Trauma Recovery Certification Course
Welcome!
I am Dr. Jane Simington. I developed the Trauma Recovery Certification course based on my background working with people of both genders and from various cultures. I frequently facilitate courses and workshops for both the public and private sectors on topics related to my research and publishing interests in grief and trauma, healing, spirituality, and empowerment.
Since 2000, I have pioneered a model for healing trauma, based on up-to-date trauma research, my personal experiences with trauma, and on my clinical background. In my work with adult survivors of childhood and sexual abuse, traumatized women in a federal prison, and with traumatized First Nation Canadians, many of whom were experiencing direct trauma as well as the long-term effects of inter-generational trauma resulting from residential school events, I recognized the effectiveness of the consistent application of the Four Part Model for Healing Trauma© as a way to gain the attention of both the brain’s hemispheres so as to heal the memories and emotions stored in the body, mind, and spirit.
Participants of the Trauma Recovery Certification Course, November 18-24, 2024, Star of the North Retreat Centre, St. Albert, Alberta
A Soulful Approach to Trauma Healing
Recognizing that the spiritual disconnection which frequently accompanies unresolved trauma is often the deepest pain, I designed a model for healing trauma that addresses first the spiritual distress being experienced, and incorporate measures to heal the spiritual disconnection resulting from a traumatic event.
Within the context of this course, spirituality is described as a human being’s personal relationship to what is meaningful to him or her, and what gives direction and purpose to their life. The spiritual needs as identified by Carson and co-authors in Spiritual Dimensions of Nursing Practice are: the need for love, trust, hope, forgiveness, belonging, and meaning and purpose in life. According to these authors and other researchers, all people are considered to have a spiritual dimension regardless of if or how it is expressed or practiced. Spiritual distress is the suffering experienced when one or more of the spiritual needs are not met, as frequently happens during times of personal crisis such as following a traumatic life event.
To address the spiritual distress of trauma clients, training participants are introduced to the work of Carl Jung who noted that if you want to address soul you must speak soul’s language, the language of symbol and metaphor. Supported by his work and by research that demonstrates that during trauma, emotions are processed in the brain’s Right Hemisphere, course participants learn to incorporate therapeutic art and guided visualization as spiritual interventions, and learn to interpret the symbolic messages being revealed. My clinical experiences and the reports from traumatized clients indicate that when the spiritual wounds are healed, it is so much easier to then address and heal the mental, emotional, social, and physical manifestations of the trauma.
Applying Spiritually Based Strategies: Trauma Education to Achieve Wholeness
Abstract
The acknowledgement that Western methods may not adequately address all the cultural and spiritual components of PTSD, created a call for models that are more wholistic and Indigenous in nature. The Trauma Recovery Certification Accredited level course was designed to address this gap. The purpose of this research was to statistically quantify the effectiveness, on learning as determined through analysis of course evaluations, and on the personal healing of PTSD symptoms achieved by course participants, as determined through analysis of the PCL-5 pre to post score differences. A second purpose of the study was to determine if there would be a significant difference, in course evaluation scores, for course participants who attended in an Urban Retreat Center, as compared to those who attended in Indigenous Communities in Canada. Data was obtained from all 294 course participants. The p-value for a paired t-test was 0.0000, indicating a significant difference between PCL-5 pre scores and post scores, and based on the sample size gives a good degree of confidence in the PTSD symptom reduction from methods provided in the course. The p-values for the independent t-tests comparing the means of the course participants from Indigenous communities and the course participants from the urban retreat center, for Questions 1, 2 and 3, on the Course Evaluation are not significant at the conventional significance level of 𝛼=0.05α=0.05. Based on the t-test results, and due to the sample size, there is no strong evidence to suggest significant differences in scores for participants in the Urban Retreat Center or from Indigenous Communities. These findings provide confidence in the methods for the treatment of PTSD symptoms for both Western and Indigenous populations in Canada.
Testimonials
Dr. Jane Simington is a true, gifted teacher, who has dedicated her life to the healing and transformation of people around the world. She is a wise scientist, shaman, healer who manages, through her training, to transform trauma and pain into love and light. As a wise sp[iritual woman, she is a guiding light along our purpose in life. I bow respectfully to her work, and have opened up to it in full trust.
Dionysia Fiannopoulou,
Psychotherapist at the Pronoe Centre for the Treatment of Addictions, Athens, Greece.
I have benefited from Jane’s work both personally and professionally. Her insights and gifts have allowed me to heal from past trauma, and have shown me the way to reach personal heights that I had never before imagined. I am so grateful for my own healing, as it is this healing that has opened the way for me to be with others as they, too, move quickly into their own deep healing experiences. Jane’s work is spiritually guided, and contributes to the healing of all, as we remember our path of Oneness.
Suzanne Prince Gette,
MSW, RSW, Trauma Therapist, Cochrane, Alberta.
Karin Stewart, MPS
Success of the Trauma Recovery Certification Course
On a daily basis, people in numerous parts of the world are touched by the effects of trauma. While a variety of therapeutic approaches aimed at helping relieve trauma symptoms have been developed, most prove to be only minimally satisfactory.
Several reasons exist for this lack of total effectiveness including:
1) Many helping models do not offer strategies that are culturally appropriate in relation to the trauma history.
2) A second reason why many models designed to offer help following a traumatic event are ineffective is because even though trauma affects every aspect of humanness, most models focus almost solely on meeting emotional concerns and fail to offer a holistic approach. This lack of attention to the total needs of traumatized human beings is most evident in the failure of most trauma models to address the spiritual concerns that surface following trauma, even though the deep soul needs of the individual, the family, and the community are becoming increasing recognized.
3) A further reason why many trauma approaches have been found lacking is because their focus is almost solely on the use of counseling skills, thus addressing only the needs of the brain’s Left Hemisphere while paying little if any attention to the needs of the brain’s Right Hemisphere. This continues in many cases to be so even though for more than a decade neurological evidence has suggested that during trauma, functions associated with the brain’s Left Hemisphere are interfered with, including the use of language for storage and recall of memories and the ability to analyze and store logical and contextual information (Perry, B. 2001; Scar, R. 2005;. van der Kolk, 1998). Furthermore, since 2004, due to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) there is evidence that those who suffer from Post-traumatic Stress, replay their traumatic memories through the sensory and imaging storage area of the brain’s Right Hemisphere (Lanius, R. 2004).
References
Lanius, R. et al (2004). The Nature of Traumatic Memories: A 4-T fmri functional connectivity analysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 161:36-44.
Perry, B. (2001). The Neurodevelopmental Impact of Violence in Childhood. In D. Schetky & E. Benedek (Eds.) Textbook of Child and Adolescent Forensic Psychiatry. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric press, Inc. (221-238).
Scaer, R. (2005). The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and Human Resilience. New York: W.W. Norton.
van der Kolk, B. A. (1998, November). Neurobiology, Attachment and Trauma. Presentation at the annual meeting of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, Washington, D.C.
