Second Course in Series

Em-BODY-ing Conversations:
Integrating Narrative Practice, EMDR, and Somatic-oriented Therapies

Course Description

Narrative practices have evolved in many ways over the decades in response to changing professional, social and cultural contexts. The founders of the Narrative Therapy approach, Michael White and David Epston, gave voice to the hope and intention that we would continue to try out different modes of inquiry, come up with new practices, and integrate these cherished ways of being with people that fit with our own local experiences and socio-political contexts. Now the Affective Turn in psychotherapy invites us to explore the relationship between politics, culture, memory and embodiment in the context of decolonizing practices. Many therapists especially the younger generation of narrative therapists are asking for integrative therapeutic resources and practices that engage narrative meaning-making while building on non-verbal embodied healing experiences.

This course builds on our deep respect for the evolution of Narrative Therapy while creating spaces for an interplay with other treasured approaches to working with people experiencing serious difficulties in their lives and relationships. Severe and early trauma seems to rob clients of memories and cast sensations, images and memories as the enemy, and can disconnect people from what has shaped moral virtues, intentions, and a sense of “myself” across time. We explore how integrating alternative approaches can make visible the complexities of lived experiences, allowing for the discovery of different metaphors, new associations and a shift in a felt sense of bodily experiences. These discoveries help reinvigorate a re-connection with moral virtues, a language for inner life, and new possibilities for action and movement in accordance with cherished intentions, values, hopes, dreams, beliefs, purposes and commitments. When the language of sensations, images, and memories are engaged in this way, people—with child-like creativity—connect with real and imagined allies, responsibility for abuse is assigned where it belongs, and preferred solutions and subordinate stories emerge. This sense of “aliveness” and agency creates new possibilities for relating.

Please join Lynne Rosen (Pasadena, California), Maggie Carey (Adelaide S. Australia), SuEllen Hamkins, (Northampton, Massachusetts) Laure Maurin (Bordeaux France) David Pare (Ottawa Canada), Ian Percy (Perth Australia), Navid Zamani (San Diego California) as they honor their narrative roots while bringing forward specific therapeutic practices that engage narrative meaning-making while cultivating healing embodied experiences. Integrative work opens up possibilities for responding to habits of body, re-contextualizing dilemmas, engaging moral imagination, and re-populating lives in ways that support agency and movement toward preferences for living and relating. Through eight lessons, we draw from philosophy and practices associated with The Affective Turn, bringing together understandings of rich story development, a person’s response to trauma, memory theory, attunement practices and applications of mindfulness, EMDR and somatic therapies.

Course Objectives

ADD MORE and REFINE: Participants will be able to:

Construct language and practices around integrating EMDR and somatic practices with a Narrative Approach both philosophically and practically, while escaping recruitment into interiority ideas and binaries of body/mind, inside/outside, thinking/feeling and resources/deficits.
Synthesize an understanding of and engagement with rich story development.
Identify the process of rich story development through witnessing the visual mapping of conversations
Describe how to ethically and collaboratively experiment with alternative integrative practices, considering both potential benefits and possible contraindications
Cultivate attunement practices and narratives of resilience as foundational in narrative interviewing practices.

Course Structure & Participation

Narrative therapy rests on the belief that we become who we are through relationship and meaning-making through interactions with each other. Having constructed this course during the pandemic, we are also sensitive to many therapists, coaches, teachers and students expressing being “zoomed out.” Rather than scheduling additional online meetings, we made the entire course self-paced. Each of the three interview-based lessons ends with an exercise with questions to ponder. We strongly recommend finding at least one other person with whom to take the course and share your responses. Ideally, take this course as part of a local study group or use it as a way to bring together a new group. Alternatively, please Contact us if you would like help finding a Study-Buddy; keep in mind it will easier for us to do so if you have registered at a time when others are also registering such as during the Early Bird period.

Registration gives unlimited access to all course materials for personal use for an unlimited time. You can start this course at anytime: all course materials are available on-demand, and adaptable to personal schedules. For an additional $25, registrants can earn 10 APA approved CE credits through Alliant International University.

We believe this course will make excellent teaching materials for graduate training programs Please contact us for an institutional rate if you wish to use these materials for other than personal use.

