— Sounds True Presents —

Trauma Skills Summit.

Heal from the Effects of Trauma—for Yourself, the World, and Generations to Come

Own the Trauma Skills Summit Upgrade Package

What You Get When You Upgrade:

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Lifetime Access

Revisit all 23 sessions at your convenience with downloadable videos, audios, and transcripts

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Presenter Bonuses

Enjoy valuable gifts from the Trauma Skills Summit experts to support your ongoing journey

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Three Special Gifts

Receive three trauma recovery programs so you can go even deeper with your healing

You Are Not Your Trauma

Dear friends,

If you’ve ever experienced trauma, hold yourself with compassion. The effects, through no fault of your own, can impact every dimension of your life—your relationships, your health, your sense of safety, and your self-worth.

I’m Dr. Jeffrey Rutstein. As a clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of trauma recovery, here’s what I can tell you:

You aren’t alone in this experience, and you aren’t irreparably broken.
Not only can you heal from the effects of trauma—you can emerge with more resilience, joy, and purpose than before.

In the Trauma Skills Summit, you’ll hear from 24 leading voices in the field of trauma recovery—from neurobiologists and psychotherapists to meditation teachers and spiritual luminaries—each offering profound insights and practices for healing.

Tending to your own trauma recovery can be a deeply personal process, but the impacts might be more far-reaching than you realize …

Collectively, our unresolved trauma shapes the world we all live in.
A world with less trauma for all of us begins with healing for each of us.

Whether you’re a therapist working with clients, an individual seeking personal growth, or a community leader in times of need, I hope you’ll join me to explore breakthrough skills, practices, and tools for healing with the Trauma Skills Summit.

As our gift to you, each of our sessions will be accessible and free for your viewing from the time it airs until the end of our 10-day event. However, for your convenience and to allow you to go even deeper with these trainings, we’re offering a special upgrade package that gives you lifetime access, downloadable materials, presenter gifts, additional resources, and much more.

This special offer ends on August 31, 2020. Now is the time to heal your trauma, reclaim your life, and share your much-needed gifts with the world.

With gratitude,

Dr. Jeffrey Rutstein
Clinical psychologist and host of the Trauma Skills Summit

Jeffrey Rutstein, PsyD

Jeffrey Rutstein, PsyD, is a clinical psychologist who has specialized in the treatment of trauma for the past 35 years. His approach integrates traditional and somatic psychotherapy along with the latest advances in neuroscience and mind/body approaches to address the whole person in a powerful and effective manner.

What You’ll Learn:

Body as Ally
Your body might carry the imprints of trauma—but it also holds the key to recovery. From neural retraining to the polyvagal theory, learn how your body can be your ally in healing.
Transforming Shame
When we feel stuck and unable to “get better,” shame is often at the root. Discover how to transform shame into compassion and welcome more of your whole self home.
Tools and Practices
More than theory, this summit brings you proven practices for recovering from trauma—meditation, breath work, body-based practices, and more.
Cultivating Resilience
Build a foundation of inner security and safety so you can show up as the wisest, strongest, most joyful version of yourself.
Post-Traumatic Growth
Trauma isn’t the end of your story. Learn how traumatic events can become catalysts for new possibilities, spiritual connection, and a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.
Collective Healing
Trauma doesn’t happen in a bubble—and neither does healing. Explore how we can heal as a community from intergenerational trauma, natural disasters, institutionalized trauma, global events, and more.

24 Worldwide Leaders in the Field of Trauma Healing

The Trauma Skills Summit shares the wisdom of 24 thought leaders and visionaries to explore how we can heal from the effects of trauma and reclaim our lives.

Daniel J. Siegel, MD
Daniel J. Siegel, MD

New York Times bestselling author, neuropsychiatrist

The Wheel of Awareness: A Trauma Recovery Tool for Well-Being

Explore the mechanisms of the mind with Dr. Daniel J. Siegel in this fascinating interview—including how the “mind” refers to a lot more than just the brain. Dr. Siegel introduces us to the Wheel of Awareness, a tool for consciousness integration that has been shown to improve well-being and trauma recovery in thousands of patients. You’ll discover how both integrating and differentiating various parts of our mind and experience can support healing, as well as the importance of being able to access states of pure awareness.

Session Highlights:

  • How the nature of reality, energy, and quantum laws can affect our healing and potentiality
  • Consciousness as a multifaceted integration of mind, body, sensory experience, and relationship
  • Understanding how to use the Wheel of Awareness as a tool for working with trauma
  • The importance of moving out of plateau states of consciousness and into planes of possibility
Peter A. Levine, PhD
Peter A. Levine, PhD

Founder of Somatic Experiencing® trauma recovery

Trauma and Addiction

Why do we find that people with trauma histories usually have some level of addiction? So often, trauma leads to states of dysregulation. Without other support, many people turn to substances to address the dysregulation they experience. Unfortunately, this approach offers only a temporary fix, and what’s more, actually increases the dysregulation over time. In this session, Dr. Peter Levine helps us understand the connections between trauma, addiction, and shame, providing tools and body-based practices for breaking the cycles.

Session Highlights:

  • An overview of the different types of substances different personalities tend to be drawn to
  • The physiology and role of the vagus nerve in our bodies, and what occurs when we experience trauma
  • The role of toxic shame in feeding addictive behaviors
  • How working with the breath is a powerful way to regulate the nervous system
Justin Michael Williams
Justin Michael Williams

Transformational speaker, musician, author

Meditation for Radical Change: The Revolution Starts Inside

Meditation isn’t about relaxing—it’s about becoming more alive. And if you grew up in the struggle—overcoming homophobia, sexism, trauma, shame, depression, poverty, toxic masculinity, racism, or social injustice—you need a different type of meditation, one that doesn’t pretend the struggle doesn’t exist. Join Justin Michael Williams to learn how meditation can help you move from awareness to inspired action in this engaging session.

