Touch, Embodiment and Trauma
Three-part course
with Steve Haines
Touch is the sense we rely on most for reality.
This course shows why connecting to the body is so helpful in dealing with trauma.
Through skills of relational touch we can help our clients find wholeness and safety again.
In this three-part course you will learn:
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How trauma is rooted in overactive protective physiological reflexes, survival gestures locked in our body
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Why connecting to the body is useful in trauma
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What embodiment is
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The connection between consciousness, cognition and the body
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How touch can help clients recover from flashbacks and anxiety
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About different models of how the mind and the body work together
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About new modes of sensing, moving, feeling and touching
COURSE CONTENT
PART I
What is Embodiment?
- Mind body unity
- Definitions of embodiment
- Why movement and spatial thinking is so important to consciousness
- Embodied Cognition and Enactivism
- Recent, exciting models from philosophy
- ‘A lived body that is inseparable from the world’
- Challenges to embodiment
- Not all yoga and meditation practices point to the body
- Non-duality and transpersonal self (‘Self’) models can encourage disidentifying from the body
- The role of changing beliefs – its complex!
PART II
The Power of Touch
- The power of touch
- Babies need touch to thrive
- Old people fare worse without touch
- Touch is the sense we rely on most for reality
- Interoception, touching inwards and touching outwards
- How touch works
- Interoception is fundamental to our sense of self
- Limits of touch
- Physical therapy does not work in the way we have been taught
- We cant reliably diagnose by touch
- We can’t change tissues by primarily locally focused touch
- Relational Touch – a new paradigm
- Creating safety
- Meeting the whole person
- Slow touch
PART III
Using Touch and Embodiment to Help Heal Trauma
- What is Trauma?
- Anything that overwhelms our resources
- We can get stuck in protective reflexes
- Losing Contact
- ‘Dissociation is the essence of trauma’
- Absent, numb bodies
- Negotiating contact
- There is a ‘touch taboo’ in talking therapies
- When touch is terrifying
- Simple principles to support embodiment
- Using touch safely
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Watch Course Introduction
BUY THIS COURSE
Steve Haines has been a chiropracter for over two decades and teaches TRE and Cranial work all over the world. He is the co-author of ‘Cranial Intelligence’ and author of the short graphic books ‘Pain Is Really Strange’ and ‘Trauma Is Really Strange’. Understanding the science of pain and trauma has transformed his approach to healing.
Join Steve as he discusses embodied cognition, an approach that celebrates that we are embedded in a the world. An approach where consciousness is a process that emerges only through the engagement of body in our environment.
If you have any questions regarding this course, please contact us.
