CURRENT TRAININGS
9-MONTH ONLINE TRAINING WITH NATURE KNOWS AND
THE SOMATIC WILDERNESS THERAPY INSTITUTE
TRAININGS ON REQUEST
A TRAUMA-INFORMED, EXPERIENTIAL AND MULTI-SENSORY TOOLKIT FOR GROUP WORK
1 and 2 Day Training
An experience inside a toolbox of games, movement, multi-sensory activities, experiential and relating practices. From quick ways to transform the energy in a group, to strengthen relationship, respond to group dynamics or support the inherent transitions in group practice.
Group-work is a powerful and unique context offering a micro-community to experience, discover, reflect, practice and integrate growth directly to our lives.
The new era for group work requires us to not only understand the field of neurobiology and re-patterning in trauma and transformation, but to create opportunities for participants to experience these concepts and embody them.
A variety of somatic practices are always available to us as facilitators and therapists to purposefully bring to group work, bridging psycho-education with creative and authentic experience. Mindfulness and multi-sensory exercises provide internal growth and discovery, and deepen group process as a whole.
This training identifies the neurobiological benefits in experiential activities along with benefits and considerations in applying this to trauma or vulnerable populations.
EMOTIONAL REGULATION AND THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF NATURE AS HEALER
1 Day Training or 90 Minute Presentation
Navigating the journey of our lives includes a running sideline of emotional self-talk, whole reaction (body as well as mind and heart), and personal perception of our ability to manage what we're encountering.
Emotional intelligence and emotional regulation have been discussed in the psychotherapy world at depth. However in the sensory world that is alive, and a noted cornerstone of the field of outdoor therapy, it’s endless relevance for this field can go unrecognised, and it’s success in outcomes, unresearched. Time spent in nature is an incredibly healing approach to working with trauma, and bush adventure therapy calls us to explore the field of emotional regulation at our feet and fingertips.
We explore the existing research for bush adventure therapy in working specifically with emotional regulation and trauma, including a rich overview of the psychobiology of nature as healer. As practitioners we have a privilege when working with people in nature that those in the office miss. This includes real-time experience, a micro-culture, and an array of participatory exercises and mirrors of reflection.
Nature is a profound healer across the whole spectrum of mental health. This topic comes from experience applying this in a wilderness context with families, veterans and soldiers, drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, participants direct from custody or psychiatric hospitalisation, young people, women, and indigenous groups.
This explores the journey between how we feel and who we are, and the encounter of internalising another level of freedom ~ our ability to simply and powerfully trust our own bodies and experiences.
THE NEUROPSYCHOLOGY OF THE HEART:
WHERE SCIENCE AND INDIGENOUS UNDERSTANDINGS UNITE
1 Day Training or 1 Hour Interactive Presentation (incl. biofeedback)
This training presents the neuropsychology of the heart and age-old understanding of the heart in relationship, memory, intimacy and self-revelation.
We experience several connecting practices and together problem-solve ways to work with people regardless of resistance, level of emotion, trauma or pain.
This training is useful and relevant for practitioners, healers, mental health professionals, caregivers, parents, and each of us on our own journey.
CREATING MEANINGFUL MOMENTS
1 and 2 Day Training, or Shorter Presentation
When we're given opportunities to create powerful and meaningful moments for ourselves, long lasting change occurs. This is at the heart of all rites of passage.
This training uncovers and delves into themes proven to support powerful change. The past ten years working with rites of passage, I've asked people "what just happened?" following any significant change. These are the questions to keep asking ourselves as we examine them together. We explore experiential, creative and highly relevant ways to put these to practice.