About This Webinar

In this 2+ hour online webinar, Dr. Abi Blakeslee, SEP, CMT, MFT, Ph.D., and SE™ International Faculty, offers trauma therapists, crisis responders, and helping professionals a deeply practical and embodied training — one that equips you with real tools to regulate your own nervous system while supporting others through some of the most difficult experiences imaginable.

Presented in partnership with the SE Ukraine Task Force, EASE, and Somatic Experiencing International, this webinar is available in English and Magyar (Hungarian).

What You'll Learn

This training bridges theory and lived practice. By the end of the webinar, you'll walk away with:

• A clear understanding of trauma physiology and how survival states show up in the body
• Tools to recognize high stress symptoms and compassion fatigue in yourself and your clients
• An introduction to the autonomic nervous system (ANS) — the window of tolerance, sympathetic activation, and parasympathetic settling
• How to use interoception — conscious awareness of bodily sensation — as a clinical and self-care tool
• Four core somatic stabilization tools: grounding, self-contact, orienting, and gentle movement
• An understanding of pendulation — the nervous system's natural movement between trauma and resource states
• How to build and identify internal and external resources for regulation
• Guidance on navigating survivor guilt and compassion fatigue in crisis work

Who This Is For

This webinar is for anyone interested in learning theory and stabilization tools and seeing experiential exercises in action — including:

• Somatic Experiencing practitioners and students
• Trauma therapists and psychotherapists
• Crisis responders and humanitarian aid workers
• Mental health professionals working with refugees or populations in acute stress
• Helpers who want to deepen their own self-regulation skills

Key Concepts Covered

The Window of Tolerance - Dr. Abi walks through the autonomic nervous system model, helping you recognize when you or your clients are stuck in sympathetic activation (anxiety, hypervigilance, panic) or parasympathetic shutdown (depression, numbness, dissociation) — and what to do about it.

The Four Stabilization Tools - Through live demonstrations with volunteers, Dr. Abi models how to guide someone through grounding, self-contact, exploratory orienting, and gentle involuntary movement — showing exactly how these tools work in a clinical or supportive setting.

The Stream of Life Model - Dr. Abi introduces Peter Levine's trauma vortex and counter vortex model, explaining how pendulation — the movement between the trauma vortex and the healing counter vortex — is where the actual healing happens.

Compassion Fatigue & Self-Regulation for Helpers - Helpers are not immune to the physiology of trauma. This section addresses the signs of secondary trauma, how to check in with your own nervous system between sessions, and how to build the practices that restore you.

About the Presenter

Dr. Abi Blakeslee, Ph.D., MFT, SEP, CMT is a world-renowned trauma recovery expert, Senior Faculty at Somatic Experiencing International, and the founder of Implicit Psychotherapy. With decades of clinical experience, Dr. Abi brings together the science of the nervous system, depth psychology, and somatic practice to help healers and their clients move from survival into aliveness.