Innate Somatic Intelligence™ Trauma Therapy Approach (ISITTA) Training

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Innate Somatic Intelligence™ Trauma Therapy is an integrative, relational approach to healing trauma. Based on essential Hakomi Therapy techniques, ISITTA integrates a polyvagal trauma-informed view on the somatic, relational, and clinical skills needed to transform trauma experiences.  

This highly experiential training is designed for therapists/practitioners who want to learn from their own somatic experience and be part of a mindful learning community, guided by trauma-informed principles. We begin with the innate wisdom of the trauma practitioner’s own nervous system by using trauma-informed movement practices* to develop and increase an attuned and resourced connection to oneself and one’s body. We then continue to layer techniques into these practices that are designed to facilitate clients emotional and somatic releases. These practices are also key to studying the limiting trauma beliefs that hold back the client’s growth.  

ISITTA training is based on the core assumption that trauma healing is not a problem to be solved, but rather a psychobiological process to be connected too. Trauma healing can reconnect us with innate somatic intelligence that is available in all of us: the “river beneath” the trauma. This river is our innate healing capacity we access through the safety of the attuned therapeutic relationship where we use precise somatic and clinical practices. 

We train the trauma therapist with in-depth somatic tools such as self-regulating practices, felt-sense awareness (somatic attunement), safe touch and movement therapy techniques to help heal both individual and collective trauma experiences.  

The training has four main goals:  

1. Somatic Knowledge: Increase this embodied wisdom ™ skill set for therapists who want to incorporate in-depth somatic therapy tools into their existing therapy practice. We will integrate movement therapy, breathing techniques and trauma-informed mindfulness tools. 

2. Clinical Knowledge: Apply trauma-informed and evidence-based clinical therapeutic interventions tailored to developmental and relational traumas. We will use a combination of demonstrations, didactic presentations, and supervised practice groups.

3. Wisdom & Self-Care: Demonstrate how to cultivate the self-compassion and resilience the trauma therapist needs by practicing and applying regulating techniques to support the therapist through challenging client experiences and countertransference. Develop body-based self-care tools to support both emotional and nervous system capacity. 

4. Community Support: Create a supportive experiential learning setting and build a network of somatic therapists/practitioners who share the values of being compassionate, relational, somatic and attuned to social justice and systemic experiences.  

ISITTA’s focus is to enable the trauma practitioner to alleviate suffering in complex therapy environments, while acknowledging that individual trauma is interconnected with collective, intergenerational and historical trauma. 

How is ISITTA unique in Trauma Healing? 

Transforming your clients’ traumatic experiences isn’t just about savvy therapy skills and clinical interventions. It requires a refined ability to see deeply into your client’s suffering and trust their Innate Somatic Intelligence™.  This means that the therapist/practitioner is working on themselves as they deepen their somatic therapy skills. Trauma therapists sit at the intersection of individual and collective trauma support and must also understand trauma as an issue of social justice and socio-political forces. This requires developing skills that include seeing the complexity of the client's process in the present moment and also as it unfolds in their current and historical living and societal contexts. 

Facilitating the process of unearthing one's Innate Somatic Intelligence™ is an in-depth journey into how the past has impacted the present, both mentally, emotionally, systemically and relationally.  

ISITTA is about learning to trust the client’s wisdom by offering concrete, present-moment experiences and safe explorations that can shift the inner perception of the historical trauma imprints. These therapeutic skills require a different kind of training. The therapist has to be willing to partner, as well as guide, the client while listening to what truly wants to emerge. This is not an easy process. The pressure of performing well, delivering change, being overwhelmed with the suffering and pain, the helplessness and one's own triggers all come into play when engaging in in-depth trauma healing.  

In this method we are learning to stay connected with the present moment unfolding of the body's healing experience. We trust the body’s capacity fo heal. Through mindful movements we reconnect with the innate capacity of wanting to move out of an immobility response by sensing into the fluidity in our bodies. Every trauma experience has both a memory sequence and also a movement sequence we can access to release limiting psychobiological patterns in a safe and supported way. What is unique to ISITTA is that we utilize the fluid systems of the body to support this organic healing process. 

What are the six principles in trauma work?

