Upcoming events.
International Trauma Conference
Mariah will be presenting two half-day workshops and moderating the conference closing at this year’s International Trauma Conference in Boston, MA (and also online):
Abuse, Neglect, Deprivation, and the Restoration of Dignity: Healing Personal, Cultural, and Collective Wounds and Trauma using Psychomotor Therapy (with Linda Thai and Gus Kaufman)
A Gathering for the Times (with Prentis Hemphill)
The Somatics of Liberation: Embodying Resistance, Imagination, and Collective Trauma Care (with Junauda Petrus)
Somatic Trauma Healing Summit with The Embody Lab
A FREE online summit from the Embody Lab:
The Body Remembers the Unmet Needs: Somatic Pathways to Healing Developmental and Collective Wounds
Our bodies carry the imprint of unmet needs from our earliest relationships and contexts, including the families, communities, and systems that shaped us across generations. In this didactic and experiential session, we explore how foundational developmental needs live in the body as posture, movement, and nervous system patterns, and how both personal history and collective wounding shape their expression. Drawing on somatic, parts-based, and liberatory frameworks, participants will be guided toward new possibilities for healing in themselves, and in community.
Workshop: Psychodrama Structures: Healing Trauma and Attachment Wounds in Three Dimensional Space
This deeply experiential, small-group workshop brings together somatic modalities, psychodrama, and narrative re-structuring (drawn from Pesso-Boyden / PBSP lineage) to help participants reconfigure relational templates, address early life wounds, and somatically imprint new inner realities. Inspired by the work of Bessel van der Kolk, Licia Sky, Gus Kaufman, and others, we will use somatic practices, movement, touch, voice, parts work, and visual/auditory input to create three-dimensional “structures” in space that open pathways for transformation.
Training: Embodied Awareness, Attachment Wounds, and Healing Shapes: An Experiential Training
Following the immersive retreat, this two-day professional training invites psychotherapists, counselors, and somatic practitioners to deepen their clinical application of somatic psychotherapy techniques.
Through a blend of didactic learning, experiential practice, and demonstrations, participants will explore how attachment wounds and predictive relational templates are expressed and repaired through the body. Building upon the relational and somatic foundations introduced in the retreat, this training translates embodied and communal healing experiences into practical tools for therapeutic and community-based settings.
Participants will engage with PBSP concepts such as basic needs, shape and countershape, the creation of "good inner objects," and the symbolic fulfillment of unmet developmental needs—while also critically examining how these needs and their expression are shaped by culture, identity, and systems of power. Together, we will explore how to practice PBSP principles in adaptive, expansive, and culturally responsive ways that honor the full context of each client's lived experience.
More information here >
Somatic Re-Storying: A Psychodrama Structures Retreat
A transformative and healing workshop for LGBTQIA+ identifying folks. Together we work to heal our family- and culture-of-origin wounds through powerful somatic and embodiment exercises.
Therapy Wisdom Circle: The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing
The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing
Long before we have words, the body integrates a knowing of what we were given and what was missing. Our nervous systems organize around fundamental needs for place, safety, protection, support, nurturance, and limits - not as preferences, but as requirements for dignity and survival. When these needs are unmet, bodies adapt in wise ways, shaping patterns that are often mislabeled as pathology.
This workshop/webinar offers a contemporary, embodied framing of basic needs as both a developmental and transformation map. Drawing from somatic and parts-based perspectives, we will explore how unmet needs show up in the body, in relationships, and in our clinical work - especially for those shaped by familial, cultural, and systemic trauma. Through reflection, dialogue, and experiential practice, participants will be invited to sense into what was missing, honor the adaptations that emerged, and imagine what repair, countershape, and collective care might look like in a more just world.
The Body Knows What Was Missing: A Contemporary Frame of Basic Needs as a Map for Transformation and Healing
Long before we have words, the body integrates a knowing of what we were given and what was missing. Our nervous systems organize around fundamental needs for place, safety, protection, support, nurturance, and limits - not as preferences, but as requirements for dignity and survival. When these needs are unmet, bodies adapt in wise ways, shaping patterns that are often mislabeled as pathology.
