‘The Missing Link’
Integrating Somatic Therapy into Clinical Practice
DATES IN 2026
We have 2 Level 1 courses in Australia:
Brisbane 23-25 July
Sydney 12-14 November
And two Level 1 courses in Bali:
Kommune, Keramas 3-9 May
Gaia Oasis, Tejakula 19-25 August
And one Level 2 Course in Bali:
Gaia Oasis, Tejakula 26 - 31 August
There are two ‘Missing Link’ trainings:
A 20 hour APS approved Level 1 training
and
a 16 hour, Level 2 deep-dive workshop style training
Courses are facilitated in Australia, over 3 days and in Bali over 5 or 4 half days (to allow for a holiday!) respectively as a retreat-style training.
An important note for participants - please read before booking your training
In The Missing Link trainings, we draw on a range of established therapeutic approaches including Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, Gestalt Therapy, and Inner Focusing. The orientation we explore is less about applying a structured technique, and more about cultivating a capacity to listen deeply to the body and the sensations, images, emotions, implicit memories, and the parts of our clients that carry pain or protect against it, that may emerge. This approach is trans-diagnostic, in that, via the presenting symptoms, or repeating self-limiting patterns, we potentially gain access to and heal the often unconscious aspects of our experience that lead to the symptoms our clients experience.
Although the practices we teach are grounded in gentleness—using pendulation, titration, and nervous-system-informed pacing—they can be profoundly powerful. The body is where truth, aliveness, and unfinished experience reside. Our work invites these truths to emerge, to be felt, and to be integrated.
Rather than following a manualised, step-by-step protocol, the training supports therapists to follow what arises in the moment. We provide guidelines, demonstrations, and opportunities for practice, alongside somatic resources that you can draw on to help clients (or yourself) to feel safer in their bodies and to strengthen the “muscle” of awareness of moment-to-moment experience.
For therapists whose background has been primarily in structured, skills-based, or manualised approaches, this style can initially feel disorienting. It asks us to sit with not knowing—to allow space for what needs attention to show itself, rather than directing the process too quickly. This may stir discomfort, avoidance, or even our own unfinished material, and that is part of the learning – we are all human and have our own embodied material, both supportive and otherwise!
Importantly, this training is not just intellectual. It is experiential and reflective, meaning your own embodied experience as a therapist becomes central. You may begin to gently notice your own patterns, parts, and somatic responses within the learning process. What you bring into the experiential components is part of how you come to embody the work.
We aim to provide a safe, emotionally held environment in which participants are encouraged to be with whatever feels ok within the context of a training, and to move away should the answer to the question ‘is it ok to be with this?’ be a ‘no’, just as we practice with our clients.
If this description resonates with you, we warmly invite you to join us in Bali or in Australia, to lean in to this fascinating, life-affirming, creative and deeply touching work!
About These Trainings:
Within much of psychology, the body—and even emotion—has historically been sidelined, with a primary focus on the thinking mind. This mirrors broader cultural values, but it can also reinforce old, once-necessary avoidance mechanisms that ultimately block authentic change when relied upon exclusively.
The result is often ‘stuckness’ in therapy, and burnout for professionals. Clients may understand their history and symptoms, yet still feel unable to shift how they experience themselves or others. Patterns repeat, relationships struggle, and both therapist and client may feel the limits of the traditional paradigm.
Recent developments in trauma therapy and research have placed the body—our nervous system, our sensations, our emotions—at the centre. The body is not only where trauma is stored, but also where profound healing and reconnection with our truth, values, and uniqueness can occur.
The Missing Link trainings explore how integrating somatic approaches into psychological practice opens new possibilities for growth and transformation. By learning to listen to the body’s language—its sensations, emotions, and implicit memories—we create space for deeper awareness and lasting change, both for our clients and ourselves.
Our face-to-face trainings offer a safe, nurturing environment in which to embody these approaches. While there is some structured teaching, the emphasis is on experiential practice, reflection, and dialogue. These courses will not suit those seeking a primarily didactic, step-by-step training; instead, they invite a more spacious, embodied, and relational way of learning.
