Karen Rachels, LMFT | Psychotherapy Consultation & Training

• SAT Training
• Workshops
• Taste of SAT

SAT Training

Practice-Focused Somatic Attachment Therapy Training
(30 - 45 hours, depending on specific training)

The goal of this training is to actively learn and use somatic and attachment-based skills/concepts to facilitate transformation in clients’ core beliefs and patterns of relating to self and others.

The training covers the didactic material of my workbook and also allows therapists the direct experience of practicing basic somatic skills with compassionate, constructive feedback. Making the transition from a non-somatic approach to a somatic one can be challenging. The class aims to normalize these challenges and help participants ease into the transition at their own pace.

Dates and Hours: Change per specific training

Location: Oakland, CA, close to public transit

Fee: Approximately $30/hour/person, subject to change, as of January, 2018.

Class Requirement: Participants must be on a clinical track. If prelicensed, must be working with an individual supervisor.

Required Text: My workbook, Body, Brain, Love: A Therapist’s Workbook for Affect Regulation and Somatic Attachment is the required text. You can order it through my website or through Barnes and Noble (free shipping).

CE: Available for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCs and PhDs for a small fee. **

Number of Participants: 9 maximum

Description of Somatic Attachment Therapy: The goals of SAT are to earn a secure attachment and to develop a coherent narrative of one’s life story. Accomplishing these two goals is dependent on the ability to both observe and experience one’s own internal and interpersonal process in a complete way, i.e., one that utilizes the information from our bodies, our hearts, our intellect, and our spirit in a moment-to-moment, present-focused relationship with a securely-attached, co-regulating, attuned other. Somatic Attachment Therapy aims to facilitate this observation and experience by tracking and working with the markers of client attachment tendencies as well as our own and using a somatic-based approach to deepen awareness and the capacity for change.

Structure of Training: I will teach specific skills through active practice. Didactic material will be integrated with the practice. Each participant will work as “therapist” and “client” during the course of each training day. I will do the bulk of the teaching with one or two assistant teachers who will be teaching some material with my guidance. By the end of the 39 hours of training, participants will have some familiarity and comfort using the following skills:

1. Inducing mindfulness
2. Regulating a client in a hyperaroused state
3. Regulating a client in a hypoaroused state
4. Tracking your own dysregulation
5. Recognizing traumatic activation
6. Teaching the Window of Tolerance
7. Tracking
8. Contacting
9. Deepening one and Deepening two
10. Slowing
11. Permission-Seeking
12. Use of touch
13. Supporting the wisdom of defenses
14. Recognizing and working with a child states, protectors, parts, and incomplete trauma reactions.
15. Meaning, anchoring and integration
16. Attachment tendencies as they manifest in therapy
17. Recognizing your own attachment tendencies
18. Increasing your ability to work from the right brain and recognize which brain you are working from during sessions
19. Enhancing your capacity for presence in therapy through right brain-left brain integration
20. Learning the Attachment Bubble (working with present-moment attachment dynamics), attachment bids and beliefs

Didactic Preparation Prior to Training

1. Reading of Body, Brain, Love: A Therapist’s Workbook for Affect Regulation and Somatic Attachment (It is okay to not complete the reading beforehand although it will greatly help your learning. I will be assigning pertinent chapters for reading in between sessions. See #3 below)
2. Viewing of specific videos on my YouTube channel.
3. A few weeks prior to the training, you will receive a study guide to prep for the first class. Once the class begins, you will receive a study guide for each successive class session.

I am asking all participants to engage in at least one practice session outside of class between training sessions. We can form groups during class. Sessions can be conducted in person or by Skype/Zoom.

Didactic Study during Training

1. Recommended reading of Being a Brain-Wise Therapist by Bonnie Badenoch
2. Possible other readings as appropriate from books reflecting various somatic and/or attachment therapies.
3. Reading articles and watching videos per the study guides.

Post-Training

I have several practice groups that participants may be able to join.