Somatic Therapy in Action: Enhancing Self-Worth & Finding the Authentic Self

 $447 USD $247

On-Demand Course Length: 5 Hours

This course explores the journey of self-worth, featuring somatic therapy demonstrations that illuminate the path to inner acceptance and strength. It details how to establish safety for nervous system exploration, differentiate between nervous system states, and utilize resources for regulation. The package also emphasizes working with protective parts in therapy and understanding the therapist's attunement to the participant 's experience. UltiMatély, this course empowers professionals to guide participant s in connecting with their authentic selves, processing core emotions somatically, and cultivating lasting self-worth.

About this course

Self-worth isn't built through affirmations or cognitive reframing alone—it emerges from deep somatic integration, nervous system regulation, and compassionate engagement with the parts of ourselves that have learned to contract, hide, or seek validation externally. This insightful demonstration package explores the journey of self-worth through four powerful somatic therapy sessions, illuminating the path to inner acceptance, authenticity, and lasting strength.

The Power of Demonstration:

Watch master clinicians work with real clients navigating core self-worth struggles—dimming their light in social situations, people-pleasing, seeking external validation, and battling self-doubt. Through these intimate demonstrations, you'll witness the subtle art of somatic therapy as it unfolds in real time, learning not just what to do, but how to be with clients in these tender territories.

What You'll Learn:

Through four comprehensive demonstration modules, you'll discover how to:

Module 1: Polyvagal Theory in Clinical Practice with Deb Dana

Working with Nervous System States:

• Establish safety and connection (ventral vagal) as the foundation for exploration
• Guide clients to differentiate between sympathetic (mobilization), dorsal vagal (shutdown), and ventral vagal (safety) states
• Navigate the experience of "dimming one's light" and contracting under social pressure

Regulation and Exploration:

• Use breathwork and somatic awareness to access ventral vagal states
• Anchor in ventral while exploring other nervous system states with awareness
• Address fears around vulnerability and collapse
• Facilitate return to regulation using resources like breath and imagery
• Support self-acceptance, worthiness, and trust in resilience

Module 2: Working with Protector Parts in IFS with Frances D. Booth

Understanding the Parts System:

• Work with protectors first before addressing vulnerable parts to establish safety
• Identify and explore protective parts (like the "jailer" activated when others prioritize their needs)
• Use reflective listening and parts work in somatic therapy

Building Safety with Protectors:

• Ask for objections and validate the protective parts' roles
• Build self-energy through curiosity, compassion, and acknowledgement
• Facilitate unblending to create safety for deeper work
• Develop trust in the therapeutic relationship through mindful dialogue
• Help clients access and process emotions through somatic inquiry

Module 3: Attending to Somatic Changes in Therapy with Jessica Montgomery

Moment-to-Moment Attunement:

• Practice exquisite therapist attunement to client's internal cues and shifting experience
• Track and respond to somatic changes as they emerge
• Create safe, supportive space for tender emotions

Connecting Body and Emotion:

• Guide clients to explore connections between physical sensations and emotional states
• Use somatic awareness as a pathway to self-awareness and processing
• Facilitate differentiation between present feelings and body memories
• Support integration and build sense of agency
• Help clients access deeper understanding of authentic self
• Work with experiences of unwinding and integration

Module 4: Using Mindful Dialogue and Somatic Awareness to Resolve Self-Doubt with Dr. Scott Lyons

Addressing Validation-Seeking Patterns:

• Work with patterns of seeking external validation and self-doubt
• Use attunement, mirroring, and reflective language to facilitate self-awareness
• Help clients slow down and stay in their bodies

Recognizing and Working with Avoidance:

• Identify the many forms of avoidance in client behavior (like attending to others to escape self)
• Apply therapeutic strategies to address avoidance patterns
• Support clients in staying present with embodied experience
• Facilitate connection with internal experience and personal agency

Building Relational Awareness:

• Develop deeper sense of self-acceptance through the therapeutic relationship
• Understand relational dynamics between client and practitioner
• Build safe therapeutic space that supports integration of insights
• Help clients connect with their authentic selves rather than performing for others

Core Competencies Developed Across All Modules:

Clinical Presence:

• Witness how master clinicians create safety for vulnerable exploration
• Learn the art of pacing and timing in somatic work
• Understand when to slow down, when to explore, when to resource
• Develop capacity to hold tender emotions without rushing to fix

Somatic Literacy:

• Track subtle body cues and nervous system shifts
• Connect physical sensations to emotional and relational patterns
• Use the body as the primary pathway to transformation
• Understand how self-worth lives in the soma, not just the mind

Working with Core Wounds:

• Address deep-seated beliefs about worthiness and identity
• Process emotions somatically rather than cognitively
• Navigate protective patterns with compassion
• Support authentic self-emergence beneath learned adaptations

Expert Faculty:

Learn from Deb Dana (Polyvagal Theory pioneer), Frances D. Booth (IFS practitioner), Jessica Montgomery, and Dr. Scott Lyons—each demonstrating their unique approach to cultivating self-worth through somatic therapy.

The Demonstration Advantage:

Watching real sessions unfold offers learning that lectures cannot provide. You'll witness the micro-adjustments, the therapeutic attunement, the moments of breakthrough, and the skillful navigation of stuck places. These demonstrations reveal the art behind the science of somatic therapy.

