Overview

• Restoring Resilience is honoured to be co-hosting the Recreating Songlines from
• Trauma Trails - Weaving Indigenous Wisdom, Somatic Experiencing® and Collective

Healing on the lands of the Bundjalung Nation — led by Prof Judy Atkinson and Dr Caroline Atkinson (We Al-li), in collaboration with Dr Peter A. Levine, Maggie Kline and Ashley Dargan, and Restoring Resilience Co-Founders Anna Skolarikis and Phyllis Traficante.

This workshop weaves We Al-li Storywork and Somatic Experiencing® through the lens of Two-Eyed Seeing — walking with both eyes open:

one eye grounded in Indigenous cultural knowledge, sovereignty, and ways of being

one eye informed by deep observation of nature, physiology, instinct, and the body’s innate capacity to heal

 

Together, these ways of knowing help restore what has been fragmented — returning people, families, and communities to belonging, dignity, and wholeness.

Held by Lake Ainsworth — a place of cleansing, reflection, and renewal — participants will move through a culturally held process of listening, story, movement, learning, and remembrance, guided by Country as teacher.

We Al-li’s 6 Stages of Healing

(Atkinson, 2002 — Return to Wholeness)

This gathering is guided by the six culturally grounded stages of healing, which are relational, cyclical, and held within community, allowing people to move at their own pace and in their own way:

1. Creating Culturally Safe Places

Establishing cultural, emotional, physical, and spiritual safety where people feel respected, protected, and supported.

2. Finding and Telling Our Stories

Sharing our stories in ways that are witnessed, honoured, and held with care — without judgement or shame.

3. Making Sense of Our Stories

Reflecting, understanding, and finding meaning — connecting experiences with identity, culture, and lived truth.

4. Feeling the Feelings

Allowing emotions to surface safely — grief, sadness, anger, fear, love — and letting the body process what it holds.

5. Moving Through Layers of Loss and Grief

Working through loss with support, restoring ownership, choice, and agency through gentle healing and self-determination.

6. Strengthening Cultural and Spiritual Identities

Reconnecting with spirit, culture, community, and belonging — restoring identity, purpose, and wholeness.

 

Program Highlights:

• Welcome to Country & Cultural Ceremony — Bundjalung Elders

• We Al-li Storywork & Healing Processes guided through the 6 Stages

• Somatic Experiencing® teachings — Dr Peter Levine & Maggie Kline

• Honouring the body’s innate wisdom, instinct, and capacity to restore balance

• GROW Program & Relational Proprioception™ — restoring safety, agency, and dignity in the body

• Yarning Circles — respectful dialogue across cultural knowledge systems

• Cultural performance, story, and music — Ash Dargan and local community

• Nature-based embodied practices by Lake Ainsworth

 

Each element is held in alignment with the 6 Stages of Healing, ensuring a paced, respectful, and supported journey from arrival to departure.

Guiding Principles - Respect | Reciprocity | Relationship | Renewal

 

Participants are invited to engage with humility, courage, curiosity, and deep listening — recognising Country as teacher and community as medicine.

Learning Outcomes

The Northern Rivers workshop is designed to:

• Honour the leadership, wisdom, and sovereignty of First Nations Peoples

• Practise Two-Eyed Seeing as a respectful meeting place between Indigenous and non-Indigenous healing knowledges

• Deepen into We Al-li’s 6 Stages of Healing, as articulated by Prof. Judy Atkinson

• Explore Somatic Experiencing® as a body-led, nature-informed approach to healing trauma, rooted in the study of animals in the wild, human physiology, and the rhythms of regulation and recovery

• Introduce The GROW Program practices where individual healing happens in relationship

• Support the emergence of Relational Proprioception™ — the nervous system learning safety and negotiating trauma imprints through relationship and connection

• Foster pathways of reciprocity, responsibility, and collective wellbeing across Cultures

Presenter(s)

Peter Levine, Judy Atkinson, Dr. Carlie (Caroline) Atkinson, Maggie Kline, Ashley Dargan

About the presenter(s)

