At Somatic Training Ireland, we believe that healing is more than the resolution of trauma.
It is the remembering of safety. The restoration of relationship. The rediscovery of belonging. And the unfolding of human flourishing.
Through evidence-informed education, embodied practice, nervous system regulation, and compassionate enquiry, we prepare practitioners who work not only with knowledge and skill, but with presence, integrity, and humanity.
Our graduates learn to create the conditions in which individuals, relationships, organisations, and communities can flourish. Because we believe that when people feel safe enough to be fully alive, healing naturally becomes possible.
Our Mission
Our mission is to cultivate practitioners who create the conditions for healing, belonging, and human flourishing.
Through somatic trauma therapy, nervous system regulation, reflective practice, and evidence-informed education, we support professionals to develop the knowledge, skills, presence, and ethical foundations required to work safely and compassionately with others and support lasting change.
We believe that transformation happens not only through insight but through relationship; not only through understanding, but through embodiment. Not only through healing the past, but through cultivating the conditions in which people can live more fully in the present and contribute more wisely to the future.
By training practitioners to work with the wisdom of the body and the intelligence of the nervous system, we contribute to healthier individuals, stronger relationships, and more resilient communities.
Our Vision
A world where every practitioner understands the role of the nervous system in healing, and in which every person has the opportunity to experience safety, belonging, embodiment and the possibility of flourishing.
We envision communities, organisations, and professional practices where nervous system awareness, embodied presence, and compassionate relationships become the foundations for healthier individuals, stronger families, thriving workplaces, and more connected communities.
We live in a world where many people have become disconnected—from their bodies, from one another, from the natural world, and sometimes from themselves. Stress, trauma, uncertainty, and rapid social change have left many longing for a greater sense of safety, meaning, and belonging.
We believe that healing begins when people experience relationships that are grounded in presence, compassion, curiosity, and respect. By preparing embodied practitioners, we hope to contribute to a quieter transformation. One conversation. One family. One organisation. One community. One nervous system at a time.
We cultivate the conditions in which people remember they belong, so that together we may flourish.
Founded and led by Dr Sue Redmond, PhD, Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapist, Somatic EMDR Practitioner, Mindfulness & Compassion Teacher, Yoga Teacher, educator and researcher with over 20 years' experience supporting individuals, communities and professionals to heal trauma and build resilience.
Trauma, stress, and life experiences are not only stored in our memories and thoughts—they are also held within the body and nervous system.
Many people can explain exactly why they feel the way they do, yet continue to experience anxiety, overwhelm, emotional reactivity, disconnection, or recurring patterns in relationships. Insight alone is not always enough to create lasting change.
Somatic Therapy works directly with the body's sensations, emotions, movements, and nervous system responses, helping people move beyond understanding their experiences to fully integrating them.
By learning to work with the body's innate capacity for regulation, adaptation, and healing, practitioners can help clients develop greater resilience, emotional flexibility, connection, and wellbeing.
As research continues to deepen our understanding of trauma, attachment, and neuroscience, body-based approaches are becoming an increasingly important part of effective therapeutic practice.
Somatic Therapy is not simply about reducing symptoms. It is about helping people move from survival towards greater aliveness, connection, and authenticity.
The demand for trauma-informed, nervous system-aware practitioners continues to grow across therapy, coaching, healthcare, education, youth work, and community settings.
Yet many professionals receive little or no training in how trauma lives within the body or how to work effectively with nervous system regulation.
The Professional Diploma in Integrative Embodied Somatic Therapy has been designed to bridge that gap.
This one-year programme combines contemporary trauma theory, nervous system education, embodied practice, relational approaches, and practical application. Participants learn not only what Somatic Therapy is, but how to confidently and ethically integrate it into their professional work.
Through live teaching, experiential practice, peer learning, client work, retreats, and ongoing support, participants develop the skills, confidence, and embodied presence required to work with trauma in a way that is both effective and sustainable.
This is more than a training in techniques.
