A Live Online Workshop with Bessel van der Kolk and Licia Sky

This workshop is being hosted live online only and will not be recorded to maintain the privacy of all attendees. Instructions on how to join will be emailed to registrants shortly before the workshop start date.  
 
10 CE credits 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 CEs from our co-sponsor, Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA). CEs may be purchased at any time before the workshop, but only those who have purchased in advance will receive credits. Unfortunately, we are unable to issue CEs retroactively. 
 
If you need to request accessibility accommodations, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu at least one week prior to the workshop start date. For more information, explore our Frequently Asked Questions.

Trauma keeps us stuck in a heightened perception of danger and harm, and prevents us from updating our reality. Our incomplete or thwarted physical attempts to re-establish physical and emotional protection become parts that hold patterns of vigilance, which then compromise our capacity to respond effectively to our environments, relationships, and ourselves.  

Restoring that ability and capacity requires re-establishing awareness of our senses, and through them, an awareness of our nervous system, so we are then able to befriend our interior reactions to our surroundings. 

Join Bessel van der Kolk, one of the world’s foremost experts in trauma, and renowned Embodied Awareness Facilitator Licia Sky for this rare two-day experiential workshop on understanding and healing trauma. Drawing upon Bessel’s decades of research and their experience working as spouses and teaching partners, Bessel and Licia invite you to explore and activate your innate self-regulatory capacities for a deep restoration of Self.

Physical mastery, memory processing, affect regulation, sensory integration, and other techniques can support people who may be trapped in their traumatic past and guide them into living in the present. Bessel and Licia demonstrate how both experience itself, and controlled body action—individually and in groups—can help overcome traumatic repetitions and continued fight/flight/freeze responses. Bessel and Licia share the science behind traumatic stress including early attachment trauma and the ways childhood traumatic experience impacts brain development. 
 
In this workshop participants learn guided, focused exercises in the present moment, notice subtle inner shifts, and learn to pay attention to their senses, including the ways they habitually ignore physical reactions. Participants explore body-centered approaches drawn from theater, music, yoga, and play for building attunement, restoring agency, and dealing with trauma. Participants are also exposed to the potential role of both traditional and innovative techniques including alternatives to drugs and talk therapy in the future of the field of traumatic stress.  
 
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.


Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD, is a pioneer clinician, researcher and teacher in the area of posttraumatic stress. His work uniquely integrates developmental, neurobiological, psychodynamic, somatic and interpersonal aspects of the impact of trauma and its treatment.  

His #1 New York Times Science best seller, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Treatment of Trauma transforms our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring—specifically areas dedicated to pleasure, engagement, control, and trust. He shows how these areas can be reactivated through innovative treatments including body work, psychodrama, mindfulness techniques, parts work, yoga, and neurofeedback, Dr. van der Kolk and his various collaborators have published extensively on the impact of trauma on development, such as dissociative problems, borderline personality and self-mutilation, cognitive development, memory, and the psychobiology of trauma. He has published over 150 peer reviewed scientific articles on such diverse topics as neuroimaging, self-injury, memory, neurofeedback, Developmental Trauma, yoga, theater and EMDR.  

He is founder of the Trauma Research Foundation (formerly the Trauma Center) in Boston, MA; past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, and Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical School. He regularly teaches at universities and hospitals around the world.

Licia Sky is a Boston based Embodied Awareness Facilitator, artist, singer-songwriter, and bodyworker who works with traumatized individuals and trains mental health professionals to use mindful meditation in movement, theater exercises, writing and voice as tools for attunement, healing, and connection. She is a regular instructor in trauma healing workshops at Kripalu and Esalen. She has been teaching workshops on these subjects around the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, Netherlands, China, the Middle East, and New Zealand. 

She has been writing poetry since she was 11 years old. She has been singing all her life, first alone in the woods with her dog, and in elementary, middle school, high school and church choirs. Then at age 36, she acquired her first guitar and began writing songs. She has been singing publicly in coffeehouses, clubs, house concerts, and conferences ever since. 

In the course of over 25 years of bodywork practice, she developed her methods of vocalizing for embodiment in physical and emotional healing when she began using her voice with her bodywork clients by vocalizing and toning–to help them release the constriction from repressed vocal expression. She found that breathing, toning and vocalizing led to profound beneficial changes of physical and emotional state. Liciasky.com 

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

1. Discuss what neuroscience teaches about self-awareness and trauma.
2. Describe how thenature of early attachment trauma leads to fragmentation and development of distinct parts. 
3. Explain the difference between the impact of trauma (i.e. a specific overwhelming experience) and the disruptions of attachment, as in neglect and abuse. 
4. Demonstrate a basicunderstanding of ways that childhood traumatic experience impacts brain development and the ability to process information is disrupted.  
5. Analyze physical mastery, memory processing, affect regulation, sensory integration and other techniquesas ways to help people from being trapped in their traumatic past and living in the present.  
6. Apply body-centered approaches drawn from theater, music, yoga, and play for building attunement, restoring agency, and dealing with trauma.
7. Discuss therole of timing and pacing in trauma processing. 
8. Describe howsensorimotor processing can alleviate traumatic re-experiencing.
9. Demonstrate how experience itself, and controlled body action, individually and in groups, can powerfully help overcome traumatic repetitions and continued fight/flight/freeze responses. 
10. Predict the potential role of both traditional and innovative techniques, alternatives to drugs and talk therapy, in the future of the field of traumatic stress. 

Information on Continuing Education Credit for Health Professionals 

10 CE credits 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 CEs from our co-sponsor, Spiritual Competency Academy (SCA). CEs may be purchased at any time before the workshop, but only those who have purchased in advance will receive credits. Unfortunately, we are unable to issue CEs retroactively. 
 

• CE credits 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 CE credits for LCSW, LPCC, LEP, and LMFT license renewal for programs offered by approved sponsors of CE 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 CE 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 this document for 4 years after the course concludes. SCA is an approved CE provider for National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coaches (CEP Number 100196). 
• For questions about enrolling in CE or receiving your Certificate of Attendance, or for any other questions about CE, contact David Lukoff, PhD at ce@spiritualcompetency.com. 

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, publicprograms@ciis.edu.