Trauma-informed care starts when a client finally feels safe.
Once the nervous system begins to settle, another stage of healing becomes possible. The brain can begin releasing pain patterns that no longer serve, restoring healthier communication throughout the body, and supporting the neurochemistry that allows people to reconnect with life.
Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two builds on the foundations of Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level One by introducing Suzanne Scurlock’s unique work with the portals to calm, the thalamus, and brain-body integration.
Through practical demonstrations, guided processes, and therapeutic dialogue, you'll learn how to help clients shift from a brain organized around protection toward one capable of healing, connection, pleasure, and creating life anew.
Take the next step in learning how to support clients as they move beyond trauma and begin creating the next chapter of their lives.
Prerequisite: Read or listen to Full Body Presence and Reclaiming your Body by Suzanne Scurlock
And Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level One
This course is approved by NCBTMB for 10.5 CE Hours

One of the greatest breakthroughs in trauma-informed care has been recognizing the importance of helping clients regulate an overwhelmed nervous system.
Without a sense of safety, lasting healing is difficult to achieve.
But regulation of the nervous system is only the beginning.
Once their nervous system is more regulated, many clients reach a point where they feel calmer, yet they continue to experience the lingering effects of trauma.
Old pain patterns remain as their brain continues to interpret the world through the lens of past experiences.
They may struggle to reconnect with joy, creativity, purpose, or the sense that life can once again feel full of possibility.
Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two describes how unresolved trauma can distort our perceptual lens, narrowing what we are able to see and experience in the present moment. When we are caught in past trauma, it can become difficult to recognize the resources, support, and possibilities that are actually available to us now.
As practitioners, we naturally begin asking new questions.
How do we help the brain let go of pain it no longer needs to hold?
How do we support healthier communication between the brain and the body?
How do we help clients move from a physiology organized around protection toward one capable of healing, connection, and renewed engagement with life?
These are the questions explored throughout Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two.
Building on the foundation of Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level One, Suzanne introduces practical approaches designed to help them rediscover what it means to truly live.

If you're ready to expand your trauma work beyond regulation and explore the brain's remarkable capacity for healing, this master class is the next step.
Imagine working with someone whose immediate trauma response has begun to settle.
They feel safer and more present in their body. And yet something is still holding them back.
Perhaps pain persists long after it should or perhaps their nervous system remains hyper-vigilant. Or they may understand intellectually that the danger has passed, but their brain and body continue responding as though it hasn't.
Or perhaps they simply feel flat, disconnected from the pleasure, creativity, curiosity, and joy that once made life feel alive.
This is where another stage of healing can begin.
In Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two, you'll explore approaches that work with the physiological, neurological, and energetic patterns that can continue holding trauma and pain in the system.
These approaches are different doorways into healing. Rather than working only with the story of what happened, they offer ways of working with the underlying patterns that may be keeping the system activated.
As this becomes part of your practice, you'll begin exploring how to help clients:
Settle more deeply into their bodies
Release pain patterns that may no longer be needed
Restore healthier communication between the brain and body
Recognize and access their own inner resources
Experience greater resilience when life becomes challenging
Reconnect with pleasure, creativity, and joy
Expand beyond a life organized around protection
Begin imagining what they want to create next
The goal is not simply to help someone become less traumatized.
It is to help create the conditions in which they can become more fully alive.

