Upcoming events.

International Conference on Trauma and Embodiment
Apr
4

International Conference on Trauma and Embodiment

Strength Training As Trauma Care: Exploring Case Studies In Trauma Informed Weight Lifting

This session explores how Trauma-Informed Weight Lifting can transform fitness spaces into environments of healing and resilience. Grounded in neuroscience, physiology, and trauma research, this approach redefines weight lifting as a powerful tool for trauma recovery. Case studies demonstrate its impact on personal healing and community resilience, showing how trauma-informed practices promote both physical and emotional well-being. This session offers practical insights for integrating trauma-informed principles into fitness and wellness practices.

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Nov
7
to Nov 10

TRANSFORMING CHILDHOOD WOUNDS: Heal Your Past and Step into New Possibilities for Your Future

Embark on an extraordinary journey of healing and self-discovery guided by Linda Thai and Mariah Rooney, esteemed integrative trauma therapists, and somatic practitioners. Immerse yourself in a nurturing retreat environment designed to facilitate profound personal growth and transformation.

Through experiential practices carefully curated by Linda and Mariah, delve into the depths of your being to address long-held wounds and ignite the spark of healing. Engage in somatic and embodiment exercises, psychodrama structures, and narrative-changing techniques that illuminate the intricate connections between your mind, body, and spirit.

In this collaborative and supportive group setting, expect to

  • Transcend childhood wounds, finding solace and understanding in unresolved experiences

  • Cultivate a deep sense of groundedness, presence, and openness to pleasure through transformative somatic practices

  • Heal entrenched relational patterns and rewrite embodied narratives that no longer serve you

  • Expand your horizons and envision new possibilities that leave a lasting imprint on your body and nervous system.

Participate in dynamic group discussions, invigorating physical movement exercises, immersive hands-on experiences, and intimate one-on-one sharing sessions throughout the retreat. These interactions foster profound connections and insights, enriching your journey of self-discovery.

By the journey’s end, you’ll emerge with enhanced communication skills, a rekindled connection to your inner child, and a revitalized sense of empowerment. 

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The Giving Ground: A Grief Retreat
Aug
26
to Aug 29

The Giving Ground: A Grief Retreat

In this four-day, three-night experience you will gather with others in a beautiful space where you can bring all of yourself and all of your grief. Together we will learn more about how loss and grief affect our lives, relationships, and sense of self through activities including gatherings, intentional time in nature, healing with horses, body work, connection with spirit and meditation.

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Using Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor (PBSP) for Healing Attachment Wounds and Trauma: An Experiential Workshop for Therapists
Apr
26
to Apr 28

Using Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor (PBSP) for Healing Attachment Wounds and Trauma: An Experiential Workshop for Therapists

Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor Therapy (PBSP) is a powerful, gentle, flexible method for changing old, dysfunctional patterns. This workshop will present PBSP theory and help participants tune in to body signals and witness healing of deficits and wounds. The primary tool for this will be having participants role-play “ideal parents” who would have provided the client with the right input at the right age.

PBSP therapy is a particularly useful approach for providing transformative and healing experiences for people who have experienced wounding and trauma within their attachment relationships. We know that “what fires together, wires together”, and that painful experiences, particularly those that are repeated throughout our lifetime, become ingrained patterns and maps for our ways of moving through the world. Deconstructing these patterns and creating new maps can be incredibly challenging, as well as powerfully liberating.

PBSP provides opportunities for us to see in the present moment the structure of the ‘old map’ that has been written into our bodies, minds, nervous systems and hearts, as well as the possibility of what a new map can look and feel like.

We anticipate a mix of therapists new to PBSP and those more experienced to join this workshop, so we would like to note that some of the specific PBSP skills we may focus on include 'microtracking' (witnessing and voices), reversals/ideals and unbounded states/limits.


