Into the Fire: Facilitating Somatic Opening
Q/T & BIPOC Practitioner Training
Into the Fire: Facilitating Somatic Opening. Q/T & BIPOC Practitioner Training:
This course is for practitioners who are queer and/or trans and/or BIPOC, and will develop practitioners’ abilities to facilitate somatic opening. Somatic Opening is where the magic of somatic transformation happens: long-held patterns & contractions are supported to open so that something new can emerge in the client’s soma, and in their relationships with themselves and others. Facilitating Somatic Opening includes developing skills of somatic perception, working directly with hidden emotions, such as shame, as well as supporting clients to live into a wider range of emotions.
The course is skills-based, grounded in Generative Somatics’ methodology. In this course, participants will explore somatic theory, witness and participate in demonstrations of somatic skills, practice with one another, and deepen their embodied capacity to offer somatic work.
In Into the Fire: Facilitating Somatic Opening, we explore:
Generative Somatics’ theory of how Somatic Transformation .
Facilitating Somatic Practices for Healing Shame.
Returning to a Felt Sense of Dignity after experiences of trauma.
Practices for Centered Accountability, Self - Forgiveness, and Holding Contradictions.
Somatic Perception - learning to see how the body physically holds trauma.
Introduction to Somatic Bodywork for Widening Emotional Range.
Where: In-person, at a location near Cambie & Broadway in Vancouver
When: Tuesdays, 9am - 12pm, from April 28 - June 30th
Who: Small Group. Maximum 8 participants, BIPOC-majority cohort.
Access info: KN95 masks required. Teaching space is up a flight of stairs (15 steps).
Investment: $2100.
Limited Reduced Fee Spaces Available for QT/BIPOC ($1850) and Black & Indigenous Practitioners ($1650)
*
Coming back into our own bodies, as practitioners, is a political choice. Knowing how to support clients to come back into their own bodies is also a political offer. There is a reason that a tactic of colonialism has been to separate people from their own bodies (and also the land, water, one another, and plant and animal life) - it is where our power, our courage, our connection to a larger sense of aliveness, is felt.
In this training, I bring 15 years of Generative Somatics training to teaching somatic skills to practitioners in community. So many of us are holding so much in our roles as political repression increases. Somatic work is one of the ways in which we can effectively support healing.
There are infinite paths to embodiment; all of our lineages have ways to move trauma through the body, and in many cases these knowledge bases were purposefully disrupted by colonialism, including in my lineage. Generative Somatics is one methodology amongst many to return to our bodies. We will look together at the tributaries of practice that fed into GS, named and unnamed, known and unknown, while also developing and practicing skills that cellularly, in our lineages and in our DNA, we have always known.
Course Outline
(subject to change and adjustment according to the needs of the group):
Week 1: Opening: Orientation to Generative Somatics’ Theory of Somatic Opening.
Week 2: Somatic Perception: Learning to See How Our Bodies Hold Trauma.
Week 3 & 4: Healing Shame: Theory & Practice for Working Directly with Shame.
Week 5: Returning to A Felt Sense of Dignity
Week 6: Centered Accountability & Self Forgiveness
Week 7 & 8: Introduction to Somatic Bodywork*: Working with Increasing Emotional Range.
Week 9: Open Space / Integration.
Week 10: Completion.
Early (First Round) Application Deadline: Thurs, Aug 20th.
Final Round Applications Deadline (for any remaining spaces): Thurs, Sept 3rd
*In this course, while we explore an introduction to Somatic Bodywork, we will not be touching one another’s bodies, except for arms, where there is consent. We will use breath and self-touch to learn foundations of somatic bodywork.
*A familiarity with Generative Somatics practices for Regenerating Safety is necessary for this course, as the skill set of Facilitating Somatic Opening is useful as a next step in a healing arc once sufficient safety is rebuilt. You can connect with me if you have questions about this!
Fayza Bundalli
Fayza is a queer, femme, somatic practitioner and bodyworker. She feels in her bones the importance of the role of politicized healers in moving towards a new world. She was strongly mentored by generous, profoundly skilled, and predominantly QT/BIPOC teachers during her decade with Generative Somatics, and now feels deep commitment to and joy in mentoring fellow QT/BIPOC practitioners in somatic skills.