About This Webinar

What does it mean to find relative safety when there is no safety? How do helpers stay regulated when the need around them feels endless?

In this special edition of the SEI Community Conversation Series, Dr. Peter Levine — founder of Somatic Experiencing — sits down with Dr. Abi Blakeslee, SEI Faculty, for a wide-ranging conversation on living with the threat of war. Recorded in 2022 amid the crisis in Ukraine, their exchange speaks to anyone touched by armed conflict, displacement, or the weight of global suffering.

What You'll Discover

Dr. Levine and Dr. Abi move through several layers of the crisis — from people far from the front lines absorbing the collective threat, to refugees rebuilding lives in unfamiliar countries, to helpers on the ground working themselves to exhaustion.

What runs through every layer is the same somatic truth: regulation has to start with us.

You'll hear them explore how trauma is infectious — how unresolved survival physiology in one person, one community, or one generation ripples outward into the next. And more importantly, what we can actually do about it.

Key Themes Explored

• Relative safety vs. absolute safety — why the language matters and how to help people find a pocket of settledness even in active threat
• Supporting refugees — the importance of preparing the receiving community, not just the people arriving
• Movement, rhythm, and play — why children skipping, singing, and dancing together is not a distraction but a deeply biological intervention
• The invisible thread — staying connected to loved ones far away while navigating survivor guilt
• Transgenerational trauma and resilience — how ancestral wounds show up in the present, and how ancestral strengths can too
• Self-care for helpers — why compassion fatigue is really the fatigue of not receiving compassionate reflection from others
• Bottom-up and top-down — how somatic tools and cognitive awareness work together to interrupt catastrophic thinking

A Thought to Sit With

Dr. Levine offers a simple and profound reframe: joy is a natural state. Even in the midst of suffering, it arises — spontaneously, unexpectedly — especially in children at play. The work isn't to force it. It's to notice when it arrives, and let it stitch itself into the fabric alongside the pain.

What threads of okayness are already present in your day — even now?

About the Speakers

Dr. Peter Levine, Ph.D., is the founder of Somatic Experiencing and Somatic Experiencing International, and author of Waking the Tiger and In an Unspoken Voice.

Dr. Abi Blakeslee, Ph.D., MFT, SEP, CMT, is Senior Faculty at Somatic Experiencing International and founder of Implicit Psychotherapy, whose work bridges neuroscience, Jungian depth psychology, and somatic healing.

Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Abi Blaskeslee. SEI Webinar 2022- Dealing with the Threat of War and Armed Conflict Series.

Around the world, people everywhere are being impacted by war, directly and indirectly, at any given time. Join us for this conversation with Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Abi Blakeslee as we create this special edition series of SE™ Community Conversations in which we will explore the ways in which war is impacting our communities, our sense of safety, and our collective futures. Founded by Peter, this organization exists to educate and support helpers around the planet who are serving in the trenches and supporting the hearts and minds of persons dislocated by the threat of war. We believe it is possible to shift the physiology of upset, anxiety, and panic so that people can experience relief through the application of SE-informed resources. 

Watch the full webinar here.