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USABP ALLIANCE OF SOMATIC EDUCATORS

Our Alliance provides webinar training, certification programs, degrees and doctorates for somatic psychology, body-psychotherapy, and somatic practices.  Enjoy our list of premiere centers for expanding your skills. There are three types of Organizations: Colleges & Universities, Training Institutes and Training Centers.

To aid you in your practitioner development assessment and search for extended and continued education programs The United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP), in collaboration with the Alliance for Somatic Educators, have created the Somatic Psychotherapist and Practitioner Proficiency Guidelines.


Somatic Training Institutes - Level 1

A founding institute of an established or recognized somatic-based practice, or psychotherapy. Must have been in operation for at least 20 years.

They offer stringent in-depth programs leading to Practitioner Certification in their specific modality. These training institutes are established, recognized leaders in somatic education guiding our field forward with innovations in body-mind approaches.

 Graduates of this level qualify for Somatic Practitional level membership. They also can qualify as Somatic Psychotherapist membership of USABP after acquiring a license and are eligible to be part of the Find-A-Therapist section and our on-line members only referral directory.


Bodynamic Institute USA, The Bodynamic system of Seven Developmental Stages is a very detailed and accurate description of childhood psychological and somatic development, and the links between them. It describes both what healthy development looks like and what happens when there are developmental disruptions. It contains precise knowledge that we have learned to teach in a user friendly format. This knowledge often allows you to resolve client issues in the context of the developmental stage in which the disruption occurred. And this leads to quicker and more lasting integration of new behaviors into a client’s life. READ MORE


Rooted in the work of Wilhelm Reich and founded by Alexander Lowen, Bioenergetic Analysis is a specific form of body-psychotherapy – based upon the continuity between body and mind.  Bioenergetic Analysis basically combines a bodily, analytic and relational therapeutic work, based upon an energetic understanding. READ MORE


John Pierrakos, MD developed the Core Energetics Evolutionary Process and is the founder of the Institute of Core Energetics. Core Energetics theory comes from the premise that emotional, mental and physical disturbances are symptoms of blocked energy due to an individual’s adaptive responses to environmental deficits or injuries in childhood. The work brings consciousness to how we block our energy and recreate defense patterns adapted in childhood that keep us limited and disempowered. READ MORE


Since 1981, Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy has pioneered mindfulness and somatics in experiential psychotherapy. “Dynamic” mindfulness is an integral part of the therapy session, and when Hakomi’s body-centered techniques are introduced with the mindful client, key core material is accessed rapidly, yet safely. This includes the unconscious beliefs and experiences that shape our lives, often without our knowledge. Once conscious and directly experienced, these patterns are available for transformation and re-integration. Hakomi can also be integrated with many therapeutic modalities. READ MORE


The Organic Intelligence® (OI™) training is characterized by scientific and professional rigor, by contemplative underpinnings, and by enjoyment. Through the lens of OI’s Post-Trauma Growth orientation, OI answers the question, “What if people had not been convinced that addressing trauma (including dysfunction, dysregulation and disembodiment) was the focus of therapy?”

OI applies complexity science to clinical and somatic insights, and observes, Trauma means unintegrated resource.” With this, OI members and their clients come to realize the actual, lived experience of their innate healing nature. A range of educational opportunities are available, for seasoned therapists, coaches or beginners, including the year-long OI Coach Certification program. READ MORE



The Institute for Orgonomic Science (IOS) was incorporated in September 1982 as a non-profit organization. It serves as an educational and scientific organization, conducting regular seminars by psychiatric orgone therapists, scientists, and other professionals for discussion of clinical and scientific matters. It is responsible for the publication of the Annals of the Institute for Orgonomic Science. The IOS is also involved in the training of qualified mental health professionals who are interested in becoming psychiatric orgone therapists, and provides occasional lectures and symposia on various orgonomic topics. READ MORE


The United States Pesso Boyden System Psychomotor (USPBSP), a non-profit membership organization of Psychomotor teachers, practitioners and learners dedicated to training psychotherapist and allied professional the PBSP method.  Albert Pesso and Diane Boyden-Pesso developed PBSP after spending years observing how human emotions were expressed in body action and in speech. READ MORE


SERVING WORLDWIDE FOR OVER 35 YEARS

Providing training in yoga therapy for since 1986, PRYT Yoga Therapy Training is WORLD CLASS. We offer online yoga therapy training combined with in-person intensive retreats to deepen learning at three certificate levels, including an IAYT accredited program (International Association of Yoga Therapists).

