We are Shapeshifters
and Storytellers:
The brave return to learning and creatively re-imagining life.
Phase 3 Training Module
Somatic Psychotherapeutics & Trauma Work
for Breathwork Facilitators
We are Shapeshifters and Storytellers:
The brave return to learning and re-imagining life.
160 hours (80 contact hours)
Entrance into Phase 3 training modules with Nūma Somatics
requires the following prerequisites:
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Completion of Nūma Breathwork Phase 2 (or equivalent course(s) with another breathwork training program - 100 hours minimum training)
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Training Application completed and accepted (if entering from a different training program)
From our point of view, everyone is fundamentally a shapeshifter. We are quite literally built to learn from and adapt to our experiences and gradually evolve an ever more elegant and sophisticated capacity to interact with and navigate our environment and relationships. Repetitive disruptions within our human development and acute experiences of trauma impair and interrupt these natural, fluid learning processes. They convince us, even at the level of our cellular body, that we need to be a particular way – to take on particular shapes - to be safe enough, to be cared for, to be loved, or to belong. We reactively hold to these particular ways of being and lose track of our innate capacity for change. Why would we want to learn something new when our past learning experiences were painful?
For many people, the threshold marking the return to learning and changing appears when their resistance to change becomes more distressing or uncomfortable within a changing environment than the return to learning and changing. Learning is a vibrant living process that eventually grows around and through the fragile rigidity of old, decaying, untenable forms. Learning is life challenging, breaking through and growing beyond domestication and colonization. Learning is a return to untamed potential. Learning, truly curious, vulnerable, brave learning is the return of the wild.
In this module, we take a deep look at one of the main impairments to learning; trauma. Trauma is a huge catch word in recent years and its rippling and pervasive personal, familial, and broader systemic affects are being increasingly recognized and studied. Everyone has been impacted by some degree and type of trauma. For some, it can be utterly devastating.
While conscious breathwork has the powerful capacity to evoke the spontaneous processing and renegotiation of certain trauma responses, it also has the capacity to be overly activating and even fortifying for the trauma response when utilized in inappropriate ways or circumstances. For that reason, we will temporarily set aside the breathwork and turn toward a mindful style of facilitation that strategically utilizes a somatic, relational therapeutic approach to safely renegotiate our clients’ painful past learning experiences and bravely imagine and embody new possibilities. Our clients begin to reimagine the stories of their lives as they learn and heal.
Storytelling of old wasn’t only for amusement or passing time… it was a living communication that embodied the wisdom and mystery of the ages. The songs and myths echoing on from human to human carried the aches and pains, sorrows and heartbreaks, courage and curiosity, and pleasures and deep loves of this blood and bone human-spirited experience. Many of us have disconnected from being cocreators within these living stories but nonetheless, we are still storytellers. We tell ourselves stories every day. We live and die by these stories. The question is what stories are we telling ourselves, what consequence do they have on our lives, and how can we creatively re-imagine them when appropriate?
It takes a combination of cultivated safety and bravery to regenerate our capacity for shapeshifting and cocreative storytelling. After we have expanded our capacities, as facilitators, to tend to our clients needs and foster a deepening of safety within our therapeutic practice we can then learn how to be more evocative for particular types of experiences when it may serve the clients needs. Doing so with an experimental mindset, our investigations with clients can sensitively and safely be accelerated. In this training, we will learn to curiously experiment with thought and belief, affect, behavior, gesture, posture, sensation, relational interaction, boundaries and more to carefully work with a broader array of client presentations. We will also look at numerous methods for effective integration of the transformation that occurs within our client sessions.
Once we've developed our new skill sets, we will then integrate them with our breathwork facilitation and learn how we may reimagine our breathwork practice through this trauma-informed lens.
Within this level you will:
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learn an elegant therapeutic process model to expand your effectiveness and scope of practice
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learn how to incorporate an increasing variety of somatic psychotherapeutic theories, principles, and practices into your facilitation
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study more about the nervous systems role in shock trauma and more complex versions of PTSD
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increase your capacity to recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma, improving the trauma sensitivity of your facilitation
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develop the capacity to recognize the signs and symptoms of defensive mobilization and immobilization responses
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deepen your ability to track a client's nervous system and respond accordingly to support them in staying within their "window of tolerance"
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continue fostering respectful, learning-based therapeutic relationships with clientele as you enhance your capacity to listen, communicate, and experiment effectively for therapeutic purposes
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learn methods to safely, gently, and slowly bring awareness to attachment disruptions, embodied trauma, and shame and support its renegotiation
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expand your understanding of resourcing and the tools and techniques that can be shared with clients to support their self-regulation
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learn the difference between emergency methods to stabilize someone experiencing a trauma response versus supporting the processing of trauma while a client is within their "window of tolerance"
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cultivate the therapeutic usage of mindfulness and a wide variety of other tools and practices such as:
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contact statements and acknowledgements
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affirmations, inquiries, and probes
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simple movement practices, positional changes, and take overs
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alternative breathing practices and vocal toning
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proximity and boundaries explorations
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enhance your capacity to mindfully navigate your clients' processing of trauma via sensitive, experimental conversation both with and without breathwork
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explore the nuances of transformation and develop more ways to support the integration of new possibilities, insights, somatic shifts, and behaviors
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cultivate the capacity to be directive without compromising sensitive listening or the spirit of experimentation
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develop a wide variety of tools and practices
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personally receive these practices so that you can then utilize them from a place of experience with clients.
Testimonial
I came to the training with a clear recognition that I was at an edge in relation to the wounding of (but not limited to) this lifetime. Prior to the training, I didn't feel ready/ equipped to explore it. It hurt too much. Whatever shifted in the experiences of our time together has allowed the lid to come off. It sucks. It's glorious. I feel SO supported, both by seen and unseen forces. I couldn't and wouldn't ask for it to be any other way, but ffffffffffpppptptptptttt it is thick and icky. Amidst it all, I feel immense gratitude as I know it is what I am here to do - clearly because here it is. Deep gratitude for the part your facilitators have played.
- Heather M, Ottawa
Upcoming Trainings
The total hours of training (160 hours) include the in-person or online training (80 contact hours) plus 80 hours of web study meetings, home studies, and practicum work.
To receive a certificate of completion for your Phase 3 Somatic Psychotherapeutics & Trauma Work, at least 90% of the live training must be attended and all web meetings, home studies, and practicum must be completed.
Testimonial
This work moves me at a soul level and I am so grateful to have you as a teachers/facilitators/ navigators. I feel so lucky to have found Nūma Somatics. The training is top notch, I wouldn't change a thing. The facilitators are an amazing team and I so appreciate how you hold space for us all. Thank you for this last session - it just keeps getting better & better.
- Wendy A, Courtney