A Somatic Approach to Healing Trauma – Free Training with Peter Levine and Arielle Schwartz
Trauma is often discussed as something to understand intellectually. In this free training, Peter A. Levine, PhD, and Arielle Schwartz, PhD, CCTP-II, E-RYT, EMDR-C, explore what changes when trauma is approached through lived experience, the body, personal story, and the search for meaning.
A Somatic Approach to Healing Trauma: From Survival to Wholeness brings together autobiography and neuroscience in a fireside conversation centered on the paradox of the wounded healer. Dr. Levine reflects on the experiences, influences, and discoveries that shaped his somatic approach to trauma.
The conversation explores childhood trauma and early resilience, the role of joy and imagination in survival, the influence of mentors and somatic pioneers, and the relationship between story, embodiment, and wholeness.
Rather than treating trauma only as pathology, the training considers how trauma can also be understood through meaning, identity, protection, and the body’s responses to overwhelming experience.
Why Attend “A Somatic Approach to Healing Trauma: From Survival to Wholeness”
Peter A. Levine has spent decades developing a body-awareness approach to trauma through Somatic Experiencing®. In this conversation with Arielle Schwartz, he reflects on the personal and intellectual path behind that work, including the ways childhood trauma, protection, resilience, imagination, and embodiment shaped his understanding.
The training also explores the wounded healer paradox: what it can mean to accompany others while still working through one’s own unresolved experience. That perspective opens a wider conversation about how professional insight, personal history, neuroscience, and somatic observation can intersect.
You’ll also hear reflections on mentors, dreams, intuition, ethology, neuroscience, and the limitations of research, along with a careful exploration of why telling our stories can matter when it is approached with support.
Who Should Attend
This training is especially relevant for clinicians and helping professionals interested in somatic approaches to trauma, the relationship between personal experience and professional work, and the ways the nervous system and body can inform trauma treatment.
It may also speak to people drawn to the broader questions at the heart of the conversation: how protection and resilience develop, how story and embodiment interact, and how trauma can be understood as more than a fixed identity.
- Clinicians interested in somatic approaches to trauma
- Helping professionals exploring the wounded healer paradox
- Practitioners interested in the relationship between autobiography and neuroscience
- People curious about childhood protection, resilience, joy, imagination, and embodiment
- Those interested in the influence of mentors, dreams, intuition, ethology, and somatic pioneers
- Anyone drawn to a careful exploration of story, meaning, and wholeness in the context of trauma
What You’ll Learn
The conversation begins with trauma as lived experience rather than theory alone, including childhood trauma, protective responses, early resilience, and the role of joy, imagination, and embodiment in survival.
From there, Peter A. Levine and Arielle Schwartz explore the wounded healer’s path, including what it means to develop a therapeutic approach before personal resolution and to support others while continuing one’s own healing process.
The training also looks at the people and ideas that shaped Levine’s work, from dreams and unexpected guides to somatic pioneers, ethology, neuroscience, and the boundaries of what research can explain.
- How childhood trauma, protection, and early resilience can shape lived experience
- The role of joy, imagination, and embodiment in survival
- What the wounded healer paradox can reveal about helping others while still healing oneself
- How autobiography and neuroscience can intersect in the understanding of trauma
- The influence of somatic pioneers, ethology, mentors, dreams, and intuition on Levine’s work
- Why research has value while also having limitations
- Why telling our stories can matter when approached carefully and with support
- How trauma can be explored as a doorway to meaning rather than as a total identity
About Peter A. Levine & Arielle Schwartz
Peter A. Levine, PhD, holds doctorates in medical biophysics and psychology. He developed Somatic Experiencing®, a body-awareness approach to trauma, and founded the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute. His work has also included serving as a stress consultant for NASA during development of the space shuttle project and contributing to responses to large-scale disasters and ethno-political warfare.
Levine is the author of Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, as well as books including Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes, Trauma-Proofing Your Kids, and In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness. His contributions to body psychotherapy were recognized with a Lifetime Achievement award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy.
Arielle Schwartz, PhD, CCTP-II, E-RYT, EMDR-C, is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified complex trauma professional, EMDR Consultant, and Kripalu yoga teacher. Her integrative approach includes relational therapy, somatic psychology, EMDR therapy, parts work therapy, and therapeutic yoga for trauma.
Schwartz is the author of eight books, including The Complex PTSD Workbook, EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology, The Post-Traumatic Growth Guidebook, and Applied Polyvagal Theory in Yoga. She founded the Center for Resilience Informed Therapy and specializes in integrating mind-body approaches into trauma work.
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Join Peter A. Levine and Arielle Schwartz for an educational conversation on somatic trauma work, the wounded healer paradox, resilience, meaning, and the return of wholeness.
- Nov 11 2026
- Expired!
- 11:00 am - 1:00 pm
Local Time
- Timezone: America/New_York
- Date: Nov 11 2026
- Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
More Info
- Worldwide
