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Strategies for Working with Sexual Trauma and Sexuality

Live Workshop Recording

All of us work with clients who have experienced sexual trauma as a child, sexual assault as adults, with couples who grapple with sexual incompatibilities, or people who struggle with debilitating shame, sexual/gender identity, body image and just generally resist being in their bodies.

This workshop is designed to tackle just these issues, and aimed at helping practitioners acquire a variety of new and effective tools to best serve these clients—even the toughest ones. Introducing material not covered in the SE training.

PROFESSIONAL CONTENT

  • How to work with those most reluctant to inhabit their bodies

  • Learn multiple exercises to deepen and expand embodiment and pleasure in comfortable, titrated ways

  • Learn new ways of strengthening boundaries and establishing genuine “embodied consent”

  • Learn skills specific to working with male survivors

  • Learn how to support couples when one is sexually avoidant, or when there are sexual incompatibilities

  • Tools for healing shame

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN PERSONALLY:

  • Become friends with your body, and inhabit it with comfort and ease, all parts of it…

  • Develop more awareness, find new levels of pleasure. Even enjoy sex more!

  • Get comfortable talking about the body and discussing sexuality issues with your clients and intimates.

WHO WILL BENEFIT

Therapists, psychologists, and practitioners who want to become more adept at somatically treating sexual trauma and sexuality issues.

Sorry—no CEUs available for this program.

Cost for access to this recording is $95 for 9 hours of content.

Payments can be made through Venmo, Zelle, or Paypal (between friends) via arielgcal@gmail.com

Zelle—the account is under ariel@fullembodiment.org

“Restoring Resilience & Healthy Sexuality” presented through SAND—Science and Non-Duality https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/

WEBINAR

2-part Webinar Series Overview

We are born embodied and sensual before parents, culture, religion, peers, intergenerational beliefs and trauma begin to skew our connection to our most essential selves and, consequently, to others. This conditioning undermines our ability to accept our bodies, to identify or keep dependable partners, to surrender to our inherent sensuality and to receive healthy, genuine love when it presents itself.

This webinar explores how this happens through the lens of the Somatic Experiencing® trauma model. It offers a variety of simple somatic exercises designed to leave old traumas and beliefs behind so that we can welcome new levels of pleasure and connection.

This webinar is appropriate for “people on the path” who seek a deeper and sexier connection to their true selves, as well as for those who struggle to be embodied because trauma has made the body an unsafe and scary place.

Practitioners and therapists who work with sexuality and trauma will find a number of effective tips to support their most body-phobic clients.

In this 2-part (5 hours total) workshop, Ariel explores:

  • How SE principles can support people to “come home” to self and body, as well as help resolve sexual trauma and shame

  • How our body responds to memories of shame and abuse, and how to gently recover from these

  • A menu of somatic practices that each participant can adapt to their own comfort level

  • Through the study of neuroscience and attachment theory,  how brain and body can evolve

  • A variety of strategies for improving sexuality and connection

  • The deepening into somatic practices to recognize and repair obstacles to a healthy relationship

  • Why sexuality and desire "die" in long-term relationships, learn what is necessary to renew "the spark" and actually have better sex than ever before

This webinar includes a number of somatic, experiential exercises, some journaling, and some imagining.

"Attachment, Trauma and Sexuality - Coming Home to the Self" 5-Hour Webinar Series—presented through SAND—Science and Non-Duality

https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/

WEBINAR

Through the science and heart of attachment and trauma, we’ll examine how we are physiologically designed for connection, closeness, and pleasure—which is as deeply “wired” as our response to threat—as well as what happens when this nature is denied.

Through a mix of educational material, experiential exercises, reflections, and homework this series will provide numerous ways of coming home to the body, finding advanced levels of pleasure, and helping to identify and overcome all that gets in the way.

 This series will cover:

  • The science and psychobiology of attachment needs

  • The physiology of trauma, and how disconnection from the body prevents the resolution of past trauma

  • Exercises that support fuller embodied pleasure and self-acceptance

  • Ways of recovering from sexuality trauma and sexual abuse, and how to do this at a respectful pace that prevents re-traumatization

PART I

Trauma, Attachment, Connection, and Pleasure

  • The science behind how we are all designed to connect, to seek pleasure, and to respond to threat or trauma

  • What happens when any of these are interrupted or denied, and the parenting styles and gender stereotypes that have unknowingly created harm

  • Survival involves moving away from danger, but also moving towards others for safety

  • Overview of fight, flight, freeze and appease

  • Exercises to help heal these early wounds

  • Examining the messages we are given about gender as early as prenatally, and how these messages affect our connection to our bodies and sense of self

  • Shame and abuse that occurs in formative stages of life

  • Exercises and reflections towards healing from this shame and abuse

PART II

Embodiment, Abuse, and Intimacy

  • Coming more fully into the whole self through embodied mindfulness

  • What is needed to heal most gently and respectfully from sexual abuse or assault

  • Importance of boundaries and embodied consent

I use art, a variety of mindfulness exercises, active boundary exercises, reflections on developmental stages, homework with self-touch, and embodiment.

“Neither the church nor the opponents of the church have clearly understood that the secret, or unconscious, motivation of sexual repression is to make it all the more interesting. And on the other side, it has not been clearly understood that sexual biology and all that goes with it is a figuring force, on the level of biology, of what the whole universe is about, ecstatic play.” Alan Watts

For countless generations, beliefs about sex and the body have been exceedingly pejorative and condemning. Although most religions develop these mores as a necessary means of keeping social order, such ideologies have a devasting effect on our psyches, emotions, and relationships with others. Abiding by these creeds necessitates a thorough disconnection from our essential nature.

Calling on my decades of experience as a trauma therapist and trainer of Somatic Experiencing, combined with extensive training in somatic sexuality, this series addresses what it takes to heal our sexuality and our relationship to our gender, and to our bodies.

“Embodied and Sensual: Healing Sexual Wounds” FREE interview and dialogue with SAND founders

WEBINAR

In this dialogue with Zaya & Maurizio Benazzo, Ariel Giarretto explores:

  • How the wounding and suppression of our erotic energy early in life can lead to disconnect from ourselves and from life.

  • How sexual trauma has rippled into our social structures and resulted in forms of oppression.

  • The basics of the Somatic Experiencing model and how it can be used to repair old traumas and wounds and to restore resilience, healthy sexuality and intimacy.

“Coming Home to the Body” FREE Interview

INTERVIEW

Karine Bell interviews Ariel Giarretto during the "Embodied Trauma Conference", February 5, 2020. They explore ways of supporting even the most body phobic person, in how to gently find pleasure and ease in the body.

“Healing Sexuality Trauma” Interview on “Transcending Trauma with Moniquea Spiteri”

INTERVIEW

Moniquea Spiteri interviews Ariel Giarreto on “Transcending Trauma with Moniquea Spiteri.” Ariel discusses her passion for supporting people of all cultures and ages in how to find ease and pleasure in their bodies, increased intimacy, and freedom from the grip of trauma.