Bodywork and Massage as a Relational Practice: Polyvagal & Trauma-Informed Bodywork with Sarah Mclellan
Updated: Aug 19
Previously known as Massage and Bodywork through the Lens of Polyvagal
Theory. This is the same CPD — same content, same community — under a name that better reflects the learning journey.
Massage and bodywork is a wonderfully empowering modality. Clients meet themselves through touch — they find sensation, release, and sometimes parts of themselves they'd stopped listening to. This CPD is for practitioners who already sense that possibility in their work, and want a clear, grounded pathway to bring it fully into the room.
This 3-day course is for bodywork and touch therapists at any stage of your practitioner journey. Touch is our cornerstone, and presence is what gives it life. What shapes a session most isn't technique, but the quality of presence and co-regulation a practitioner brings — their capacity to be truly with themselves, and truly with their client. This course is an invitation to deepen that capacity, and even more fully engage with the profound impact of the work you already do.
On this course you will develop:
A polyvagal and trauma-informed foundation — understanding how the nervous system holds and releases experience, so your work is safe, attuned, and responsive to what's happening beneath the surface.
Your own embodiment as a therapist — recognising your own patterns of connection and disconnection and embodied presence as part of the work itself, so what you offer comes from grounded contact rather than effort.
A shared bodymind language with your clients — ways of inviting the 'bodymind' to speak, and of listening together, so the session becomes a genuine collaboration, between you and the client; between the client's mind, body, nervous system and heart. Creating the environment for integration and empowerment that is part of the journey back to balance 'healing'.
Naming a bodymind coaching-style pathway with clients, to bring it all together — permission and structure to invite the client's bodymind explicitly into the room, deepening the collaborative work many of you are already reaching for, without leaving massage or stepping into somatic therapy.
Awareness of possible next steps for training, for referring clients, for receiving sessions yourself to help you embody the learning. All the nurture, release, and deep relaxation of massage — pain relief, postural and injury recovery support — and a way for clients to keep listening to their own bodymind long after they leave the table.
How will we learn together:
Theory is interwoven throughout with playful and practical, embodied exploration. Therefore the learning journey is also a bodymind collaboration, tracking how this is for us throughout. We'll draw on the work of Stephen Porges and Deb Dana, who've made Polyvagal Theory accessible to somatically-oriented therapists; Nick Pole's Words That Touch; Aline LaPierre's NeuroAffective Touch and Healing Developmental Trauma; and Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent and other practitioners and teachers whose work offers us practical tools for embodying these ideas, not just understanding them.
As part of the CPD you will also be meeting and hearing from 2/3 other experienced bodywork and somatic therapists, who will give you a flavour of their approach and make sure you hear from more than one voice on this fascinating subject.
What the training isn't: It is not a training in somatic therapy or talking therapy, and it won't equip you to diagnose or treat trauma. Importantly though, what it will do is help you recognise where your scope ends and know where to refer on, so you can practise with both confidence and humility.
Any questions do please feel free to email Sarah at sarahmclellan20@gmail.com
Learn more about CPD at BCMB >
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