About This Webinar
Many clients know exactly where a pattern began. They can name the year, the house, the room, and explain it clearly in talk therapy, yet their body still reacts as if it is happening now. This webinar explores why insight alone often doesn’t shift trauma responses, and introduces a structured, trauma-informed approach to working with them somatically.
Trauma isn’t stored only as a conscious memory. It is held in implicit memory and the brain’s subcortical systems, in the patterns of the autonomic nervous system, and, as research on intergenerational trauma and epigenetics suggests, it can be carried across generations. How it’s held differs from person to person. Two clients can present with the same anxiety while carrying completely different roots: one from a childhood environment that never felt safe, the other from fear that predates their own life. A one-size-fits-all approach often falls short because the intervention hasn’t been matched to the individual.
Presented by Melissa Hiemann, creator of Root-Cause Therapy (RCT), author of the Root-Cause Therapy book and co-founder of The Centre for Healing, this live webinar shows practitioners how RCT assesses where trauma is held for each client, tracks it consistently across sessions using a single testing sheet, and guides clients through a somatic release process safely and within scope.
Who it’s for: Practitioners, coaches, counsellors, therapists and healers working with clients who have trauma histories, plus people who are considering training in trauma-informed somatic practice.
Learning outcomes. By the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:
Explain why trauma responses can continue after conscious insight, with reference to implicit memory, the nervous system and intergenerational transmission.
Describe how the mind categorises traumatic experience, and identify the symptom patterns associated with each category.
Use a structured testing sheet to record where trauma is held, track change across sessions and plan next steps for a client.
Outline the stages of a somatic healing process, including safety, consent, pacing and aftercare.
Recognise the scope-of-practice boundaries and the indications for referring a client to other support.
Summary
Summary
This 90-minute live webinar is made up of four teaching segments followed by a Q&A.
1. Introduction and scope (10 min). The gap between understanding a trauma and resolving it. The role of the practitioner as a facilitator. Scope of practice and when to refer.
2. How trauma is held (15 min). Implicit and explicit memory, how the nervous system holds unresolved threat responses, and current research on intergenerational trauma. Case examples show how the same symptom can come from different roots, and why that changes how you approach treatment.
3. How the mind categorises trauma (15 min). The categories RCT uses to understand how a client has stored an experience, and the symptoms and behavioural patterns that typically come with each one.
4. Tracking with the RCT testing sheet (20 min). A walkthrough of the single testing sheet that follows a client from session to session. It records where trauma sits, how it has been categorised and what the client’s system needs to release it, so the practitioner can measure progress and plan sessions without guesswork or starting from scratch.
5. The somatic healing process (15 min). A step-by-step overview of how RCT guides a client through somatic release, covering establishing safety, client consent, pacing, managing activation and post-session aftercare.
6. Live Q&A (15 min). Participants bring questions about applying these concepts in their own practice.
Participants receive a CPD certificate on completion.