ISITTA is based on six principles originally inspired by the five classic principles of the Hakomi Method. These Principles frame the work and guide the practitioner towards integrity, self-awareness and embodied wisdom™. The principles act as an inner compass in which to anchor the somatic and trauma techniques used. For example, an intervention that is offered from a compassionate inquiry mindset has a particular quality/felt sense/ impact on the client. And, if the therapist holds relational and community healing as a value, we will understand our own biases within the context of our work as trauma therapists.

Here is a brief overview of the six guiding principles.

ISITTA Principles

1. Innate Somatic Intelligence™ 
   The body is intelligent, this healing wisdom is innate and, with safety, can be accessed. The wisdom body knows how to heal.

2. Relational & Community Healing
   We are co-regulating humans. Healing happens in our relationships with each other in a safe and inclusive community, and in relation to our natural environment. When we safely co-regulate, we can grow.

3. Adaptability & Embodied Wisdom™ 
   Everything changes, nothing is permanent. We can grow, adapt and thrive. We are a fluid organism. With adaptability, we are able to meet the challenges in this increasingly complex world. Through this process we develop embodied wisdom™, an inner guidance that can meet the challenges we face with both knowledge and right action.

4. Compassionate inquiry
   The compassionate self-inquiry process is evoked/arises/happens when we extend kindness to ourselves and others. We learn to trust the process even in times of suffering. Others become motivated and/thrive in the presence of  compassionate regard. The therapist is in a compassionate inquiry with the client, that supports the unfolding process of the client.

5. Embodied Consciousness
   Engaging and embodying mindfulness allows us to shift our awareness and purpose towards new insights and experiences. This intentional practice and mindset helps us discover our Innate Somatic Intelligence™.  

6. Interconnection & Interdependence
   Understanding our own healing in the context of family, community, and society allows us to be of service to others. By understanding our interconnectedness, we integrate our actions of past and present and become intentional in our actions for the future.  We recognize the interdependence of all living beings and actions and become deliberate in our choices. 

The Classic Principles of the Hakomi Method 

We acknowledge these inspiring principles as the foundation of mindful and wakeful living and practice. 

1. Mindfulness

2. Body-mind holism

3. Non-violence

4. Organicity

5. Unity 

Meeting complex trauma challenges at this time  

Contemporary helping professionals face the complexities of trauma healing at this time. Wedged between the individual trauma story within the cultural and socio-political influences that can create a multiplicity of traumas, the trauma therapist/practitioner has the responsibility of creating a safe healing environment.  We are living at a time where we are called upon to integrate therapy modalities that best serve our clients’ needs, as well as to understand the impact of social and historical trauma on our bodies. 

The trauma therapist needs to meet this complexity by training differently–it’s no longer enough to just learn interventions and skills. We need to become a different kind of practitioner, one who’s unafraid to sit with suffering in a deep and compassionate way. We need to become trauma change catalysts who can see beyond the stigma of trauma and support growth in our clients and facilitate the sacredness of their life journeys.

We can’t fix past traumas for our clients, but we can learn how to respond to their longing for wholeness with wisdom, skill and heart. We can support their nervous systems to regulate, teach them somatic and mindful tools, and help them trust that their trauma story has deep purpose. We can learn how to ground ourselves in kind heartedness and work with our clients’ traumatic experiences as our own triggering arises. This new way transcends the old paradigm of healing and delivers precise and effective tools for self-healing and transformation.  

The ISITTA training provides a clear pathway to becoming this kind of healer.

Learning from the Soma up  

Guiding clients through trauma processes also requires a fluid and resilient nervous system. The adaptive practitioner commits to healing their own nervous system and uses their nervous system’s resilience to support clients towards health and new ways of being. In this training, you’ll focus on learning “from the soma up” to deepen both your cognitive and somatic understanding. In other words, you won’t just learn techniques and practices for healing trauma–you’ll learn to embody them.

Being a somatically intelligent practitioner means understanding the current socio political and societal challenges that we’re collectively facing. We need to understand not just our client’s personal trauma, but how it intersects with intergenerational and collective trauma in a society that’s constantly changing and evolving. We explore who we need to become to facilitate health and wellbeing in this climate of dramatic change. These current challenges require a new mindset to help heal the deep fractures in communities, societies and in the relational realms.