April 21-24, 2022

​The Journey Space, Glen Echo, MD

$795 US ($695 paid 1 month in advance)

​Streaming Attendance Available

This is a live and streaming course, so you can attend virtually as well as in-person

Times:

10:00 am - 6 pm each day

1.5 hours for lunch

Ending at 4 pm on Sunday​

We are presently experiencing a massive interest in the subject of trauma, led by a host of researchers and clinicians around the world. A number of methodologies and figures have emerged in this conversation, including individuals such as Gabor Mate, Stephen Porges, Peter Levine, Judith Hermann, and many more. Their approaches vary, although much of this work emphasizes somatic and neurobiological processes.

Stanley Keleman is a pioneer in the field of somatic education. His work, Formative Psychology, has influenced many professionals in the somatic movement. In 1989 he published Patterns of Distress: Emotional Insults and Human Form, in which he outlines his unique perspective on traumatic events. He acknowledges the consequences of overwhelming experience, and the wide-ranging characterological and neurological implications of trauma, and demonstrates how these consequences impact our “form” and our developmental trajectory.

As he says, “Form is the primary concern of that which lives.” His work on embodiment stems from this statement, as do all the various procedures, practices and exercises that he uses in his Formative Psychology. He addresses the various psychological and physiological effects of traumatic experience as distortions of form, or insults to form. This focus on form provides highly effective pathways for reorganizing traumatic states, and offers an additional sense of optimism and hope.

Although Keleman’s work will be the primary influence in the methodology presented in this seminar, other important sources include Polarity Therapy, Craniosacral Biodynamics, and Pre and Perinatal understanding. Together, all this work is synthesized under the name Formative Embodiment.

​This course will serve as an introduction to the following topics:

1. Primary Pulsation – The Body’s “Metronome” and Organizing Principle.
2. The Embryological Foundations of Formativeness – Morphogenesis
3. Boundaries and Form-Building – Porosity, Motility, Rigidity and Density
4. Action – The Fundamental Imperative of the Human Form – The Body as “Organized Action”
5. Formative Embodiment – Its Implications for Managing Stress and Trauma
6. The Formative Narrative – Building Differentiation and Coherence
7. Formative Methodology for Therapy and Self-Management
8. Stanley Keleman’s Bodying Practice – The Dynamic of Embodying, Rebodying, and Cobodying.
9. VMCE – Voluntary Motor-Cortical Effort – Keleman’s “Royal Road to the Unconscious” and to self-forming.

Takeaways from this seminar:

1. An appreciation of how a formative perspective can be practiced both as a stand-alone procedure, and enriches other approaches to trauma, such as SE, Compassionate Inquiry, EMDR, NARM, Craniosacral Biodynamics, Polarity Therapy, Psychotherapy, Art Approaches.
2. A simple method to support the process of embodiment as it reorganizes defensive reactions to trauma, including simple dissociative responses.
3. How the understanding of constitutional typology and somatypes can provide powerful resources in dealing with life challenges.
4. A procedure for using muscular micro-movements to help stabilize behavior and reduce excessive arousal and activation.