Expanded Awareness as an Integrated Practice: Exploring Growth Edges In The Healing Process with Bessel van der Kolk and Licia Sky

Awareness of our bodily sensations holds an important key to understanding self-regulation, coregulation, and healing from trauma. Restoring the ability and capacity to be aware in the present moment requires re-establishing awareness of our senses and being able to befriend our interior reactions to our surroundings. Our senses inform our nervous system about our physical state of safety or danger, agitation or calm, and in turn, determine our capacity to focus and respond effectively to what is around us.

Join somatic educator and Trauma Research Foundation (TRF) cofounder Licia Sky and special guest presenter Bessel van der Kolk for a program that explores how you can restore your ability and capacity to be aware in the present moment.

Through an exploration of body sensations that includes orienting attention, breath, sound, and movement, you will:

• Learn a detailed body tracking meditation that incorporates interoception, proprioception—and how they inform our sense of safety and availability to engage.
• Observe how nonverbal awareness affects physical and emotional states.
• Explore nonverbal vocalizing, and how it affects our body for calming, energizing, and tension release.
• Learn to track shifts of state through nonverbal interaction in self and others to foster attunement.

These explorations are all nonverbal, but time is provided after each exercise to process the experience and unpack ways they can be practiced to build self-awareness and enhance meaningful engagement. Return home with techniques to notice these subtle inner shifts so you can fully engage with your bodies, thoughts, and feelings.