The Gesture of Traumatic Response: Envisioning Trauma with a Structural Integrator's Eye

Due to COVID-19 and gathering restrictions around the globe, please check with individual providers regarding the status of their courses

Instructor:
Kristen Kuester

Organizational Host: 
Kristen Kuester

Credits: 
22 CEs Category 1 

Registration Prices:
$475 ($400 before 2/28/2020)

Contact Information: 
[email protected]
505-989-7529

Register Now

Course Description:

Limited to ten students, this course is a unique opportunity to learn to work with trauma in an intimate class setting near to nature in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Your instructor, Kristen Kuester, will draw on her years of work with Rolfing® Structural Integration and Somatic Experiencing® to present a unique way of envisioning and experiencing how a gesture, in a moment of perceived life-threat, remains present in the myofascial net and how each unresolved cringe, collapse, crash, flail, or failure-to-defend is notated in that net. You will explore how multiple traumatic episodes overlay like moire patterns through tissue and learn the art of intuiting and disentangling these energetic/neuro-muscular patterns using touch and concise verbal cueing.The workshop will include lecture, visual and sensory illustrations, discussion, hands-on table work, and movement experience to embody concepts presented. Handouts will provide clear, practical guidelines for clinical application of course material. Techniques presented will easily integrate into Structural Integration sessions. Concepts will stimulate inventive treatment procedures.

The class provides knowledge of, and a clinical protocol for:

• Physiology of trauma and its relation to SI work.
• Language appropriate to create safety, containment, and resource.
• Recognition / tracking of hyper-arousal in the body, allowing gentle discharge without reenactment.
• Re-establishment of sensory and orienting responses.
• Ability to “hold neutral” for the client, to support homeostasis.
• Ability to imagine the 3-D movement of an accident to identify the gesture.
• Methods to find GRAVITY as a resource within an unresolved traumatic gesture, releasing deep musculature and providing a direct relation to traditional SI.

Instructor Biography:

Kristen Kuester is a Certified Advanced Rolfer, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Craniosacral Practitioner and body/mind educator practicing in Santa Fe, NM for thirty years. Kristen is an approved CE provider for IASI, NCBTMB, and the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute® (this class earns 22 CE credits for IASI and NCBTMB and 3 elective credits for DIRI). Besides her bodywork and trauma training, Kristen holds a Master's degree in sculpture/ performance from the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. She incorporates her working knowledge of structural anatomy and mechanics of motion with an artist's intuitive aesthetic sensibility to envision and follow the unique form each individual may take. Kristen has published articles on bodywork and trauma at https://tinyurl.com/gesture-article and https://tinyurl.com/safe-haven-article. Learn more about Kristen at https://www.kristenkuester.com.