2023 WORKSHOP SERIES FOR SOMATIC PRACTITIONERS
Relational Anatomy & Physiology
Transform Trauma by Transforming Your Relationship with Your Body!!
WHAT IS RELATIONAL ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY?
The word “relational” emphasises that our learning journey occurs in the context of a felt sense of being safe with others, witnessing and being witnessed. This approach takes the map of anatomy and physiology as a way to be more present to and build skills to interpret the language of our body. We use a combination of teaching with words, illustrations and anatomical models in order to understand the body from the outside in, as well as engaging in mindful movement, touch, drawing and journaling to experience the body from the inside-out. Our goal is not to focus on the specifics of anatomy or physiology, but to use the structures and systems in the body as a pathway to self-inquiry, to help you better understand your inner sensory landscape, deepen your capacity to experience what is working in your body, and to enable you to meet others from a place of embodied presence.
Learn How to Build your Client’s Somatic Ability
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
This workshop is for somatic practitioners (mental health practitioners such as counsellors, social workers, psychologists, psychotherapists, marriage and family therapists, and body workers or movement educators) whose clients are healing from trauma.
TEACHING APPROACH:
We learn best when we feel safe and comfortable. Our goal is to create a learning environment where we have time and space to explore choice, slow down, and listen to our body’s wisdom. These workshops aim to offer you innovative, trauma-informed somatic inquiries in the context of a safe small group environment where there is no right or wrong way to experience your body. As teacher, I cannot know your experience; Somatics is a way of honouring your felt sense. We use the somatic map of body systems and developmental movement based in the work of Body-Mind Centering® and the trauma-informed lens of Somatic Experiencing® and DARe® to explore the body, independent of a person’s cognitive narrative.
YOUR TEACHER:
Julie Teetsov, Ph.D. is a certified Yoga Teacher, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), DARe Practitioner, Upledger® Certified Craniosacral Therapist and Movement Educator influenced by the teachings of Body-Mind Centering.

My intention is to support you in developing your capacity to work with your client’s trauma.
YOU WILL LEARN:
Each workshop is designed for you to build your skills for working somatically. You will also learn how to build your client’s skills so they can work more effectively with you to process their trauma. Body systems, developmental movement patterns and reflexes will be used to teach key principles for working somatically with trauma. You will LEARN….
- 1. New ways to use Movement in your personal & professional practice.
- 2. To Give and Receive Touch as a source of Co-Regulation and Attachment Repair.
- 3. How support precedes movement, yield precedes your push, and reaching precedes your pulling towards.
- 4. The Somatics of Attachment and Belonging thru the perspective of Embryology, Reflexes and Developmental Movement Patterns.
- 5. How tissues and systems in your body are in relationship, sensing how parts of the body are separate and/or connected, different and/or similar.
- 6. How orienting and healthy boundaries come from building one’s ability to focus attention & modulate movement: narrow/wide, near/far, inside/outside, urgent/ gradual, light/strong, contained/free flowing, to name a few.
- 7. To work with traumatic coupling dynamics and packaging strategies using movement & touch.
- 8. To increase your capacity for a FELT SENSE of safety, comfort, well being and coherence in the body.
- 1. New ways to use Movement in your personal & professional practice.
- 2. To Give and Receive Touch as a source of Co-Regulation and Attachment Repair.
- 3. How support precedes movement, yield precedes your push, and reaching precedes your pulling towards.
- 4. The Somatics of Attachment and Belonging thru the perspective of Embryology, Reflexes and Developmental Movement Patterns.
- 5. How tissues and systems in your body are in relationship, sensing how parts of the body are separate and/or connected, different and/or similar.
- 6. How orienting and healthy boundaries come from building one’s ability to focus attention & modulate movement: narrow/wide, near/far, inside/outside, urgent/ gradual, light/strong, contained/free flowing, to name a few.
- 7. To work with traumatic coupling dynamics and packaging strategies using movement & touch.
- 8. To increase your capacity for a FELT SENSE of safety, comfort, well being and coherence in the body.
SLOW DOWN…. MOVE, TOUCH & CO-REGULATE
Deepen your commitment to yourself & sharpen your skills as a practitioner
LISTEN and LEARN the LANGUAGE of your BODY

SAFETY & CONTAINMENT:
The primary purpose of this workshop is educational. However, traumatic material may surface during the workshop and individuals and the group may experience therapeutic healing. Our intention is to hold space for a gentle and titrated processes within a clearly defined educational context. Julie will be available in between each workshop to schedule individual follow-up sessions and there will be an assistant present at each workshop to support us in creating a safe container. While opportunities for partner and group movement practices will be offered, students are encouraged to choose their level of participation. Each experiential exercise will be optional and every effort will be made to offer choice and cultivate a culture of informed consent. Class size limited to 10 students.
WHAT TO BRING AND HOW TO PREPARE:
Bring an open mind and curiosity to move and interact with your body and with the group. Bring a journal, water bottle and wear comfortable clothing with layers. Lunch will be provided and you will receive an email from our caterer before the workshop to determine your dietary requirements.

