Research consistently shows that touch is the most fundamental basis for our earliest relational experiences, the primary modality of relationship between caregiver and child, even before the capacity for language develops.

Through touch, we develop an image of our body and its boundaries, a sense of embodiment that holds all our experiences at the neurophysiological, affective, behavioral, and cognitive levels.

The importance of intentional touch for developing capacity to contain and self-regulate, for working with implicit memory and the challenges of early attachment experiences are the subject of this NARM training. Relational touch addresses emotional, interpersonal, cognitive and developmental deficits that are not accessible through verbal means alone. To support their healing, it is important to encourage the collaboration of both the body’s and the brain’s intelligence.

The training offers a clinical approach to working with the primary identity distortions, the encapsulated body-self, and the central patterns of rigidity, collapse and the associated numbness and disconnection. These are the consequences of adaptation to developmental trauma patterns which, if unresolved, become part of our identity.

Systematically decoding the somatic components of relational and emotional trauma while supporting the “working through” down to the cellular level is a powerful tool for those who want to expand their body-psychotherapeutic skills. 

NARM therapists will learn to increase their confidence in integrating body-oriented interventions and therapeutic touch into their clinical practice with greater sensitivity and ease.

Topics covered

• The primary distortions of identity and the adaptations of the encapsulated Body-Self
• Body-oriented interventions and relational (self-) touch to work simultaneously “Bottom-up” with implicit procedural behavior, posture and movement, and “Top-down” with thoughts, beliefs and trauma-based identifications
• Deepening the NARM approach of being heart-centered, genuinely interested and developing containing skills when providing relational touch

• • When, based on what intention and in what context do we touch? When and in what context not?
  • How do we explore and work with the somatic equivalents of identifications and the associated emotions like anger, grief, shame and fear (numbness, tension, collapse, high arousal, autonomic disorganization, etc.)?
  • How do we work when clients have difficulty accessing their bodies or develop symptoms when they reconnect to them?

• Intention and touch

• • Touch: an exploratory interaction and sensory dialogue
  • Touch and adult consciousness (passive, receptive, regressive or actively engaged)
  • Qualities of touch to stabilize dysregulated emotional patterns: when containing, when offering space?
  • When supporting stability, confrontation, working through, integration?
  • Addressing different systems in the body with touch: muscles, connective tissue, joints, organs, central nervous system and brain

• Life Force and self-organization

• • Matrix of health, homeostasis, containment and coherence
  • Supporting healing and integration through conscious reconnection to the life force

• Specifics of the relational matrix when providing touch

• • (Subjective, somatic) resonance, transference and countertransference dynamics
  • Physical proximity – boundaries, sensuality and sexuality

• Working with earliest adaptations to developmental trauma

• • Deepening understanding of Connection and Attunement Survival Styles

• “Feeling safe and connected”

• • Neuroception, interoception, proprioception and the implicit/procedural memory (“implicit relational knowing”)

• Refining NARM-Language 

Target Group

Certified NARM Therapists

Dates

October 21 – October 25, 2026
February 10 – February 14, 2027

Cost

€ 1950,-

Location.

Fletcher Erica Berg en Dal

Molenbosweg 17
6571 BA Berg en Da

Booking online or contact