This workshop/webinar offers a contemporary, embodied framing of basic needs as both a developmental and transformation map. Drawing from somatic and parts-based perspectives, we will explore how unmet needs show up in the body, in relationships, and in our clinical work - especially for those shaped by familial, cultural, and systemic trauma. Through reflection, dialogue, and experiential practice, participants will be invited to sense into what was missing, honor the adaptations that emerged, and imagine what repair, countershape, and collective care might look like in a more just world.
The Body in Polycrisis: Trauma, Rage, Grief, and Staying Human
We are living inside overlapping crises - institutional and systemic violence, climate crisis, political upheaval, genocides - while continuing to sit with others’ pain in the therapy room. For many clinicians and clients alike, the body is holding more than one lifetime of fear, rage, grief, and exhaustion. These responses are not signs of pathology; they are logical adaptations to sustained threat.
Together we will explore how trauma lives in the body during times of polycrisis, and how rage, shutdown, numbness, and grief function as protective and meaning-making responses. Together, we will reflect on how nervous systems respond to chronic uncertainty and moral injury, and how parts of us organize around survival, refusal, and care. We collectively will be invited to tend to our own bodies while exploring how to support clients in staying rooted in their full humanness - without bypassing despair or rushing toward resilience.
Expanding Your Toolkit: Somatic & Parts-Based Interventions for Trauma and Dissociation
This two-evening training with Mariah Rooney takes us beyond the limitations of traditional talk therapy into what recent research calls “bottom-up” healing approaches. With a liberatory, destigmatizing lens grounded in contemporary trauma neuroscience, we’ll explore:
Evening One: Understanding the Somatic Architecture of Survival
How dissociation and plurality develop as creative adaptations to overwhelming trauma
The neurobiological basis of parts work: what happens in the brain during “switching”
Recognizing somatic memory when narrative memory is absent but the body remembers
Moving beyond pathology to see multiplicity as survival intelligence
Evening Two: Clinical Applications and Somatic Interventions
Using the therapist’s nervous system as co-regulatory instrument
Parts-based dialogue that honors internal specialization
Practical tools for working with fragmentation, shutdown, and somatic overwhelm
Creating therapeutic relationships that can hold multiplicity without pathologizing
More information and registration can be found here.
Somatic Developmental Trauma Therapy Certificate Program with The Embody Lab
Developmental trauma shapes everything—our bodies, our breath, our reflexes, our ability to connect, and the very way we exist in the world.
It doesn’t just come from “what happened.”
It comes from what was interrupted (developmental milestones) and what was missing: safety, connection, attunement, and belonging.
Moments of not being wanted.
Being separated too soon.
Having needs ignored, shamed, or unmet.
Or growing up without enough support to feel like it’s okay to be me.
These early ruptures live in the nervous system long after the events themselves. They show up in clients as chronic shame, boundary struggles, emotional collapse, hypervigilance, and relational confusion.
While most trainings approach developmental trauma through a cognitive or attachment lens, the body remembers first—and without addressing these somatic imprints, healing remains incomplete.
More information and sign up here.
Masters Events: Transform Trauma Oxford
Embodiment Beyond the Individual: Cultural and Collective Practice as a Pathway to Societal Transformation
Mariah will be in conversation with Prentis Hemphill
Somatic Re-Storying Retreat
A transformative and healing workshop for LGBTQIA+ identifying folks. Together we work to heal our family- and culture-of-origin wounds through powerful somatic and embodiment exercises.
36th ANNUAL BOSTON INTERNATIONAL TRAUMA CONFERENCE
Mariah will be presenting two half-day workshops and moderating the conference closing at this year’s International Trauma Conference in Boston, MA (and also online):
Embodied Awareness, Attachment Wounds and Healing Shapes: An Experiential Workshop Using Psychomotor Psychotherapy with Linda Thai
Embodying Transformative Practice and Fostering Social Change with Prentis Hemphill and Kai Cheng Thom
Trauma Informed Weight Lifting and Sport with Candace Liger & Megan Bartlett
Integrating Parts Work into Therapy: Getting Creative in Working with Youth, Adults, Couples and Families with Developmental Trauma From a Parts Framework
During this workshop, we will explore creative ways of integrating parts work into therapy with clients of all ages, including how parts work can be interwoven with other models/interventions, as well as be used to understand and address clinical impasses and other therapeutic challenges and barriers
International Conference on Trauma and Embodiment
Strength Training As Trauma Care: Exploring Case Studies In Trauma Informed Weight Lifting
This session explores how Trauma-Informed Weight Lifting can transform fitness spaces into environments of healing and resilience. Grounded in neuroscience, physiology, and trauma research, this approach redefines weight lifting as a powerful tool for trauma recovery. Case studies demonstrate its impact on personal healing and community resilience, showing how trauma-informed practices promote both physical and emotional well-being. This session offers practical insights for integrating trauma-informed principles into fitness and wellness practices.
