Somatic Practices for Healing Trauma

The body has memories of trauma that can only be understood through the language of the Soma, or the body itself. Somatic Psychotherapy provides a powerful and direct path into the body’s wisdom and our innate capacities for healing.

Trauma activates the body’s nervous system and creates dysregulated emotional states as well as body symptoms that can be debilitating. The trauma activations that are experienced can range from subtle self-aggression to self-harm, and from emotional withdrawal or avoidance to self-sabotage. Through body-oriented mindfulness practices, we can learn how to regulate trauma-activated inner states. This experiential workshop guides participants through various somatic interventions in order to learn how to safely resource and metabolize traumatic experiences.

Join Somatic Psychotherapist and co-director of the Hakomi Institute Manuela Mischke-Reeds for an exploration of the body’s wisdom and the somatic practices for healing trauma. Manuela shares gentle movement, breathing, and sensing exercises that are grounded in trauma sensitive knowledge. Manuela illuminates how the body and nervous system can be changed by trauma, how unhealed trauma continues to inflict harm on the self and others, and how trauma is an illness of the heart, mind, and body.

Trauma is not just an individual story. It is deeply interwoven into the history of our families, our communities, and the broader intergenerational collective. Manuela integrates Dharmic viewpoints into ways of perceiving trauma as interconnected—not separate from our collective wisdom.

This workshop offers a mix of lecture, demonstration, and experiential learning through personal explorations and in small group exercises. Manuela integrates her work as a therapist and teacher, drawing from Hakomi techniques, Somatic Experiencing, Continuum Movement, Dharmic embodied meditation practices, and mindfulness awareness.

This workshop is open to anyone interested in healing trauma for themselves or others.

Manuela Mischke-Reeds, MA, MFT, is a Somatic Psychotherapist and an international teacher of Somatic Psychology, Dharma Teacher and author. She co-directs the Hakomi Institute of California and is the Senior Faculty in Hakomi Australia. 

Manuela teaches regularly in the US, Europe, Australia, and Israel. She lectures, consults and trains professionals in Hakomi Therapy, Somatic Trauma Therapy, Somatic Meditation, Attachment and Movement therapy. She maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Menlo Park, CA working with a wide spectrum of clients from Trauma survivors to First responders. She has consulted with business leaders how to incorporate somatic wisdom and stress relief into the work culture of Silicon Valley.  

Her integrative teaching brings together various fields of Psychology, Buddhism, and Somatic Wisdom from many traditions. Manuela’s view on healing trauma and creating thriving life is to root the individual in the collective wisdom of the body. Understanding one's own body is an innate technology that can be accessed and utilized in daily life enhancing personal growth and healing. Manuela’s therapeutic knowledge for the past 20 + has extended to working with many cultures, ranges of trauma and life span issues. She has treated survivors of political torture, sexual abuse victims, first responders, kidnap victims, developmental and attachment trauma clients. 

CIIS students, staff, and faculty receive discounts on all events. CIIS Public Programs Members receive a 20% discount on all events. Contact us for more information at publicprograms@ciis.edu.