Somatic Approaches: Working With Pain

Pain care is changing rapidly, with a new lens of pain care focusing on the effects of trauma in the body.  Somatic approaches can easily be incorporated into massage practices.  Introductory courses to somatic approaches are extremely important because accessibility creates awareness in service providers and better outcomes for clients.  Trauma is not  obvious, and steps like slowing down during the client intake, orienting someone to a space, or asking certain questions can transform a clients experience and support healing without requiring a three year trauma certification.

In this introductory course, we will explore both context and hands-on experience. Developing tactile skills, somatic awareness, and other skills in the context of working with the resolution of trauma by professional therapeutic hands-on applications are the main focuses of this course.

In this three day live course, the class will build the participants understanding of working with pain in a somatically informed approach and will support the massage therapist to incorporate different types of touch. They gain an understanding of different body systems and tissues, and invite different somatic practices into their bodywork practice.

We explore what the autonomic nervous system is and its relationship to pain, in order to attune directly to each client. We learn how to track our clients nervous system state, through simple observations, and learn how to track ourselves and our own levels of connection and in doing so improve our interpersonal skills, which may include communication skills, boundary functions, and other ethical considerations.