New! LIVE Expert Spotlight Training with Q&A
Shame and Grief
How Trauma Lives in the Body
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2026 @ 12 pm MT | 2 pm ET
Learn how shame and grief take root in the body and why they often show up as collapse or withdrawal. In this free 90-minute training, you will see how somatic practices support regulation, expression, and renewed connection.
Healing shame and grief begins when we stop following a script—and start following the body.
Most trainings teach us what to do. Rarely do we get to witness how healing actually happens.
Shame and grief are among the most complex emotions we can encounter—multifaceted, deeply rooted, and often invisible in their influence.
Clients rarely arrive naming that they feel ashamed or grieving. Instead, they describe exhaustion, isolation, or the sense that something vital in them has gone quiet.
Beneath those patterns lie old stories, the echo of loss, and protective mechanisms that once kept pain at bay, but now hold it in place.
The power of grief becomes clear when we think of all the ways we experience loss—not only the death of a loved one. It threads through our lives in quieter ways: the end of a friendship, a child growing independent, the ache of missed chances or paths not taken.
Grief lives wherever something meaningful has changed shape or slipped away. When we can see it in these many forms, we begin to understand how it shapes our clients’ capacity for joy, intimacy, and presence.
And shame, its frequent companion, often guards the very doorway to that grief—turning tenderness or vulnerability into self-criticism, and loss into isolation and judgment.
Even the most elusive aspects of shame and grief can be revealed and begin to soften when we approach them through the body.
Dr. Peter Levine’s work shows that when we bring compassionate attention to the sensations beneath these emotions, we create space for what’s been suppressed to emerge safely. Through this somatic contact, the very experiences that once overwhelmed us can begin to move, integrate, and find resolution.
In this live masterclass, Dr. Peter Levine demonstrates how the body reveals and resolves these hidden roots of shame and grief. By witnessing the process unfold in real time, you’ll see how compassion, pacing, and attunement allow what’s been long held to move again—transforming constriction into flow, and grief into authentic vitality.
Whether you’re a clinician expanding your therapy toolkit, or someone exploring your own healing, Dr. Levine’s approach can guide you toward deeper healing and transformation.
Transform patterns of shame and grief
through the body’s natural wisdom and resilience.
In This FREE, 60-Minute Live Masterclass, You’ll Learn...
In this live training, Dr. Peter Levine explores how shame and grief take shape in the body and demonstrates how healing unfolds through a somatic lens.
1
Recognize How Shame and Grief Manifest Somatically
Learn to identify the body’s physiological patterns—collapse, constriction, heaviness, and withdrawal—that accompany shame and grief. Understand how these patterns reflect the nervous system’s attempt to protect and restore balance.
2
Witness Core Somatic Experiencing® Principles in Action
Through live demonstration and discussion, Dr. Levine brings key SE™ concepts to life—orienting, pendulation, titration, and completion—showing how the body naturally moves toward regulation and resolution.
3
Explore the Interplay Between Shame and Grief
See how these two emotions often intertwine in trauma responses: how shame can block the natural movement of grief, and how grief can free what shame has constrained.
Watch Dr. Levine demonstrate how the body’s innate intelligence guides healing—from shame to dignity, and grief to authentic vitality.
Can’t join our session live?
Register anyway, and we’ll send you a free, limited-time replay.
Who Should Join Us?
Witness Real Somatic Work in this New Expert Spotlight Training—with Q&A
- Therapists, Counselors, and Mental Health Professionals who want to deepen their understanding of how shame and grief live in the body, and learn somatic techniques for meeting these emotions safely, without retraumatizing or overwhelming clients.
- Body-Based Practitioners (such as massage therapists, yoga instructors, and physical therapists) seeking to recognize how unresolved emotions like shame and grief appear as chronic holding, collapse, or bracing, and how gentle somatic awareness can restore flow, presence, and vitality.
- Social workers and caregivers looking for simple, compassionate ways to support individuals who carry unspoken emotional pain or loss, helping them rebuild safety, self-worth, and authentic connection.
- Educators and advocates who wish to understand how shame and grief affect nervous system regulation and relational safety, informing trauma-sensitive practices in schools, communities, and organizations.
- Individuals on a personal healing journey who want to understand their own emotional landscape more deeply, learning how the body holds grief and shame and how to support natural movement toward expression and integration.
- Anyone interested in how body-based practices can unlock stored trauma, and how observing Somatic Experiencing® in action can rewire our understanding of safety, connection, and resilience.
- Clinical professionals trained in traditional modalities who want to integrate somatic awareness and body-based interventions into their trauma and attachment work, especially when addressing shame, grief, and other deeply rooted emotional states.
Join us live for 90 minutes of teaching and Q&A as we explore how shame and grief take shape in the body and how somatic awareness supports renewed emotional vitality.
Register to Save Your Spot!
Shame and Grief
How Trauma Lives in the Body
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2025 @ 12 pm MT | 2 pm ET
Meet the Experts
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.
Daniel Vose MA S.E.P., is an educator and coach. He has helped train hundreds of therapists and other helping professionals in attachment and somatic methods. He has helped over 1,000 individual clients, run continuing education groups for therapists at the renowned Sierra Tucson treatment center, helped in and learned from Indigenous people’s communities in the US and Canada, and authored a book. He has a master’s degree in somatic psychology and many postgraduate certificate trainings. Daniel started his professional somatic work in 2008 and has since acquired more than 10,000 intentional practice hours.
Our goal is to uncover secure attachment, allowing it to prevail over relational trauma or attachment disruptions—or to help us recover more quickly from distress.
Diane Poole Heller PhD, is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and teaching expert in the field of adult attachment theory and trauma resolution.
Her signature approach—DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning experience)—provides therapists and individuals with relevant skills and practical exercises that facilitate healing from attachment and trauma wounds.
Her work with adult attachment has forged a path for adults with childhood attachment injuries to develop Secure Attachment Skills (SAS) that lead to more connected and fulfilling adult relationships.
She has authored several books, including the widely acclaimed The Power of Attachment: How to Create Deep and Lasting Intimate Relationships. Her expertise in trauma healing has supported survivors, helpers, and families affected by events such as 9/11, Columbine, and other school shootings.
Through various training programs, books, lectures and her own work as a clinical therapist, Dr. Heller has helped a countless number of people in their healing journey towards experiencing greater intimacy, wholeness and more fulfilling relationships.
She believes that when we heal ourselves first, we heal our families, our communities and the world as a whole.