Session Highlights:

  • The two common myths that will ruin your meditation practice
  • Discovering your “Unique Energy Signature” so you can experience the freedom that is your birthright
  • Pinpointing the wounds that seem to be stopping you every time you try to grow
  • Spotting “internalized oppression” and turning your mess into magic
Ruth King
Ruth King

Author and Founder of Mindful of Race Institute, LLC

Transforming the Six Disguises of Rage

Rage sits at the crossroads of personal transformation. Those of us seeking spiritual enlightenment will inevitably stumble upon rage along the path. Rage is not to be understood as a useless emotion, empty of insight. Rather, rage is fierce clarity and untapped fuel. It is the descendant of traumas, the twin of shame, the burden of denied history, the language of emotional pain, and the wisdom that helps us heal. When we push rage away, we can’t transform it. Embraced with mindful attention and compassion, the energy trapped in rage becomes an intimate and empathic teacher of stability and integrity, greatly enhancing our relationships and our service.

Session Highlights:

  • Exploring how we distinguish rage from anger
  • Discovering the six disguises of rage, the reasons we wear them, and the wisdom behind them
  • Learning mindful practices for befriending the energies of rage
  • Establishing an aspiration that ripens emotional maturity for personal and social well-being
Lama Rod Owens
Lama Rod Owens

Meditation teacher, coauthor of Radical Dharma

The Dharma of Collective Resiliency

The world is unsteady and seemingly chaotic, and it’s hard to maintain our physical and emotional balance. Resiliency, a critical skill right now, helps us meet the challenges of our lives with a sense of openness and curiosity, which in turn helps us to regain our balance. One of the methods we use to sustain our resiliency is mourning—tapping into our sadness and hopelessness in order to offer the space to simply be within our experience. Explore resilience, balance, and mourning on the path to healing in this powerful session.

Session Highlights:

  • How mourning helps us to unearth heavy and sometimes hidden energy
  • The importance of cultivating collective resilience
  • Balance—understand how remaining grounded helps us meet challenges directly
  • How we can increase and sustain resiliency, balance, and healing together
Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD
Elizabeth A. Stanley, PhD

Creator of Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®

Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness

Mindfulness alone has the potential to be more triggering than helpful for those with post-traumatic symptoms, but mindfulness used in a trauma-sensitive manner can be incredibly healing. A former US intelligence officer and an ordained Buddhist nun, Dr. Elizabeth Stanley is no stranger to the unique intersection of trauma and meditation. In this presentation, she’ll explore how we can work with mindfulness and trauma in a beneficial way.

Session Highlights:

  • The thinking brain and the survival brain—their different roles and ways of being affected by stress and trauma
  • The “window of tolerance” as a key component for healing
  • Three key patterns of dysregulation and how to identify them
  • Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®—critical skills for trauma-informed mindfulness
Thomas Hübl
Thomas Hübl

Founder of the Academy of Inner Science

Unlocking Our Capacity for Collective Healing

We often think of trauma as a personal experience, but there is also a collective dimension that we are most often unaware of. Thomas Hübl will explore how these entangled traumas live inside each of us and how we can come together to consciously work on healing our collective traumas—both the crises we currently face and the traumas inherited from generations past. By learning to cultivate collective presence and group coherence, we can break through hidden trauma layers and unlock our higher capacities for collective intelligence, insight, and innovation.

Session Highlights:

  • Becoming aware of the trauma field we have been “born into”
  • How collective trauma affects our health, relationships, and communities
  • Why the current global crisis is reactivating hidden trauma layers
  • How we can create a high level of group coherence to surface and heal collective trauma
Deb Dana, LCSW
Deb Dana, LCSW

Author of The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy

From Activation to Regulation: A Polyvagal Guided Approach

When we feel threatened, our defenses go up and our ability to regulate our nervous system seems to go out the window—as a result, our trauma responses can get stuck in our bodies. Polyvagal theory helps us understand the ways trauma shapes our nervous system—and therefore see the pathways that can lead us back to healing. In this session, you’ll look at the cues that activate a survival state and explore ways to engage the natural resources of the autonomic nervous system in order to return to regulation.

Session Highlights:

  • The autonomic nervous system as the heart of daily living—powerfully shaping our experiences of safety and connection
  • How to recognize autonomic responses to trauma and explore the polyvagal theory as a key component for recovery
  • How to use “ventral vagal anchors” to cultivate feelings of safety and connection
  • The importance of connection with others in healing
john a. powell, PhD
john a. powell, PhD

Professor of law, professor of African American studies and ethnic studies

Bridging from Trauma to Belonging

In the West, and in the United States in particular, we live largely isolated and separated lives. On fundamental levels, we feel a sense of separation from spirit and the earth, and our minds and bodies are viewed as separate entities. Then, in daily life, society perpetuates the felt sense that we are separate from each other based on race, gender, religion, and so much more. In this presentation, Dr. john a. powell explores how this feeling of separation both is made worse by trauma and can be a cause of trauma itself, offering clear guidelines for how we can build bridges back to belonging.