It is a professional and personal journey that supports practitioners to deepen their understanding of trauma, strengthen their capacity to hold complexity, and cultivate a way of working that is grounded, relational, and transformative.
Somatic Therapy Training Ireland was founded on the belief that effective trauma training requires more than theory alone.
Our approach integrates science, somatic practice, nervous system education, relational awareness, and real-world application. We believe that practitioners learn best when knowledge is combined with experience, reflection, supervision, and community.
Learn from practitioners who have spent over 20 years working at the intersection of trauma, resilience, healthy relationships, violence prevention, community development, nervous system regulation, and embodied practice.
Led by Dr. Sue Redmond, the training draws on over twenty years of experience across trauma healing, youth and community work, leadership development, violence prevention, resilience, healthy relationships, and embodied practice.
Participants benefit from a unique integration of:
Somatic Trauma Therapy
Nervous System Regulation
Attachment & Developmental Trauma
Somatic EMDR-informed principles
Mindfulness & Embodied Awareness
Therapeutic Yoga & Movement Practices
Group Facilitation & Community-Based Practice
Trauma-Informed Leadership & Systems Thinking
Unlike many trainings that focus solely on the individual, this programme recognises that healing happens within relationships, families, communities, and wider systems.
Our goal is not simply to teach techniques, but to develop thoughtful, ethical, embodied practitioners who can bring trauma-informed, body-based approaches into their work with confidence, compassion, and integrity.
When practitioners understand both the wisdom of the body and the intelligence of the nervous system, they become better equipped to support meaningful and lasting change.
Understand trauma through a nervous system and somatic lens.
Recognise and respond to activation, shutdown, dissociation, and survival responses.
Apply somatic principles and practices ethically and safely within your existing scope of practice.
Integrate nervous system regulation and body-based approaches into your professional work.
Support clients in developing greater regulation, resilience, and embodied awareness.
Work more confidently with trauma, stress, anxiety, grief, and relational challenges.
Understand the role of attachment, developmental trauma, and implicit memory in shaping behaviour and wellbeing.
Use resourcing, tracking, pendulation, titration, and other core somatic skills in practice.
Develop a deeper embodied presence and therapeutic attunement.
Apply somatic approaches within individual, group, community, and organisational settings.
We train therapists, coaches, youth workers, health professionals, and helping professionals to integrate embodied somatic therapy into their existing work.
Participants are responsible for ensuring they work within their own professional scope of practice and comply with any insurance, accreditation, or regulatory requirements relevant to their profession.
The programme is intended to complement and deepen existing professional qualifications rather than replace them.
Enrollment for September 2026 Open Now
LEARN TO REGULATE YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM AND COME HOME TO YOUR BODY
Process the past at the subtle body level and integrate practices into your daily life to support you to thrive and come home to joy.
For therapists, practitioners, and professionals who know that healing doesn’t happen through words alone
You’ve likely seen it in your work…
Clients who understand their patterns and yet still feel stuck.
Conversations that go in circles.
Moments where something deeper is present and yet hard to access.
Because trauma doesn’t live in thoughts alone.
In truth it lives in the body
In the nervous system
In patterns of activation, shutdown, and protection
This training is designed to help you work at that level.
What This Programme Offers
The Professional Diploma in Integrative Embodied Somatic Therapy is a 1-year, in-depth training that supports you to:
Understand trauma through a nervous system lens
Develop skills in somatic awareness and regulation
Work safely with activation, shutdown, and dissociation
Integrate body-based approaches into your existing practice
Support clients in ways that are gentle, effective, and deeply attuned
This is not just a training in techniques.
It is a process of becoming a more embodied, present, and confident practitioner.
A year-long somatic therapy certificate grounded in over 200 hours of nervous system science, embodiment, and ethical practice.
