Mental Health Professionals

held: 11/2

9 am - 6pm EST (1 hour lunch break)

Tending to the Need for Touch:

Assessing and Addressing the Somatic Needs of Grieving Clients

8 hour Zoom live webinar training

Grief focused mental health clinicians will receive evidence-based training on how to recognize, affirm, and validate the somatic needs of grieving clients, while also learning to educate grievers on options for getting their needs for touch met in safe and healthy ways.

Participants will learn about the inherent value of touch and other somatic interventions for clients experiencing grief and loss, how to assess the touch needs of grievers, how to provide psycho-education on somatic impacts of loss, and how to coach clients in developing strategies for getting their touch needs met in a healthy and safe manner. This program will also share strategies for remaining within the mental health clinician scope of practice while validating and addressing somatic needs.

This 8 hour training has been created by Aimee Joy Taylor, MA, who has worked with grieving clients both as a grief-focused massage therapist and as a grief counselor (Hospice intern and in a group private practice setting as a LCMHC-A). Aimee has provided grief education to licensed massage therapists for the past decade and has created a 40 hour Grief Massage curriculum to ensure trained Grief Massage practitioners are available to grievers.

She has now created “Tending to the Need for Touch: Assessing and Addressing the Somatic Needs of Grieving Clients” in response to requests from mental health professionals, who want to learn about the value of touch and other somatic interventions during grief and loss, and who want to gain a deep understanding of how loss impacts the brain and body (and how touch can help).

This 8 hour training will provide information from an academic, evidence-based perspective, as well as from a human-centered personal perspective. Aimee is not only a highly knowledgeable grief-focused practitioner, she is also the survivor of several traumatic losses and has experienced fertility grief. She will openly share some of her own experiences with body-based grief rituals and practices, and will also share some valuable insights from her work with grievers (while protecting the privacy and confidentiality of all former clients).

learning objectives

After taking this class, licensed mental health practitioners can expect to be able to:

1) recognize grief in clients 2) engage clients in exploring somatic impacts of their loss 3) provide psycho-education on connections between loss, stress, and somatic grief symptoms 4) understand how loss can increase health risks 5) provide psycho-education on somatic manifestations of grief 6) provide psycho-education on how loss impacts the brain 7) provide psycho-education on how the nervous system responds to loss 8) understand current grief theories as they relate to somatic grief and the need for safe touch 9) use available assessment tools to gather information about grieving clients' touch needs 10) understand how tending to somatic grief needs can fit into any theoretical orientation and treatment plan 11) understand the unique needs grieving clients may have for safe touch 12) provide psycho-education on simple self-touch routines for grievers 13) assist grieving clients in developing a plan for getting touch needs met 14) assist clients in body-based grounding after an during/after a grief counseling session 15) incorporate body-based practices into a grief treatment plan 16) understand current research on touch for grief 17) stay in scope of practice when addressing somatic grief needs 18) make appropriate referrals 19) utilize safe touch for self-care

register

Tuition for this 8 hour training is $90. Future offerings of this training will increase to $250. Please register via our Eventbrite page, which will be available here when registration opens on 8/25/2024.

About Your Presenter: Aimee Joy Taylor is experienced in grief counseling (including an internship at a hospice organization in 2019/2020), is an experienced continuing education provider of grief-focused training for licensed massage therapists, is the author of "Massage for the Grieving", published in Massage & Bodywork magazine (September 2017), was the recipient of 2 Massage Therapy Foundation Community Service Grants "Grief Massage Traumatic Loss at The Respite" in 2012 and "Grief Massage at The Respite: Comfort for Life Transition and Loss" in 2013, and is a pioneer in the field of Grief Massage and somatic grief care.

Aimee is a National Certified Counselor (NBCC Certificate #1371926), North Carolina Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor Associate (NC #A15831), National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork Continuing Education Approved Provider (NCBTMB # 521 - approved as Organization "The Institute for Grief Massage Inc"), and a North Carolina Licensed Massage and Bodywork Therapist (NC #7632),