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

This course focuses on Lynne Rosen’s approach to integrating narrative practice with EMDR, and Somatic-oriented Therapies. Here Lynne introduces her work to SuEllen Hamkins and Maggie Carey.

Our lives and body/mind/spirit are multi-storied, some of which find expression beyond words. Michael White talked about how people would tell half stories about traumatic and oppressive experiences. We learned to honor what clients shared and make visible the absent but implicit, people’s responses to trauma and oppressive experiences that were absent from dominant storylines. We then could explore the foundations of these responses and how they spoke to important values to in life and relationships that were threatened or diminished. We can explore the absent but implicit with clients’ affective, imaginal, and somatic responses, making visible these half-stories; how sadness (a tear or the silent refusal of tears) or a gesture, for example, might be protest or testimony to what one holds as precious that has been threatened or diminished.   Lynne Rosen

The second course in the Narrative Therapy, Affect & the Body series; Em-BODY-ing Conversations: Integrating a somatic and affective-inspired EMDR, Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Somatic Therapies with a Narrative Therapy approach, will be a site to explore what becomes possible when we enter the realm of the nonlinear and create different kinds of scaffolding using sensations, images, gestures, affect, dreams, movement, and imagination. We will traverse different landscapes, moving between narrative, affective and somatic-inspired EMDR therapy, and somatic practices in a way that resonates with the tenets of a Narrative Therapy approach both practically and philosophically. We will explore ideas around “embodiment”, how memory theory and interperosnal neurobiology can serve as frames for discernment in helping inform the pacing and movement between safety and risk as we move between different landscapes so that we avoid retraumitization and help clients’ move from constriction to greater spaciousness, agency, and freedom.

We will also explore what it looks like to politicize the experiences of the body. How do we make visible and heal bodily inheritances from abuse, colonization, and other forms of oppression? How might the body be responding with silent testimony or refusal? How do we listen to multiple voices of the body so preferred adn differetn body responses can emerge? My hope is that together we find a way to guard against imposing Western embodiment ideas on others and explore ancestral and cultural wisdom and knowledge. What does embodied anti-racism and emobodied actrivism look like in our work?

Most importantly, it is my hope that in the second course, the dialogues clients have so generously agreed to share and the ideas shared by colleagues, authors, and professional and personal ancestors, all of whose shoulders I stand, engage us in dialogue, envisioning, and collectively imaging different pathways forward that support relational being, greater justice, and collective healing.

Most importantly, it is my hope that in the second course, the dialogues clients have so generously agreed to share and the ideas shared by colleagues, authors, and professional and personal ancestors, all of whose shoulders I stand, engage us in dialogue, envisioning, and collectively imaging different pathways forward that support relational being, greater justice, and collective healing.        Lynne Rosen

 Participants will be able to:

1. 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.
2. Synthesize an understanding of and engagement with rich story development.
3. Identify the process of rich story development through witnessing the visual mapping of conversations
4. Describe how to ethically and collaboratively experiment with alternative integrative practices, considering both potential benefits and possible contraindications
5. Cultivate attunement practices and narratives of resilience as foundational in narrative interviewing practices.

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.

The second course in the Narrative Therapy, Affect & the Body series; Em-BODY-ing Conversations, will be a site to explore what becomes possible when we enter the realm of the nonlinear create different kinds of scaffolding using sensations, images, gestures, affect, and imagination. We will traverse different landscapes, moving between narrative, somatic-inspired EMDR, and somatic practices in a way that resonates with the tenets of a Narrative Therapy approach both practically and philosophically. We will explore how we move from constriction to greater spaciousness, agency, and freedom.

Our lives and body/mind/spirit are multi-storied, some of which find expression beyond words. Michael White talked about how people would tell half stories about traumatic and oppressive experiences. We learned to honor what clients shared and make visible the absent but implicit, people’s responses to trauma and oppressive experiences that were absent from dominant storylines. We then could explore the foundations of these responses and how they spoke to important values to in life and relationships that were threatened or diminished. We can explore the absent but implicit with clients’ affective, imaginal, and somatic responses, making visible these half-stories; how sadness (a tear or the silent refusal of tears) or a gesture, for example, might be protest or testimony to what one holds as precious that has been threatened or diminished.

I have learned that as we move between different landscapes, associates between memories are made that move outside the familiar, visualizations are restored that is needed to see the past metaphorically, moral imagination is engaged, and acts of redress and resistance are made visible. Through radical imagination, I have witnessed people repopulate identities with real and imagined allies, deconstruct so-called truths about deficit-based identities, connect with greater compassion, and enact responses aligned with justice and reclamation.

We will also explore what it looks like to politicize the experiences of the body. How do we make visible and heal bodily inheritances from abuse, colonization, and many forms of oppression? How might the body be responding with silent testimony or refusal? My hope is that together we find a way to guard against imposing Western embodiment ideas on others and explore ancestral and cultural wisdom and knowledge. What does embodied anti-racism look like in our work?

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 $40, registrants can earn 14 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.

• 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: