This developmental trauma course provides effective strategies to help your clients work through prenatal and perinatal trauma and global high-intensity activation
$299 (33% off)
Regular price is $450
12.5 hours, with 3 Demonstrations
On-demand, online course
English only
You’ll Learn Effective Methods to Help Your Clients Overcome Anxiety, Migraines, Allergies, and Low Self-Esteem
Persistent imprints from prenatal and perinatal traumas are often in the form of implicit somatic memories with a tendency towards global high-intensity activation in the central nervous system.
This can lead to long-term symptoms such as anxiety, migraines, heart dysregulation, allergies, attachment and relational difficulties, and emotional difficulties such as persistent low self-esteem.
Symptoms of prenatal and perinatal trauma and global high-intensity activation can also be seen in clients whose caregivers had activation from causes such as war; or in clients who did not have adequate interactive regulation from their caregivers early in their lives.
If unresolved, they often form the template of how we are affected by later traumas and compromise our ability to cope with them.
You’ll learn effective methods to help your clients work through prenatal and perinatal trauma and global high-intensity activation, utilizing
- the specialized knowledge of the physiology and energy anatomy of prenatal and perinatal trauma and global high-intensity activation,
- the principles of physical and energetic regulation, and
- the tools of emotional embodiment and interpersonal resonance from Integral Somatic Psychology™ (ISP™) that include the work with archetypes from Jungian psychology as resources to help facilitate emotional processing.
The Developmental Trauma Course Will Cover the Following Topics
- Major types of prenatal and perinatal trauma
- Existential terror, fragmentation, rage, and shame
- Physiological and energetic defenses commonly involved
- Global high-intensity of the central nervous system
- How to efficiently work with all of the above by building a greater capacity for a larger range of emotional experiences by using the body as a container
- The science of embodied cognition, emotion, and behavior
- The role of archetypes from Jungian psychology as resources for processing emotions
ISP has developed into a rich treasure. In helping clients with difficult emotions such as fear, grief, and pain my work has gained much more containment and depth. And during a severe flu combined with heart symptoms I was able to regulate my anxiety through what I have learned at ISP. I highly recommend ISP to therapists.
Who can Benefit from this Developmental Trauma Course
All professionals including graduates and students of Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) engaged in treating symptoms from prenatal and perinatal trauma and global high-intensity activation stand to gain much from this course.
Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) graduates and trainees will learn about pre and perinatal trauma and how to apply their ISP skills specifically to pre and perinatal traumas.
About Raja Selvam, PhD
Raja Selvam, PhD, is the author of The Practice of Embodying Emotions and developer of Integral Somatic Psychology™, a new paradigm in body psychotherapy based on state-of-the-art research in neuroscience, affect theory, cognitive psychology, and emotion. He has helped over 1,500 therapists in 20 countries graduate from his ISP Professional Training.
His articles on trauma, embodiment, and spirituality have appeared in several journals.
Raja is also Senior Faculty at Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Institute and works as a licensed clinical psychologist with a PhD in Psychology.
Prenatal and Perinatal Trauma Course Curriculum
Day 1 – Video 1 (1:01:29): Workshop Overview: Prenatal and perinatal traumas and Integral Somatic Psychology
Day 1 – Video 2 (50:31): Types of prenatal and perinatal trauma.
Day 1 – Video 3 (58:19): How prenatal and perinatal trauma can affect various layers of the body including the brain.
Day 1 – Video 4 (56:02): Clinical demonstration: Working with prenatal and perinatal trauma. Symptom: Panic and loss of mental clarity. Working with underlying existential terror.
Day 2 – Video 1 (56:41): Debriefing of day 1 practice & overview of the strategy of emotional embodiment.
Day 2 – Video 2 (41:10): Where blocks against traumatic suffering can form in the body and why.
Day 2 – Video 3 (41:05): The five major themes of prenatal and perinatal trauma: Existential terror, fragmentation, rage, shame, and difficulty in making contact.
Day 2 – Video 4 (1:01:16): Clinical demonstration: Working with fear, agitation, and helplessness from pre and perinatal trauma.
Day 3 – Video 1 (1:00:48): Debriefing of day 2 practice & the role of the archetypes of the collective psyche from Jungian psychology in pre and perinatal trauma.
Day 3 – Video 2 (56:18): Working with the highest archetype of the collective psyche at the crown of the head as a resource for working with prenatal and perinatal trauma.
Day 3 – Video 3 (47:19): Working with the five major themes from prenatal and perinatal trauma: Existential fragmentation, terror, rage, shame, and difficulty in making contact.
Day 3 – Video 4 (1:11:33): Clinical demonstration: Working with existential shame.
Day 4 – Video 1 (31:03): Review of ISP Professional Training & the basic elemental archetypes of the collective psyche.