Session Highlights:

  • Interconnectedness and belonging as foundations for resilience
  • The stories that feed into our sense of separation and create ongoing fear of others
  • The difficulties inherent in traumatized communities—dreaming of a better world can seem impossible
  • How to build bridges with others, creating a more loving and open pathway to belonging for all of us
Monica Sharma, DO
Monica Sharma, MD

Physician and epidemiologist

Leadership in Challenging Times

A 20-year veteran of the United Nations, Dr. Monica Sharma is an international expert on leadership for sustainable and equitable development. Her approach, Radical Transformational Leadership, which is established worldwide, teaches us to source our inner capacities to manifest change—change that embodies the universal values of dignity, compassion, and fairness. In this session, Dr. Sharma explores how we can simultaneously transform unworkable systems and cultural norms as we solve problems in equitable and enduring ways.

Session Highlights:

  • Discovering how Radical Transformational Leadership can help us address trauma as we build resilience
  • Recognizing your innate inner capacity as a foundation for strategic action in the world
  • Understanding the interdependence of systems and cultural norms within the context of healing and resilience
  • Becoming empowered to take action for preventing trauma, engaging healing, and building resilience
Richard Schwartz, PhD
Richard Schwartz, PhD

Creator of Internal Family Systems therapy

Internal Family Systems Therapy with Trauma Survivors

Very often, people who have experienced trauma hold the belief that they have been so damaged that they will never heal and that their very essence is tarnished. With Internal Family Systems therapy, we’re able to experience our core essence as untouched by trauma and realize that we don’t have to meditate for years to find liberation from suffering. This session explores how Internal Family Systems therapy and working with our “parts” can support trauma recovery by helping us feel empowered and released from shame.

Session Highlights:

  • Why different parts of yourself might not be what they seem
  • The importance of turning toward our parts with compassionate curiosity rather than trying to get rid of them
  • How symptoms like dissociation, suicide, rage, resistance, and hypervigilance can be honored and shifted
  • Connecting with your undamaged self to release and transform your vulnerable qualities
Judith Blackstone, PhD
Judith Blackstone, PhD

Founder of the Realization Process

Realization Process: The Healing Ground

The Realization Process is an embodied approach to psychological and relational healing and nondual spiritual realization. This unique approach uses subtle mind/body attunements for uncovering a fundamental dimension of consciousness—one that perceives our body and environment as a unity. These practices cultivate an experience of internal wholeness, authenticity, resilience, and refined perception. We become able to integrate cognition, emotion, and physical sensation, and we can experience deep connection with others without losing inward contact with ourselves. In this session, Dr. Judith Blackstone will explore the myriad benefits of the Realization Process, discussing how and why we constrict ourselves in reaction to trauma and how we can recognize and release these constrictions to find healing.

Session Highlights:

  • Uncovering the ground of fundamental consciousness pervading you and your environment
  • Deepening contact with other people without losing inward contact with yourself
  • Exploring how to relate to your environment from the innermost core of your being
  • Recognizing and releasing trauma-based constrictions from your body
Arielle Schwartz, PhD
Arielle Schwartz, PhD

Clinical psychologist, EMDR and somatic therapist

Resilience Strategies for Trauma Recovery: A Strength-Based Approach to Healing

Join Dr. Arielle Schwartz for an experiential presentation exploring resilience, somatic healing, and more. An expert in early childhood trauma and complex PTSD, Dr. Schwartz helps us understand the nature of trauma as it relates to fear and our memories of frightening or traumatic experiences. This model integrates an embodied approach to healing with specific attention to the impact of childhood trauma. You’ll discover practical tools like somatic psychology, EMDR therapy, parts work therapy, and therapeutic yoga for trauma recovery.

Session Highlights:

  • Shifting our lens from “trauma informed” to “resilience informed”
  • Discovering the six Pillars of Resilience
  • Exploring the six Rs of neuropsychotherapy along with somatic tools for trauma recovery
  • Additional practices include grounding, pandiculation, and a self-compassion exercise
traci ishigo, MSW
traci ishigo, MSW

Therapist, yoga and meditation teacher, organizer

Transmuting Trauma and Oppression: Embracing Our Wholeselves

Embracing our intersecting identities is essential in the ongoing process of trauma healing, especially for individuals with multiple marginalized experiences. As a queer, nonbinary therapist of color who actively engages in community organizing, traci ishigo will share personal anecdotes and discuss themes of how creative action, solidarity, and transformative justice can support a sense of wholeness, hope, and healing—particularly around trauma that is intergenerational and perpetuated by the state.

Session Highlights:

  • Why an intersectional and systemic perspective matters in our process of finding healing, wholeness, and empowerment
  • The risks and threats to creating safety and trauma healing for individuals and communities with intersecting marginalized experiences
  • A grounding meditation and creative reflection to invite remembrance and reconnection with your values, resourcefulness, and purpose
Pat McCabe, Woman Stands Shining
Pat McCabe, Woman Stands Shining

Diné (Navajo) grandmother, activist, artist, writer

A Traumatized Species: Pathology or Healing Crisis?

What can we learn about being human from an indigenous worldview, and how might this change our relationship with healing? Thich Nhat Hanh calls us “interbeings,” Pat McCabe teaches, which is a very indigenous principle. It implies that our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the larger-than-human community—both in Nature and in the Spiritual Realm—are critical to harmony and health for all. Unfortunately, our modern world paradigm—its economics, institutions, and patterns—makes relationships and relating tangential at best and impossible at worst. But what if humanity were “plugged into” an entirely different paradigm? What would become possible?

Session Highlights:

  • How indigenous peoples’ paradigms express humanity in ways that are radically different from the modern world’s paradigm
  • The modern paradigm as only one choice among many possibilities
  • Our innate design for a thriving life—and how this is inhibited by the modern world paradigm
  • Meeting the Woman of the Rainbow Waterfall—a practice for receiving unconditional love and healing
Susan Stiffelman, MFT
Susan Stiffelman, MFT

Author of Parenting Without Power Struggles

Parenting after Trauma

Parenting can be a path of profound growth and transformation. When we raise children, we may find ourselves behaving in ways that feel out of sync with our conscious parenting intentions and values. By exploring the impact of trauma on our childhood, feelings of intense frustration, rage, overwhelm, or withdrawal can become catalysts for deep healing, allowing us to move toward greater responsiveness and attunement with our children.

Session Highlights:

  • How parents can forge loving attachment with their children, even if they did not experience it growing up
  • Guidance for moving through the residue of early childhood stress, neglect, or abuse as we raise children of our own
  • Creating a narrative that empowers parents to find healing and resilience
ashley-turner
Ashley Turner, LMFT

Licensed therapist, yoga and meditation instructor

Body, Brain, Breath, and Trauma: How Yoga Can Help

This session is for anyone who wants to gain a working knowledge of the basic neuroscience of trauma—including some of the latest scientific research. Yoga and breath work are powerful tools when it comes to working with trauma—and the benefits become even clearer when we look at the neurobiology of our experiences. Join Ashley Turner to dive into a deeper understanding of the body-brain-breath connection in this fascinating presentation.

Session Highlights:

  • Understanding the basics of neuroscience and trauma, the physiology of stress, and more
  • Exploring the science of trauma-informed yoga—including how yoga soothes the HPA axis, increases GABA, affects the amygdala, and more
  • Best practices for incorporating yoga, meditation, and breath work into both clinical interventions and personal treatment
  • A coherent breathing and compassion meditation
Linda Graham, MFT
Linda Graham, MFT

Psychotherapist, award-winning author

Resilience: Transforming Any Adversity into Learning and Growth

People can learn and grow from meeting the challenges and adversities of life—from a series of small annoyances, to the troubles and tragedies that break their hearts, to the utter catastrophes that change their lives forever—when they have the support, resources, and skills to do so. This session will explore how you can recover from tragedy and move into a new sense of your strengths, new possibilities, a clearer sense of meaning and purpose, and deeper connections with others. You’ll discover the five key factors for post-traumatic growth so you can bounce forward from any trauma or tragedy.

Session Highlights:

  • Understanding how family, friends, and community are important parts of resourcing
  • Recognizing the positive in the midst of the difficult and finding the gifts within mistakes
  • Developing a coherent narrative of traumatizing events within the context of a larger life story
  • Gaining the potential to appreciate a new life that emerges not just in spite of the difficulties, but because of them
Rob Fisher, MFT
Rob Fisher, MFT

Therapist, Hakomi trainer, professor, author

Relationship Trauma

One of the most common causes of trauma is generated by issues in our intimate, family, friendship, and work relationships. Classical symptoms of PTSD—flashbacks, emotional flooding, rumination, sleep disturbances, and startle responses—are often present, intense, and inescapable. In this session, Rob Fisher explores the causes and effects of relationship trauma, along with practical tools for addressing the symptoms and underlying issues involved from a mindfulness-based, somatic perspective.

Session Highlights:

  • Discovering the similarities between relationship trauma and PTSD
  • Exploring the causes of relationship trauma, both developmentally and from shock
  • Learning how to repair relationship ruptures that can lead to traumatic reactions
  • Preventing relationship trauma by understanding the tender places in your own relationships
Annie Hopper
Annie Hopper

Founder of the Dynamic Neural Retraining System™

Is Your Brain Stuck in a Chronic Fight, Flight, or Freeze Response?

Anxiety, chemical sensitivities, exhaustion, and chronic pain syndromes were on the rise before the coronavirus pandemic, but the effects of COVID-19 have led to health challenges beyond the virus itself—leaving many people in a chronic fight, flight, or freeze stress state. When the brain is stuck in this state, we find ourselves looping in the same self-protective thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—creating the very patterns that reinforce the state itself. Join Annie Hopper, founder of the Dynamic Neural Retraining System, as she shares practical information about this self-directed, neuroplasticity-based program to help you get unstuck and improve your health.

Session Highlights:

  • The role of the limbic system in the fight, flight, or freeze response
  • How the Dynamic Neural Retraining System can help you to get “unstuck”
  • How to identify and stop unwanted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors associated with a chronic fight, flight, or freeze response
Bret Lyon, PhD & Sheila Rubin, LMFT
Bret Lyon, PhD & Sheila Rubin, LMFT

Cofounders of the Center for Healing Shame

Healing Shame

Shame is a combination of a powerful emotion and a state of freeze, similar to trauma. It can be incredibly painful and destructive in large doses—but it is designed to protect you. In this session, you’ll explore what shame is and how it affects your body, thoughts, actions, and relationships. Once we understand what shame really is, we can transform our relationship with it into something healthier and actually useful. This homeopathic dose of shame is referred to as “healthy shame.”

Session Highlights:

  • What shame is and how to begin to transform it
  • Understanding our four main reactions to shame
  • How our nervous system attempts to protect us from the full impact of shame, but these reactions actually create more problems
  • Coming Out of the Shame Freeze: Grounding Yourself and Setting a Boundary—a practice for healing
Mark Wolynn
Mark Wolynn

Director of the Family Constellation Institute

Breaking the Cycle of Inherited Family Trauma

The unresolved traumas of parents and grandparents can surface in the unexplained symptoms of children and grandchildren. By tending to this trauma, we have the potential to break cycles of inherited family trauma for ourselves and for future generations. In this session, Mark Wolynn shares ways we can decode our own personal language of trauma—what he calls the Core Language Approach®—and presents tools to help us break the cycle of generational suffering.

Session Highlights:

  • Exploring the ways trauma can be passed from a parent to a child
  • Learning the scientific research behind inherited family trauma
  • Understanding the signs of inherited trauma—including how we express verbal and nonverbal trauma language
  • Integrating Our Fragmented Selves—a practice for healing
Chris Germer, PhD
Chris Germer, PhD

Psychologist, mindfulness and self-compassion teacher

Trauma, Shame, and the Transformative Power of Self-Compassion

Trauma and shame are closely intertwined—experiences of shame are often traumatic, and traumatic experiences can lead to shame. Shame is also a predictor of PTSD as well as a host of other psychological disorders. The antidote? Self-compassion. Treating ourselves with kindness and understanding when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate is perhaps the most important gift we can give ourselves. Join Dr. Chris Germer to discover principles and practices for alleviating trauma by compassionately addressing shame.

Session Highlights:

  • Exploring what self-compassion is and its many evidence-based benefits
  • How to recognize shame and its manifestations in daily life
  • The close association between trauma and shame
  • Three skills for using self-compassion to work with shame safely and effectively

24 Worldwide Leaders in the Field of Trauma Healing

The Trauma Skills Summit shares the wisdom of 24 thought leaders and visionaries to explore how we can heal from the effects of trauma and reclaim our lives.

Explore the mechanisms of the mind with Dr. Daniel J. Siegel in this fascinating interview—including how the “mind” refers to a lot more than just the brain. Dr. Siegel introduces us to the Wheel of Awareness, a tool for consciousness integration that has been shown to improve well-being and trauma recovery in thousands of patients. You’ll discover how both integrating and differentiating various parts of our mind and experience can support healing, as well as the importance of being able to access states of pure awareness.

Session Highlights:

  • How the nature of reality, energy, and quantum laws can affect our healing and potentiality
  • Consciousness as a multifaceted integration of mind, body, sensory experience, and relationship
  • Understanding how to use the Wheel of Awareness as a tool for working with trauma
  • The importance of moving out of plateau states of consciousness and into planes of possibility

Why do we find that people with trauma histories usually have some level of addiction? So often, trauma leads to states of dysregulation. Without other support, many people turn to substances to address the dysregulation they experience. Unfortunately, this approach offers only a temporary fix, and what’s more, actually increases the dysregulation over time. In this session, Dr. Peter Levine helps us understand the connections between trauma, addiction, and shame, providing tools and body-based practices for breaking the cycles.

Session Highlights:

  • An overview of the different types of substances different personalities tend to be drawn to
  • The physiology and role of the vagus nerve in our bodies, and what occurs when we experience trauma
  • The role of toxic shame in feeding addictive behaviors
  • How working with the breath is a powerful way to regulate the nervous system

Meditation isn’t about relaxing—it’s about becoming more alive. And if you grew up in the struggle—overcoming homophobia, sexism, trauma, shame, depression, poverty, toxic masculinity, racism, or social injustice—you need a different type of meditation, one that doesn’t pretend the struggle doesn’t exist. Join Justin Michael Williams to learn how meditation can help you move from awareness to inspired action in this engaging session.

Session Highlights:

  • The two common myths that will ruin your meditation practice
  • Discovering your “Unique Energy Signature” so you can experience the freedom that is your birthright
  • Pinpointing the wounds that seem to be stopping you every time you try to grow
  • Spotting “internalized oppression” and turning your mess into magic

Rage sits at the crossroads of personal transformation. Those of us seeking spiritual enlightenment will inevitably stumble upon rage along the path. Rage is not to be understood as a useless emotion, empty of insight. Rather, rage is fierce clarity and untapped fuel. It is the descendant of traumas, the twin of shame, the burden of denied history, the language of emotional pain, and the wisdom that helps us heal. When we push rage away, we can’t transform it. Embraced with mindful attention and compassion, the energy trapped in rage becomes an intimate and empathic teacher of stability and integrity, greatly enhancing our relationships and our service.

Session Highlights:

  • Exploring how we distinguish rage from anger
  • Discovering the six disguises of rage, why we wear them, and the wisdom behind them
  • Learning mindful practices for befriending the energies of rage
  • Establishing an aspiration that ripens emotional maturity for personal and social well-being

The world is unsteady and seemingly chaotic, and it’s hard to maintain our physical and emotional balance. Resiliency, a critical skill right now, helps us meet the challenges of our lives with a sense of openness and curiosity, which in turn helps us to regain our balance. One of the methods we use to sustain our resiliency is mourning—tapping into our sadness and hopelessness in order to offer the space to simply be within our experience. Explore resilience, balance, and mourning on the path to healing in this powerful session.

Session Highlights:

  • How mourning helps us to unearth heavy and sometimes hidden energy
  • The importance of cultivating collective resilience
  • Balance—understand how remaining grounded helps us meet challenges directly
  • How we can increase and sustain resiliency, balance, and healing together

Mindfulness alone has the potential to be more triggering than helpful for those with post-traumatic symptoms, but mindfulness used in a trauma-sensitive manner can be incredibly healing. A former US intelligence officer and an ordained Buddhist nun, Dr. Elizabeth Stanley is no stranger to the unique intersection of trauma and meditation. In this presentation, she’ll explore how we can work with mindfulness and trauma in a beneficial way.

