Group Coaching for Therapists

The Container

A 10-Week Clinical Confidence Group Coaching Program for Body-Oriented Psychotherapists

So you've completed the somatic training you were so excited about, but you're struggling to incorporate what you've learned into your client sessions?

Maybe you’re...

Not sure how to introduce this new modality to your clients
Anxious about whether your choices are “right” or “wrong”
Not sure how to do somatic work with clients virtually
Feeling isolated in your work since training ended
Craving more integration between your training and your own professional values and interests

If any of these sound like you, you are not alone! Somatic approaches challenge our internalized norms around holding expertise, and instead invite us to hold space for our clients' experience. That means feeling confident in your work cannot be solely based on what you know or what’s “right”, but rather rooted in and tended by your own practices in embodiment and attunement.

Your somatic education doesn’t end with that certificate. Embodiment is a dynamic, continuous, and relational process. Continue your learning in community with The Container: a 10-week clinical confidence group for somatic psychotherapists.

Get the support you need and deserve in The Container!

In ten weeks you'll gain clarity on who you are as a therapist and feel more confident in your clinical choices and response-ability.

In The Container I’ll help you:

Interrogate the binaries and internalized norms that are holding you back from feeling confident in your work
Develop processes that offer your clients (and you!) a sense of containment in individual sessions and in the work broadly speaking
Center growing your clients individual capacity for curiosity, self-responsiveness, and connection

Week-by-Week Details

Each week will include check in & follow up, a brief "lecture" or topic introduction, dialogue & opportunities for questions, somatic experiments, and opportunities to reflect & integrate.

Week One: Framing Session

In this session we’ll review the importance of framing the theme or focus in developing a container for each individual session, in the same way you do with your clients when setting long-term goals. A big piece of this is your own clinical flexibility and confidence. We’ll do this by exploring your own needs, intentions, or goals in participating in the group.

Week Two: Challenging Binaries

This week we'll explore the hold of various binaries in our work, namely how dogma, morality, and right and wrong shape how we receive client information and make choices about interventions. We'll explore what's "right" for each of our clients from a client-centered perspective and make important connections about our "right" reflex to systems and internalized narratives.

Week Three: Client is the Leader

Perhaps the most important skills we can teach our clients are the ability to notice their own experience and, when possible, choose where, or on whom, to focus their awareness. In this session we’ll cover common challenges and themes in teaching clients dual awareness, including offering choice and helping clients get back to shore when flooded. We’ll also explore the organicity of this process, meaning how the natural unfolding and liminality of not knowing exactly where you’re going with a client is transformative in and of itself. This requires us to unlearn our own expertise and work to discern when and how we intervene.

Week Four: The Mind is In the Body

Embodiment is a whole-body experience. There's a tendency in our field to separate the mind and body; this is a legacy intimately linked to systems of oppression and dehumanization. In this session we'll explore how cognitive approaches can support somatic work, particularly when helping clients make sense of new somatic data.

Week Five: Open Consultation #1

Open consultation is an opportunity to work through client cases together. Bring examples from your present day practice. What are you struggling with? The week prior, I'll survey the group for cases and if we have more cases than time we may explore case topics rather than individual clients.

Week Six: Discernment

This week we'll explore how your own judgement is a perfectly good tool for making clinical choices. It's not uncommon for therapists to worry about following the correct "protocol" when working with clients. No modality can prepare you for every client situation. Every modality has its limitations. Often, we have to consult and then filter our training through the lens of what's possible or safe or productive for the client in front of us.

Week Seven: Recontextualizing Trauma "Treatment"

A common question I hear from body-based therapists is: “How do I use this trauma processing modality I just learned with clients who don’t have single incident traumas/have complex trauma?” or “How do I work with clients who are in actively traumatizing situations?” Context is incredibly important. Resmaa Menakem says, "Trauma in a person decontextualized over time can look like personality. Trauma in a family decontextualized over time can look like family traits, trauma decontextualized in a people over time can look like culture." Recontextualizing trauma, therefore, requires interrogating the concepts of "treatment," "recovery," and "healing."

Week Eight: Pleasure, Play & Creativity

Something that can be hard for therapists to claim is a clinical identity. When we struggle to feel confident we might look outwards for examples of how we should be in sessions. This well we'll explore flipping the script and centering pleasure, play and creativity in our work rather than pain and suffering. What do we want our clients to be able to access in their lives outside of sessions? And what does that mean for how we model living?

Week Nine: Open Consultation #2

Week Ten: Integration Session

In our final session, we’ll practice integrating new skills and insights. We’ll explore this on at least a few levels, including helping your client at the end of each session, helping them towards the end of your relationship, and integrating for yourself as you continue to learn through experience. This includes compassion and clarity around whats changing and whats constant.

The Container is for you if:

You’ve completed some training in somatic or body-based psychotherapy (such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Havening, Hakomi, or any other Mind-Body approach)
- AND/OR you feel you have a similar level of knowledge and experience
You feel isolated in your work and crave opportunities for consultation
You’re not sure how to introduce your new modality to clients or they don’t seem to be “getting it”
You feel anxious about what’s “right” and “wrong”
You find yourself feeling lost when clients are overwhelmed

The Container is not for you if:

You’re brand new to body-based/somatic work, or psychotherapy in general. I see you and I welcome you to come back in the future!
Your discomfort with body-oriented work is causing severe distress. I totally get that, and I invite you to care deeply for yourself and come back when you feel a bit more resourced. This program is not therapeutic in nature, and in fact may bring up challenging emotions, body sensations, etc.
You feel uncomfortable talking about systemic oppression, including, but not limited to white supremacy, colonization, capitalism, heteropatriarchy. The Container recognizes the material, emotional, economic, and other impacts of these systems on our bodies