TRANSFORMING CHILDHOOD WOUNDS: Heal Your Past and Step into New Possibilities for Your Future
Embark on an extraordinary journey of healing and self-discovery guided by Linda Thai and Mariah Rooney, esteemed integrative trauma therapists, and somatic practitioners. Immerse yourself in a nurturing retreat environment designed to facilitate profound personal growth and transformation.
Through experiential practices carefully curated by Linda and Mariah, delve into the depths of your being to address long-held wounds and ignite the spark of healing. Engage in somatic and embodiment exercises, psychodrama structures, and narrative-changing techniques that illuminate the intricate connections between your mind, body, and spirit.
In this collaborative and supportive group setting, expect to
Transcend childhood wounds, finding solace and understanding in unresolved experiences
Cultivate a deep sense of groundedness, presence, and openness to pleasure through transformative somatic practices
Heal entrenched relational patterns and rewrite embodied narratives that no longer serve you
Expand your horizons and envision new possibilities that leave a lasting imprint on your body and nervous system.
Participate in dynamic group discussions, invigorating physical movement exercises, immersive hands-on experiences, and intimate one-on-one sharing sessions throughout the retreat. These interactions foster profound connections and insights, enriching your journey of self-discovery.
By the journey’s end, you’ll emerge with enhanced communication skills, a rekindled connection to your inner child, and a revitalized sense of empowerment.
The Giving Ground: A Grief Retreat
In this four-day, three-night experience you will gather with others in a beautiful space where you can bring all of yourself and all of your grief. Together we will learn more about how loss and grief affect our lives, relationships, and sense of self through activities including gatherings, intentional time in nature, healing with horses, body work, connection with spirit and meditation.
Postponed: Somatic Re-Storying Workshop
A transformative and healing workshop for LGBTQIA+ identifying folks. Together we work to heal our family- and culture-of-origin wounds through powerful somatic and embodiment exercises.
Using Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor (PBSP) for Healing Attachment Wounds and Trauma: An Experiential Workshop for Therapists
Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor Therapy (PBSP) is a powerful, gentle, flexible method for changing old, dysfunctional patterns. This workshop will present PBSP theory and help participants tune in to body signals and witness healing of deficits and wounds. The primary tool for this will be having participants role-play “ideal parents” who would have provided the client with the right input at the right age.
PBSP therapy is a particularly useful approach for providing transformative and healing experiences for people who have experienced wounding and trauma within their attachment relationships. We know that “what fires together, wires together”, and that painful experiences, particularly those that are repeated throughout our lifetime, become ingrained patterns and maps for our ways of moving through the world. Deconstructing these patterns and creating new maps can be incredibly challenging, as well as powerfully liberating.
PBSP provides opportunities for us to see in the present moment the structure of the ‘old map’ that has been written into our bodies, minds, nervous systems and hearts, as well as the possibility of what a new map can look and feel like.
We anticipate a mix of therapists new to PBSP and those more experienced to join this workshop, so we would like to note that some of the specific PBSP skills we may focus on include 'microtracking' (witnessing and voices), reversals/ideals and unbounded states/limits.
Learning Objectives:
1. Learn the five basic needs addressed by PBSP
2. See how developmental deficits and attachment wounds and trauma show up in the body
3. Gain exposure to exercises/interventions that a) help discover unconscious emotion and b) help re-instate the ‘pilot’—forebrain/executive function
4. Experience the healing process of a PBSP structure
Other important details:
Schedule:
We will meet Friday, April 26th from 5-8p and Saturday and Sunday, April 27th and 28th will meet from 9a to 5p with an hourlong break for lunch.
