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Crossing the River

Advanced Trauma-Skilled Practitioner Program

High-touch 1:1 Training Program
Learn clinically effective approaches for supporting persons with trauma

The world has an urgent and unmet need for experientially educated and deeply embodied leaders for community trauma support. 

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To be "embodied" means that one has faced their own shadows and has become the embodiment of their work as a pre-requisite for service. That's why this program is a journey in personal transformation and professional development. 

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This program is for educators, therapists, coaches, holistic health practitioners, community support leaders, and anyone who wishes to increase their skill, experience, and understanding around effective and proven approaches for working with persons with trauma. 

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Completion of this program will provide you with the clinical skills and body-centered awareness required for creating safe space to host trauma-informed workshops, support groups, retreats, and to support clients and loved ones affected by trauma. 

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The program is capped at 15 students. Apply for the 2023 start date. 

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Train with Amanda Blain, holistic biopsychosocial therapist and trauma specialist

As a holistic clinical therapist who has personally healed from Post-Traumatic Stress, I regularly see clients with trauma who were deeply discouraged during years - even decades - of traditional therapy that seemed to provide little to no relief of post-trauma symptoms. 

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After less than one year of working with the approaches you'll learn in this training, clients report a significant reduction in post-trauma symptoms, a renewed sense of self and personal agency, improved mental and physical health, and a sense of higher purpose that is no longer limited by the painful past. 

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Here's what one client had to say about their trauma healing experience...

"I found Amanda by chance ... I had just spent a year reliving my extensive past trauma over and over in talk therapy. The therapists weren’t providing any ways to deal with all the reactions my body was having.

 

I wanted to know how I was supposed to cope with it in real life. How was I supposed to be able to make it through this journey to heal - one that I doubted was even possible for me? 

 

My complex trauma started when I was 2 months old, so I have no memory of a life without PTSD symptoms.

 

I'm 40 years old now and have been in and out of traditional talk and psychotherapy since I was 12. 

 

I ranged from having very little improvement in my quality of life from my best therapy interactions to being re-traumatized...traditional therapy just hadn't helped.

 

I'd resigned myself to the fact that this was going to be how I was the rest of my life, even though I desperately wanted to heal

 

I'd cycle between feeling a little better and capable to bouts of depression that all the yoga, meditation, exercise, eating healthy, etc, could not keep at bay. Those moments are honestly indescribable - though I'll try. 

 

Feelings of hopelessness - that no matter what I do or how hard I fight that I'll always end up back in that dark place, blaming myself for just not being capable enough to "be like everyone else," deeper loneliness than I can ever fully express. 

 

...Not actually wanting to die - but to keep living felt unbearable

 

It seemed like no matter how much progress I thought I'd made, I always ended up back feeling that way...trapped in an endless cycle.

 

I've had 14 private sessions with Amanda now and I have taken it quite slow, I'm a little over 9 months into my work with her. In the beginning I honestly didn't trust that it would really work, I thought maybe I'd learn a few more coping skills and count it a success. I don't think I'll ever be happier about being wrong.

 

Working together, I've been able to recognize what being triggered feels like in my body, how the things I think affect that, and how physical movements can help.  I've been able to relieve symptoms during flashback, to calm panic attacks on my own, and release trauma from my body.

 

I now feel that there is a reality where this doesn't rule my life. Knowing that I now have agency has been life-changing. It's like I was living in a dark forest of perpetual night and the sun is just rising for the first time. 

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-Alex in Oregon

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Program Curriculum 
Namaste
Module 1: Finding Rhythm
As practitioners, our job is to help our clients master their nervous systems. Yet, many practitioners work and overexert from chronically dysregulated nervous systems. This dampens the impact of the practitioner-client relationship. 

Tracking the nervous system means examining the use of our creative energy, our ability to rest, to play, to recognize and respond to our internal needs, to advocate for ourselves, to set healthy boundaries, and to harmonize our yin and yang energies. This is achieved through rhythm. 