Learning objectives, Level 1:
Upon completion of this training, participants should be able to:
Understand why it is important to bring the body into the therapy room.
Recognise the impact of trauma and other less-than-nurturing experiences on the mind, psyche, and body of their clients.
Implement techniques from established somatic psychology approaches to work with the body–mind connection.
Distinguish, through experiential learning, the difference between “being with, with compassion” and “trying to fix.”
Develop awareness of their own bodies as therapists and human beings, and learn to protect against burnout by tending to themselves with somatic practices.
Utilise somatic exercises both to support clients in therapy and to cultivate a more compassionate relationship with their own embodied selves.
Following the Level 1 course:
You will:
Be ready to weave somatic tools and principles into your usual clinical practice.
Have methods to access the unconscious processes that keep our clients stuck, and to facilitate quickly moving through barriers.
Know the science of somatic work; the functioning of our nervous systems, the impact of trauma, and how somatic approaches can address this directly.
Be able to use the traditional approaches of top-down processing (mind to body) as well as bottom-up processing (body to mind), so that your practice is holistic and complete.
Be freed up to support your clients in a way that gives them agency and self-responsibility.
Begin to address and work with dissociation and other challenges in the therapy room.
Have tools to support yourself in your own life and to manage the impact of your work on your own body and mind.
Feel part of a growing community of like minded practitioners as this relatively new field expands in Australia, as it has in the USA and Europe.
Level 1 and Level 2
Level 1:
Level 1 is the foundational course.
In this 20 hour in-person course, you will learn how to begin to integrate somatic awareness practices into your usual evidence-based clinical practice, tapping into what is held in the body; trauma, emotion, deep wisdom and the ability to heal and re-discover wholeness.
We explore the embodiment of emotion, the nervous system, memory, attachment relationships and trauma, and ways to access what is held unconsciously and powerfully impacts our client’s lives and relationships (as well as our own).
This course is open to Psychologists, Social Workers, Psychiatrists, Therapists, Counsellors and anyone working with people in a healing or caring capacity.
If choosing to learn on retreat, the training is run over 5 mornings of learning, with free time in the afternoons and evenings, and in Australia, over 3 days.
Level 1 is APS CPD Approved for 20 hours.
A recent participant writes;
“Incredible training - the level of content, presenter's clarity and engagement and even the physical location for the training were all top level. This is the stuff we should be teaching in Master's programs...would highly recommend - I'll be back for level 2 asap!” Caitlyn Mackenzie, Clinical Psychologist
Level 2:
In this workshop-style training, you will receive 16 hours of CPD, deepening your knowledge of somatic work, to support your clients in working with intense or conflicting emotions, dissociation and intergenerational trauma.
Level 2 affords the opportunity to dive deeper into somatic work, to have more time and space for personal and case discussions and to explore challenges, such as dissociation, the impact of powerful transference and counter transference dynamics.
Research in the field of Epigenetics has shown that much of what we carry and struggle with in our systems and what shapes our perception and subsequent experience, is related to what our parents and ancestors endured and the ways available to them to manage their experience. In Level 2 we explore powerful ways of understanding and healing intergenerational trauma, and what we and/ or our clients may carry within our systems that don’t originate in us.
This training is run over four mornings in Bali and over three days in Australia.
Level 2 is for participants who have completed Level 1 or are well versed in somatic approaches and can be completed immediately (where available) or at a later date and offers 16 hours of CPD.
A recent participant writes;
“Level 2 Somatic Therapy training connects all the dots (and then some) from level 1, leading to a more holistically enriching and rewarding mind-body healing experience, underpinned by deeper awareness and knowledge all guided by an exceptionally authentic trainer in Kirstie and supported by Karen. If you have been debating this therapeutic technique do not procrastinate any longer. The Missing Link training coupled with the healing foundations of Bali was inspiringly majestic”. Dr Michelle Grover Clinical/Neuropsychologist
Where is the training delivered?
‘The Missing Link’ Level 1 and Level 2 are delivered as a face to face training, both in Australia, and in Bali (as a retreat style course)
To view available dates and locations, please head to the Bookings page.
Testimonials From Previous Participants
