Somatic Therapy 101 — Core Tools for Body Based Healing

Somatic Therapy 101 — Core Tools for Body Based Healing

Somatic Therapy 101 — Core Tools for Body Based Healing.
This course introduces core principles and skills of a somatic approach to growth and transformation. Topics include sensory awareness, embodied meaning-making, nonverbal communication, and working with movement impulses. Participants will develop key practitioner capacities such as staying in direct experience, tracking movement, practicing kinesthetic empathy, and finding embodied integrity. Through experiential exercises, participants will embody the material and develop foundational skills, then learn strategies for integrating this approach into their professional practice.

Learning Outcomes & Professional Benefits

Foundational topics: Sensory awareness; embodied meaning-making; nonverbal communication; working with movement impulses; integrating embodied experience with action.

Practitioner capacities: Staying in direct experience; oscillating attention; tracking micro and macro movement; practicing kinesthetic empathy; expanding somatic bandwidth; finding embodied integrity as a practitioner.

Who This Is For

Practitioners looking to integrate a somatic approach into an existing professional practice. Foundational/introductory level ("101").

Faculty

Christine Caldwell (Dr.)

Christine Caldwell (Dr.)

Dr. Christine Caldwell is the founder of and professor emeritus in the Somatic Counseling Program at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She lectures and trains internationally, and has authored four books: Getting Our Bodies Back, Getting In Touch, The Body and Oppression, and Bodyfulness. She offers trainings in somatic psychotherapy with specializations in addictions, play behavior, movement sequencing, therapist training, scientific inquiry, and bodily authority.

Rae Johnson (Dr.)

Rae Johnson (Dr.)


Rae Johnson, PhD, RSMT, BCC (they/them) is a board-certified coach, somatic movement therapist, and scholar/activist working at the intersections of embodiment and social justice. A professor of somatic psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, Rae helped develop the first Embodied Social Justice Certificate, bringing together hundreds of practitioners to shape this emerging field. Rae is the author of several books, including Embodied Social Justice (Routledge, 2018) and Embodied Activism (North Atlantic Books, 2023).