BEGINNING:
Usually consists of three 4-day seminars.

• Understand the physiological basis of trauma.
• Learn about containment, resourcing and empowerment.
• Study tracking skills, titration and establishing continuity through the felt sense.
• Practice establishing defensive orienting responses, completion and discharge.
• Explore coupling dynamics, the elements of internal experience (SIBAM), and integrating experiential polarities, in order to restore creative self-regulation.
• Be able to identify, normalize, and stabilize traumatic reactions.
• Attain skills to avoid pitfalls of re-traumatization and false memory.
• Learn to uncouple fear from immobility; re-establish and maintain healthy boundaries.
• Investigate the transformative qualities of trauma.
• Integrate trauma work into ongoing therapy.
• Acquire short-term solutions to acute and chronic symptoms.

INTERMEDIATE:
Usually consists of three 4-day seminars. Examine the different categories and causes of traumatic shock and approaches to treating each case including:

• Global High Intensity Trauma i.e. surgery, electrocution, hallucinogens, drowning, suffocation, strangulation, fetal distress, traumatic birth, intrauterine stress, and invasive medical procedures in utero.
• Inescapable Attack i.e. by wild animals, rape, war, bombings, physical abuse, mugging, incest, molestation.
• Physical Injury i.e. surgery, anesthesia, burns, poisoning, hospitalizations, stabbing, gunshot wounds.
• Failure of Physical Defense i.e. falls, high impact accidents, head injury.
• Emotional Trauma i.e. severe neglect and abandonment, severe loss, ongoing abuse.
• Natural Disasters i.e. earthquakes, fires, tornadoes, floods, social dislocation from the natural world and community.
• Horror i.e. seeing an accident (especially with blood, gore), watching someone else be abused, raped, killed or tortured, killing or hurting someone yourself.
• Torture and Ritual Abuse i.e. war torture, repeated rape in war, concentration camp, and systematic abuse (sometimes with the person drugged).

ADVANCED:
Usually consists of two 6-day seminars.

• Learn about the relationship of trauma to various clinical syndromes.
• Further integrate SE theory and practice into the specialty area of the therapist.
• SE bodywork in working with the different categories of trauma.
• Application of research in the psychophysiology of trauma.
• The ‘art’ of therapy.
• Special topics including work with children and infants.

Panic, Biology, and Reason: Giving the Body Its Due
Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. / Director of the Foundation for Human Enrichment

The Neurophysiology of Dissociation and Chronic Disease
Trauma Information Pages, (2001)
Robert C. Scaer

Dr. Levine Thesis pages 1-44
Peter A. Levine, Ph.D. / Director of the Foundation for Human Enrichment

NOTE: This certification in Somatic Experiencing® is not a license to practice bodywork or psychotherapy.
Such licensing is governed by the appropriate state agencies.