NeuroAffective Touch®: A Somatic Toolkit for Healing Emotional & Relational Trauma

Recognize the subtle yet powerful indicators of the emerging self as they are revealed in sensation, imagery, posture, and gesture.
Engage in collaborative mind-body dialogues that support reconnection with the disrupted developmental matrix.
Apply NeuroAffective Touch® protocols to address developmental deficits: learn to create a Nurture Surround™, support the cranial base, brainstem, and spine.
Interrupt the brain’s predictive mechanism to maintain a somatic time-line awareness.
Experience the internal sensory systems of interoception and neuroception and the touchpoints for the heart, lungs, enteric nervous system, and throat that are their bodily base.
Explore the Social Engagement System through the neuropsychological convergence of the ears, eyes, jaw, cranial base, and throat.
Work with early development without creating dependency.
Apply attuned self-touch as a tool for self-regulation.

Dr. Aline LaPierre is a pioneer in the field of somatic psychology. She is the creator of NeuroAffective Touch® an approach integrating the therapeutic use of touch, nonverbal communication, and somatic psychotherapy. She is the founding director of the NeuroAffective Touch Institute, offering mental health and body-centered practitioners training in the vital use of touch when working with developmental, relational, and emotional trauma. Dr. LaPierre is the co-author of Healing Developmental Trauma: How Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship, now available in twelve languages. She was faculty in the Somatic Doctoral Program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute for ten years and is currently Deputy Editor of The International Body Psychotherapy Journal, a peer-reviewed journal bringing together a global somatic community of psychologists, psychotherapist, body-centered practitioners, researchers, and students. A graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, and of The New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, Aline has trained in many body-centered modalities including BodyMind Centering, Continuum, EMDR, Neuromuscular Therapy, and Visceral Manipulation. Her website is www.NeuroAffectiveTouch.com. She can be reached at aline@neuroaffectivetouch.com.