The following outlines the structure of the 1-Year Professional Diploma in Integrative Embodied Somatic Therapy:
Weekly online sessions
Mondays, 7:00pm–9:00pm GMT
21st September 2026 – 21st June 2027 (Bank holidays off)
Opening weekend retreat (Venue Hidden Gem Retreat Centre. Accommodation & food separate )
3rd–4th October 2026
Peer Practice
20 hours of peer-to-peer somatic therapy practice (giving and receiving)
Peer Support Groups
Weekly small group meetings to reflect, discuss, and integrate learning
Client Practice & Case Studies
Work with 5 clients (4–6 sessions each) and complete written case studies
Reading & Reflection
Three book reviews based on the recommended course material
Closing retreat (venue & teaching Spanish Point Spirituality Centre. Accommodation & food separate)
29th- 30th May 2027
Final submission of all materials
9th September 2027
Embodying Safety
Through welcome, shared intention, community agreements, reflective practice, and embodied arrival, students experience psychological safety, belonging, and connection while establishing the foundations of a compassionate learning community.
Recognise the importance of psychological safety, belonging, and nervous system regulation as foundations for learning and therapeutic practice.
Contribute to the co-creation of a respectful, compassionate, and trauma-informed learning community through shared agreements and reflective participation.
Develop awareness of their own intentions, needs, and embodied experience as they begin the journey towards becoming an embodied practitioner.
The Foundation of Safe Therapeutic Relationships
Explore ethics as a living practice rather than a set of professional rules. Students begin developing the integrity, boundaries, humility, and self-awareness required to create psychologically safe therapeutic relationships.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand ethical considerations specific to somatic work
Identify appropriate scope of practice and referral pathways
Develop awareness of boundaries in relational and body-based work
Understanding the Body as a Pathway to Healing
Explore the history, evolution, philosophy, and contemporary science of Embodied Somatic Therapy while introducing the major contributors whose work has shaped the field.
Learning Outcomes:
Describe the difference between top-down and bottom-up approaches
Understand core somatic therapy principles
Recognise the role of the body in trauma and healing
Learning the Language of the Nervous System
Develop a practical understanding of Polyvagal Theory, neuroception, autonomic states, and nervous system regulation as the foundation of therapeutic practice.
Learning Outcomes:
Identify key autonomic nervous system states
Map activation, regulation, and shutdown responses
Apply nervous system awareness to client work
Understanding Protection Before Pathology
Explore the physiology of stress, survival responses, and the remarkable intelligence of the nervous system. Learn practical approaches for supporting regulation, connection, and safety.
Learning Outcomes:
Recognise fight, flight, freeze, and appease responses
Understand the concept of safety in somatic work
Apply basic regulation tools to support safety
Listening to the Wisdom Within
Develop the ability to notice sensations, impulses, emotions, and nervous system shifts through interoception and somatic tracking, recognising the body as a source of information and healing.
Learning Outcomes:
Differentiate between sensation, emotion, and thought
Support clients in tracking internal states
Develop language for describing embodied experience
Coming Home to the Body
Experience embodiment as more than a concept. Explore practices that cultivate presence, awareness, groundedness, movement, and connection while beginning the lifelong practice of living from the body rather than merely thinking about it.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand embodiment as a therapeutic foundation
Develop awareness of personal somatic experience
Begin cultivating an embodied practitioner presence
Learning to Become a Regulating Presence
Explore the relational nature of nervous system regulation and develop the embodied qualities of attunement, presence, orienting, and therapeutic connection.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand the role of co-regulation in nervous system healing
Develop attunement skills through presence, pacing, and observation
Cultivate awareness of your own nervous system while working with others
Discovering What Supports Life
Learn how to identify, strengthen, and expand internal and external resources that increase nervous system flexibility, resilience, and capacity.
Learning Outcomes:
Identify and build a range of somatic resources
Support clients in differentiating between story and sensation
Apply practices such as breath, imagery, and orientation to strengthen regulation
The Rhythm of Healing
Discover how the nervous system naturally moves between activation and settling, learning to support healing through rhythm, pacing, and gentle oscillation rather than overwhelm.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand the principles of pendulation and titration
Recognise signs of overwhelm and under-engagement
Guide clients safely between states of activation and regulation
Honouring the Wisdom of Survival
Understand incomplete survival responses as intelligent adaptations and learn how to gently support the body's natural movement towards completion and integration.
