Content 

Foundations in Feminist Somatics is a full-day workshop that aims to build essential skills and knowledge for gendered violence workers interested in embodiment and somatics. Developed and delivered with Susan Stark, it provides an introduction, as well as practical tools to support counsellors to increase their capacity and confidence in integrating somatic frameworks within 1-on-1 sessions. At its core, this workshop provides a framework for authentic, co-created therapeutic change with the aim of cultivating the agency of victim-survivors. 

Drawing from Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and Politicised Somatics, this workshop contextualises somatics within an explicitly intersectional feminist framework.

Through experiential learning and interactive activities, Foundations in Feminist Somatics integrally supports practitioners to bring awareness to and inhabit their own nervous systems and body-minds as a way of resourcing the healing of victim-survivors.

Participants will gain:

• ~ A range of somatic practices relevant to Stage-1 trauma recovery (safety and stabilisation) including tools for: grounding, centring, orienting, resourcing and tracking
• ~ Somatic techniques for navigating use-of-self, boundary-work and the relational field
• ~ An understanding of vicarious trauma from a somatic framework, as well as embodiment practices for self-care

Assumed Knowledge

This training is designed for practitioners with an interest and desire to work with bodies (including our own). It assumes participants bring a basic knowledge of trauma, its embodied impacts, polyvagal theory and 3-stage trauma recovery.

This training is ideal for folks who may have some experience with embodiment (such as familiarity with yoga, breathwork or movement) but are looking to expand their skills in noticing and intentionally regulating activation and deactivation cycles in your own nervous system and well as tracking, staying with and sequencing sensations in your body.

Facilitation

We adopt an experiential, somatic and interactive learning approach. This training invites participants onto their learning edges - to practice, play and begin to embody the ideas and concepts through ourselves first.

This learning approach is grounded in the principle of embodied consent. Attendees are encouraged to engage with the training by bringing full awareness to their own capacity and desire to participate. The skills that allow full, authentic choice is cultivated throughout the workshop.