The Body Alchemy Trilogy

Rebecca M. Ridge has created an exciting and enriching new curriculum entitled, The Body Alchemy of Relational Neuroscience.  This trilogy of 3 courses teaches CS therapists how to deepen their therapeutic relationship with clients. It includes specific skills to manage intense states of body dysregulation caused by a loss of trust and safety due to abuse, complex trauma and early childhood neglect from a body therapy perspective.  In Body Alchemy I, Students will learn how to:

• Establish clear ethical boundaries when working with sensitive emotional memories,
• Kinesthetically distinguish differing emotional, energy fields and respond appropriately to them.
• Repair the body of trust and apply specific skills to assist a client’s nervous system to regulate and reconstruct their history.
• Communicate with and balance the limbic system through various channels of the amygdala and cingulate gyrus.
• Balance the vestibular area of the brain stem through positional release techniques.
• Understand the long term effects of trauma, neglect and abuse on the nervous system.
• Apply attachment theory to their understanding of a client’s healing process.

The body alchemy process integrates craniosacral therapy with appropriate somatic therapies and the expressive arts.  Students will learn to strengthen their own therapeutic and ethical boundaries and develop communication skills to explore a client’s past so that they can more fluidly guide a client through the body releases of past hurt, pain and fear. Utilizing the current theories of trauma they will also learn how to gently release the freeze/shock from the body and brain, while structurally and compassionately rebuilding resilience and trust. Using metaphor and storytelling that accesses deep body communication, students will discover ways to guide a client through the change making process so that they can find their own creative resources and reframe their traumatic experience.  Body Alchemy I teaches therapists how to rekindle a more hopeful resilience within their clients, integrating body, mind and spirit.

Body Alchemy II : Recovery for the wounded healer, Rewriting stories of hope and faith  the second level workshop  focuses on Jung ‘s concept of the ‘wounded healer’.  Recognizing that we are often wounded in relationship means that true healing will come through repairing relationships. This course teaches therapists how to listen to the deep story within, how to process a client’s  story through the craniosacral rhythm while tracking it via  Gendlin’s ‘felt ‘ sense within the tissues.  A therapist’s own wounded story will have implications on how they treat their own clients.  Gaining insight to one’s own wounding will enable therapists to be clearer in listening to their client’s needs.  This concept of the healing story as metaphor will be interwoven throughout the 3 days. Therapists will also learn:

• The value of explicit and implicit memory and how to apply this to CST.
• How to listen to the reticular alarm system throughout the body.
• To understand and recognize the various kinds and levels of dissociation in order to unpack it safely.
• Building resilience by applying Steven Porges’ Polyvagal theory  and tracking the vagus nerve throughout the body.
• The impact of trauma upon the soul.
• Finding the state of grace within.

In the third workshop, Body Alchemy III, Managing deep states of trauma, working with the inner perpetrator and sabouteur. The final stages of deep healing of trauma involves exploring and confronting the energetic influence of the internalized perpetrator  hidden within the restricted layers of fascia. Whoever caused the harm to the child or person had an intention to do harm to them. Whether they were conscious or not, this energetic intention leaves a deep impression and influence within the person’s body tissues, cells and emotional centers.  This is the most difficult layer to uncover and explore. It requires all the work of the previous two courses that provided ‘enough safety’, emotional regulation and a connection to the healthier parts of self.

In this course the work will be on naming and uncovering the core trauma, building more resources from within, exploring the intention of the ‘one who caused harm’.  Helping the client to see how they have unconsciously absorbed the attitude and internalized the actions of the perpetrator.  How to work with the energy cyst and SER from this perspective will be explored.  Fascia layers of shame and self-blame will be touched and softened with conscious repair.  Releasing the pterygoid and masseter muscles within the ‘avenue of expression’ will help to unlock this mask of shame.  It can be illuminating to recognize that the flip side of the perpetrator is the role of victim which may have become a role frozen or overdeveloped within the body.  These roles or behaviors may explain why a person/client keeps creating their pain or other symptoms which are essentially holding them hostage to the past.

The Body Alchemy trilogy series is developmentally arranged with each course nested into the next course. The courses include an in-depth study guide that provides enough information that students can easily refer back to their new learning. Structured over 3 days allows just enough information and training so that it can easily be absorbed and practiced.  Those courses held in Minneapolis are at the Amanae Center located close to the metro light rail system.  Amanae provides Bed and Breakfast accommodation for ten and a healthy lunch for all 20 ( max) participants.  This intimate class size and setting provides a supportive and nurturing environment that mirrors emotional regulation and healing. A variety of expressive arts, yoga, breath work and body meditation are included in each course.  Finding your hidden gold and the recovered gold for your clients; this series could be invaluable to your therapeutic practice.

What participants have said about this class: