This course is a scaffolded approach to developing a relationship with the sensations and emotions in your body. The aim is to safely get us in touch with our body so that we can tend to its needs through self-care and self-compassion. We develop the skill of interoception, an awareness of what is happening inside our body, in service of making meaning of our experience and tending to ourselves kindly and skillfully.

Over 17 weeks, which includes 14 live online 1-hour Gatherings and 3 weeks of self-study material (during weeks that Kristy is unavailable) we’ll grow our awareness of sensations in the body, what they mean and what we can do to respond kindly. We’ll address the three Somatic Self-Compassion practice questions: What am I feeling? What do I need? What can I do?

The Interoception Curriculum

This program is an online adaptation of The Interoception Curriculum which was recently developed by occupational therapist, Kelly Mahler, expert on helping her clients get safely in touch with their bodies. The Interoception Curriculum is evidence-based, having been used in several formal research studies that revealed significant improvements in body awareness and ability to regulate emotions. We’ll use an adaptation of the curriculum that weaves in Somatic Self-Compassion principles and practices.

The Interoception Curriculum is designed to explicitly teach self-regulation (the ability to soothe ourselves in times of stress) by systematically improving three aspects of self-regulation:

Body: The ability to notice body signals

Emotion: The ability to connect body signals to an emotion

Action: The ability to regulate using feel-good strategies that match the body-emotion connection

Who Benefits from this Program?

The curriculum can be beneficial for a wide range of learners. Many of us, regardless of our experiences, are not in touch with our bodies. Interoception is an important skill to develop for any kind of self-regulation self-development endeavor, including self-compassion and mindfulness training. The curriculum has been found to be effective for learners with anxiety, trauma stories, and high sensitivity to sensory input.

Improving interoception can have positive effect on self-regulation, health and wellbeing. Learning to notice and understand body signals, which is the basis of many activities included in the curriculum, can even create positive changes in brain function as well as increase a variety of social emotional skills. The curriculum can help us if our body signals feel too big (strong and overpowering with too many happening at one time); too small (muted, weak or completely unnoticed); or distorted (noticeable but not clear enough to give specific detail about location of type of feeling).

Facilitator

The facilitator of this program is Kristy Arbon. Kristy has been teaching self-compassion skills to individuals and groups for 6 years, and she developed the Somatic Self-Compassion program in response to a need for a body-based self-compassion curriculum. She is delighted to be using Kelly’s curriculum as it is one of the missing pieces in self-compassion and mindfulness work: how to safely get in touch with emotions in the body.

When

The live Gatherings will be Saturdays 9-10am US Central Time starting May 18, 2019. Here is the time for our first Gathering converted to the current local time on your computer (please check that your computer’s time is the same as your local time 🙂 ):

Time converter at worldtimebuddy.com

Here are the dates of our program:

May 18, 25

June 1, 8, 15, 22, 29

July 6, 13, 20, 27 (self-study)

August 3 (self-study), 10, 17 (self-study), 24, 31

September 7

Gatherings will be recorded so you can view them at your own leisure if need be. The whole program could be taken asynchronously, meaning you could rely on watching the videos of the Gatherings in conjunction with other online material to do this course, if you are unable to make it to the live Gatherings.

Where

We will meet on in a video conference platform called Zoom, and connect 24/7 via a companion website in PowerSchool Learning that offers readings, research, videos, downloadable material, mediations, a group discussion board and more!

How

Training is facilitated through talks, exercises and guided group reflections.

You can register below…