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Training Details

The Training

The Aliveness Training in Somatic Process™ Certification Program is a course of study that bridges body-centered processes and nature reconnection exercises to teach foundational life skills needed for psychological health, as well as deep transformative processes for Somatic Soul work. Two concentrations of study, BodyWay and the Aliveness Intensive, are available. Students in both specialty areas receive the overall curriculum acquiring techniques for overcoming struggles with: relationships; symptoms of extreme stress such as addictions and codependency; the emotional impact of life-threatening disease; work challenges like burn-out, overwhelm, or boredom. The life skills imparted include practical, step-by-step techniques drawing on research from the fields of ecopsychology, energetics, and somatic psychology to facilitate optimal states of functioning.  Additionally, the somatic soul work draws on indigenous, shamanic and expressive arts practices to facilitate an individual’s deep connection with the calling of their Soul.

The BodyWay concentration’s focus is on somatic processes for healing areas of non-chemical addictions, eating disorders, and codependency, as well as related areas of dysfunction.

The Aliveness Intensive concentration’s focus is on accessing the somatic soul through pre-symbolic activities and experience which results in co-creative, cooperative and flow-based living.  Somatic processes are augmented with creative and heart-based modalities. 

The training program consists of four learning modules of three months duration each.  Aliveness Intensive students additionally attend, at minimum, one 4-day in-person retreat in Portland Oregon. BodyWay students with an interest in eating disorder or weight related issues receive a fifth learning module that focuses on the specifics of eating and body image issues.  All learning modules are delivered via teleconference format.  A student may take one, two, three or all four modules.  Certification requires, however, that all four modules plus additional focus work is met.

Who Should Attend?

Mental Heath Practitioners
Mind-Body Therapists
Expressive Arts Therapists
Executive, Personal Growth Coaches
Occupational Therapists
Nurses
Pastoral Counselors and Ministers
Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers
Marriage and Family Therapists
Drug and Alcohol Counselors
Crisis Intervention Counselors
Weight Counselors and Weight-loss coaches
Nutritionists
Eating Disorder Therapists

Learning Object and Outcomes

Aliveness Professionals’ Certification Training includes these program elements for both specialties

Professional’s training tele-conferences, support materials, & training manuals;
BodyWay program teleclasses and support materials;
Additional focus work
Practicum
Project demonstrating mastery
Pre-graduation assessment and consultation

Learning Segments

Module: Embracing Wholeness—Training for the Treatment of Culturally Induced Disconnection and Fragmentation


The Aliveness Institute contends that so called “normal functioning” in our culture is founded, on a state of disconnection and fragmentation. Further, that success is often measured by an individuals’ ability to disconnect from their own body rhythms and inner/broader states of knowing.  Institutions are built on a framework that disowns the somatic, nature-based rhythms of the individual, and the innate need for belonging and community. Traditional behavioral and cognitive psychotherapies, while well-intentioned and often temporarily successful, focus on solving client problems within the framework of this fragmented or disconnected state of the modern mind, leaving the client’s somatic heart and soul as empty as it was to begin with.


Embracing Wholeness addresses the fragmented states brought on by the dysfunctional family system as well as the disconnected industrialized culture we are raised in.  Students will learn effective heart-based and somatic interventions that recapture the wholeness inherent in the client.  Methods for identifying disruptive cognitive and emotional states underlying addictions and eating disorders as well as “normalized” addictions such as too much doing, spending, and giving are explored with step-by-step processes for recapturing the needs and recognizing the underlying truth of the client.  Length of training: approximately 25 hours.

