Embodied Trauma Work: Integrating Somatic Experiencing® with Internal Family Systems
To access the discount form for registering for multiple workshops or participants, please click here.
When & Where:
- Date: Friday, January 22, 2027
- If you cannot attend this workshop on 1/22, you can pre-register for the on-demand version here: https://www.theknowledgetree.org/p/embodied-trauma...
- Time: 10:30am - 5:30pm Eastern Time
- CE Hours Included: 6 (please see below for details)
- Location: Live Interactive Webinar ("Synchronous") on Zoom
- Investment: $140 before January 8th at 5:00pm Eastern Time, $160 after
- Presented by: Cody Gauthier, LCSW, SEP (see bio below)
- Workshop Recording: A recording of this workshop is available to review for 60 days after the presentation. However, participants must attend live to receive the "Synchronous" CE Certificate.
- Instruction Level: Introductory
- Target Audience: Psychologists, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists
Learning Objectives:
After completing this workshop in its entirety, you will be able to:
- Describe how principles of Somatic Experiencing® can complement Internal Family Systems when working with trauma-related protective responses
- Identify physiological cues of activation, settling, protection, and autonomic shifts that may emerge while working with parts, as well as how to meet them.
- Explain Somatic Experiencing® principles of resourcing, titration, and pendulation to support pacing and regulation during IFS-informed trauma work.
- Illustrate the relationship between a client’s identified parts, somatic experience, and patterns of nervous system activation during the relational process and permission process.
- Demonstrate interventions that incorporate sensation, movement, impulse, and present-moment tracking into parts-based clinical work.
- List the ways in which an SE- and IFS-informed approach demonstrates how developmental attachment material is always present inside the body.
Workshop Description:
What if the parts our clients struggle with aren’t only telling a story—but also expressing themselves through the body?
Trauma shapes our mind, body, emotions, and spirit. We organize as humans around connection and protection, and our survival physiology sets the tone for how we relate to ourselves and the world.
The beauty of Internal Family Systems is in its offering of compassion, acknowledgment, and deeper understanding of our protective system and its intention. This approach brings forward the richness and depth of healing potential through increased tracking of the body and the emotions stored within our protective system. Somatic Experiencing fundamentals can help highlight and illustrate for clinicians a pathway into the body to work with the physiological patterns that accompany trauma through a gentle pace.
In this experiential training, participants will explore practical ways to integrate principles of SE into IFS-informed trauma work. Through didactic teaching, clinical demonstrations, and experiential exercises, participants will learn to slow down parts work, track sensation and autonomic shifts, recognize protective responses as they emerge in the body, and incorporate principles such as titration, pendulation, and resourcing. Particular attention will be given to pacing, somatic exploration, maintaining curiosity toward protective parts, and the therapist’s own somatic and bodily expression in the field.
Workshop Agenda:
- Foundations of Embodied Trauma Work: Integrating SE and IFS (60 minutes)
- Core principles of Somatic Experiencing® and Internal Family Systems (refresher)
- Understanding trauma through parts-based, somatic, and experiential perspectives
- How protective parts organize around physiological responses
- Developmental and attachment trauma as adaptations within relationships
- Areas of overlap and important distinctions between SE and IFS
- Developmental Trauma, Attachment, and Protective Organization (60 minutes)
- How early relational experiences shape protective parts and nervous system patterns
- Attachment strategies as adaptive responses to connection, disconnection, and relational threat. (developmental lens and literature)
- Exploring fight, flight, freeze, collapse, appeasement, and relational protection
- Recognizing how developmental trauma may appear through present-day somatic and relational patterns. (past is always present)
- Understanding protective parts within the context of the client’s developmental history and current relationships
- From Story to the Here-and-Now: Tracking Parts in the Body (60 minutes)
- Shifting from talking about an experience toward noticing what is occurring in the present moment
- Tracking sensation, breath, posture, gesture, movement, affect, and impulse
- Recognizing activation, settling, orienting, mobilization, and immobilization
- Using present-moment experience to deepen curiosity toward parts
- Experiential practice moving between narrative content and here-and-now somatic processing
- Resourcing, Titration, and Pendulation in Parts Work (60 minutes)
- Establishing internal, external, somatic, and relational resources
- Applying titration to slow trauma processing and maintain workable levels of activation
- Using pendulation between activation and experiences of greater capacity, connection, and resourcing.
- Tracking protectors and responding to signals to slow down, pause, or redirect
- Experiential practice integrating SE principles into IFS-informed interventions (demo)
- Working Experientially With Protection and Incomplete Responses (60 minutes)
- Exploring sensation, movement, gesture, posture, imagery, and action impulses
- Recognizing protective and defensive responses within parts
- Using the therapeutic relationship and here-and-now experience as sources of clinical information
- Demonstration and experiential practice of integrated SE/IFS interventions
- Integration and Practice (60 minutes)
- Organizing information and helping participants determine when to emphasize parts exploration, somatic tracking, developmental context, or relational experience
- Recognizing transference/countertransference and here-and-now relational patterns without losing the somatic focus.