Discover what becomes possible when healing is no longer only about surviving the past, but creating what comes next.
Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two builds on the foundations of Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level One and explores the next stage of trauma healing: helping the nervous system down-regulate, working with patterns of pain held within the brain-body system, and supporting the return of pleasure, vitality, and fuller engagement with life.
Immersion-style training with guided experiential practices, skill building, and conceptual learning designed to help you embody the work — not just intellectually understand it.
This training includes:
Guided teachings and experiential practices
Grounding and embodiment exercises
Exploration of the portals to calm
Work with the thalamus and pain processing
Brain-body dialogue and integration practices
Exploration of dopamine and the brain’s pleasure pathways
Live demonstrations of Healing From the Core® approaches
Opportunities to practice and experience the work
Self-care and self-regulation practices
Practical approaches that can be integrated into your existing professional work
The techniques Suzanne teaches approach trauma from several different physiological pathways, including the stress response, pain processing, and the systems associated with pleasure and motivation.
This master class is designed for practitioners and professionals who already understand the importance of trauma-informed care and want to expand their ability to support the next stages of healing.
Including:
CranioSacral Therapists
Bodyworkers and manual therapists
Somatic practitioners
Coaches
Counselors and psychotherapists
Healthcare professionals
Massage therapists
Energy practitioners
Caregivers and helping professionals
Healing From the Core® students and practitioners
Anyone committed to exploring trauma recovery through a more embodied, integrative lens
These principles are not limited to hands-on practitioners. This master class can support the work of coaches and psychotherapists as well as bodyworkers and other hands-on practitioners.
Trauma recovery is often viewed as a process of helping clients become less reactive.
That is an essential part of healing. But Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two goes further.
It recognizes that once the nervous system begins to settle, the body and brain may be ready for a different conversation.
Rather than remaining focused only on what trauma has taken away, practitioners learn how to support the body's natural capacity to restore connection, resilience, vitality, and pleasure.
This master class guides you through the next phase of healing through three interconnected areas of focus.
Begin with Suzanne Scurlock's method–Portals to Calm–an approach for down-regulating an activated nervous system, helping create the physiological conditions that allow deeper healing to unfold.
Regulation of the nervous remains the foundation, but it is no longer the destination.


Explore the role of the thalamus as a major relay station for sensory and pain information and learn Healing From the Core® approaches for working with patterns of pain that may remain in the system.
Through healthy dialogue between the brain and body, practitioners explore ways to support greater integration and resilience.
Healing isn't complete simply because the alarm bells have become quieter.
This master class also explores areas of the brain associated with dopamine, pleasure, and joy, helping practitioners understand how they can support clients as they reconnect with the experiences that make life feel meaningful and alive.
As the brain and body begin working together in healthier ways, clients have the opportunity to reconnect with pleasure, creativity, purpose, and meaningful engagement with life.
Rather than remaining organized around protection, healing can begin supporting growth, possibility, and renewed vitality.

This progression from regulation to brain integration to creating life anew is what makes Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level Two such a powerful continuation of Suzanne's trauma work.
The work with the thalamus and the adrenals was so timely. With so much going on in the world right now, collectively and personally, down regulating my system has been a lasting experience of calmness. It feels as if something in my depths has been shown the way home, and the path towards my authentic life has become brighter and smoother.
This information is so important at this time in history, when so many people are struggling with trauma. The simple powerful techniques I learned caused immediate and significant change in my practice partner who is healing from a fracture as well as other traumas. She had a big reduction in pain, decrease in tinnitus and feels so much more hopeful about her healing now.
This workshop takes you deeply in to the inner workings of our central nervous system, accessing it in a way that is empowering to the therapist and client alike!
Still integrating all that I learned. So very relevant to my life and applicable with each client.
This curriculum has made a positive impact on my skills as an educator and a school leader. Each of the classes bring new pieces to my skillset to enable me to support my students, their families, and my colleagues with presence and to hold a healing, loving space for everyone.
This program Suzanne has offered has been a life changing experience of which I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to expand their awareness and really get in touch with their ability to feel in a whole different way.
Practical Skills for Supporting Brain Healing, Integration, and Creating Life Anew
This master class builds on the foundations of Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level One, taking you beyond nervous system regulation to explore how the brain and body can release outdated patterns, restore healthier communication, and reconnect with the pleasure, creativity, resilience, and vitality that trauma can disrupt.
In this training, you will...
Gain a deeper understanding of:
What becomes possible once the nervous system has enough safety and stability for deeper healing to occur
The role of the thalamus in processing and relaying sensory and pain information
How trauma can create patterns that continue influencing the brain and body after the original experience has passed
The relationship between stress physiology, pain processing, and trauma recovery
How trauma can disconnect people from their bodies, inner resources, and ability to accurately perceive what is happening in the present moment
Why regulation is an essential foundation for healing, but not necessarily the end of the process
Develop the capacity to:
Recognize when a client is ready to move beyond regulation into deeper levels of healing
Work with Suzanne’s Portals to Calm to support greater nervous system stability
Remain grounded and present while facilitating deeper brain-body work
Listen for the body's priorities rather than imposing an outcome
Support healthier communication between the brain and body
Help clients access their own innate resources for healing and resilience
Discover how to:
Work with the thalamus and its relationship to pain signals
Help the brain and body explore whether an old pain pattern is still necessary
Facilitate dialogue between different areas of the brain and body
Support greater integration when trauma has disrupted communication within the system
Work with the body's innate intelligence rather than trying to force change
Help create the internal conditions in which outdated patterns can begin to release
Learn how to:
Support the shift from a physiology organized around protection toward one capable of greater connection and engagement
Explore brain areas associated with dopamine, pleasure, motivation, and joy
Help clients reconnect with pleasure, creativity, and vitality
Help clients recognize and strengthen the inner and outer resources available to them
Support greater resilience and the capacity to recover when new challenges arise
Explore what becomes possible when energy previously tied up in survival becomes available for living
Integrate these Healing From the Core® approaches into your existing therapeutic work
Bring greater confidence, curiosity, and possibility into your work with clients recovering from trauma
Suzanne emphasizes throughout this work that resilience does not mean difficult things stop happening. It means developing access to the inner and outer resources that help us recover and return to greater health and well-being.
Help clients move beyond surviving and begin creating life anew.

