Healing Trauma Through The Body
An Online Program for Nervous System Regulation
Find relief from symptoms of trauma and stress and experience calm, relaxation and wellbeing in your life!
Learn body-based tools for nervous system regulation and trauma healing.
Starting Soon!
Are you struggling with symptoms such as
anxiety, panic, or hypervigilance
chronic tension, not being able to relax
insomnia
high stress states on a regular basis?
Or do you find yourself
shut down or frozen
lethargic, depressed
dissociated
not being able to accomplish things?
Those symptoms might come from past trauma that your body has not processed which can create stuck, habitual patterns in your nervous system. Or they might come from chronic high stress which also leads to similar nervous system states. The good news is that we can re-educate our nervous system to come back to a state of balance, calm and wellbeing.
Working with the nervous system is reaching the roots of the symptoms rather than just trying to fix the symptoms on a superficial level. And the best way to communicate with the nervous system is through the body.
Healing Trauma through the Body is based on cutting edge neuroscience and trauma research combined with the age old wisdom of yoga and embodiment practices
Drawing from Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory, Polarity Therapy, Ortho-Bionomy, various embodiment practices, breath practices and simple yoga.
“The centrality of the body, the living, sensing, knowing body, that’s what’s going to be the big paradigm shift.”
- Peter Levine, founder of the Somatic Experiencing method of trauma healing
With this program you can take your healing into your own hands!
You will learn:
How trauma and stress affect your body and your nervous system
How to connect with your body
How to feel sensations and listen for the signals of your body
How to use your attention in deliberate ways
Effective tools for nervous system regulation
Results that you might see from this class:
Feeling more settled and at ease
Being able to access deep relaxation states
Feeling less stressed
Being less reactive to triggers
Feeling more emotionally regulated
Enhanced sense of wellbeing
Better sleep
About the Creator
Hi! My name is Ines Manteuffel and I am a trauma therapist, body-centered psychotherapist, bodyworker and yoga teacher in Boulder, Colorado.
Nervous system regulation is my passion!! I am excited to offer you this class as a culmination of 25 years of study, practice and working with clients. I have come to recognize that a regulated nervous system is THE foundation for well being and KEY to healing trauma.
During over 25 years of supporting my clients I have collected many body based tools to work with nervous system regulation - drawing from Trauma therapy, Yoga, mindfulness, breath practice, Energy medicine, Osteopathic Bodywork and embodiment practices to name just a few.
In this program I integrate all this wisdom and practices from different traditions into a comprehensive system to support your healing on a root level, from the ground up, to affect real change.
Read more about me here.
This program is about Befriending Yourself, Learning about Yourself, Listening to Yourself, Honoring Yourself, Healing Yourself
Why is “Nervous System Regulation” so important for healing trauma and stress?
Definition of trauma:
Trauma is the response to a deeply distressing or threatening event or circumstance that overwhelms our ability to cope.
When we encounter such a situation, our survival responses such as fight&flight, or freeze/ collapse kick in and try to create safety for ourselves. However, when our system feels overwhelmed and is not able to cope with the intensity of the situation, our nervous system – meaning our autonomic nervous system, which is a big part of our survival response – often gets stuck in certain survival responses. And then these responses might keep going even after the threat is over and we are actually safe again. On the deeply unconscious level of our survival system, we have not realized that we are safe now. This is called “nervous system dysregulation”. It is a maladaptive response to overwhelm where our nervous system is not able to regulate back to a state of calm and safety.
A very similar response happens with chronic stress. Our survival system goes into a fight or flight state to deal with the demands of the stressor and if the stressors keep coming our system adapts by chronically being in that high activation state. The good news is that this is a learned response and it can be unlearned. There are ways to re-train our nervous system to access states of calm and safety and wellbeing.
Why is it important to work through the body to regulate your nervous system?
The survival responses are largely body-based responses.
There are physiological changes that take place when we are in fight or flight or a freeze response. And those changes happen automatically, beyond our conscious control. That means that we cannot direct ourselves though our conscious mind to come out of the response. Our rational mind occupies a different part of our brain than the more “primitive” survival system. So, what we need to do is communicate directly with our autonomic nervous system and teach it to function differently. And the most direct way is through the body.
Why would I take this class rather than do trauma therapy?
This class is not meant to replace one-on-one therapy with a skilled trauma practitioner.
It is meant as an addition.
Especially if you have intense trauma symptoms, it is absolutely necessary to have personalized guidance and support.
However, what I have seen in over 25 years of working with clients one-on-one is that a weekly therapy session is often not enough to really re-train the nervous system. If your nervous system has established certain pathways for a long time it needs practice and many reminders to do something new. That is true especially for long term trauma symptoms and complex trauma. While a lot of change can happen during therapy sessions, it is easy to revert to the old patterns during all those days that you are not in therapy.
I usually give my clients homework to practice, but I have found that a lot of people need extra support to be able to do the homework on a regular basis.
And this is why I have developed this class.
To support people in regular practice and to teach people in-depth about their nervous systems, what happens with trauma and specific tools to help regulate their nervous system.
We don’t have to go back to the past and remember what happened in order to heal.
We can work with what is happening in our bodies right now and shift long held patterns by helping our bodies to re-organize.
“ Trauma is not a disorder, it’s not a disease. But it is a wound.
It may not be a physical wound, but it’s a wound to our psyche, to our soul.
It leaves us bereft, disconnected from ourselves and disconnected from others.
It is a wound that can be healed if we know the right tools and can apply those tools. “
-Peter Levine, founder of Somatic Experiencing
More about the class
This is a 3 month long program to teach you the fundamentals about nervous system regulation. You will be guided step-by-step through the most important skills and practices for self-regulation. You will also receive education about trauma, the effect of trauma on your body and your nervous system and how the tools that I teach work.
