Trauma Training in Scotland
Date: 10.00 – 4.00 pm Saturday 6 June 2026
Facilitator: Dr Bill Paterson
Venue: Healing for the Heart. Fourth Floor, Merchants House, 30 George Square, Glasgow G2 1EG
Contact: traumatraininginscotland@gmail.com
Cost: £ 95.00
The workshop is for therapists, counsellors, and other helping professionals wishing to understand and develop a somatic compassion practice; not just for working with client trauma, but as a self-care resource for practitioners.
For the last 16 years, as a mindfulness/compassion teacher and then therapist, I have been exploring different streams of somatic practice. Those streams began with embodied contemplative practice (Rob Nairn, Reggie Ray, and the Mahayana and Vajrayana tradition), but include somatic psychotherapy (Reich, Lowen, Levine, Hakomi), neurobiological and polyvagal frameworks (Porges, Dana, Maté), attachment and developmental theory (Bowlby, Gerhardt), compassion-based clinical approaches (Gilbert, Neff, Jinpa), trauma-informed dissociation models (Janet, Van der Hart), and relational and person-centred traditions (Rogers, Prouty, Gendlin, Badenoch). All of this has helped me develop a compassionate somatic practice for ‘cultivating wholeness’ with clients who want to work with their trauma. Whilst the workshop will focus on introducing these practices to participants, the theory is woven throughout. This is an experiential day of practice and discussion, not a lecture.
The day begins with bringing awareness to the body to compassionately recognise the patterns of the nervous system. In the afternoon we will begin meeting what we find with a compassionate felt sense. This creates the conditions to explore different ways of releasing the survival energy that was mobilised but never completed. Promoting these practices as an act of self-compassion in the pursuit of wholeness can help alleviate the shame and guilt that trauma survivors often experience.
Please bring an open and curious mind, a yoga mat, blanket, cushion, and notebook, and wear clothes that allow movement and layers so that you can regulate your temperature.
| Time | Activity |
| 10.00 | Welcome: Introductions |
| 10.30 11.30 | Opening to the nervous system with clients – theory + practice + sharing |
| 11.30 | Comfort break |
| 11.45 | Opening awareness to connections between body sensations, mind, emotions, and behavior: theory + practice + sharing |
| 12.30 | Lunch |
| 1.15 | Somatic compassion: awareness and cultivating tolerance Deepening connection to the body with movement theory + practice + sharing |
| 3.00 | Comfort break |
| 3.15 | Being with difficult sensations as a somatic practice |
| 3.45 | Evaluation of day |
| 4.00 | Closing of Day |
Trauma Training in Scotland
Date: 10.00 – 4.00 pm Saturday 6 June 2026
Facilitator: Dr Bill Paterson
Venue: Healing for the Heart. Fourth Floor, Merchants House, 30 George Square, Glasgow G2 1EG
Contact: traumatraininginscotland@gmail.com
Cost: £ 95.00