Day 4 – Video 2 (42:59): The basic elemental archetype of earth and its relationship to prenatal and perinatal trauma.
Day 4 – Video 3 (33:28): Working with the basic elemental archetype of earth at the coccyx or tailbone.
Reading – 1 (1:45:00): Notes on Global High-Intensity Activation in the central nervous system from pre and perinatal trauma.
Reading – 2 (30:00): Heeding the body’s messages: Physiological implications of prenatal trauma.
Reading – 3 (1:15:00): How to improve outcomes in all therapies through embodiment of emotions.
Reading – 4 (1:45:00): What is Integral Somatic Psychology? A conversation with Raja Selvam.
References
Peer Refereed Journal Articles
Aviezer, H. Trope, Y., & Todorov, A. (2012). Body cues, not facial expressions, discriminate between intensive positive and negative emotions. Science, 338(6111), 1225-1229.
Cortizo, R. (2021). Prenatal broken bonds: Trauma, dissociation and the calming womb model. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 22(1), 1-10. DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2021.1834300
Critchley, H. D., & Nagai, Y. (2012). How emotions are shaped by bodily states. Emotion Review, 4(2), 163–168. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911430132
Daglar, G., & Nur, N. (2018). Level of mother-baby bonding and influencing factors during pregnancy and postpartum period. Psychiatria Danubina, 30(4), 433–440. https://doi.org/10.24869/psyd.2018.433
Damasio, A. & Carvalho, G. (2103). The evolution of feelings: Evolutionary and neurobiological origins. Nature Reviews in Neuroscience, 14 (2), 143-152.
Enlow, M. B., Devick, K.L., Brunst, K. J., Lipton, L. R., Coull, B. A., & Wright , R. J. (2017). Maternal life time trauma exposure, prenatal cortisol, and infant negative affectivity. Infancy, 22(4), 492-513. https://doi.org/10.1111/infa.12176
Gross, J., & Barrett, L. F. (2011). Emotion generation and emotion regulation: One or two depends on your point of view. Emotion Review, 3(1), 8-16.
Haukvik, U., McNeil, T., Lange, E., Melle, I., Dale, A., Andreassen, O., & Agartz, I. (2014). Pre- and perinatal hypoxia associated with hippocampus/amygdala volume in bipolar disorder. Psychological Medicine, 44(5), 975-985. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291713001529
Horsch, A. & Stuijfzand, S. (2019). Intergenerational transfer of perinatal trauma-related consequences. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 37(3), 221-223. DOI: 10.1080/02646838.2019.1629190
Laird, J., & Lacasse, K. (2014). Bodily influences on emotional feelings: Accumulating evidence and extensions of William James’ theory of emotions. Emotion Review, 6, 24-37.
Lyman, B. J. (2011). Antecedents to somatoform disorders: A pre and perinatal hypothesis. Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology and Health, 25(4), 205-213.
Price, T. F., Peterson, C. K., & Harmon-Jones, E. (2012). The emotive neuroscience of embodiment. Motivation and Emotion, 36, 27-37.
Thomson, P. (2007). “Down will come baby:” Prenatal stress, primitive defenses and gestational dysregulation. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 8(3), 85–113. https://doi.org/10.1300/J229v08n03_05
Books
Barrett, L. F. (2018). How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Boston: Mariner Books.
Cheryl, B. T., Drisoll, J. W., & Watson, S. (2013). Traumatic child birth. Routledge: Abingdon, Oxon, UK and New York.
Colombetti, G. (2014). The feeling body: Affective science meets the enactive mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Craig, A. D. (2015). How do you feel? An interoceptive moment with your neurobiological self. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Evertz, K. , Janus, L. , & Linder, R. (Eds.). (2021). Handbook of pre and perinatal psychology: Integrating research and practice. New York, NY: Springer Publishing.
Hufendiek, R. (2016). Embodied emotions: A naturalistic approach to a normative phenomenon. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.
Janus, L. J., Turner, J. RG, Turner, T. GN, Gouni, O., Verny, T. R., Janov, A., Odent, M., Rakovic, D., Levin, E., & Brekhman, G. (2018). Prenatal psychology 100 Years: A journey in decoding how our prenatal experience shapes who we become! The International Journal of Prenatal and Life Sciences: Athens, Greece.
Ruppert, F. (2014). Pregnancy, birth, and the first years of life. Green Ballon Publishing: Steyning, UK.
Weinstein, A. D. (2016). Prenatal development and parents’ lived experiences: How early events shape our psychophysiology and relationships. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Integral Somatic Psychology is neither a regulatory nor licensing organization and therefore not sanctioned to certify, license, or otherwise bestow the legal authorization to practice as a mental health professional.