Transformation Through Embodiment:

This package empowers professionals to guide clients in:

• Connecting with their authentic selves beneath protective patterns
• Processing core emotions somatically rather than intellectually
• Cultivating lasting self-worth rooted in nervous system safety
• Moving from external validation to internal knowing
• Expanding capacity to be fully present and visible

Essential training for therapists, coaches, and healing professionals who want to help clients build genuine self-worth—not as a concept to believe in, but as a lived, embodied experience that transforms how they show up in the world.

Join our brilliant experts for the following sessions:

DEB DANA

Deb Dana, LCSW is an author, clinician, and consultant specializing in using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and create ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system. She developed the Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series and lectures internationally on ways Polyvagal Theory informs work with trauma survivors. She is a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute, clinical advisor to Khiron Clinics, and an advisor to Unyte.

Deb’s clinical work published with W.W. Norton includes The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client Centered Practices, and the Polyvagal Flip Chart. She partners with Sounds True to bring her polyvagal perspective to a general audience through the audio program Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory and her forthcoming print book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.

To learn more, visit rhythmofregulation.com or polyvagalinstitute.org

FRANCES D. BOOTH

Frances Booth LICSW is a Certified IFS therapist, consultant, and international trainer. She is a colleague of Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS, and Susan McConnell, author of Somatic IFS. As a clinical social worker, her somatically focused practice specialties are trauma, anxiety, depression, cancer, and attachment ruptures and repair. Fran is a cis-gendered, white, heterosexual woman of Irish-German descent and she will speak with us from the land of Narragansetts, Niantic, and Wampanoag peoples, now known as Rhode Island, USA.

Website: www.francesbooth.com

JESSICA MONTGOMERY

Jessica Montgomery, MSW, Certified Hakomi Trainer, has been a somatic counselor and catalyst for more than 30 years. Blending brain science with mindful experiential techniques and profound regard for the unbroken wisdom within, Jessica facilitates individuals, couples and communities toward greater wholeness. Her background includes work in community mental health, private practice, retreats and international pilgrimages, integrative medicine, counselor and bodyworker education and the use of ritual for personal growth. A graduate of Reed College and Portland State University, she is both thankful and critical of traditional academics and fiercely committed to anti-oppression practices in mental health. Jessica is a Trainer at the Hakomi Institute of the Pacific Northwest and has been on faculty at the National University of Natural Medicine, the META Institute, Sacred Journeys, the Pacific Center for Awareness and Bodywork, and served for five years as program director at Breitenbush Retreat and Conference Center. As co-developer of the Primary Attachment model, she supports practitioners in developing greater capacity for professional intimacy. A passionate communicator, Jessica is skilled at synthesizing key information across disciplines, inspiring embodied approaches to personal and social evolution. She lives in a small house on a tall hill in Portland Oregon where she practices aerial yoga, kitchen witching and the art of effing the ineffable.

Website: www.jessicamontgomerycounseling.com

DR. SCOTT LYONS

Dr. Scott Lyons is a licensed holistic psychologist, educator and author of the book Addicted to Drama: Healing Dependency on Crisis and Chaos in Yourself and Others, with Hachette publishing. Scott is also the host of The Gently Used Human Podcast, a delightfully depthful and often hilarious exploration of what it is to be human, to have lived life, and come out gently used.

As a renowned body-based trauma expert, Doctor of Osteopathy (Spain) and Mind-Body Medicine specialist, Scott helps people to break free from cycles of pain, limited beliefs, and trauma. Scott is an innovator in transformative wellness and trauma therapy, teaching over half a million people internationally over the past twenty years how to relieve stress and restore vitality. Scott has worked with many of the country’s top leaders and CEOs as an executive coach and wellness consultant.

Scott is the creator of The Embody Lab—the largest online learning platform for body-based trauma therapies—and developer of Somatic Stress Release™, a holistic process of restoring biological resilience, taught in over 20 countries.

Scott is a Certified Body-Mind Centering™ Teacher and Practitioner, Cranio-Sacral Therapist, Visceral Manipulation Therapist, Neuro-Developmental Therapist, Infant Developmental Movement Educator, Registered Movement Therapist and Educator, Trauma Therapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Thai Massage Practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Mindfulness-based Executive Coach, Experiential Anatomy/ Developmental Movement and Yoga Practitioner, and a 500-hour registered yoga teacher. Additionally Scott holds a BFA in Theater/Psychology, MFA in Dance/Choreography, MS in Clinical Psychology, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology and Mind-Body Medicine.

Scott has been featured in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, Forbes Women, Fast Company, The Telegraph, The Guardian, INC., CNBC Make It, Fortune, Bustle, Reader’s Digest and Goop. He has also appeared on The Mel Robbins Podcast, The Jordan Harbinger Show, The We Can Do Hard Things Podcast, The Mental Illness Happy Hour, The Human Upgrade, The Genius Life, and The Chopra Well.

Websites: www.TheEmbodyLab.com, www.drscottlyons.com 

Instagram: @DrscottLyons

Book: www.drscottlyons.com/addicted-to-drama-book

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