Trauma-Sensitive Training for Massage Therapists

Trauma takes many forms and will show up on your massage table. You’ll have clients burst into tears. Someone will become belligerent for seemingly no good reason. You’ll walk away from a massage feeling on edge and drained, but not sure why. Clients often seek massage to help ease body pain that is rooted in emotional pain from events in the past. So, wouldn’t it be great if you were able to recognize the signs of trauma in your clients, feel confident in handling it, and take care of yourself in the process?

Enter Trauma Sensitivity Training.

This training offers 3 days of education about trauma AND daily afternoon practicum for skills you can start using immediately to improve your massage practice. You will learn how to create increased safety for clients with a history of trauma. You will practice concrete techniques that can be used to help ground and stabilize a client whose trauma has become activated through massage. And we will also provide you with skills you can use to help shed the vicarious stress you, as the therapist, will naturally feel as part of the healing process.

It is crucial for massage therapists to have in-depth knowledge in the practices and policies needed to create safety and containment for your massage clients. Our training will give you a greater understanding of trauma that will enable you to both avoid trauma triggers and know how to manage them with safety and respect toward the client when a technique invokes a traumatic response.

• Understand the emotional, physiological, and neurological components of a traumatic response.
• Understand the impacts of trauma on the body and how that impacts their patients receiving massage therapy services.
• Build mastery using concrete tools & systems to immediately impact your assessment, informed consent, and interaction with clients to both avoid trauma triggers and de-escalate intense experiences related to trauma.
• Become aware of your own risk factors for compassion fatigue and build self-care practices to minimize the risks of compassion fatigue and secondary trauma.
• Increase your potential for outstanding word-of-mouth referrals as you begin to see better and better healing outcomes in your practice.