Session Highlights:

  • The thinking brain and the survival brain—their different roles and ways of being affected by stress and trauma
  • The “window of tolerance” as a key component for healing
  • Three key patterns of dysregulation and how to identify them
  • Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT)®—critical skills for trauma-informed mindfulness

We often think of trauma as a personal experience, but there is also a collective dimension that we are most often unaware of. Thomas Hübl will explore how these entangled traumas live inside each of us and how we can come together to consciously work on healing our collective traumas—both the crises we currently face and the traumas inherited from generations past. By learning to cultivate collective presence and group coherence, we can break through hidden trauma layers and unlock our higher capacities for collective intelligence, insight, and innovation.

Session Highlights:

  • Becoming aware of the trauma field we have been “born into”
  • How collective trauma affects our health, relationships, and communities
  • Why the current global crisis is reactivating hidden trauma layers
  • How we can create a high level of group coherence to surface and heal collective trauma

When we feel threatened, our defenses go up and our ability to regulate our nervous system seems to go out the window—as a result, our trauma responses can get stuck in our bodies. Polyvagal theory helps us understand the ways trauma shapes our nervous system—and therefore see the pathways that can lead us back to healing. In this session, you’ll look at the cues that activate a survival state and explore ways to engage the natural resources of the autonomic nervous system in order to return to regulation.

Session Highlights:

  • The autonomic nervous system as the heart of daily living—powerfully shaping our experiences of safety and connection
  • Recognizing autonomic responses to trauma and exploring the polyvagal theory as a key component for recovery
  • How to use “ventral vagal anchors” to cultivate feelings of safety and connection
  • The importance of connection with others in healing

In the West, and in the United States in particular, we live largely isolated and separated lives. On fundamental levels, we feel a sense of separation from spirit and the earth, and our minds and bodies are viewed as separate entities. Then, in daily life, society perpetuates the felt sense that we are separate from each other based on race, gender, religion, and so much more. In this presentation, Dr. john a. powell explores how this feeling of separation both is made worse by trauma and can be a cause of trauma itself, offering clear guidelines for how we can build bridges back to belonging.

Session Highlights:

  • Interconnectedness and belonging as foundations for resilience
  • The stories that feed into our sense of separation and create ongoing fear of others
  • The difficulties inherent in traumatized communities—dreaming a better world can seem impossible
  • How to build bridges with others, creating a more loving and open pathway to belonging for all of us

A 20-year veteran of the United Nations, Dr. Monica Sharma is an international expert on leadership for sustainable and equitable development. Her approach, Radical Transformational Leadership, established worldwide, teaches us to source our inner capacities to manifest change—change that embodies the universal values of dignity, compassion, and fairness. In this session, Dr. Sharma explores how we can simultaneously transform unworkable systems and cultural norms as we solve problems in equitable and enduring ways.

Session Highlights:

  • Discovering how Radical Transformational Leadership can help us address trauma as we build resilience
  • Recognizing your innate inner capacity as a foundation for strategic action in the world
  • Understanding the interdependence of systems and cultural norms within the context of healing and resilience
  • Becoming empowered to take action for preventing trauma, engaging healing, and building resilience

Very often, people who have experienced trauma hold the belief that they have been so damaged that they will never heal and that their very essence is tarnished. With Internal Family Systems therapy, we’re able to experience our core essence as untouched by trauma and realize that we don’t have to meditate for years to find liberation from suffering. This session explores how Internal Family Systems therapy and working with our “parts” can support trauma recovery by helping us feel empowered and released from shame.

Session Highlights:

  • Why different parts of yourself might not be what they seem
  • The importance of turning toward our parts with compassionate curiosity rather than trying to get rid of them
  • How symptoms like dissociation, suicide, rage, resistance, and hypervigilance can be honored and shifted
  • Connecting with your undamaged self to release and transform your vulnerable qualities

The Realization Process is an embodied approach to psychological and relational healing and nondual spiritual realization. This unique approach uses subtle mind/body attunements for uncovering a fundamental dimension of consciousness—one that perceives our body and environment as a unity. These practices cultivate an experience of internal wholeness, authenticity, resilience, and refined perception. We become able to integrate cognition, emotion, and physical sensation, and we can experience deep connection with others without losing inward contact with ourselves. In this session, Dr. Judith Blackstone will explore the myriad benefits of the Realization Process, discussing how and why we constrict ourselves in reaction to trauma and how we can recognize and release these constrictions to find healing.

Session Highlights:

  • Uncovering the ground of fundamental consciousness pervading you and your environment
  • Deepening contact with other people without losing inward contact with yourself
  • Exploring how to relate to your environment from the innermost core of your being
  • Recognizing and releasing trauma-based constrictions from your body

Join Dr. Arielle Schwartz for an experiential presentation exploring resilience, somatic healing, and more. An expert in early childhood trauma and complex PTSD, Dr. Schwartz helps us understand the nature of trauma as it relates to fear and our memories of frightening or traumatic experiences. This model integrates an embodied approach to healing with specific attention to the impact of childhood trauma. You’ll discover practical tools like somatic psychology, EMDR therapy, parts work therapy, and therapeutic yoga for trauma recovery.

