Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM
One of the long lasting programs at Southwestern College is the Trauma, Grief and Renewal Certificate program. It consists of six weekend classes that are taken in a virtual classroom. The attendees are MA degree seeking students, educators, nurses, massage therapists and licensed clinical counselors and social workers seeking continuing education credit.
I recently attended the “Counseling Skills for Trauma and Grief” weekend course for continuing education credit. Now, this is a big –big topic and so I did not really know what to expect. Fortunately, the program is taught by current practitioners who are tracking what is occurring in the field of mental health and science and relaying this information in easy to understand and digestible segments.
We had a speaker presenting on Somatic Experiencing and discussing the nervous system which was a great review and there were new tidbits in there that were engaging and experiential. It was nice to receive a reminder to be tender to our nervous system and to recognize when a somatic approach takes precedence over a cognitive approach depending upon where the client is in their process.
In addition, to covering some information on Somatic Experiencing we also had a speaker from a Mobile Crisis team who works alongside first responders in the community and were able to learn more specifics about this type of intervention when it comes to trauma.
As our programs always includes a transformational component, it was no surprise to have invited guests speaking about the alchemical and spiritual process of transformation through yoga, mindfulness and storytelling. More on that in another blog. My cup was “running over” with experiences, sharing and new information and so I am very grateful to the New Earth Institute at Southwestern College for keeping this program running all of these years.
I want to give a special shout out to our community partner Golden Willow in Taos and Ted Wiard and Karsyn Lahann who co-led this course.
About the Moderator
Dru is a graduate of the SWC MA in Art Therapy/Counseling program. In her spare time, she serves as the Director of Enrollment Services at SWC and has a private practice. She is the proud guardian of two pups – Kioko and Suki and is a huge animal lover!