SCHEDULE:
Meeting from 9 am- 5 pm on Friday & Saturday
April 7-8
The Skeletal System
Your skeletal system provides a support structure and shapes your movements through space. Inviting your client into a dialogue with their bones can support a greater sense of grounding, certainty, clarity and deactivation as they shift experience from global activation to local awareness. Developing a relationship with our bones and joints helps us differentiate one bone from another and find pathways of connection within our skeletal system. These somatic skills can be applied to a cognitive recognition of connection and differentiation when working with over- or under-coupled traumatic patterning.
May 12-13
The Ligamentous & Fascial Systems
Fascia wraps around all structures as one continuous spiralling, multilayered, and multidimensional network of expansive sheaths, enclosing containers and specialised attachments, known as ligaments. Ligaments set boundaries of movement and support communication between the bones. They coordinate and guide muscular responses by directing a clear and specific pathway for efficient movement and alignment of the bones. We will explore how a dialogue with our ligaments and fascia can support greater ease and flow within our body, and in working with undercoupling, reinforce our client’s felt sense of connection and belonging to the web of life.
June 16-17
The Organ System
Organs are collections of tissues that each have their own function. They bring us vitality and carry on our every day internal functions of breathing, nourishment and elimination. Organs can also be local habitats for storing unresolved shock and trauma, often early developmental trauma. We will use touch and movement with attention to our organs, noticing what happens locally and how this affects our global well being. We will tell the story of how embryologically we grew our gut tube, heart, lungs and brain and explore how we can access our instinctual, emotional and mental centres of wisdom and social engagement via a felt sense of
our organs.
July 18-29
The Nervous System
Your nervous tissue grew in order to manage your body’s energy budget and maintain homeostasis. You developed a sophisticated communication system of sensory information being sent into your central nervous system and motor information being sent to your peripheral nervous system. You form memory and perceive the world in order to predict how you will need to respond to your environment, moving towards safety and away from danger. What is your relationship to movements that are voluntary vs. Involuntary? We will explore our perceptual response cycle in order to shift our pre-sensory motor focus towards recognising greater health and wellbeing. We will explore movement in the context of the Polyvagal theory and how we evolved to create a socially intelligent nervous system.
The Nervous System and the Endocrine System (and the Immune System) work together (with all the other systems in the body), to maintain homeostasis by coordinating and communicating with all the cells, tissues and organs in the body. The endocrine and nervous systems both use signalling molecules (hormones, neurotransmitters, peptides, neurohormones, neuropeptides) to communicate with tissues and with each other. We will look at how nerve impulses affect the release of hormones, and how hormones can encourage or inhibit.
August 4-5
The Endocrine System
The Endocrine System commands a sort of mystical quality in its ability to respond to stress by creating coordinated global chemical reactions in our whole body. We will gently build our awareness of pockets of hormonal regulation and homeostasis in glandular systems such as your HPA and RAAS systems. As we bring our glands into relationship with one another and the whole body, we can discover their potency for regulation and resilience. We will explore our chemical self at a cellular level and how we relate with the many chemicals that support homeostasis in our body.
September 8-9
Developmental Movement Patterns
Starting with vibration, the basis of all movement, we will explore cellular to whole body movement, noticing how our movement is driven by our senses and perception. How did you learn to organise your head, limbs and torso to respond to physical or social nourishment or danger in your world? We will deepen our capacity to relate to gravity and yield into the support of the earth. For this place of yielding, we will find what happens to our capacity to push, reach and pull. In our relational response cycle. We will explore how this place of yielding affects our ability to push, how our push allows us to reach, and how reaching helps us pull what we need towards us.
October 13-14
Primitive Reflexes, Righting Reactions & Equilibrium Responses
Reflexes are the fundamental building blocks of human movement and reflect the importance of whole body awareness. We will differentiate movement in relation to the vertical, horizontal and sagittal planes and explore the role of reflexes in the readiness for relating to earth an heaven, gathering and reaching, taking hold and letting go, weight bearing, rolling, vertical uprightness, locomotion and equilibrium. We will demonstrate how primitive reflexes can show up in our adult clients as a result of certain behaviours that have not been completed or integrated.
November 3-4
The Muscular System
The three-dimensional grid of your muscles creates balanced support and movement with elastic forces that move your bones through space. Your muscles are the blood-filled and dynamic flesh that encompasses the skeletal system and which act in relationship with one another rather than existing in isolation. Your muscles enable you to express your power, follow your instincts, protect yourself and move towards safety and connection. We will explore different qualities of effort using our muscles that allow us to play or cuddle, fight or flee, digest or collapse and so much more. We will explore the difference between physiological and postural tone and tone in a baby’s early experience with gravity and support.



WHY A SERIES OF 8 WORKSHOPS?
You may register for any number of workshops each year and they can be taken in any order. These workshops will be repeated annually, so you may choose to take the full series over 1 year or over multiple years.
COST: $225
Each 2-day workshop includes two vegetarian lunches catered for individual dietary requirements.
HEALTH PRECAUTIONS:
Please stay home if you are feeling unwell. Masks are not required. We will provide a required COVID test at the start of each class day for all participants.
CANCELLATION:
Full refund for or cancellation within 1 week of the start of each workshop, your workshop fee can be used towards a future workshop, minus a $25 registration fee. If you test positive for COVID or unable to attend because you are unwell for any reason, you will be refunded your full workshop fee, minus a $25 registration fee.
VENUE:
Historic Makarau Hall, 290 Makarau Road, about 1 hour’s travel from Auckland airport and Auckland’s CBD.
OPTIONAL OVERNIGHT ACCOMMODATION:
Camping on the grounds and/or sleeping Marae style in the hall is available at no additional charge. Optional Friday night dinner and Saturday breakfast will be provided at an additional cost upon request. Kitchen facilities are limited to use of the fridge, toaster and tea/coffee. Bathroom facilities are rustic with long drop and outdoor shower. Additional camping facilities and/or farm stays with local residents of the Makarau valley can be arranged upon request.