Curriculum (Embracing Wholeness)


Accessing Safety & Building Safety Resources
When to Strengthen Safety and When Not To
The Role of Ego Death in Soul Emergence
The Embodiment of Well-being
Wounding and the Body
Characterlogical Systems that protect us from the Pain of the Wound
Culture of Never Enough—Consumerism and Nature-Deficits
Releasing Attachment/Addiction—Facing the Pain of Emptiness
Letting Go of Control—Facing the Pain of Powerlessness
Embodiment of Core Strength
Surrender
Healing Fragmentation
The Embodiment of Being—releasing mental concepts.
Operating from Wholeness
Sense-awareness
Trust
Heart-Based Knowing and the Unknown

Module: Loving Nurture—Training for the Treatment of Self-Sacrifice, Codependency, Burn-Out and Doing Addiction


Our success-based culture has produced generations of adults who consistently and persistently rely on perfectionistic, production-based results and accumulation to measure self-worth. The mindset of “never enough” has pervasively invaded the psyche’s of the American soul, resulting in burn-out, overwhelm and continual states of stress and unrest.  Loving Nurture addresses the habit of self-sacrifice that denies core Being.  It guides the practitioner through the experience of deep terror that is at the root of this defense strategy, and embraces that experience with the highest heart-based states of compassion and self-respect.  Length of training: approximately 25 hours

Curriculum (Loving Nurture)


The Somatic Experience of Self-Sacrifice
Giving, Doing and Caring as Coping Mechanisms
Essential Components of Loving Nurture
The Somatic Experience of Nurture
Sense-based Awareness
Nurturing Rituals for Balance, Health and Well-being
Debunking Myths of Nurture
Cycles of Darkness, Body Constrictions and Shadow-States
Therapeutic Strategies for working with Polarities:
  Over-Pleasing and its Underlying Rage
  Over-Giving and its Underlying Terror
Accessing the Intelligence of the Heart
Modulating the Body’s Ability to Hold Increasing States of Pleasure
Nature-Reconnection Exercises to strengthen States of Pleasure
Working the Somatic Edge between Pleasure and Pain
Living in Flow:  the Dynamics of Heart-based Action

Module:  Feeling Power—Training for the Treatment of Culturally Induced Dissociation, Stress-related disorders, and Extreme States of Fear, Anxiety and Rage

“Only the person who is not fully alive, who is dead inside, can commit acts of violence. For anyone who loves life and is spiritually fulfilled, such acts are incomprehensible to them.”  Professor James Garbarino

Our disconnected culture produces individuals who are encapsulated within a man-made electronic world far from touch with our nature selves.  This disconnection from the natural world, including our innate biological wisdom, results in a massive cultural numbness overlaying feelings of grief, rage and fear, which surfaces in all kinds of deviated behaviors. To treat these deviant behaviors without understanding the source only perpetuates the problem, shifting symptoms.  People are hungry to reconnect with their innate natural being, yet have no idea how to do this.  This Module educates the Practitioner in Ecological and Somatic Techniques for helping clients understand and handle their own numbness, underlying stress, and realign with their nature-based feeling states of love and joy.  Length of training: approximately 25 hours

Curriculum (Feeling Power)


Biological Wisdom and the Natural World
Coping with Disconnection:  Numbness and Denial
Reinhabiting the Body:  Welcoming Terror, Rage and Grief
The Descent and the Somatic Soul
Shadow Feelings and the Body
Somatic Techniques for Handling Overwhelm and Out-of-Control Feelings
Expanding States of Joy and Aliveness through Heart-Based & Nature-Based Exercises
Therapeutic Necessity of Releasing Agenda for Clients
Handling Conflicted Feeling States
Titrating Feelings
Reinstating feelings of Belonging
Working with Higher Energies for Transmuting Lower Frequency Feeling States

Module:  Heart-Mind Applications—Training for Expanding Deeper Knowing & Sensing Capacities


Our industrialized culture reveres the small-mind’s logic. Our schools tell us to think hard, focus on facts and numbers, calculate and analyze so that we may dominate and conquer the natural world. While the utilization of the intellect is an important tool, as a people we are profoundly unhappy because we have disconnected ourselves from that which gives life real meaning and joy—the ability to center ourselves deeply in our hearts, to experience ourselves as a part of the natural world, to use our senses to expand our range of pleasure and to own our sense of true belonging.