We will explore a different theme each month – Resource, Connecting to the Body, and Breath.
The core of the program is a weekly, live streamed, 75-minute-long class to participate in live or watch later at your convenience. This is a practice-based class, so it’s about doing the practices as I instruct during the class and not just about watching. Think of it like a yoga class that is very specific to nervous system regulation. You wouldn’t sign up for a yoga class just to watch it.
There will be a guided meditation very specific to nervous system regulation at the end of each class. You will be able to download the audio and practice during the week as many times as you can. Of course, you can also re-watch the whole class during the week as often as you like.
You will get a written handout after each class with the most important practices that we covered, so if you don’t have time to repeat the whole class you can repeat shorter practices.
You will be able to ask questions – either at the beginning of the live streamed class, by unmuting or typing in the Q&A box or you can email me with your questions and I will answer them at the beginning of the next class. If it is an urgent question that will keep you from practicing between classes I will try to answer per email right away.
If you have difficulties with the practices and would like one-on-one support, you can schedule a private session with me in-person if you are local or over zoom.
The classes happen over zoom. I encourage you to keep your camera turned on so that I can see you and give suggestions and corrections, but if that feels uncomfortable for you, you can turn your camera off.
This Class is for you if you…
Experience mild to moderate symptoms of trauma or stress and you are relatively stable, meaning you can connect with your body and go inside and not be flooded by intense symptoms to the point of overwhelm.
Experience fairly intense symptoms of trauma and you are working one-on-one with a trauma professional, and you have decided together that a class like this would be helpful. During the class you keep receiving one-on-one support from your practitioner or from myself in private sessions.
If in doubt, contact me
This Class is NOT for you if you…
Experience strong symptoms of trauma that regularly leave you feeling overwhelmed and flooded by symptoms and overwhelm
You do not have the support of a trauma informed practitioner one-on-one on an ongoing basis
If in doubt – contact me
What you will need:
An internet connection and a device to watch the class over zoom
A private, undisturbed space
A yoga mat
Pillows and a blanket to create comfort
A chair if you have trouble getting up and down from the floor or have physical limitations
·
The kinds of practices we will explore:
- directing your attention to certain areas of your body or certain inner experiences or aspects of your environment to affect your nervous system
- learning to stay focused on particular experiences of your choice
- using your own touch on your body in particular ways and in particular places
- gentle movement
- simple and gentle yoga (no experience necessary)
- breathing practice
- guided meditations
The Monthly themes:
· First month:
Resource – the concept of resource means anything that feels supportive to you or that feels positive and calming to you.
When your nervous system is in a survival state because of trauma or stress you will tend to notice things around you and inside of you that feel negative or threatening. That perception comes with the survival states of fight (I need to always be ready to aggressively respond to danger) and flight (I need to always scan for danger and be ready to run away) or freeze (I don’t feel safe to move freely or express myself, I need to always pull inside of myself and be still to create safety). Your thoughts and emotions and view of the world probably have established habitual pathways around danger and the world not being a friendly place. Your view of the world becomes smaller and smaller, like a tunnel, only seeing the negative things. Your body functions according to the pathways of responding to danger.
All of this can become a habitual state you live in and so automatic that nothing else seems possible anymore. And this state is deeply rooted in your survival response and not easily controlled by your conscious mind.
So, in order to widen your perception of the world and yourself you need to learn to connect to things that are positive and feel good and create a feeling of safety. You are literally creating new pathways in your brain and nervous system that way. This kind of practice goes way beyond positive thinking. It is about learning what makes you feel safe on a body/nervous system level and feeding those signals into your nervous system and receiving those signals in a felt way. Over time, as new pathways get established, the state of safety and feeling good becomes easier and easier to find for your body-mind system. This is the foundation for nervous system regulation.
· Second month:
Connecting to the body and sensations
Once you have learned to access some positive states in yourself it now will become more possible to connect with your body and the sensations in your body in a deeper way. For a lot of people with trauma, connecting deeply into their bodies is not that easy. It often does not feel safe to feel what’s inside, because scary things might have happened in the past that affected their body. In that case, it might have been a really good choice to disconnect from bodily sensations and not feel as much. It is extremely important to understand that this kind of disconnection is a very intelligent response to certain situations and not wrong at all. And it needs to be honored as such. But, over time, staying disconnected can thwart your healing process. So, once you are in a safe enough space, you can start to slowly explore connecting to your body however much feels ok to you. What is important here is to go very slow, always staying in the zone of safety and honoring the timing and ability of your own system.
This is how I approach deepening into your inner experience. Going slow, honoring your body and what feels right to you and your own way and your own timing. And I will teach you how to do that.
The reason that connecting with the sensations in your body is an important part of the healing process from trauma is that it allows the stuck and frozen places inside to be felt and seen which allows them to transform.
You will also learn what activation or freeze feels like in your body so you can identify what state you are in and then apply the right tools to shift that state.
· Third month:
Breath
Using our breath in a conscious way is one of the most powerful ways in which we can influence our autonomic nervous system directly. Our breath is right on the interface of our autonomic functions and our conscious functioning. It can be automatic and happen without our noticing or we can direct our breath consciously. Our nervous system controls our breath, but it also works the other way around – our breath, especially directing our breath in particular ways affects our nervous system and can help it to shift from an activated state into a calm state. Depending on how we use our breath, we can also activate our nervous system with it, but for our purposes we will focus on calming and regulating types of breath practice.
Once you have learned to connect to resource and to sensations in your body you are now ready to explore a bit more deeply internally through the breath. With the skill of connecting to your sensations you will be able to monitor what is happening in your body with conscious breathing. If it is too intense you will be able to tell that you are getting activated and then slow things down. Or you can pick up your breath a bit when not much is happening.