Learning Outcomes:
Recognise incomplete defensive responses in the body
Support safe expression through movement, sound, and physical engagement
Apply gentle completion practices without retraumatisation
Expanding Capacity Without Overwhelm
Develop confidence in recognising activation and supporting clients to remain connected to themselves while gradually expanding nervous system capacity.
Learning Outcomes:
Recognise signs of activation, hyperarousal, and narrowing of capacity.
Support clients to remain within their Window of Tolerance while gently expanding capacity.
Apply somatic pacing, grounding, and co-regulation to prevent overwhelm.
Befriending the Protectors
Explore the protective wisdom of different parts of self and learn how compassion, curiosity, and relationship create conditions for deeper healing.
Learning Outcomes:
Identify protective parts through somatic cues
Support inner dialogue and integration
Use self-touch and grounding practices to stabilise inner experience
The Body Remembers What the Mind Forgets
Understand implicit memory, procedural learning, imagination, and embodied awareness while recognising the body as a living archive of both survival and resilience.
Learning Outcomes:
Differentiate between explicit and implicit memory.
Recognise how implicit memory is expressed through sensation, movement, emotion, and relationship.
Support clients in working with embodied memory through present-moment awareness rather than narrative alone.
Supporting the Body's Natural Movement Towards Integration
Discover the core principles of somatic processing and learn how healing unfolds through awareness, relationship, movement and gentle completion rather than force.
Learning Outcomes:
Identify when to regulate versus when to process
Apply the arc of somatic processing in practice
Support integration through awareness and embodied experience
Finding Life Within Stillness
Explore freeze and dissociation as deeply intelligent protective responses. Learn how to support gradual reconnection without overwhelming the nervous system.
Learning Outcomes:
Differentiate between survival responses and their functions
Support safe expression of activation (e.g. movement, impulse)
Work with appeasement patterns and relational safety
Reclaiming Energy, Agency & Boundaries
Healthy aggression is the life energy that enables us to protect what matters, establish healthy boundaries, move towards what nourishes us, and act with courage and integrity. This module explores anger as an adaptive survival response that, when met with awareness and compassion, can become a powerful catalyst for agency, vitality, and authentic self-expression.
Learning Outcomes:
Recognise anger as an adaptive nervous system response that can support protection, agency, and healthy boundaries.
Differentiate between healthy aggression, defensive survival responses, and interpersonal violence.
Support clients in safely accessing, expressing, and integrating healthy life energy through embodied awareness, breath, movement, sound, and relational presence.
Facilitate the transformation of anger into clarity, choice, self-protection, and authentic action.
Recognise the role of compassion, curiosity, and non-judgement when working with anger, conflict, and protective responses.
Restoring Choice Within Movement
Explore anxiety through the lens of the nervous system and develop somatic approaches that increase regulation, flexibility, and capacity.
Learning Outcomes:
Recognise anxiety as an embodied survival response rather than simply a cognitive experience.
Support clients in developing greater flexibility and choice when working with flight responses.
Apply somatic regulation strategies that gently reduce overwhelm while increasing capacity.
Returning to the Places That Shaped Us
Deepen understanding of early relational experiences and their influence on nervous system development, attachment, identity, and lifelong patterns of connection.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand attachment patterns through the body
Recognise implicit relational memory in clients
Apply somatic approaches to developmental trauma
Restoring Dignity
Explore shame as an embodied experience and learn compassionate approaches that reconnect people with worth, belonging, and self-compassion.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand emotions as embodied processes
Support expression through breath, sound, and movement
Work skilfully with shame and grief in a regulated way
Making Space for Life to Move Again
Understand grief as an expression of love and explore how compassionate presence allows sorrow, meaning, resilience and renewed vitality to coexist.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand grief as a natural expression of love, attachment, and change.