- Assessing readiness and modifying interventions based on capacity, dissociation, protective responses, and client preference
- Considering culture, identity, disability, lived experience, and differing relationships with body awareness, attachment, safety, and other clinical implications diagnostically.
- Benefits, risks, contraindications, and limitations of somatic and experiential trauma interventions
- Case application and integration (demo)
Presented by: Cody Gauthier, LCSW
Cody Gauthier, LCSW, SEP, is a psychotherapist, educator, and clinical supervisor specializing in experiential and body-oriented approaches to trauma treatment. He is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP), Level 2 trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), and trained in EMDR and Brainspotting. He also teaches Gestalt Therapy at the graduate level. His clinical and teaching approach integrates somatic awareness, parts work, and experiential interventions to help clinicians move beyond cognitive understanding of trauma and toward deeper engagement with clients here and now embodied experience.
Workshop Schedule (Eastern Time):
- 10:00am - 10:30am | Sign-In and Welcome
- 10:30am - 12:00pm | Session
- 12:00pm - 12:10pm | Break
- 12:10pm - 1:40pm | Session
- 1:40pm - 2:20pm | Lunch Break
- 2:20pm - 3:50pm | Session
- 3:50pm - 4:00pm | Break
- 4:00pm - 5:30pm | Session
- 5:30pm | Continuing Education Certificates Available
6 CE Hours Included - Details by License Type Below:
- PSYCHOLOGISTS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company maintains responsibility for this program and its content. For more detailed information on the current CE ruling in Georgia, or if you are licensed in another state or country, please click here.
- COUNSELORS: The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company has been approved by the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) as an Approved Continuing Education Provider (ACEP), ACEP No. 7153. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. The Knowledge Tree, A Summit Professional Education Company is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
- GA: Counselors in GA will receive 6 Core Hours for completing this course. Please click here for more detailed information.
- SOCIAL WORKERS: The Knowledge Tree, a Summit Professional Education Company, provider #2470, is approved as an ACE provider to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Regulatory boards are the final authority on courses accepted for continuing education credit. ACE provider approval period: 1/14/2026-1/14/2027. Social workers completing this course receive 6 clinical continuing education credits.
- GA: Social Workers in GA will receive 6 Core Hours for completing this course. Please click here for more detailed information.
- MARRIAGE & FAMILY THERAPISTS: TKT has applied for approval for this workshop through the Georgia Association for Marriage & Family Therapy (GAMFT). If you are licensed in another state or country, please click here for more detailed information.
Registration: To register for individual workshops, we recommend purchasing the course directly on the workshop's page on our website. If you would like to register for multiple workshops at once and receive our multi-workshop discount (detailed below), you may either complete the Multi-Workshop Registration Form (available HERE) and email it to our Customer Service Team at theknowledgetree@summit.zendesk.com or call them at 404-913-2005 to register over the phone. Workshops worth fewer than 3 CE hours are not eligible for the multi-workshop discount and are therefore not listed on the registration form. Workshop registration for live webinars is open until the time the workshop begins, unless otherwise specified.
Multi-Workshop Discount: There is a 10% discount when registering for two workshops, a 15% discount when registering for three or four workshops, and a 20% discount when registering for five or more workshops. To receive this discount, you must use the Multi-Workshop Registration Form (available HERE). The discount only applies to courses purchased in the same transaction; the discount cannot be applied to courses purchased directly on our website, and cannot be applied retroactively to courses previously purchased. As stated above, courses worth fewer than 3 CE hours are NOT eligible for the multi-workshop discount and are therefore not listed on the registration form.
Refund/Cancellation Policy: If you can no longer attend a workshop you have registered for, you can either receive a credit for another workshop or receive a refund if you are within the refund policy period. Refunds will be given for cancellations received at least five days prior to the workshop. More information about refund/cancellation can be found here.
Attendance Policy: 100% attendance and completion of a course evaluation is required at any CE program in order to receive credit for that CE program. No partial credit is given. Certificates of completion will be available in each attendee’s account once the broadcast has ended and the course evaluation completed.
ADA Requests: We will make every effort to accommodate any reasonable ADA request. Please call or email us at least two weeks prior to the event. Payment and registration are required to fulfill an ADA request.
No Conflict Policy: Neither The Knowledge Tree nor its speakers have received any commercial support for this program or its contents and will not receive any commercial support prior to or during this program.
System Requirements: Live Interactive Webinars are facilitated via Zoom. System requirements for the Zoom platform are linked at our FAQ page.
We are an approved vendor for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for easy reimbursement of educational expenses for VA employees.
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For information about our Continuing Education Workshops, please contact our Customer Service team at: theknowledgetree@summit.zendesk.com |
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