Start with our introductory Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy Essentials Workshop. From there, you will gain clarity on which next step is best for you. READ MORE



The Realization Process is a somatic approach to psychological healing, relational healing, and nondual spiritual realization. It is a series of practices for attuning to foundational consciousness pervading our body and environment as a unity. These practices cultivate an experience of internal cohesion, authenticity, increased vitality, and the integration of cognition, emotion and physical sensation. Combined with verbal dialogue, specific Realization Process practices apply foundational consciousness to the release of somatically bound protective patterns that were formed in response to early traumatic relationships. Teacher certification trainings focus on the embodiment, nondual meditation and psychological healing aspects of the Realization Process. Advanced certification training focuses on recovery from trauma. READ MORE 



SOMATIC EXPERIENCING® (SE™) is a potent psychobiological method for resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic stress. It is the life’s work of Dr. Peter A. Levine, resulting from his multidisciplinary study of stress physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics, together with over 45 years of successful clinical application.  READ MORE


Discover our 500-hour professional training program to become a certified somatic movement therapist. Rooted in the PME method, this course offers an immersive, client-centered approach using guided body sensing, movement, touch, and reflection to promote healing and growth. Led by Dieter Rehberg, MA, BA, MSMT/E, a somatic expert with 35 years of experience, the program covers disciplines like Somatic Movement, Anatomical Embodiment, Somatic Coaching, Healing Dance, and more. Available worldwide through a hybrid/online format, this affordable and flexible training allows you to enhance your somatic practice and professional skills from anywhere.  READ MORE


SPI is a professional educational organization that designs and provides the highest-level trainings and services to serve a global network of mentalhealth practitioners, and for the public at large. Seeking to enhance human relationships, our paradigm is substantiated by interpersonal neurobiology and impelled by mindfulness applied in interactive contexts.  READ MORE


Co-founded by Anna and DariaHalprin in 1978, Tamalpa Institute is an internationally recognized nonprofit organization that offers movement-based expressive arts training programs and workshops for healing, education, and social transformation. Our innovative work has been brought into classrooms, businesses, hospitals, mental health care settings, hospices, prisons, and disadvantaged communities, among others.   READ MORE 


Somatic Training Institutes - Level 2

Graduates qualify for practitioner/clinical membership of USABP and are eligible to be part of Find-A-Therapist section to the public and the on-line members only referral directory.

They offer stringent in-depth programs leading to Practitioner Certification in their specific modality. These training institutes are established, recognized leaders in somatic education guiding our field forward with innovations in body-mind approaches.

Graduates of this level qualify for Somatic Practitional level membership. They also can qualify as Somatic Psychotherapist membership of USABP after acquiring a license and are eligible to be part of the Find-A-Therapist section and our on-line members only referral directory.


Core Evolu­tion is a pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach in Hu­man­ist­ic, So­mat­ic, Pos­it­ive and Transper­son­al Psy­cho­logy, So­cial and Heal­ing Sciences, Edu­ca­tion, Psycho­so­mat­ic Medi­cine and Con­sult­ing.

The Core Evolu­tion Train­ing is based on con­tem­por­ary sci­entif­ic re­search on the in­ter­ac­tion of body and mind, the found­a­tions of body-ori­ented ther­apy, fam­ily sys­tems, neur­os­cience, trauma the­or­ies, in­cor­por­at­ing west­ern and east­ern teach­ings.

The Core Evolu­tion Train­ing ad­dresses in a psy­cho­dy­nam­ic and ex­per­i­en­tial way  the whole­ness of the per­son. READ MORE


Focusing is a process grounded in experiential listening as developed by Eugene Gendlin.  It is a powerful way of interacting with innate body-felt knowing and leads to mutual respect, authenticity and compassion.  We are a cross-cultural organization dedicated to supporting individuals and groups world-wide who are practicing, teaching and developing Focusing and its underlying philosophy. READ MORE


The NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) addresses attachment, relational and developmental trauma by working with early, unconscious patterns of disconnection that deeply affect our identity, emotions, physiology, behavior and relationships. Integrating a body centered (“bottom-up”) and psychodynamic (“top-down”) approach, within a context of interpersonal neurobiology, and grounded in mindfulness and a non-western orientation to the Self, NARM offers a comprehensive theoretical and clinical model for working with complex trauma. READ MORE 


The Swiss Institute of Mindfulness delivers high quality Mindfulness trainings to empower groups and individuals towards positive personal and socio-ecological change.