PETER LEVINE Dr Peter A Levine, Ph.D., is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma, which he has developed over the past 50 years. He holds a doctorate in Biophysics from UC Berkeley and a doctorate in Psychology. He is the Founder and President of the Ergos Institute of Somatic Education and the Founder and Advisor for Somatic Experiencing International, where his work has been taught to almost 2,000,000 therapists in 55 countries. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Mills College; Antioch University; the California Institute of Integral Studies; and the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, The Sigmund Freud University of Medicine in Vienna and the department of psychiatry at the school of medicine in Zurich Switzerland. He has also taught at the Hopi Guidance Center in Second Mesa Arizona. He was a stress consultant for NASA on the early space shuttle mission. He is the author of several landmark books on trauma, including Waking the Tiger, Healing Trauma (published in over 33 languages); In an Unspoken Voice, How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness; and Trauma and Memory, Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past. And in 2025 published, An Autobiography of Trauma, A Healing Journey. JUDY ATKINSON Emeritus Professor Judy Atkinson is a Jiman (central west Queensland) and Bundjalung (northern New South Wales) woman, with Anglo-Celtic and German heritage. Her academic contributions to the understanding of trauma related issues stemming from the violence of colonisation and the healing/recovery of Indigenous peoples from such trauma has won her the Carrick Neville Bonner Award in 2006 for her curriculum development and innovative teaching practice. In 2011 she was awarded the Fritz Redlick Memorial Award for Human Rights and Mental Health from the Harvard University program for refugee trauma. On the 26 January, 2019 Judy received a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for her services to the Indigenous community, to education and to mental health. Judy is: • A member of the Harvard Global Mental Health Scientific Research Alliance. • Chair of the Australian Childhood Foundations Cultural Governance Group. • The founder and Patron of We Al-li. CARLIE ATKINSON Dr. Carlie (Caroline) Atkinson is a Bundjalung and Yiman woman and an accredited Social Worker with a PhD (Charles Darwin University, 2009). Associate Professor Atkinson is an international leader in complex and intergenerational trauma and culturally informed strengths-based healing approaches in Indigenous Australia. She is the CEO of her family organisation, We Al-li, designing and coordinating the delivery of Culturally Informed Trauma Integrated Healing Approaches (CITIHA) training and resource development for organisations and communities across Australia focusing on systems transformation and implementation and an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne and a Chief Investigator or 6 separate National research projects. She is also the founder of the Northern Rivers Community Healing Hub, an Indigenous Framework response to the catastrophic floods in the Northern Rivers in 2022. MAGGIE KLINE Maggie Kline, LMFT has been in education since the 1970s, a Family Therapist and School Psychologist since the 1980s, and a Somatic Experiencing® International Faculty Member since the 1990s. She is owner of Conscious Connections PlayShops and co-author with Peter Levine of Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes and Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. She also wrote Brain-Changing Strategies to Trauma-Proof Our Schools, and contributed chapters in four anthologies, including EMDR for Complex Trauma and Dissociation in Children and The Handbook of Trauma-Transformative Practice. Her latest contribution is My Inner Doggie Is Growling—a somatic and interactive children’s picture book to help kids (and grown-ups) discover the sensations hidden beneath big emotions. ASHLEY DARGAN Ash is a Larrakia artist, storyteller, adventurer and educator from Darwin in the Top End. As a cultural ambassador for the Northern Territory throughout the 2000’s he reached a global audience and achieved worldwide acclaim for his unique style of storytelling and live musical performance. He has received multiple national and international nominations for his recorded works. Ash gained his Masters of Indigenous Studies under Prof. Judy Atkinson following her work in Trauma Informed approaches to community recovery and has worked with We Al-li nationally as an Elder Facilitator for 14 years. Ash is currently a Chief Investigator with the University of Sydney leading research and development of a VR immersive experience to help Aboriginal youth at risk of entering the justice system reconnect to self, Country, Culture and spirit. He was previously the Northern Territory coordinator for the Federal Initiative MindMatters that was responsible for delivering and implementing Social and Emotional Wellbeing frameworks into all schools Nationally.

Notes

Registration Process: Arrive April 24 between 5-7pm to register your arrival Cancellation Policy: Tickets are non refundable

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Website/s

https://restoringresilience.com.au/recreating-songlines-from-trauma-trails/