Experiential consultation in the round
Focused skills labs to deepen and grow your sensorimotor Psychotherapy practice
Registration is now live
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Registration is now live *
why join a skills lab?
Continue your learning in an experiential community context: grow your clarity, confidence, and supple skill in this methodology, rooted in social justice praxis.
Perhaps after completing your SP training program you recognize you need some support to grow your confidence or your clarity in this work.
Perhaps the maps for practice feel unclear or abstract.
Perhaps it feels difficult to translate the learning from the training program into your practice in your work setting.
Perhaps it would feel strengthening to have some focused and specific support and community to find your flow and artistry in this method.
Perhaps you had some negative experiences in your training program, microaggressions that made it difficult to learn what you were there to learn or that resulted in a feeling of shame or grief that sits in your way as you practice with clients.
This is an opportunity to learn and grow in a kind, affirming, clear context.
Grow your confidence and ease, deepen your embodied presence and your capacity for attunement and resonance with clients.
Learn about making use of SP to support folks navigating the impacts of historical and contemporary collective traumas as well as the impacts of personal experiences of systemic oppression.
Learn about making use of SP for deepening capacity for resistance, self-advocacy, and strengthening fidelity to one’s inner wisdom.
Learn about the vast myriad of possibilities for navigation, grow your clarity in choice points along the way, so that you can more skillfully and creatively support your clients.
generative, encouraging community
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experiential learning
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focused support for confidence and skill
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social justice in education
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generative, encouraging community * experiential learning * focused support for confidence and skill * social justice in education *
unfolding trauma
Open to graduates of L1. Working with the impacts of traumatic harms, understood in context.
Wednesdays, 10-12 pacific time
Dates:
(1) December 11
(2) January 15
(3) February 12
(4) March 12
(5) April 9
(6) May 14
interweaving trauma & relational work
Open to graduates of L2 and L3. Working with the interwoven impacts of traumatic harm and relational injuries, understood in context.
Wednesdays, 10-12 pacific time
Dates:
(1) January 8
(2) February 5
(3) March 5
(4) April 2
(5) May 7
(6) June 4
Deepening with arts and Earth
Open to graduates of L1, L2, and L3. Weaving Arts, Play, and Relations with Earth with SP practice, to deepen potency and joy.
Movement, visual arts, writing, playfulness, voice, improv through a neuroscience and wisdom lens. Relations with Earth. Possibilities for how, when, and where to make use of these methods in your SP practice & how to weave SP & Earth Relations into your arts therapy practices.
Saturdays, 9-11 pacific time
Dates:
(1) January 11
(2) February 8
(3) March 8
(4) April 5
(5) May 10
(6) June 7
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experiential learning
In the skills labs we will be practicing together, with supportive, encouraging, precise feedback and guidance embedded into the practice throughout the flow.
Learning while practicing makes it possible to clarify possibilities in the midst of the work. Participants are supported to grow their navigational understanding and ease.
Experiential pedagogy helps participants learn to sense and feel the practice, learning what and how to listen to within their own embodied experience, within the space between, and within the client's sharing.
In this way, experiential pedagogy helps participants grow their wise instincts in this work.
A clear learning outcome is understanding with more depth, and being able to apply that understanding through focused instincts and honed precision in skills.
A learning outcome is a more relaxed presence, increased improvisational suppleness, and deepened nuance and creativity in navigation.
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Live Practice
We will practice in a focused way. Sometimes full sessions, sometimes briefer practice to explore particular skills.
Practice Dyads and Fishbowls will be made use of: supporting learning in a variety of nourishing and dynamic ways.
In dyads, students can practice with each other in the group session, with the consultant offering live-time supportive feedback and teaching with an explicit intention to grow both confidence and nuance.
In the fishbowl practice, students collectively take on the role of therapist while the consultant sits in the seat of the client.
One student described this method in this way: “The fishbowl exercises allowed for in-the-moment feedback and analysis of different stages of therapy session and rationale for where we are, where we might go and different ways to apply the skills. I feel I learned more because of the safe atmosphere created.” (described by a student in Level One in Toronto)
In such sessions, the consultant offers specific support for the therapists’ journey in the midst of the work, helping students hone their practice with kind and affirming precision.
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Demonstration
Learning through live demonstrations makes it possible to understand the maps and the possibilities from an experiential process of observation and from being in the client role.
In demonstrations, the consultant is in the role of the therapist and simultaneously in the role of teaching about the choice points. Participants in the group have the opportunity to sit in the role of the client. Some demos might be full session, while other demos may be short form practice to highlight particular skills.
It is can be deeply valuable to see and experience how this practice works, to be able to witness the process unfold, accompanied with live-time discussion about choice points and the reason for choices made.
This way of learning can substantially help folks deepen their sense of possibility, creativity, and their understanding of the maps for practice. This way of learning can also be deeply integrative, meaningful, and exciting.
Experiential pedagogy can help participants find a deeper and more solid ground in their SP practice, to bring their SP into their work context with deepened confidence and creativity.