Learning Objectives:  
1. Learn the five basic needs addressed by PBSP
2. See how developmental deficits and attachment wounds and trauma show up in the body
3. Gain exposure to exercises/interventions that a) help discover unconscious emotion and b) help re-instate the ‘pilot’—forebrain/executive function
4. Experience the healing process of a PBSP structure 


Other important details:

  • Schedule:

    • We will meet Friday, April 26th from 5-8p and Saturday and Sunday, April 27th and 28th will meet from 9a to 5p with an hourlong break for lunch.

  • Cost:

    • The cost for the weekend training is $550 and is payable via PayPal or Venmo. Please submit your information via this form and you will be contacted to make payment. Payment options are also available.

  • Cancellation/Refund policy:

    • Refunds are available if registration is cancelled prior to March 25, 2023.

    • Past March 25, 2023, refunds will only be available if we are able to fill your spot in the training (and the training is full) less a $25 administrative fee.

  • Accommodation options: For folks traveling to Minneapolis, we will have limited accommodations available at the workshop site for an additional fee. Please let us know at the below link if you will be needing accommodations.

    • Private room for 3 nights: $275

    • Shared room with king bed for 3 nights: $375

This training weekend will be facilitated by Gus Kaufman, Ph.D.

Gus Kaufman, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who works with individuals, couples, families and groups as well as providing clinical supervision, and training. Since 1978 Dr. Kaufman had been a trainer and supervisor both nationally and internationally of Pesso-Boyden System Psychomotor Therapy. His dissertation research Body Signals of Childhood Loss was a pioneering work in demonstrating how ‘the body keeps the score.’ Gus has been an adjunct professor and clinical field supervisor in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University.

Dr. Kaufman has co-founded five nonprofits, including Men Stopping Violence, for which he conducted classes, training and public education (locally and nationally). He is a respected and renowned writer, fundraiser, and organizer of community action to end male violence toward women. Gus was instrumental in developing a 12-session curriculum on abuse which was used for all prisoners (approximately 40,000) in GA correctional facilities. Gus co-founded the Rainbow Project: Ending Violence in Our Relationships which focused on public education and intervention aimed at ending abuse in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender relationships.


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Psychodrama Structures Workshop
Oct
21

Psychodrama Structures Workshop

What will the workshop entail?

This Psychodrama Structures workshop will be a highly experiential, narrative-changing healing space where you get to address your family- and culture-of-origin wounds in a small group environment. During our time together we will engage in somatic and embodiment exercises to prepare our bodies, hearts and nervous systems to engage in psychodrama structures, a powerful modality for healing and transforming the wounds and stories we carry.

This practice is a collaborative and profoundly transformative approach to healing relationship patterns and embodied narratives that no longer serve us.

In this workshop we will recreate in three dimensional space a representation of something we would like to heal. We do this in order to step into the deep longings and hidden wounds of our inner child/ren and then re-imagine new possibilities that become somatically imprinted with the help of group members and a highly experienced facilitator.

We often joke that this transformation of your relational templates and possibility maps “is like doing ten years of therapy in one hour.”

Workshop Details

  • Room for up to 12 participants

  • If you are interested in joining, please fill out this form here.

  • Due to the nature of this work, we will likely complete 3-4 Structures during the day which means that not everyone will receive a structure on this day, but one of the most powerful aspects of this modality is that being present and participating in others' structures is incredibly potent and transformative. I will continue to come back to Minneapolis to do more of this work so there will absolutely be future opportunities to have your own structure if you choose to participate as an accommodator for others' structures during this workshop.

  • Pricing + Payment Options

    • The workshop fee is $250. If cost is a barrier to your ability to attend, please let me know and we can certainly work something out

  • Date/Time/Location

    • Saturday, October 21

    • 9a-5p with an hour long break for lunch

    • Location: Carondelet Center, St. Catherine University, 1890 Randolph Avenue St. Paul

      • Parking: There is plenty of street parking around the perimeter of the St. Catherine's campus as well as a visitor parking lot off of Fairview Ave on the East side of campus

Learn More

If you are interested in learning more about Psychodrama Structures you can read about it in chapter 18 of The Body Keeps the Score written by Bessel van der Kolk.

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