Expressions Through Felt Wisdom is What Heals
LEVEL 2
Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP)™
Trauma, Emotions, and the Body
September 26th. to April 16th, 2027
627 Columbia St. New Westminster, BC
TUITION for On-line Training (30 hrs.) $2,500 CAD
TUITION for 5 days Immersive Training (40 hrs.) $3,450 CAD
[ Accepting 10 Students ]
REFUND POLICY: Integrative Somatic Studies Institute does not issue refund for online materials once course is purchased. All rights reserved
Certificate in Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP)™
In ISTP™, we work from the body's knowing, not just the mind.
We heal when we feel safe in relationships and connected to our body, breath, and emotions. In that safety, we can connect deeply with ourselves, open to our vulnerabilities, and express our emotions to uncover our truths. Healing comes from the wisdom we feel and express.
After completing Level 1 in Fundamentals of Trauma Recovery, we shift our focus to developing specialized skills for working with the body, mind, and emotional self-regulation to support trauma healing.
The Level 2 Certificate Training brings together eight core practices from Integrative Somatic Therapy, offering a well-rounded approach to somatic processing and integration. These core practices include the:
- wisdom of Restorative Postures,
- present focus of Mindfulness,
- healing power of Bodywork,
- sacredness of Ceremony,
- depth of Breathwork
- resonance of resilience enhancement,
- reverence of Ancestral healing
- intuitive rhythm Sound vibration
- insightfulness of Somatic processing and integration.
These practices aim to enhance the body’s natural healing abilities. Students learn techniques to help clients notice physical sensations, tension, and patterns formed as self-protection. You will also develop skills to guide clients in cultivating moment-to-moment awareness of their body, breath, and emotions, supporting the release of stored expressions—whether physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual. “The goal is to work through and integrate held expressions and unconscious memories, fostering a kinder, more compassionate relationship with the self—body, mind, and spirit,” says Ratha Che.k.
While our personal and emotional healing experience may be difficult, the therapy process should be simple. It is often the mind that keeps things complicated!
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
- Explain the reasons and guidelines for using mindfulness, breathing exercises, resourcing, restorative postures, supportive touch, ceremony and sound healing as part of trauma recovery practices.
- Facilitate moment-to-moment awareness of body sensations, breath, emotional energy and thought to identify and integrate traumatic memories
- Explain how core practices in ISTP™ are used for somatic processing and integration for healing trauma
- Demonstrate how to a structure ceremonial rhythms in a somatic therapy session
- Apply restorative & supported postures to engage in felt expression through safety and stability in the body
- Learn the art of invitational language and how to engage the body in relaxation response
- Utilize various props to support and release muscular tension, stress and pain held in the physical body
- Understand 3 fundamentals of breathing skills and apply techniques to mediate resilience in sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
- Identify and apply key points in trauma work in support of held expressions
- Understand the application of an ISTP™ model in relations to “best practice” in trauma recovery
- Learn to support felt-sense experiences through tracking physical sensations and emotional charge during an ISTP™ Session
- Learn to develop a counsellor’s practice of connectedness and embodiment to one’s own felt wisdom to avoid taking on client’s energy and emotional charge
- Describe the rational for infusing ceremony into clinical practice
- Engage in 50 hours of practice in ISTP with mentorship and guidance
PREREQUISITE : Completion of Level 1
This one-year intensive certificate program includes 2 training components:
Component 1 eLeaning Training (online)
- Content is designed for online education and training. This includes various formats such as text, images, and interactive interactive live webinars all accessible through an online learning platform. Materials are created to be suitable for diverse learning styles, ensuring engagement and facilitating knowledge retention.
- 2 days. online live interactive webinars
- 13 hrs. online group mentorship and clinical consultations
- 25 hours total
- TUITION 2,750 CAD
Component 2 Immersion Training (in-person)
- 6 days immersions designed to bridge theoretical knowledge and practical applications by submerging learnings in environments that replicate real world scenarios. Learners are actively engaged in tasks, tools, and processes relevant in an Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP) sessions.. Immersion training emphasizes learning by doing thus, fostering a deeper understanding and skills retention.