NeuroSystemics TM is a Mindfulness-based methodology bridging ancient wisdom traditions, evolutionary neurosciences and systemic understanding to offer integrative path to resilient healing, passionate living and awakening. The CARE training (Compassionate Complexity, Awakening, Resiliency & Empowerment) is a transformative 3-year journey to learn and practice essential life and therapeutic skills in the midst of a nourishing community. CARE graduates (NeuroSystemic practionners, NSP’s) can facilitate contemplative training and development, 1:1 therapy and group therapy with a focus on embodiment, somatic healing and transdiagnostic treatment. READ MORE


The Radical Aliveness Institute curriculum combines training in somatic psychotherapy, container building for cultural awareness and sensitivity, and deep emotional process work. The element that makes this work unusually fresh and powerful is the Radical Aliveness Process, a cutting-edge technology for group facilitation and participation providing a quantum leap in the healing capacity of groups. It fosters the development of individual leadership through group dynamics; cultivates the ability to be inclusive and collaborative, even in the midst of personal upheaval and chaos; and it furthers the capacity to create healing on the world and social levels.   READ MORE


The Rubenfeld Synergy Method® (RSM) is a powerful and proven healing modality, with a 50-year history of using the wisdom of the body to provide transformational healing. Combining intentional, respectful, listening touch with verbal processing creates a dynamic integration of body, mind, emotions, and spirit. READ MORE


Seattle School of Body-Psychotherapy offers a three-year training program which can be taken for both personal transformation and professional development. The program at SSBP incorporates the work of Wilhelm Reich and Core Energetics with contemporary therapies and, with permission, indigenous practices. With the understanding that pure life force emanates from the Core of every being and always remains intact, we study how to track the blocks that obscures our energy over time and through the life cycle. We learn techniques to free the expansive life energy in order to use it on behalf of our life, our interpersonal experiences, and to reconnect with our joy. The result is as spiritual as it is psychological, opening our perception and that of those with whom we work, to the greater world around us as well as to our own unique offering which we call “Referencing From the Self”. READ MORE


We at The Somatic Therapy Center hold the conviction that the BODY is the Keeper of Truth, the Holder of Wisdom and the Way-shower to Wholeness and Health. For over 30 years, the founders Joe Weldon and Noël Wight, have been touching people and transforming  lives. Their work, Transformative Touch, is the touch of gentle, gracious guidance.  It is an approach that combines touching with their hands, touching with their hearts, and touching with their words. Transformative Touch is a conversation that fosters and forges a healing dialogue in which the client fully participates- body, mind, heart and soul.  READ MORE


Somatic Training Organizations

These organizations offer short-term specialized trainings in a variety of body-mind integrative practices for which they give Attendance Certificates.


The Alexander Lowen Foundation (TALF) aims to advance the contributions of Alexander Lowen, M.D.’s Bioenergetic Analysis into mainstream health-practices and the consciousness of the world. Bioenergetic Analysis recognizes the ability of the body to heal itself, and promotes that process. It differs from other forms of therapy in that it combines analysis of personality and character with body techniques and physical exercises to recognize and release chronic muscular tension – a necessary step in liberating feelings and changing patterns of behavior. This form of therapy has helped people achieve good health – in body and in mind – for more than half a century, and it continues to be state-of-the-art psychotherapy.  READ MORE


Guided Self Healing, founded by Andrew Hahn, Psy.D.  draws from the four historical traditions in psychology plus an emerging fifth tradition.  The Guided Self Healing Training Institute exists to facilitate the process of integrated presence and growth through individual and collective healing, experiential workshops and training courses. The Institute also promotes the growth of Guided Self Healing as a specific healing modality. We do this by developing and supporting trainers and practitioners, collaborating with other organizations, and expanding the development of the work itself. GSH is established as a service organization committed to doing its part to bring peace, compassion and understanding to the world. READ MORE



Center for Healing Shame with Bret Lyon, PhD and Sheila Rubin, LMFT, RDT/BCT – Their Training Workshops are designed to help therapists show clients how to recognize shame, work through it and move on. We will become more sensitive to the shaming often implicit in the therapy situation and learn how to counter shame in therapy. We will be able to help clients separate feelings of shame from other emotions. And we’ll learn how to take clients back to early shaming situations and reverse the outcome – helping clients move their energy powerfully outward rather than turn it against themselves.  READ MORE


The Center for Mindful Body Awareness is a non-profit aimed at providing professional trainings in Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy (MABT), an evidence-based approach to teach body/interoceptive awareness skills for client self-care and emotion regulation. Interoception is the ability to access, attend and process inner body sensory experiences. MABT strategies are particularly helpful for clients with high experiential avoidance. Professional trainings for clinicians are designed as small classes to provide a supportive and individualized learning environment. The Center also works with organizations to train staff, develop programs, and evaluate MABT services. READ MORE



