Healing Comes From The Wisdom We Feel
LEVEL 2
Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP)™
Trauma, Emotions, and the Body
2027 COHORT
Starting January 9th. and Ending September 8th
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
5-Days Immersion Training And eLearning Mentorship
Trust in the body’s sacred wisdom beyond the reach of the intellect.
The body may be understood as a sacred threshold, opening the way to deeper wisdom and profound transformation. Within it reside stories, memories, and a quiet knowing that extends beyond the limits of the intellect. When we honour and fully inhabit our physical being, we open ourselves to change that is genuine, enduring, and whole! As body and spirit come into sacred communion, the inner self comes more clearly into view, and a sense of balance is gently restored. In this way, the body becomes a living vessel of revelation, disclosing dimensions of our being and of the universe that often remain veiled in the patterns of ordinary life. In ISTP™, we attend to the body’s knowing, trusting it’s quiet wisdom beyond the reach of the intellect!
Accepting 10 Students for 2027
Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP)™ Certificate
Wounds suffered in relationships must be healed in relationships
Healing occurs when we experience safety within relationships and foster a connection to our bodies, breath, and emotions. This process is fundamentally linked to the nervous system, which is inherently structured to support healing through relational connections. When a secure environment is established, we are more likely to express our vulnerabilities by sharing personal thoughts, fears, and insecurities, facilitating a deeper self-understanding and emotional connection. Healing comes from the wisdom we feel.
Embodied Spiritual Development
Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP)™ weaves the body into the process of spiritual growth, laying a grounded base for deeper connection, insight, and transformation. This approach goes beyond symptom management, encouraging self-awareness and understanding of how internal experiences impact well-being. Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice bridges psychological, emotional, and spiritual growth within a trauma-informed path of healing and transformation.
Healing comes from the wisdom we feel!
Fundamental Principles and Objectives
Healing Through Wholeness
In Level Two, trauma healing is held within a sacred vision of wholeness and interconnectedness that honours the full breadth of human experience. Practitioners learn skills to walk alongside clients as they cultivate moment-to-moment awareness of the body, breath, and emotions, opening a gentle and reverent space in which held expressions may soften, unfold, and begin to release.
Held expressions are physical or emotional patterns carried within the body through past experience. This work invites a tender and compassionate relationship with the body, supporting a healing process that is integrative, enduring, and restorative.
Nine Core Practices
To support this process, ISTP™ includes nine Core Practices. Each one offers a distinct contribution to healing and spiritual development:
- Mindfulness: Cultivates attentive awareness of bodily sensations and present-moment experience.
- Restorative Postures: Encourage relaxation and support nervous system regulation.
- Touch and Bodywork: Help release physical tension and emotional holding patterns.
- Ceremony: Creates sacred space for reflection, healing, and transformation.
- Breathwork: Deepens connection to the self and supports emotional regulation.
- Resilience Enhancement: Strengthens inner capacity and supports adaptive responses to stress.
- Ancestral Healing: Honours lineage and explores inherited patterns (intergenerational burdents) that may shape present experience.
- Sound Vibration: Uses auditory resonance to support healing and deepen awareness.
- Somatic Processing and Integration: Brings conscious attention to physical and emotional experience to support holistic healing.
Through body-oriented practices that support nervous system regulation, individuals are invited to rest more fully into present-moment awareness and an embodied sense of being. In this state of awareness, sensations, thoughts, and emotions may be received as they arise with tenderness and reverence without the need to explain, analyze, or hold them too tightly.
Healing is hard. Therapy can be simple. The mind complicates it!
Learning Objectives
- Explain the reasons and guidelines for incorporating mindfulness, breathing exercises, resourcing, restorative postures, supportive touch, ceremony, and sound healing into trauma recovery practices. This includes recognizing how each modality contributes to the facilitation of felt expression, safety, and stability in the body, as well as promoting relaxation, resilience, and the release of stress and tension
- Facilitate moment-to-moment awareness of bodily sensations, breath, emotional energy, and thoughts to support the identification and integration of traumatic memories.
- Explain how core practices in ISTP ™ support somatic processing and integration for trauma healing.
- Demonstrate effective structuring of ceremonial rhythms within a somatic therapy session.
- Apply supported postures to facilitate felt expression and promote safety and stability in the body
- Learn and use invitational language to engage the body in a relaxation response
- Utilize props such as blankets and bolsters to support the release of muscular tension, stress, and physical pain
- Learn the three fundamentals of breathing techniques and use these skills to build resilience within both the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems
- Recognize essential aspects of trauma work and apply somatic techniques to release held expressions
- Explore how ISTP model called “RARI” can be applied to align with best practices in healing trauma
- Learn to facilitate the release of held expressions by tracking physical sensations, observing emotional charge, and applying resourcing techniques during an ISTP™ session
- Cultivate a counsellor’s embodiment practice to avoid absorbing the client’s energy and emotional intensity.
- Describe the rational for incorporating ceremony into clinical practice
- Complete approximately 25 sessions of practice in ISTP with mentorship and guidance
PREREQUISITE : Completion of Level 1
Level 2 Training Components
Level Two Training Includes Three Components
Component 1: Online eLearning
- The online eLearning brings together text-based materials, images, video recordings of therapy sessions, and interactive webinars through a digital learning platform. These resources are designed to support a range of learning styles, encourage meaningful engagement, and help participants integrate their learning with confidence.
- eLearning includes five days of live, interactive webinars and group mentorship, and clinical consultation*
- Completion of practicum hours with 25 documented sessions through mentorship and consultation
- Tuition: CAD 2,850.00
* Group mentorship and clinical consultation offers supportive guidance in the following areas:
- Building confidence and practical skill in the nine core practices of ISTP™: Mindfulness, Restorative Postures, Touch and Bodywork, Ceremony, Breathwork, Resilience Enhancement, Ancestral Healing, Sound Vibration, and Somatic Processing and Integration.
- Preparing for your first ISTP™ session, including intake, assessment, informed consent, session length and fees, and professional liability insurance.
- Exploring ethical considerations in somatic psychotherapy, including dual and multiple relationships, documentation, the use of touch, and appropriate supervision.
- Learning to navigate internal and external resources and activation, including when to stay with resources and when to move gently through activation.
- Practicing exercises that help restore social engagement when moving from activation into more settled states, using the RARI model.
- Strengthening your ability to respond when a client is activated or overactivated.
- learning to discern the difference between integrative and eclectic practice in an ISTP™ session
- Developing a deeper understanding of resistance, transference, and countertransference, and how to work with them thoughtfully in practice.
- Learning how to integrate touch and bodywork into somatic psychotherapy with consent, care, and clarity.
Component 2: In-Person Immersion
- This five-day immersion is designed to gently bridge online learning and skills-based practice. Learners are invited into settings that reflect real-world experience. Participants engage directly with the tasks, tools, and processes relevant to Integrative Somatic Therapy Practice (ISTP)™ sessions, deepening understanding and building confidence through hands-on application.
- Experiential feedback from instructors, peers, and the surrounding environment, including the land, offers meaningful support for deepening practice and recognizing areas for continued growth.
- Tuition: CAD 3,850.00
The five-day in-person immersive training is offered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Accommodation & meals are not included in tuition.fees
Component 3: In-Person Immersion in Somatic Bodywork
- This three-day immersion is design to develop skills in bodywork as an adjunct
- For more information, View Here
- Tuition for online training: CAD 2,595.00
- Tuition for 3-days immersion: CAD 3,500.00
9 Days Training Immersion 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 restorative postures, somatic 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