In this Module students learn a variety of heart-based and nature connection techniques to expand their ability to experience pleasure, to breathe and center into the locus of the heart, and to trust the knowledge acquired from these activities.  As a result the Somatic Self expands beyond the separated egoic body to include the natural world.  This is the true beginning of living in a state of creative flow.  Length of training: approximately 25 hours

Curriculum (Heart-Mind Applications)


Impact of Heart and Nature Disconnection
Using Language to Support Somatic Presence, Heart Presence and Nature-based Awareness
Standing in the Center of the Heart
The Role of Silence in the Therapeutic Process
Slowing Down
Witnessing the Small-Mind—Mindfulness
Replacing Limited Small-Mind Thinking with Heart-Based & Nature-Based Thinking
Nature Reconnection exercises for Expanding our Range of Pleasure & Connection
53 Senses and Their Applications to Somatic Awareness of Self
Identity Crises and Letting Go of Attachments
Cultivating States of Allowing, Embracing, Compassion and Forgiveness
Working with Higher Energies for Transmuting Outdated Beliefs and Personality Identities

Teaching Methods at Aliveness Institute Trainings

Monday Evening Teleconference

The student learns by participating as a “student” herself in the Monday night classes.  She participates through listening, writing, and taking part in experiential exercises as delivered by the founder, Jane E. Latimer and faculty.


Tuesday Evening Teleconference

Designed to teach the professional skills of that month’s module, students learn through lecture, experience and facilitation practice on the calls.


The Following Methods are used for Teaching:


Lectures
Didactic material is taught through Tele-conference lecture.


Facilitation Demonstration
Faculty demonstrates techniques through real-life facilitation of student issues on both Monday and Tuesday night calls as well as review of audio sessions with clients.


Facilitation Practice
Real life issues of students are brought to the calls giving students the opportunity to practice
the techniques with one another.

 
Discussion
Sharing is encouraged on all calls.

 
Consultation
Case consultation is provided by instructors to facilitate integrating techniques into one’s private practice.


Practice
Students are required to pair up in-between classes to practice using the tools.  Those student practice sessions are recorded for instructor feedback.


Feedback
Certification requires student demonstrate proficiency with the materials.  To that end, faculty listens to and critiques students’ skills during class as well as sessions recorded in-between classes.


Audio Library
Mp3 downloads of Aliveness Training sessions and demos are available for students to review on their own time at home.


Reading & Audio Assignments
Each Module has it’s own set of downloadable lessons and audio lessons to be reviewed on the student’s on time. 

A Professional Manual for both the BodyWay and Aliveness Intensive Trainings are provided. 


Writing Assignments
Module Lessons contain study exercises and written homework designed to facilitate application of course content.


Peer Partner Assignments
Students team up with one other student in the training for educational purposes to practice elements of the method.

Requirements for Certification

Although students may enroll in one, two, three or all four of the modules, certification requires that all four modules are completed.  BodyWay students seeking certification with a focus on food and weight issues, will complete a fifth Module, which addresses those issues.  Aliveness Intensive students seeking certification are required to attend a minimum of two Aliveness Intensives. Intensives are held in Portland Oregon. 


Certification is given upon demonstration of proficiency.
Proficiency is determined by faculty review of the following: 
Knowledge of the Material
Use of BodyWay Language
Ability to Follow Client
Demonstrates Confidence and Presence
Creates Safety
Communicates Concepts Clearly
Aliveness Skills
BodyWay Skills
20 Hours of Individual Sessions with Learning Notes
Written Assignments
Final Project


Practicum
Practicum is the portion of the program designed for students to develop skills by practicing with each other and/or clients.  Students will audio tape sessions and submit for them for review by faculty for proficiency.  Practicum must be completed to achieve certification. 


Admission
The Aliveness Training in Somatic Process™ provides adjunctive training and continuing education units for mental health professionals, coaches, ministers and anyone desiring to deepen and advance their skills in working with others. 


Note: Licensure and board certification are outside the province of this Institute.
There are no admission requirements other than a desire to live in wholeness and help others.