Course Contributors

Lynne Rosen

Lynne V. Rosen, LCSW (Pasadena, California) has been engaged in therapeutic work for over 25 years in medical, residential, inpatient, community and private practice settings. She found her therapeutic and philosophical home in the early 90’s when she traveled to New York to hear Michael White and David Epston. Most recently, she has focused her attention on integrating Narrative Therapy with EMDR, Somatic Therapies and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) with clients who are living with the effects of Trauma, Eating Problems and other difficulties that compromise relational well-being. Her favorite proverb is an African one: “Until lions have historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.” Lynne has had a long-standing interest in bringing forward lions’ tales, stories and experiences at the margins, where there is wisdom and knowledge that can transport us all. She continues to feel passionate about teaching, supervising and public conversation work and for many years, she had the privilege of working as Core Faculty and Director of the Postmodern Therapy Training Program at PGI and Co-Founder of WPLA (Women’s Project Los Angeles).

Registration for this Self-Paced Course

Please note: we have added discounted rates for international registrants, and groups of 5 or more.

Regular: $150 USD
Student or Fixed income: $125 USD
Group Rate (5 or more): $85 USD
International Regular Rate: $120 USD
International Student or Fixed Income Rate: $100 USD
International Group Rate (5 or more): $75
Alliant CE Credit: $25 extra

Add CE Credit $25

When you purchase the course

You will receive an email with the link to the correct page for beginning the course.
Each lesson and topic has space at the bottom for comments.
Please contact us to inquire about a group rate, or a scholarship reduced fee

If you have already registered, access course here:

Registered? Click Here to Take the Course

Lesson Descriptions

Lesson One: Getting Situated

Welcoming you to the course, we introduce Lynne and her team of contributors, describe Narrative Therapy & The Affective Turn, grapple with philosophical congruence, consider bringing the Affective Turn into Narrative pedagogy, address the Cultural Somatic and give a glossary of theoretical concepts.

Lesson Two: “Trauma & Its Effects”

The second lesson begins by remembering Michael White’s Contributions to thinking about trauma and its consequences. Maggie Carey helps us explore bridges between neurobiology, memory theory and rich story development, while SuEllen Hamkins renders visible attuning practices that guide narrative practice.

Lesson Three: Rich Story Development & the Affective Turn

We explore assumptions guiding trauma work and practices guiding narrative ways of working. We review four pathways to Rich Story Development, scaffolding Resonance, Metaphors, Visuals and Poetry.

Lesson Four: Integrative Approaches

In the fourth lesson, we explore clinical applications of The Affective Turn. What does Affective work beyond talk therapy look like? With a focus on attending to lived experience in the here and now, David Pare and Ian Percy explore some of the creative possibilities that mindfulness practices offer for enriching Narrative Therapy. Lynne Rosen introduces EMDR and Somatic therapies that engage the language of sensations, images, and memories to help reinvigorate a re-connection with moral virtues, a language for inner life, and new possibilities for action and movement in accordance with cherished intentions, values, hopes, dreams, beliefs, purposes and commitments. We build on Lynne’s description of her approach to integrating EMDR and somatic-oriented approaches with narrative therapy, as captured by the 2018 Radical Therapist interview with Chris Hoff below.

“Em-Body-Ing Conversation: Integrating EMDR, Somatic-Oriented Approaches with Narrative Therapy w/ Lynne Rosen” from The Radical Therapist by Chris Hoff, Episode #50, October, 2018.

Lesson Five: Norm

We devote an entire lesson to Lynne’s EMDR and somatic work with Norm – a cis-gender 60 year old man with a deep passion for music, an enormous heart, and an incredible wit. Referred to Lynne by her colleague Larry Zucker, Norm challenged so-called facts and “NORM-alizing” judgment shaped by traumatic early experiences, opening space for alternative ways of understanding the effects of history, moral judgment, and a sense of agency. We explore audio recordings and transcripts alongside Lynne and Larry’s reflections on their collaboration, teachable moments and learnings from this experience. TEMPORARY VIDEO

Lesson Six: Integrating EMDR and Narrative Practice with PJ

Lynne shares her work with P.J. to illustrate creative possibilities integrating narrative practices with EMDR, holding complexity and outsider witness practices.