map all 12 cranial nerves. Grounding ourselves in our own bodies with Alexander Technique practice first, we will learn basic facts and look at imagery that illustrates those facts.
Then, we will utilize my special brand of body mapping to create a truly embodied understanding of the anatomy and physiology.
You will, as a matter of course, learn and use the 3 main principles of the AT: awareness, inhibition, and direction, as tools to enhance personal agency and integrate sensation, emotion, and thought as you learn and enjoy dialogue with like minded colleagues.
This course will provide anatomical foundations for any trauma protocol you have learned, especially grounding you in the foundation of graviception, which is at the core of the AT, and an essential element of “safe and sound” protocols.
Once a person knows where they are in space, and where the support of the earth is, you can begin to bring in all the wonderfully nuanced senses that will guide you in the healing process. And if one way in doesn’t work – after this course – you will have 11 other resources to play with.
GO HERE TO GET THE EARLY BIRD SPECIAL.
GO HERE TO BOOK A 15 MINUTE CONVERSATION.