- Experiential feedback gained from instructors, peers, and the environment that extends to the land; helps deepen the practice and identifying areas for improvement
- Practicum (25 documented ISTP™ sessions)
- 40 hours training
- TUITION $3,750 CAD
The 5-day immersive training is offered in Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. After completing the 5-day experiential training, students can put their knowledge into practice through a practicum with group mentorship and supervision.
Practicum documented hours can be obtained through 2 options:
- Within your training cohort (students training in your group)
- With your own clients
*** GROUP MENTORSHIP & CONSULTATION
A total of 15 hours of group consultation is offered via online to provide students with an opportunity to consult, gain feedback and support from their Clinical Supervisors during practicum. Group consultation is also an opportunity for students to gain feed back from other students, learn from one another to deepen somatic therapy skills.
Online group mentorship and clinical consultation includes various topic of discussions:
- Beginning your first ISTP™ session: Intake, assessments, informed consent, session duration/rate, liability (professional) insurance.
- Ethical Issues in Somatic Psychotherapy: Dual & multiple relationships, documentations, using touch, adequate supervision.
- Navigating internal/external resources and activation. When to stay with the resources & went to move through activation
- Exercises to restore Social Engagement when moving from activation to stage relaxation using the RARI model.
- What to do when client is activated or overactivated? How to distinguish between integrative versus eclectic practice in an ISTP™ session.
- Understanding and working with resistance. Working with transference & countertransference.
3 Days In Person Training Location @ Pacific Shores Resort & Spa
(Nanoose Bay, Vancouver Island, BC)
MINDFUL INTENTION: Due to the nature of the training, the intensity of this program may be triggering for some of our students while exploring difficult emotional states originating in childhood. This program is designed to train mental health professionals as continuing education. It is not meant to be a container for personal therapy. Due to the depth of the work, we require that all students be simultaneously engage in regular personal therapy with a therapist of their choice.
In level 2, We learn skills to encourage connection & attunement to the body using the wisdom of yoga, bodywork & breathing techniques. Our intention is to promote relaxation and reduce stress by releasing tension in the body’s soft tissues through myofascial release. This practice addresses underlying causes of pain and dysfunction, rather than just treating the symptoms.
Facilitating connections through relaxation with postures that feel safe and comfortable, allow the breath to flow to different areas of the body where trauma is stored. When we create an opportunity for the body to move safely between postures, breath flows through the body to allow unconscious memories and repressed emotions to percolate and be released from the body.
Illness is thought to be the result of blocked energy. When our natural state of ease is blocked, we develop disease. Postures and breathing practices release blockages so that vital energy can flow freely, and healthy functioning can be restored
Emotions follow body postures and physical holding patterns. Releasing physical holding patterns changes one's mental patterns as well. Change is experienced on all levels. Thoughts and emotions manifest in the body and through physical releases using restorative yoga postures, we have the potential for deep emotional releases and restructuring of mental patterns as well. New connections are created in the mind and body so that patterns of tension are negatively (literally our ruts) are replaced by new groves of relaxation and positivity.
Embodiment is the art of being in the present in the body as we experience life. In our trainings, embodiment is the practice of moment-to-moment process by which participants allow awareness to enhance the flow of sensations, feelings, thoughts, images and energies through their bodily selves. We are born into bodies that travel fluidly through an infinite range of movement and feeling. Although over time, through physical and/or emotional injuries, cultural conditionings, age, and sedentary habits, our movement expression gets narrower and narrower. We forget the physical freedom we once enjoyed,
To be embodied is:
- To be aware and awake to the sensations in our physical body, the ebb and flow of our emotions, and the movements of our mind
- To be present in our life, right here and now
- To allow life force to move through our bodies in ways both familiar and unpredictable
- To live and dance with the universal spirit, expressed in the world through our soulful, one-of-a-kind self