SOMATIC SKILLS TRAINING
Somatic Skills Training I & II Certificate Program
Who This Training Is For
This training is designed for:
Licensed therapists, social workers, and psychologists of all stripes who have some or no somatics training and want to get some foundational skills.
Coaches and counselors interested in deepening their somatic approaches, embodied presence, and attunement skills.
Participants do not need prior somatic training, though familiarity with trauma-informed care is helpful. Participants with prior somatic training who are drawn to this curriculum are welcome as well.
This is an opportunity to gather, learn, and practice in-person with other local therapists, build meaningful connections, and have a break from the isolation of solo practice.
16 Continuing Education Units (CEUs) will be offered for each module (SST I & II)
Overview
This two-part Somatic Skills Training (SST) is an experiential, in-person training & certification for therapists and coaches who want to expand their capacity to work skillfully with the body, emotional processes, and energetic experience in therapeutic and healing contexts. This training emphasizes direct experience, clinical application, and integration into real-world therapeutic practice.
While many therapists are starting to understand the importance of the body in trauma and emotional processing, it can be difficult to know how to practically and ethically integrate body awareness and embodiment practice into sessions beyond simply asking clients “where do you feel that in your body?”
This training, designed for providers who have some or no Somatics education and want to get some foundational skills, offers concrete skills, experiential learning, and practice labs to help participants develop greater confidence working with embodiment, nervous system regulation, and relational attunement.
Therapists and coaches will learn how to use their own embodied awareness as a clinical and relational tool, deepen their capacity for attunement (and therefore effectiveness), and support clients in accessing the intelligence of their own body. This will help clients learn to trust their body more and expand their capacity to work with activation.
Led by two long-time somatic therapists specializing in trauma, SST integrates perspectives & practices from various somatic modalities (Somatic Experiencing, Barbara Brennan School of Healing, the Realization Process, Body-Mind Centering, Somatic Abolitionism, relational therapies (attachment, IFS), Politicized Somatics (Stacy Haines/generative somatics, AMB, Prentis Hemphill, Kai Cheng Thom) and contemplative traditions.
Em and Lis warmly welcome you to the 2026 SST cohort! Our time together will be deeply meaningful <3
Learn more about Em in the About Me page of this website
Learn more about Lisa here: http://www.lisanewell.com
Training Format
Two separate 3-day modules:
Somatic Skills Training I: Foundations
May 29–31, 2026
Friday: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Saturday: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday: 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Somatic Skills Training II: Complexities
November 13–15, 2026
Friday: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Saturday: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday: 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Participants may take SST1 as a standalone experience. SSTI is a prerequisite for SST2, which builds upon SST1 skills.
To support integration and continued learning, additional Practice Labs will be offered in between modules for participants who want continuity in practice and supervision.
Core Training Themes
SST 1: Foundations
Topics
Attunement & Resonance
Emotional Processing
Spirituality, Non-Duality, & Somatics/shared field of consciousness
Overview of Topics and Practices
Use of self from a somatic foundation
Attunement to our own bodies as a primary tool for therapeutic space-holding
Managing your own responses/reactions somatically during real-time sessions (you get to exist!)
Interpreting and discerning your own body’s signals in sessions
Initiating, guiding, interrupting, checking in, allowing silence
Deepening trust in your clinical intuition
Tracking of client’s trauma responses using resonance and observation
What to look for, listen for, and sense for around nervous system activation and shut down
Tracking relational signals
Basic Nervous System stress responses education
Somatically attuned pacing and tracking capacity for integration
Somatic concepts and unpacking terms: What is tracking? Window of Tolerance? Somatics? Resonance? Titration?
Preventing/tending to risk of escalation and overwhelm
“Less is more/ Slow is fast”
Co-regulation
Balancing talk therapy techniques with somatic work
Emotional release and letting the Body take the lead:
Trusting the wisdom and intelligence of the body to show us what is needed for emotional release, relief, and integration, without putting expectations on our clients for how that should look
Learning how to guide people to let their body lead the session rather than their intellect, or our agenda
Exploring our own relationship to being with emotions
Power dynamics as they relate to somatics and the therapeutic relationship
What somatics can offer for how to work with power (therapist/client relationship and societal) in the session and how to help clients connect to their own inner source of power
Somatic work with clients around power in their own bodies
The “shared field of relating”
Spirituality, and the Unknowns that arise in sessions
Accessing meaning-making outside of cognitive frameworks
Helping clients make sense of some of the “magic” that shows up in somatic processes
We experience the following topics as primary lenses with which to practice somatics and trauma therapy, not separate ideas to consider. We name these with some potency in SST1 and will go much deeper SST 2:
Attunement- own bodies as primary tool for attunement
Emotional Processing
Power & Oppression
Identity-Based, Ancestral, & Collective Traumas
Sexuality & the Erotic
Spirituality, Non-Duality, & Somatics/shared field of consciousness
We strongly recommend everyone take SST2 to get to know yourself more deeply and therefore better serve our communities.
SST 2 Complexities:
Topics
Attunement- own bodies as primary tool for attunement
Emotional Processing
Power & Oppression
Identity-Based, Ancestral, & Collective Traumas
Sexuality & the Erotic
Spirituality, Non-Duality, & Somatics/shared field of consciousness
Overview of Topics and Practices
Integrating and Expanding the Attunement, Resonance, & Emotional Processing skills from SST1 into relational fields
Power, Identity, and Oppression in the Body
Understanding how social location, systemic oppression, and identity-based trauma shape nervous system patterns and embodied experience.
Identity-Based, Ancestral, and Collective Trauma
Exploring how trauma is held not only individually but collectively and across generations, and how somatic approaches can support healing.
IFS therapists will find this particularly helpful to integrate with processes of Legacy Burdens.
Sexuality and the Erotic
Developing greater comfort and clarity in working with erotic energy, desire, shame, and boundaries within somatic contexts.
Spirituality, Non-Duality, and Somatic Practice
Exploring the intersection of somatic awareness and contemplative traditions, including how embodied presence can support experiences of meaning, connection, and integration to lessen the need for escape measures.
Learning Objectives
Participants will learn to:
Develop greater awareness of their own embodied experience as a clinical tool
Support clients in tracking body sensations and nervous system states
Facilitate somatic grounding and regulation practices
Recognize patterns of activation, dissociation, and collapse
Work with emotional processing through sensation and movement
Apply trauma-informed principles to somatic interventions
Understand how identity and systemic forces shape embodied experience
Integrate somatic awareness into relational psychotherapy
Participants will receive 16 CEU’s upon completion of each SST I & II (32 CEU’s total for both)
Training Methods
This training emphasizes experiential learning and practical skill development.
Methods include:
Guided somatic practices and personal reflections
Partner and small group exercises
Demonstrations
Clinical discussion
Integration conversations
Movement practices
Participants will have opportunities to both practice somatic facilitation skills and experience them directly.
Practice Lab Opportunities
To support integration, participants will be encouraged to participate in two, 2-hour Somatic Practice Labs: one in July and one in September (dates TBD). Each lab will be led by either Lis or Em and will be $60 (or $100 for both).
Practice labs provide a structured space to:
Practice somatic facilitation skills
Receive feedback
Explore clinical questions and case consultations as they relate to Somatics
Deepen embodied awareness
Stay connected with our cohort
Prerequisite: completion of SST1: Foundations