Karyne Wilner’s Core Energetics Academy offers a certificate program for mental health professionals and body workers based on the world-renowned Core Energetics method plus principles of humanistic/existential psychology and holistic counseling theory. READ MORE 


Integral Somatic Psychology (ISP) considers every approach to psychotherapy as valuable and understands them all as components of a broad unifying framework built on Eastern and Western psychologies. It offers clinicians from diverse therapeutic modalities the possibility of increasing treatment efficiency through greater embodiment of all the bodies that constitute the psyche. READ MORE


Designed for psychotherapists, body-centered practitioners, and students in these fields, NeuroAffective Touch® is a vital, integrative approach to touch which opens the psychobiological communication channels between the body, emotions, and mind, allowing individuals to organically process and release trauma and initiate post-trauma growth. Our annual Foundation Training incorporates key elements of developmental theory, relational psychotherapy, somatic psychology, and attuned touch protocols developed by Dr. Aline LaPierre, a leader in the field of somatic psychotherapy with dual certifications in psychotherapy and bodywork. NeuroAffective Touch® enables practitioners to offer clients the “missing pieces” of their early development, nurturing new levels of embodiment and enabling individuals of all ages to move forward with resilience in life. READ MORE


Soul’s Body® Center, developed by Tina Stromsted, Ph.D., MFT, LPCC, BC-DMT, RSME/T, Jungian Analyst provides a unique integration of Jungian Depth Psychology and embodied practices including Authentic Movement, Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Work®, Somatic Psychotherapy, the Creative Arts Therapies and other conscious practices that engage body, brain, psyche, soul, nature and community. Programs involve classes, workshops, week-long intensives, online webinars, and consultation – Re-inhabit your body, engage your authenticity, and live your soul’s journey! READ MORE


The School of Unusual Life Learning (SoULL) is a school for personal transformation and professional development for adults. SoULL trainings happen in small, highly experiential programs lasting from 3 hours to 3 years. Students recognize and learn to work with the deep, intrinsic regulation available within individuals, as well as relationships and communities. We teach students embodied wisdom, somatic awareness, a whole human life perspective while they learn how to support the expression of life itself. This support relieves existential distress and fosters growth. READ MORE


The Tuning Board, designed by Darrell Sanchez, Ph.D., is a professional-quality portable balancing device whose gentle, constant motion allows for movement in any plane. Its continually moving surface gives the user an experience of constant motion and flow. Therapists use the Tuning Board to invite fuller embodiment and kinesthetic awareness. With minimal use (a few minutes over the course of each therapy session), clients begin to embody key resources such as grounding, centering, spatial orienting, balance, and body awareness and connection. With additional training, therapists can use the Tuning Board more extensively to arrive at deeper healing and resolution of trauma. READ MORE

Institutes Specializing in Prenatal and Perinatal Somatics

These organizations offer short-term specialized online and in-person skills training courses, intensives, and retreats to prevent and heal earliest trauma.


The Prenatal and Perinatal Somatics Institute has grown over decades of experience through the work of Kate White, MA, BCBMT, RCST®, CEIM, SEP, PPNE, PLC and her direct mentors. PPSI provides professional education that supports the health of human development starting preconception, especially trauma prevention interventions and treatments that include preconception history, conception and prenatal challenges, birth and after birth experiences for families with babies, and adults with early experiences that impact health lifelong. READ MORE


College & University Programs

Accredited University and college programs offering a somatic psychology degree. Graduates of this level qualify for clinical membership of USABP after acquiring a license and are eligible to be part of the Find-A-Therapist section and the members only on-line referral directory.


One of the founding programs in body-oriented psychotherapy in the U.S., the M.A. in Counseling Psychology/Somatic Concentration, at California Institute of Integral Studies is a professional graduate education in psychotherapeutic practice from an integrative, whole-person model. READ MORE


Located in Boulder, Colorado, Naropa University is a private, nonprofit, liberal arts university offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs in the arts, education, environmental studies, peace studies, psychology and religious studies.

Buddhist-inspired and nonsectarian, Naropa University is rooted in contemplative education, a teaching and learning approach that integrates Eastern wisdom studies and the arts with traditional Western scholarship. Naropa was the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement.


The Parkmore Institute is dedicated to offering education and training of the highest scholarly standards, promoting social, cultural and personal change. We are a home for students, scholars, practitioners and activists who are interested in advanced thinking and training that uses psychoanalytic, psychodynamic and psychosocial insights and methods, in the service of liberation from the diverse structures of oppression. The Institute offers the unique professional doctorate in Bodymind Healing (the “DBH” degree), which is specifically designed to meet the needs of practicing body psychotherapists. LEARN MORE

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