Rhythm is necessary for effective self-care and human service, and it is an essential piece of trauma healing. Discover how creating rhythm in your psyche, body, and relationships can help you master your nervous system, transform your life, and condition you to host powerful healing space for your clients. 
Meditating in Nature
Module 2: Subconscious Mastery
The subconscious mind governs over 90% of psycho-emotional and physiological behaviors. The subconscious operates on the level of the felt-sense - which begins as subtle physical sensation and then incites emotional stories and influences self-perceptions. This is an abstract realm that governs the quality of our experiences as humans, and it is usually overlooked and unaddressed by the vast majority of therapists.

Addressing the subconscious is critical to put an end to retraumatization and chronic stress. Discover how developing an intimate, daily relationship with your own subconscious can help you masterfully guide your clients into this part of themselves and create a foundation for transformation. 
Aboriginal Hunter
Module 3:Parts of Self
For trauma work to be effective, we as practitioners must address the multidimensionality of an individual - including psyche, body, and spirit.

Effective therapy means looking for how the various parts of self have been fractured (often through shame and dissociation) and creating a safe container in which clients may suture that fracture. 

To be an effective guide in this process, we must do this work within ourselves first. This month will be personally transcendental and will fully activate the healer within you. 

As a practitioner, you will call upon this wisdom to help clients activate their own inner healer so they can learn to cultivate a safe sense of home within themselves. This is how clients shift from a phase of healing into empowered embodiment. 


 
Cheetah
Module 4: Navigating Survival Responses
Survival responses go far beyond the "fight-flight-freeze" many of us are accustomed to hearing about. There are numerous additional survival responses that have been identified in the most recent trauma research. Each of these responses operates differently at the level of the psyche, body, and spirit. These responses also vary in expression from person-to-person. 

As practitioners, we need to be able to accurately detect the characteristics of each response, as well as how to tailor our support to work with these responses. For instance, we cannot work with the immobilization response in the same way we work with fight/flight.

We cannot simply talk our clients out of these responses because talk therapy works with the brain's neo-cortex but survival responses are linked to the sub-cortex. 


This month, we will explore fight/flight, freeze/immobilization, attach/cry-for-help, collapse/submit, please/appease. You will come away with the understanding and skills to support clients in each unique response.
This will include supporting the physiology of the survival response as well as the psycho-emotional and spiritual components. 



 
Healing Therapy
Module 5: Sensory Space
Now is the time to create a space where healing can happen. Whether you are hosting sessions virtually or seeing clients in person, the feeling of the environment you create is everything. Trauma is an experience of being hijacked by sensory overwhelm - often in the blink of an eye. As such, the available sensory input from your therapy space is critical. 

This sensory input includes the pace, tone, and cadence of your voice, the smell of your space, the language you choose to use, the energy that you're carrying in your own psyche and body at the time, the way you move and use your eyes, face, and body, and the images and textures of your space. For highly sensitive persons, ALL of these things matter. And persons with trauma are among the most sensitive individuals on the planet. 

This month, you will learn the nuances of creating safe sensory space for working with persons with trauma and how to adjust to the varying needs of each client. 


 
Beautiful Dancer
Module 6: Healing to Embodiment
Your client's deepest wish is to no longer be defined by their past and to launch into a life that is not limited by trauma symptoms. In other words, your clients want to move out of the healing phase into empowered embodiment. 

Clinically, this means that your clients will be able to track their nervous system, respond to their needs in an effective manner, regulate their responses to sensory input, and feel connection to a strong sense of self that guides them into new territory and allows them to live up to their deeper reasons for being. 

This month, you will learn the art of helping clients shift from a traumatized identity into a desired experience of their very own creation. This is where all the healing work begins to pay off. This is what makes the challenging path of healing worthwhile. This is how you fulfill your mission as a trauma-informed practitioner. 



 
Enrollment will open again in 2024. Stay tuned. 

The admission process is selective. All applicants must complete a discovery call and application to be considered for the program. 

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