Cost:
The cost for the weekend training is $550 and is payable via PayPal or Venmo. Please submit your information via this form and you will be contacted to make payment. Payment options are also available.
Cancellation/Refund policy:
Refunds are available if registration is cancelled prior to March 25, 2023.
Past March 25, 2023, refunds will only be available if we are able to fill your spot in the training (and the training is full) less a $25 administrative fee.
Accommodation options: For folks traveling to Minneapolis, we will have limited accommodations available at the workshop site for an additional fee. Please let us know at the below link if you will be needing accommodations.
Private room for 3 nights: $275
Shared room with king bed for 3 nights: $375
This training weekend will be facilitated by Gus Kaufman, Ph.D.
Gus Kaufman, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who works with individuals, couples, families and groups as well as providing clinical supervision, and training. Since 1978 Dr. Kaufman had been a trainer and supervisor both nationally and internationally of Pesso-Boyden System Psychomotor Therapy. His dissertation research Body Signals of Childhood Loss was a pioneering work in demonstrating how ‘the body keeps the score.’ Gus has been an adjunct professor and clinical field supervisor in the Department of Psychology at Georgia State University.
Dr. Kaufman has co-founded five nonprofits, including Men Stopping Violence, for which he conducted classes, training and public education (locally and nationally). He is a respected and renowned writer, fundraiser, and organizer of community action to end male violence toward women. Gus was instrumental in developing a 12-session curriculum on abuse which was used for all prisoners (approximately 40,000) in GA correctional facilities. Gus co-founded the Rainbow Project: Ending Violence in Our Relationships which focused on public education and intervention aimed at ending abuse in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender relationships.
Somatic Re-Storying Workshop
A transformative and healing workshop for LGBTQIA+ identifying folks. Together we work to heal our family- and culture-of-origin wounds through powerful somatic and embodiment exercises.
Psychodrama Structures Workshop
What will the workshop entail?
This Psychodrama Structures workshop will be a highly experiential, narrative-changing healing space where you get to address your family- and culture-of-origin wounds in a small group environment. During our time together we will engage in somatic and embodiment exercises to prepare our bodies, hearts and nervous systems to engage in psychodrama structures, a powerful modality for healing and transforming the wounds and stories we carry.
This practice is a collaborative and profoundly transformative approach to healing relationship patterns and embodied narratives that no longer serve us.
In this workshop we will recreate in three dimensional space a representation of something we would like to heal. We do this in order to step into the deep longings and hidden wounds of our inner child/ren and then re-imagine new possibilities that become somatically imprinted with the help of group members and a highly experienced facilitator.
We often joke that this transformation of your relational templates and possibility maps “is like doing ten years of therapy in one hour.”
Workshop Details
Room for up to 12 participants
If you are interested in joining, please fill out this form here.
Due to the nature of this work, we will likely complete 3-4 Structures during the day which means that not everyone will receive a structure on this day, but one of the most powerful aspects of this modality is that being present and participating in others' structures is incredibly potent and transformative. I will continue to come back to Minneapolis to do more of this work so there will absolutely be future opportunities to have your own structure if you choose to participate as an accommodator for others' structures during this workshop.
Pricing + Payment Options
The workshop fee is $250. If cost is a barrier to your ability to attend, please let me know and we can certainly work something out
Date/Time/Location
Saturday, October 21
9a-5p with an hour long break for lunch
Location: Carondelet Center, St. Catherine University, 1890 Randolph Avenue St. Paul
Parking: There is plenty of street parking around the perimeter of the St. Catherine's campus as well as a visitor parking lot off of Fairview Ave on the East side of campus
Learn More
If you are interested in learning more about Psychodrama Structures you can read about it in chapter 18 of The Body Keeps the Score written by Bessel van der Kolk.
Trauma Informed Weight Lifting: Certificate Program
Please see the Trauma Informed Weight Lifting website for more details.
Training full.
Fitness For Healing: Trauma-Informed Approaches
Virtual panel. Hosted by the American Council on Exercise.