Suzanne Scurlock, CST-D, is one of the world’s leading authorities on conscious awareness and its transformational impact on the healing process.
For more than 40 years she has empowered people with practical tools that enable them to experience joy in each moment without burning out. These skills help improve every aspect of their lives, from their health and well-being to their relationships, their careers, their creativity, even the growth of their businesses.
After decades of perfecting her methods of awakening the body’s innate wisdom, Suzanne created the comprehensive Healing From the Core® training curriculum in 1994. Today it includes a robust selection of international workshops, webinars, speaking engagements and audio programs.
Suzanne is one of the original instructors personally mentored by the late Dr. John E. Upledger, CranioSacral therapist and founder of the Upledger Institute International.
Known for her honest, grounded, nurturing manner, Suzanne is adept at weaving together mind, body and spirit to create a unique and safe environment that encourages profound healing.
She is a sought-after speaker who inspires healthcare providers, coaches, executives, parents, clergy and others to stay relaxed and energized using her life-changing tools for dissolving stress, pain, overwhelm and confusion.
She is the author of two self-care books, Reclaiming Your Body: Healing from Trauma and Awakening to Your Body’s Wisdom and Full-Body Presence: Learning to Listen to Your Body’s Wisdom.
Learning to help someone regulate an overwhelmed nervous system is essential.
But it opens the door to another question:
What becomes possible once the nervous system no longer has to devote so much energy to protection?

The brain and body can begin a different kind of healing.
Old patterns can be explored.
Communication can be restored.
Resources that trauma made difficult to access can become available again.
And perhaps most importantly, healing can become about more than what happened in the past.
It can become about reconnecting with the pleasure, creativity, resilience, relationships, and possibilities that make life worth living.
Trauma may be part of someone's story.
It does not have to determine what they create next.
Move beyond regulation. Support deeper healing. Help your clients create life anew.
Prerequisite: Read or listen to Full Body Presence and Reclaiming your Body by Suzanne Scurlock
Or if you have taken DDCSP or the HFC Foundational course, you are eligible.
And Decoding the Impact of Trauma: Level One
Interested in other Immersions or becoming certified in the Healing from the Core® Method?

Healing From The Core – 11110 Sunset Hills Rd., P.O. Box 2534 Reston, Virginia 20195 United States (703) 620-4509 [email protected]