A Workshop with Pat Ogden

Pat Ogden is an internationally renowned psychotherapist and the creator of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy method, a body-oriented therapy technique for trauma and attachment. Join Dr. Odgen for an in-depth workshop exploring how to work with your clients’ nervous systems to heal trauma and dissociation. Dr. Ogden shares insights and tools for therapeutic professionals including the challenges, risks, and rewards of working somatically with dissociative clients, how to introduce body psychotherapy to clients, internal parts work, and interventions to support those with body phobias.  

In this workshop Dr. Ogden dives into the three major influences on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy’s approach to dissociation and parts work and shares practical, easy to implement somatic interventions designed to initiate change in entrenched patterns. Participants explore the use of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy’s “directed mindfulness” to mitigate triggering when working with the body and to capitalize on neuroplasticity to develop new neural pathways. 

This interactive workshop includes lectures and presentations, question and answer portions, video demonstrations of interventions, break out groups, and brief experiential exercises. Participants also receive worksheets to use with their dissociative clients to support therapeutic goals related to the workshop’s topics. 

Walk away with a new perspective on how simple techniques that target the body can begin to open the door to change even for the most dissociative clients. 

Teachings are appropriate for healthcare professionals as well as the general public. Healthcare professionals will be able to incorporate the tools and practices offered in this program in ways beneficial to clients or patients.


Pat Ogden, PhD, (she/her), is a pioneer in somatic psychology, the creator of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy method, and founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute. Dr. Ogden is a clinician, consultant, international lecturer and the first author of two groundbreaking books in somatic psychology: Trauma and the Body: A Sensorimotor Approach to Psychotherapy and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment (2015). Her third book, The Pocket Guide to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy in Context, advocates for an anti-racist perspective in psychotherapy practice. Her current interests include couple therapy, child and family therapy, social justice, diversity, inclusion, consciousness, and the philosophical/spiritual principles that underlie her work. 

Learning Objectives: By the end of this course, participants will be able to: 

1. Discuss three risks of using body interventions with dissociative clients

2. Describe two ways to use directed mindfulness to support internal communication among parts

3. Explain three interventions that use posture, movement and self-touch to integrate parts of the self

4. Describe three interventions to address the phobia of the body

5. List one challenge and one benefit of exploring positive memory with dissociative clients

6. Discuss one pitfall and one benefit of using the intervention of the client’s self-touch  

7. Apply therapeutic experiments to work with internal parts of the self in session 

8. Assess the role of movement to facilitate communication between internal parts of the self

9. Assess the value of body-based homework to support therapeutic gains  

10. Analyze the risks and rewards of using posture as an intervention for clients with complex trauma 

11. Apply two interventions to help clients sense the body to improve clinical outcome 

Information on Continuing Education Credit for Health Professionals 

10 APA/BBS CEUs are available for an additional fee of $60. After you register for the workshop, your confirmation email from Eventbrite will contain a link to the site where you can purchase the CEUs from our co-sponsor, Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA). CEUs may be purchased at any time before the workshop, but only those who have purchased in advance will receive the credits. See below for details. 

• CEUs for psychologists are provided by the Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA) which is co-sponsoring this program. The Spiritual Competency Academy is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. Spiritual Competency Academy maintains responsibility for this program and its content.
• The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts CEUs for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of Continuing Education by the American Psychological Association.
• LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFTs, and other mental health professionals from states other than California need to check with their state licensing board as to whether or not they accept programs offered by approved sponsors of Continuing Education by the American Psychological Association.
• SCA is approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing (BRN Provider CEP16887) for licensed nurses in California. RNs must retain their certificate of attendance for 4 years after the course concludes.
• For questions about completing the CE evaluation materials for this course, as well as receiving your Certificate of Attendance, contact CIIS Public Programs at publicprograms@ciis.edu. For other questions about CEUs, visit www.spiritualcompetencyadacemy.com online or contact Spiritual Competency Academy at info@spiritualcompetencyacademy.com.