Support clients to remain connected to grief without becoming overwhelmed by it.
Recognise the conditions that may support post-traumatic growth and renewed meaning.
Understanding Adaptation Through Compassion
Recognise addiction through the lens of nervous system adaptation, connection, attachment, and unmet need, supporting compassionate rather than pathologising responses.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand addiction through the lens of nervous system adaptation and unmet need.
Recognise the role of shame, attachment, and connection in recovery.
Apply compassionate, trauma-informed approaches that reduce stigma and increase understanding.
Completing the Story
Integrate developmental movement patterns, embodied awareness and gentle somatic practices that support greater organisation, vitality and wholeness.
Understand the role of developmental movement in nervous system organisation.
Facilitate simple developmental movement practices that support regulation and integration.
Recognise how movement can support greater embodiment, vitality, and resilience.
The Nervous System in Relationship
Families are often our first experience of regulation, attachment, belonging, and relationship. They can become places of profound safety and love, and they can also become places where patterns of stress, trauma, and survival are learned and repeated across generations.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand nervous system interaction within relationships
Recognise opportunities for co-regulation, relational repair, and secure connection.
Apply somatic tools within family and parenting contexts
4.2 Somatics in Groups, Conflict & High Activation
Healing Beyond the Individual
Learn how to facilitate somatic work in groups and high-intensity situations.
Learning Outcomes:
Facilitate safe and contained somatic group practices
Apply somatic awareness to conflict and de-escalation
Track and regulate group nervous system dynamics
Creating Cultures of Safety
Explore how trauma is experienced collectively and discover how communities and organisations themselves can become places of regulation, resilience, and belonging.
Learning Outcomes:
Understand how trauma is held collectively
Apply somatic principles within community and organisational settings
Reflect on practitioner role within wider systems
From Healing to Contribution
Bring together the threads of the programme by exploring how individual healing naturally contributes towards healthier families, organisations, communities, and society.
Students begin considering their own role within this wider movement towards human flourishing.
Learning Outcomes:
Explore human flourishing as a lifelong process of embodied growth, belonging, and contribution.
Reflect upon personal values, purpose, and the wider impact of professional practice.
Recognise contribution as a natural expression of living in alignment with one's values.
Living the Practice
Explore how personal practice, nervous system awareness, and embodied presence become lifelong companions within therapeutic work.
Learning Outcomes:
Develop a sustainable personal practice that supports ongoing regulation and wellbeing.
Recognise practitioner self-awareness as central to ethical and effective practice.
Integrate embodiment into everyday life as well as professional practice.
Beyond Recovery
Discover how healing creates space not only for recovery but for meaning, purpose, creativity, connection, contribution, and flourishing.
Learning Outcomes:
Differentiate between recovery, resilience, post-traumatic growth, and human flourishing.
Recognise the conditions that support meaning-making following adversity.
Explore how hope, purpose, creativity, and contribution emerge through healing.
Becoming the Lighthouse
Reflect upon the journey of the programme, present case studies, celebrate growth, honour the learning community, and prepare to carry this work into the wider world.
Graduation is understood as both an ending and a new beginning.
Learning Outcomes:
Integrate learning from across the programme into a coherent philosophy of practice.
Reflect upon personal and professional growth throughout the year.
Develop a vision for continued learning, supervision, and contribution beyond graduation.
Engage in 20 hours of peer-to-peer somatic practice (20 hours giving and 20 hours receiving), providing a safe and supportive space to develop skills, experiment, and build confidence through experience.
Participate in a weekly peer group (3–4 participants) to reflect on learning, discuss experiences, and support integration over the duration of the programme (1 hour per week).
Work with 5 clients for 4–6 sessions each, applying somatic principles in practice, and complete written case studies to support reflection and learning
Complete three reflective book reviews based on recommended course texts, supporting deeper understanding and integration of key concepts.
