Developed by Manuela Mischke-Reeds, LMFT
Innate Somatic Intelligence™ Trauma Therapy Approach
Trauma is what we experience – deeply in our soma – it can become a gateway into re-remembering the innate healing wisdom within us.
Innate somatic Intelligence™ Trauma Therapy (ISITTA™) is a somatic integrative therapeutic modality that addresses how trauma in the body can be safely released and awaken innate healing capacities. ISITTA is a somatic experiential approach that can be applied to many professions such as Psychotherapy, Mental Health Counseling and Coaching, Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies, or any health professional who is seeking nuanced somatic trauma healing tools. ISITTA is an integrative and multidimensional training; it trains the practitioner experientially from their own soma-intelligence and provides a wide variety of somatic polyvagal-informed clinical skills that are applicable to trauma healing.
Upcoming ISITTA Trainings
ISITTA’S INTENTION
To enable trauma therapists to help alleviate suffering in the complex therapy environments of our current world. We focus on how to heal individual trauma, in relation to the collective, systemic and historical trauma legacies. This training brings together many somatic modalities of sensing, feeling, moving and breathing in relationship with one’s inner curiosity, wisdom, and self-regulation tools. This resilient practitioner learns, through their own process, how to sustain in this complex trauma world we are facing. ISITTA lives at the intersection of understanding the somatic and systemic impact of trauma on the body. We apply polyvagal-informed theory and applications to engage the innate body wisdom, transform mental barriers, and release internalized protective parts.
The ISITTA training addresses both the clinical need for learning concrete somatic therapy skills and becoming more somatically wise as a practitioner. This training begins by learning somatic therapy from the inside out through experiential and relational practices. We begin with the innate wisdom of the trauma practitioner’s own nervous system, which becomes embodied when working with trauma. This unique training integrates Hakomi core techniques, somatic therapy techniques, trauma movement therapy skills, and embodied mindfulness practices and safe touch work. The background is being informed by psychobiological and neuroscience-informed models and ancient wisdom traditions into a coherent model of how to work sustainably with trauma clients in a complex world. The focus is on the inner development of the trauma practitioner who can skillfully apply the trauma techniques to create a sustainable foundation for trauma healing work.
Trauma is a human experience that can be helped. The trauma physiological state that is not processed can be supported towards release and integration by applying polyvagal-informed therapeutic interventions. The trauma states are associated with internal beliefs, creating protective parts, behaviors, and emotional responses that can be transformed. The human autonomic nervous system’s responses of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are innate to external and internal threats that can get stuck, interrupting the full human capacity towards thriving.
By learning to understand trauma response patterns, in a safe, compassionate therapeutic environment, trauma clients can heal their dysregulated nervous system responses. These psychobiological releases are somatic and relational and need to be mediated by lowered stress reactivity and learning to self-regulate.
For more information:
Van der Kolk BA. The body keeps the score: memory and the evolving psychobiology of posttraumatic stress. Harv Rev Psychiatry. 1994 Jan-Feb;1(5):253-65. doi: 10.3109/10673229409017088. PMID: 9384857.
Laricchiuta D, Garofalo C, Mazzeschi C. Trauma-related disorders and the bodily self: current perspectives and future directions. Front Psychol. 2023 May 19;14:1166127. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1166127. PMID: 37275691; PMCID: PMC10235635.
The ISITTA Trauma work is an integrative somatic trauma method that includes key practices and mindsets of many elegant methodologies. At this time of chaos and uncertainty, therapists and healers are facing the individual, historical collective mixed with the current world events. We are in a relational field as practitioners of living in current world events and influences that impact our own mental health, nervous system capacities. The lineages of knowledges in ISITTA work are integrated to sustain the practitioners in their healing work.
We acknowledge the influences of Hakomi Mindfulness Somatic Psychotherapy, Relational Psychotherapy, Polyvagal theory, Somatic Experiencing, Internalized Parts work, Movement therapies such as Continuum and Authentic movement, Expressive Arts, Somatic Touch, Attachment theory, Mindfulness awareness and Somatic Buddhist Meditation, Systems thinking, Social Justice awareness of historical and collective impact on society, ancient wisdom shamanic traditions and Embodiment practices.
Manuela has been motivated by the questions: What truly heals trauma? How have we been shaped somatically by trauma experiences? What did we start believing about ourselves and others? How do we sit in relation to deep suffering?
Her discovery was to not rely on one modality alone for treatment answers but to meet the multifaceted experience of the trauma client or group with how humans experience life itself: sensing, feeling, moving, and breathing. It is through these ways of embodiment that we understand our trauma experience and its associated meaning, history, and collective meaning making process. It is through embodied practices in a compassionate relationship with self and others that we can return to the fullness of one’s life.
Even though our human nervous systems are the same, we process fight, flight, freeze, and fawn in similar recognizable ways, yet the individual experiences and expressions are unique. To heal trauma we need to understand how trauma touches every aspect of a person’s life, their body-mind, relationship to spirituality, family, community, society, and identities. We can’t understand the person’s individual trauma without the collective and historical shaping that has occurred, and how it impacts them now. We can’t understand the healing of trauma until we learn to be with the innate wisdom that is deep within the soma.
Manuela’s personal healing path has been through deep immersive somatic journeys, and learning along with each client, diverse students, and group healing over 25 years. Her inquiry is in how to apply healing tools and techniques skillfully in relation to the complexity of being human at this time.