Overview
Within psychology, the body and even emotion, has sometimes been sidelined with a focus on the thinking mind, in line with current cultural values. However, when used in isolation, this approach can result in the shoring up of old, previously necessary, but ultimately limiting, avoidance mechanisms, so that authentic change does not occur. This can also lead to ‘stuckness’ in therapy and burn out in professionals who experience the limits of the traditional paradigm, when faced with clients who may have addressed a symptom and come to ‘understand’ why they feel and behave the ways they do, but still can’t seem to change how they feel and what they do.
Developments within the field of trauma therapy and research have begun to place, front and centre, the body, including our nervous system and our emotions, both as a container of trauma, and as a means to heal and re-connect with our ‘true selves’, our truth, our values, and our uniqueness.
Through learning to mindfully tune into the body, and to be with, with compassion, what is held, deeper and more profound healing and growth can occur within our clients and ourselves. Integrating these approaches can allow both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ processing, encompassing thoughts, beliefs, emotions, implicit memories and the ‘felt sense’, and offering a truly integrative and holistic approach.
Participants will learn how to integrate somatic awareness practices into their usual evidence-based clinical practice, tapping into what is held in the body; trauma, emotion, deep wisdom, and the ability to heal and rediscover wholeness.
Target audience
Psychologists, Therapists, Counsellors, and anyone working with people in a healing or caring capacity.
Level of learning
Foundational. This activity is targeted both to those new to the topic of somatic work and those with some experience seeking to deepen their knowledge.
APS CPD-Approved
This activity has been assessed against the APS Standards for CPD activities and approved for its education quality. Learn more about the APS CPD Approval process.
Location
Tradies Gymea, Kingsway, Gymea NSW 2227
Date
This 3-day workshop will be held over 3 days 9am-5pm AEDT on all three days. Refer to provider website for further details.
APS member discount
Learning Outcomes
Upon completion of this activity, participants should be able to:
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recognise the impact of trauma on their minds, psyche and bodies,
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interpret current psychological approaches (e.g. ACT, IFS and Attachment Theory) through a somatic lens,
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implement techniques from Sensory Motor, Somatic Experiencing, Internal IFS, iRest and others, to address their client’s body-mind,
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distinguish, through experiential methods, the difference between ‘being with, with compassion’ and ‘fixing’.
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identify work-related beliefs and attitudes that protect against burn-out, and
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utilise somatic exercises to develop a more compassionate relationship with their own bodies.
Presenter(s)
Dr Kirstie Missenden
About the presenter(s)
A Clinical Psychologist with over 25 years of post-qualification experience of working with adults in a variety of settings.
Dr Missenden qualifying through the University of East London in the UK, has worked in Community Mental Health teams, on an acute care ward, outpatient psychology services, a primary care psychology service, women’s health service and a trauma clinic, within the National Health Service, before moving to Australia in 2006 and establishing a private practice.
Co-founder and Co-Director of South Sydney Psychology and Trauma-recovery Service since 2018, she works with 10 other practitioners to provide services under Medicare, PSS and Victim Services, to people in our local community in the Sutherland Shire.
Kirstie's post-qualification training includes Cognitive Analytic Therapy practitioner and supervisor training, EMDR, ACT, and Mind Body therapies training (including Internal Family Systems and Sensory Motor Psychotherapy).
Notes
Important note for participants - please read before booking your training
In The Missing Link trainings, we draw on a range of established therapeutic approaches including Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, Gestalt Therapy, and Inner Focusing. The orientation we explore is less about applying a structured technique, and more about cultivating a capacity to listen deeply to the body and the sensations, images, emotions, implicit memories, and the parts of our clients that carry pain or protect against it, that may emerge. This approach is trans-diagnostic, in that, via the presenting symptoms, or repeating self-limiting patterns, we potentially gain access to and heal the often unconscious aspects of our experience that lead to the symptoms our clients experience. Although the practices we teach are grounded in gentleness—using pendulation, titration, and nervous-system-informed pacing—they can be profoundly powerful. The body is where truth, aliveness, and unfinished experience reside. Our work invites these truths to emerge, to be felt, and to be integrated. Rather than following a manualised, step-by-step protocol, the training supports therapists to follow what arises in the moment. We provide guidelines, demonstrations, and opportunities for practice, alongside somatic resources that you can draw on to help clients (or yourself) to feel safer in their bodies and to strengthen the “muscle” of awareness of moment-to-moment experience. For therapists whose background has been primarily in structured, skills-based, or manualised approaches, this style can initially feel disorienting. It asks us to sit with not knowing—to allow space for what needs attention to show itself, rather than directing the process too quickly. This may stir discomfort, avoidance, or even our own unfinished material, and that is part of the learning – we are all human and have our own embodied material, both supportive and otherwise! Importantly, this training is not just intellectual. It is experiential and reflective, meaning your own embodied experience as a therapist becomes central. You may begin to gently notice your own patterns, parts, and somatic responses within the learning process. What you bring into the experiential components is part of how you come to embody the work. We aim to provide a safe, emotionally held environment in which participants are encouraged to be with whatever feels ok within the context of a training, and to move away should the answer to the question ‘is it ok to be with this?’ be a ‘no’, just as we practice with our clients. If this description resonates with you, we warmly invite you to join us to lean in to this fascinating, life-affirming, creative and deeply touching work!