“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.”
— bell hooks
FAQs
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FAQs *
can i enroll for the entire series or for just one session?
Yes. Folks can enroll for the entire series or choose a few sessions to sign up for.
Space is limited to 12, so it is wise to sign up as soon as you know what sessions you wish to attend to guarantee your place in the circle.
Folks who register for the entire series at the outset receive a discount.
what is the investment?
To reserve your spot for the entire series, the investment is $100 USD per 2-hour session per person for a total of $600 USD for 6 sessions.
To register as a participant for one or more sessions, but not an entire series, the investment is $125 USD per 2 hour session per person.
What is the day/time for the series?
There are three series that you can select from.
(1) The Healing Trauma lab, centered on healing the impact of traumatic injury. Wednesdays, from 10-12 am pacific, once a month.
(2) The Healing Trauma and Relational Injury lab, centered on working with the interweave of these maps for healing. Wed 10-12 am pacific. once a month.
(3) The Deepening Lab, for learning about learning about weaving the arts, play, and relations with Earth with sensorimotor psychotherapy, Saturdays 9-11 am pacific, once a month.
who will be attending?
Participants in the these series will be graduates of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Training Programs.
The Healing Trauma lab (“Unfolding”) will center working with the impact of traumatic harm, understood in context. Participants will have completed level 1 SP and beyond.
Participants of The Healing Trauma and Relational Injury lab (“Interweaving”) will have completed SP level 1 & SP L2 training or beyond.
Participants in the Deepening with Arts & Earth Series, will have completed any of L1, L2, or L3.
does this count as a consultation requirement for SP trainings?
Yes, this counts for group consultation requirements.
What will we be doing in the skills lab?
We will center the curiosities of the folks who are gathered on each particular day. Prior to the session spend a little time considering what you would most like to focus on for our experiential process of learning.
Experiential learning includes: Demos, live supported practice, exploring theoretical maps for practice, and working in a focused way to deepen nuance and confidence in skills, understanding of possibilities, and sense of ease through an experiential method.
We will be rooting our practice within a social justice praxis lens: education as the practice of freedom.
“…we are people with the gifts of both memory and imagination, able to learn from our many histories and create what does not yet exist. ….Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining….I am imagining all that is possible when people stand among the ruins of a colonial misery they can’t bear and ask, What could we do instead?”
— Aurora Levins Morales
context:
SP draws upon ancient wise lineages of healing and transformation, from Buddhist, Taoist, and Indigenous Traditions. In these skills labs we will deepen our relationship with these profound undercurrents, naming and honouring the cultural and spiritual traditions they emerge from.
We each carry embodied rivers of cultural wisdom. And we each are being invited to learn about collective rivers of wisdom that are alive and being taught by Elders in this time of crisis. We will connect deeply with these currents, to strengthen groundedness, presence, and artistry for each practitioner in the circle.
We will practice our holistic awareness of how multigenerational forces of suffering as well as the contemporary context of ongoing collective harms impact our clients, our relationships, our learning - wars, genocides, systemic oppression, collective traumas, climate unravelling… all of this impacts our lived experience and the practice of therapy.
Folks will be able to learn how to accompany and work with this content in their Sensorimotor Psychotherapy practice.
We will explore psychotherapy as embodied liberation praxis.
“The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility.…the opportunity to labor for freedom…an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond…. This is education as the practice of freedom.”
-bell hooks
reflections:
“I cannot say enough … I have been practicing therapy as a social worker for just over 20 years now and I would describe this training as the best I have done in my career… Katrina was extremely helpful at integrating theory into practice, with didactic information as well as demonstrations and practice sessions. Their level of passion and skill in this work is very clear. I also very much appreciated the ways in which they facilitated our group, to create a courageous and safe space for us to explore new learning and to get to know each other, creating community.”
— A student in SP level 1
“The fishbowl exercises allowed for in-the-moment feedback and analysis of different stages of therapy session and rationale for where we are, where we might go and different ways to apply the skills. I feel I learned more because of the safe atmosphere created.”
— A student in SP level 1
“Katrina brings such a bright and exciting perspective that is a breath of fresh air- they are open, grounded, and engaged.”
— A student in SP level 2
“Katrina is SO skilled at creating safety for the experiential exercises, and brings in VERY important textures about culture and systems of oppression as they relate to developmental injury. I appreciate Katrina's way of folding in, acknowledging, or bringing to fore the layers of collective and oppressive systems and histories and the way that relates to relational injury”
— A student in level 2
“What a connected human Katrina is. I immediately felt my nervous system settle as she began to speak, and I really enjoyed her presence. She offered so much insight and depth to the teachings. She did an excellent demonstration with clarity, impressively navigating between therapist and trainer.”
— A student in SP level 2
“Katrina’s pacing is dialed in with that of the group and her contributions to questions are poignant and helpful. I deeply appreciated her expansions on sociocultural context and the way she drew out anti-oppression from the principle of nonviolence.”