Knowledge Assessment
40 questions
Multiple choice + short answer
Reflective Learning Journal
Minimum 10 entries
Five Client Case Studies
Peer Practice Log
40 hours documented
Final Integration Paper
1,500-2,000 words
For example: How has somatic trauma therapy influenced my understanding of healing, trauma, and professional practice?
Final Submission Date for all Materials 9th September 2027.
This programme is designed for professionals who are working directly with people and want to deepen their capacity to support trauma, regulation, and embodied change.
It is particularly suited to:
Counsellors, psychotherapists, and psychologists
Youth workers and those working in community settings
Coaches and wellbeing practitioners
Health and allied professionals supporting emotional or psychological wellbeing
This training is most relevant for those who:
are already working with clients or groups (or plan to)
recognise the limitations of purely cognitive approaches
want to integrate body-based, nervous system-informed practices into their work
Early Bird Price €2800 (Available until September 1st)
Regular Price €3000
A payment plan will be available with €1200 deposit, with 3 payments of €700 total cost €3300
Investment includes:
29 live online training sessions
Opening retreat
Closing residential integration retreat
Peer practice programme
Peer learning groups
Course materials
Community of practice access
Professional Diploma upon completion
No prior training in somatic therapy is required.
This programme is designed to support you from foundational principles through to more advanced application. What is important is that you are already working with people (or intend to), and are open to experiential learning and self-reflection.
This training is designed for professionals working directly with people, including:
psychologists, psychotherapists and counsellors
coaches and wellbeing practitioners
youth, community and family support workers
health and allied professionals
It is particularly suited to those who want to integrate body-based and nervous system-informed approaches into their work.
This is a professional training.
While the programme includes experiential elements and personal reflection, the primary focus is on developing the skills, awareness, and confidence to apply somatic approaches in a professional context.
What is the time commitment?
Participants are expected to attend:
weekly live sessions (2 hours)
2 weekend retreats
In addition, you will engage in:
peer practice (20 hours)
weekly peer support groups (1 hour per week)
client practice and case study write-ups
reading and reflection
On average, this equates to approximately 5–7 hours per week.
Sessions will be recorded where possible, so you can catch up.
However, as this is an experiential and relational training, live attendance is strongly encouraged to fully benefit from the learning process.
For accreditation, 80% of the course must be attended live.
Yes.
You will be supported through:
facilitated group sessions
peer support groups
opportunities for discussion and reflection
You will not be expected to navigate this learning alone.
Participants are required to work with 5 clients for 4–6 sessions each.
This allows you to apply what you are learning in a practical setting. You will also complete written case studies to support reflection and integration.
Clear guidance will be provided to ensure this work is conducted ethically and within scope.
Not necessarily—but you should have a pathway to working with clients during the course of the programme.
This might be through your current work, placement opportunities, or voluntary/pro bono practice.
Yes.
The programme includes:
an opening weekend retreat (October 2026) - content is covered, while accomodation and food are not.
a closing retreat (May 2027) - content is covered, while accomodation and food are not.
These retreats provide an opportunity for deeper experiential learning, connection, and integration.
Assessment is designed to support your learning and development.
It includes:
participation in sessions and peer work
completion of practice hours
written case studies
reflective assignments (including book reviews)
The focus is on integration and application, rather than performance.
Yes.
Participants who complete the programme requirements will receive a:
Professional Diploma in Integrative Embodied Somatic Therapy
This is accredited to a Professional Diploma level; accreditation is through International Practitioners of Holistic Medicine (IPHM)
Graduates will have the option to:
join Dúchas Grove - our ongoing community of practice
continue into advanced training (e.g. Somatic EMDR integration)
access to further supervision and professional development
Yes.
Payment plans are available to support accessibility. Full details will be provided at the point of application.
Places are limited to ensure a safe, supportive, and high-quality learning environment.
You are very welcome to:
attend an information session
get in touch with any questions
You can also apply, and we can explore together whether the programme is the right fit for you.
You can apply by completing the application form below:
You will then be contacted with next steps.