Session Highlights:

  • How we can shift our lens from “trauma informed” to “resilience informed”
  • Discovering the 6 Pillars of Resilience
  • Exploring the 6 Rs of Neuropsychotherapy along with somatic tools for trauma recovery
  • Additional practices include grounding, pandiculation, and a self-compassion exercise

Embracing our intersecting identities is essential in the ongoing process of trauma healing, especially for individuals with multiple marginalized experiences. As a queer, nonbinary therapist of color who actively engages in community organizing, traci ishigo will share personal anecdotes and discuss themes of how creative action, solidarity, and transformative justice can support a sense of wholeness, hope, and healing—particularly around trauma that is intergenerational and perpetuated by the state.

Session Highlights:

  • Why an intersectional and systemic perspective matters in our process of finding healing, wholeness, and empowerment
  • The risks and threats to creating safety and trauma healing for individuals and communities with intersecting marginalized experiences
  • A grounding meditation and creative reflection to invite remembrance and reconnection with your values, resourcefulness, and purpose

What can we learn about being human from an indigenous worldview, and how might this change our relationship with healing? Thich Nhat Hanh calls us “interbeings,” Pat McCabe teaches, which is a very indigenous principle. It implies that our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the larger-than-human community—both in Nature and in the Spiritual Realm—are critical to harmony and health for all. Unfortunately, our modern world paradigm—its economics, institutions, and patterns—makes relationships and relating tangential at best and impossible at worst. But what if humanity were “plugged into” an entirely different paradigm? What would become possible?

Session Highlights:

  • How indigenous peoples’ paradigms express humanity in ways radically different from the modern world’s paradigm
  • The modern paradigm as only one choice among many possibilities
  • Our innate design for a thriving life—and how this is inhibited by the modern world paradigm
  • Meeting the Woman of the Rainbow Waterfall—a practice for receiving unconditional love and healing

Parenting can be a path of profound growth and transformation. When we raise children, we may find ourselves behaving in ways that feel out of sync with our conscious parenting intentions and values. By exploring the impact of trauma on our childhood, feelings of intense frustration, rage, overwhelm, or withdrawal can become catalysts for deep healing, allowing us to move toward greater responsiveness and attunement with our children.

Session Highlights:

  • How parents can forge loving attachment with their children, even if they did not experience it growing up
  • Guidance for moving through the residue of early childhood stress, neglect, or abuse as we raise children of our own
  • Creating a narrative that empowers parents to find healing and resilience

This session is for anyone who wants to gain a working knowledge of the basic neuroscience of trauma—including some of the latest scientific research. Yoga and breath work are powerful tools when it comes to working with trauma—and the benefits become even clearer when we look at the neurobiology of our experiences. Join Ashley Turner to dive into a deeper understanding of the body-brain-breath connection in this fascinating presentation.

Session Highlights:

  • Understanding the basics of neuroscience and trauma, the physiology of stress, and more
  • Exploring the science of trauma-informed yoga—including how yoga soothes the HPA axis, increases GABA, affects the amygdala, and more
  • Best practices for incorporating yoga, meditation, and breath work into both clinical interventions and personal treatment
  • A coherent breathing and compassion meditation

People can learn and grow from meeting the challenges and adversities of life—from a series of small annoyances, to the troubles and tragedies that break their hearts, to the utter catastrophes that change their lives forever—when they have the support, resources, and skills to do so. This session will explore how you can recover from tragedy and move into a new sense of your strengths, new possibilities, a clearer sense of meaning and purpose, and deeper connections with others. You’ll discover the five key factors for post-traumatic growth so you can bounce forward from any trauma or tragedy.

Session Highlights:

  • Family, friends, and community as important parts of resourcing
  • How to recognize the positive in the midst of the difficult and find the gifts within mistakes
  • Developing a coherent narrative of traumatizing events within the context of a larger life story
  • The potential to appreciate a new life that emerges not just in spite of the difficulties, but because of them

One of the most common causes of trauma is generated by issues in our intimate, family, friendship, and work relationships. Classical symptoms of PTSD—flashbacks, emotional flooding, rumination, sleep disturbances, and startle responses—are often present, intense, and inescapable. In this session, Rob Fisher explores the causes and effects of relationship trauma, along with practical tools for addressing the symptoms and underlying issues involved from a mindfulness-based, somatic perspective.

Session Highlights:

  • The similarities between relationship trauma and PTSD
  • Exploring the causes of relationship trauma, both developmentally and from shock
  • Learning how to repair relationship ruptures that can lead to traumatic reactions
  • Preventing relationship trauma by understanding the tender places in your own relationships

Anxiety, chemical sensitivities, exhaustion, and chronic pain syndromes were on the rise before the coronavirus pandemic, but the effects of COVID-19 led to health challenges beyond the virus itself—leaving many people in a chronic fight, flight, or freeze stress state. When the brain is stuck in this state, we find ourselves looping in the same self-protective thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—creating the very patterns that reinforce the state itself. Join Annie Hopper, founder of the Dynamic Neural Retraining System, as she shares practical information about this self-directed, neuroplasticity-based program to help you get unstuck and improve your health.

Session Highlights:

  • The role of the limbic system in the fight, flight, or freeze response
  • How the Dynamic Neural Retraining System can help you to get “unstuck”
  • Identifying and stopping unwanted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors associated with a chronic fight, flight, or freeze response

Shame is a combination of a powerful emotion and a state of freeze, similar to trauma. It can be incredibly painful and destructive in large doses—but it is designed to protect you. In this session, you’ll explore what shame is and how it affects your body, thoughts, actions, and relationships. Once we understand what shame really is, we can transform our relationship with it into something healthier and actually useful. This homeopathic dose of shame is referred to as “healthy shame.”

