Trauma and the Body
Workshop With Karin Spitfire
A pioneer creator in somatic work shares 40 years of experience in healing trauma
Topics to explore include Somatic Integration, Sensorimotor Loop, Physiology of Dissociation, Nervous System Reversals, The Vagus Nerve, Reenactment vs. Release, Embodiment, Movement, Shame, Expression, Self- Regulation, Cellular Breathing, Grounding, Three Dimensionality, and a Socio/Political Context.
Nov. 9, Belfast Free Library, 9am-12
The workshop will include embodiment experiences. Please wear comfortable clothes, bring water and snacks.
Open to All by donation including survivors, healers, practitioners and therapists. Questions? Call Karin Spitfire, OT, LMT at 338-5634 or Nick Cullen LCSW, CCS at 322-8102
Supported by the Belfast Dance Studio and Center for Embodiment, Possibility Alliance, Avena Botanicals, Rockweed, Natassia Mullally LMT,
Nick Cullen LCSW/New Ground Counseling, Mary Auslander LCSW
*Support will be present during workshop if needed
Karin Spitfire is poet, artist, OT, RC, LMT, former LCPC and graduating practitioner and teacher of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s School for Body Mind Centering. Spitfire has a BA and MA in Women’s Studies, and has been activist in multiple struggles for peace and justice since 1969. Spitfire opened the fourth battered women’s shelter in the country in 1978. In 1982, the first year Maine mandated professionals report child abuse, she created “Incest: It’s all Relative”-a dance narration that toured nationally until 1990. Spitfire started doing pioneering work in trauma healing utilizing body work, movement, voice, theater, and psychotherapy, encompassing what is now referred to as somatics or body-oriented therapy in 1985. Spitfire held Creative Expression Groups, from Fort Kent to Portland, Sipayik to Bethel thru “Looking UP” a grassroots Incest Survivor Group active in the 80’s and early 90’s. She was present at the Body-Psychotherapy Conference in 1995, where Bessel Van der Kolk, famously discovered the body and Stephen Porges presented his beginnings of the Polyvagal Theory. She has worked with hundreds of survivors including herself.
.