Heart to Distant Heart brings you a wealth of skills and resource materials for conducting successful distance sessions. NOTE: The live series of 4 classes concluded on May 20. The entire 4-class series is now available as video recordings of the live events.
Each of the classes is a 2 hour segment, led by Gary Peterson, RCST and BCTA/NA approved teacher. In these classes Gary guides you through a diverse array of body-centered approaches to working with compassion, sensitivity and effectiveness in distance sessions.
Tuition fee is $35 per 2-hour segment.
The Heart to Distant Heart experience is an eclectic approach that combines the Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy skill set with other gentle but powerful body-centered therapies. This approach empowers your clients to benefit not only from the distance session itself, but from the additional resources they assimilate into their way of being in the world. Clients begin to move from reliance on external resources and coping mechanisms, to a greater capacity to access internal resources which are more sustaining and sustainable. “If you give a man rice he’ll eat for a day, but if you teach him how to farm he’ll feed himself for a lifetime.” Distance sessions give us a great opportunity to support our clients to become empowered not for hours or days, but for the duration of their lives.
There are several key elements that, when understood and practiced, lead to more consistent positive results, whether we are working with our clients in person (hands-on), or in distance sessions. In the Heart to Distant Heart series we’ll focus on 3 main elements: (1) resourcing your client, (2) exploring the health within the disturbance and (3) bringing each session to a completion that promotes the integration of the experience and also provides the client with resources to continue their healing process at home, “feeding themselves for a lifetime.”
In each of the 4 classes we’ll deepen our skills of being, relationship and recognition as we learn to support a session’s progress through (1) sequencing, (2) pacing and (3) tracking sensation and (4) body-centered verbal skills.
Class #4: In-depth Exploration of Body-Centered Skills and Practices for Any Session, Near or Far (Available as video recording)
How do our bodies feel when we have been truly seen and met? What is the felt sense of safety? How do we find the smallest ray of hope within the despair of a suffering client, and nurture that hope into warm and expansive health and balance? What do we do when a promising session suddenly pivots into activation and uncertainty? How do we even begin to sense the health and the story of a person when they are a thousand miles away?
Hopefully, we learned some useful new skills and practices in the first 3 classes, and have begun to implement these skills in our own distance sessions. Now in this 4th class of the series, we’ll deepen our knowledge and understanding of specific skills and approaches that have proven successful and reliable in helping clients find balance and empowerment. We’ll explore the specifics of 4 particular therapeutic approaches that resource clients, help them resolve acute as well as chronic distress, and transform survival patterns into “thrival” approaches to life. As time permits, we’ll also discuss a few more of the practical challenges that arise in distance session work.
To register for Class #4, scroll down to the registration area below.
Attend Classes 1, 2 and 3 via Video Recording
Class #1: Resourcing your client: Here you’ll learn how to support the beginning of every distance session. You’ll learn and deepen in your skills of being, relationship and recognition as you explore approaches that help the client drop into a settled state, rest there, and then deepen further into what we call the Holistic Shift. You’ll also learn that this first part of the session often brings to light the particular distress patterns the client may encounter in the beginning of any experience, which are the first two phases (1) intention and (2) preparation of natural sequencing. You’ll work with verbal skills that enhance sequencing, pacing and tracking sensation to help them settle below the distress and drop into the Holistic Shift.
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Class #2: Exploring the health within the disturbance: In this class you’ll learn how to support the middle of every distance session. You’ll explore how to work with your clients’ “leading edges” or inertial fulcrums while keeping them settled and resourced. Since this is more challenging at a distance than in person, a deeper and broader skill set is required. As part of that skill set you’’ll explore how to support your client’s process by using simple but powerful verbal skills and reflective resonance / attunement to help the client slowly track their own body sensations and notice releases and discharges. As another part of your skill development you’ll learn how to track yourself while tracking your client, how to help them titrate their nervous system to stay present and resourced, and thus how to help them experience their discharge/release process in a safe and contained manner. Particular learning here will be on how to modulate both the midline and the wide field of yourself and your client, and how to track the Inherent Treatment Plan from distance, as it arises. All of these skills come to bear in helping the client navigate this middle portion of the session, relating to the sequence phases of (3) action and (4) follow-through.
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Class #3: Completion, integration and home play for you and your client: Here you’ll learn how to support the end of every distance session, which often can bring up unexpected activation and disorientation for clients who had distress in the last phase (5) completion / integration of their prenatal or birthing sequences. Completions in birthing often become very distressful because the little one has left the womb and is now exposed to an array of well-intended but often overwhelming medical procedures. Completions thus can become fraught with anxiety and stress. Your own learning and skill development here will involve how to maintain your presence and skills of being, relationship and recognition while supporting your client via tracking sensation, titration, containment. You’ll also learn how to release your client from the session in the most resourced way, including providing them with various “home-play” exercises, reading and other resources to encourage their continued healing.
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For each of the 3 classes you will receive follow-up resources such as notes and handouts. After Class #1 you’ll also receive 2 Settling downloads from Gary’s upcoming book called Settling: Simple Practices for Calming Your Nervous System, Quieting Your Mind, and Nurturing Your Spirit. You’ll be welcome to use these settling exercises in your own distance sessions with clients if you wish, as well as for your own benefit.
Gary Peterson is a Registered Craniosacral Therapist (RCST®) and approved BCST teacher who has been teaching and practicing energy therapies for 35+ years. He teaches BCST trainings, Polarity Therapy trainings, Settling® trainings, Working with Babies classes, and other therapeutic work for the nervous system in the San Francisco Bay area and at various locations around the United States.
His teaching and private practice are inspired by his strong desire to understand and alleviate the deep causes of suffering found with stress and trauma to the nervous system. He is especially inspired to help babies, moms and their families resolve the crippling effects of traumas and stresses that happen during gestation, birth and early neonatal life.
REGISTRATION: Deadline for registering for any class is 10:00 am Pacific Time on the class day.
Class #4: In-depth Exploration of Body-Centered Skills and Practices for Any Session, Near or Far (video recording)
Pay Here $35
Class #1: Resourcing Your Client (video recording)
Pay Here $35
Class #2: Exploring the Health Within the Disturbance (video recording)
Pay Here $35
Class #3: Completion, Integration & Home Play for You & Your Client (video recording)
Pay Here $35