Session Highlights:

  • What shame is and how to begin to transform it
  • Understanding our four main reactions to shame
  • How our nervous system attempts to protect us from the full impact of shame, but these reactions actually create more problems
  • Coming Out of the Shame Freeze: Grounding Yourself and Setting a Boundary—a practice for healing

The unresolved traumas of parents and grandparents can surface in the unexplained symptoms of children and grandchildren. By tending to this trauma, we have the potential to break cycles of inherited family trauma for ourselves and for future generations. In this session, Mark Wolynn shares ways we can decode our own personal language of trauma—what he calls the Core Language Approach®—and presents tools to help us break the cycle of generational suffering.

Session Highlights:

  • Exploring the ways trauma can be passed from a parent to a child
  • The scientific research behind inherited family trauma
  • Understanding the signs of inherited trauma—including how we express verbal and nonverbal trauma language
  • Integrating Our Fragmented Selves—a practice for healing

Trauma and shame are closely intertwined—experiences of shame are often traumatic, and traumatic experiences can lead to shame. Shame is also a predictor of PTSD as well as a host of other psychological disorders. The antidote? Self-compassion. Treating ourselves with kindness and understanding when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate is perhaps the most important gift we can give ourselves. Join Dr. Chris Germer to discover principles and practices for alleviating trauma by compassionately addressing shame.

Session Highlights:

  • Exploring what self-compassion is and its many evidence-based benefits
  • How to recognize shame and its manifestations in daily life
  • The close association between trauma and shame
  • Three skills for using self-compassion to work with shame safely and effectively

Own the Trauma Skills Summit Upgrade Package

Plus, These Bonuses!

Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts Cover

Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy is a revolutionary method that allows us to meet and ally with the many distinct parts of our psyche. With Greater Than the Sum of Our Parts, IFS creator Dr. Richard Schwartz reveals how this powerful system can serve us on the spiritual journey. In this six-session audio course, he offers innovative practices to help you heal and harmonize the wounded facets of your self—and in doing so, reconnect with the greater Self that is your true, divine nature.
Trauma and the Unbound Body Cover

Trauma and the Unbound Body

Heal trauma. Reclaim your body. Live with wholeness. These are the gifts of utilizing the power of fundamental consciousness—a subtle field of awareness that lies within each of us. In her book Trauma and the Unbound Body, Dr. Judith Blackstone explores how we can resolve the mental, physical, and emotional struggles of trauma through the power of fundamental consciousness.

Sexual Healing

Healing the wounds of sexual trauma has long been considered by many psychotherapists to be one of the most challenging tasks a person will ever face. The good news, teaches Dr. Peter A. Levine, is that new and more effective tools are emerging. With his audio program Sexual Healing, Dr. Levine teaches you his innovative series of body-based practices to release the sexual trauma of your past.

FAQs

The Trauma Skills Summit is designed to give you powerful tools, insights, and practices for working with trauma—whether you’re seeing clients, leading a community in challenging times, or seeking personal healing and greater resilience.

Each day will feature two new presentations, with the exception of days five, six, and seven, which will have three. The presentations will cover a range of topics—from healing shame and processing grief, to intergenerational and collective healing. We recommend you plan ahead and mark your calendars for your must-see sessions.

In addition to insights on different dimensions of healing from trauma, each presenter will also share a practice. Follow along as you listen, or circle back to your favorites.

All of the content in the Trauma Skills Summit will be aired on this page. We recommend you bookmark it and mark your calendar for the start of the event on August 17, 2020.

All of the teachings, meditations, interviews, and bonus content are included in the Trauma Skills Summit upgrade package, giving you immediate and lifetime access to everything, so you can revisit any of the sessions at your convenience. The upgrade package is backed by our one-year, 100% satisfaction guarantee. And when you upgrade, your purchase helps us make events like this available for free—thank you for your support!

Own the Trauma Skills Summit Upgrade Package

 
$ 347
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If you are not 100% satisfied for any reason, simply return it for a full refund for up to one year.

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Secure Checkout

All orders are processed on a secure server. If you prefer to order by phone, call 1 (800) 333-9185.

1 year money back guarantee badge
100% Money Back Guarantee

If you are not 100% satisfied for any reason, simply return it for a full refund for up to one year.

Need Financial Help to Own this Upgrade Package?

The Sounds True Foundation offers free or reduced enrollment scholarships, donated by other Sounds True community members for just this purpose. Apply here.

Or, if you’d like to help others, donate here.

In an effort to support those most directly affected by the pandemic, Sounds True is sharing a percentage of the proceeds from the Trauma Skills Summit with two organizations in need: Americares and Save the Children Coronavirus Response Fund.

© 2023 AWARENESS TRAINING INSTITUTE ·
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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Presence FAQ

Can I participate in an Inquiry discussion group?

The Diamond Approach is offering live, online Inquiry groups to accompany this course at a discounted rate — $100 for eight, 90-minute sessions, where you’ll take turns with other students working one-on-one with an expert teacher. This is completely optional and available after purchasing Presence.

 

How do I purchase Presence: Venture into the Heart of Enlightenment?

You can purchase it here.

 

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How do I know what time live sessions start if I live abroad or in a different time zone?

All events are Eastern Time unless otherwise noted. Here is the schedule. Please use a time zone converter of your choice or thetimezoneconverter.com.

 

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Are the sessions live or prerecorded?

The course videos are prerecorded. Videos noted as “Live” are live.

 

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Click here for the Sounds True return policy.