LEARN WITH DR. LANIUS: COURSES
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Recorded Courses
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The Sensory Exchange: Book Club with 4 Live Webinars to Meet Ruth and the Co-Authors of the Recently Published Book
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A Unique Opportunity: Insights, Key Points, and Q&A with the Authors​
With Dr. Ruth Lanius, Dr. Sherain Harricharan, Dr. Breanne Kearney, and Benjamin Pandev-Girard, M.O.T
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Finding Solid Ground Intensive Training: Implementing the Finding Solid Ground Program in Clinical Practice
The Complete 5 Session Program
With Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD and Bethany Brand, PhD
​If you’re working with trauma, you’re working with clients who dissociate. Yet many therapists do not know how to spot subtle dissociation or know how to respond when a client cannot get grounded. And only one program for treating dissociation is proven by research to help!
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Treating complex trauma and dissociation is the most challenging work we do – but Ruth, Bethany, and Hygge Schielke created an approach that helps overcome some of the biggest obstacles you’re likely to encounter.​
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The program that they developed, called Finding Solid Ground, has solid research support – and it’s the first research-based program that has been shown to help severely dissociative clients. Therapists who have learned to use Finding Solid Ground feel more confident in their work with even the most severely traumatized and dissociative clients. And clients who participate in Finding Solid Ground develop greater self-compassion, healthier coping skills, and learn to understand and accept their emotions and their parts (if they have parts).
What you will get out of it:
This is the most intensive and foundational training available about the Finding Solid Ground program. The training presents cutting edge updates about the neurobiology of trauma, which informs the skills that clients develop when working with the Finding Solid Ground program. Each training offers Bethany and Ruth engaging in role plays depicting some of the most challenging moments involved when working with individuals who experienced complex trauma.
This course will cover what you need to know about dissociation, dissociative disorders & the Finding Solid Ground (FSG) Program. ​You will learn specific language to use with your clients to engage them in treatment and avoid activating dissociative responses, and ways to help your clients cope with trauma without dissociating or engaging in risky or unsafe behaviors, as well as many other important topics. You will also learn the 4 foundational skills that are key to the Finding Solid Ground approach, and critical order in which to use these skills with clients.
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This course includes 5 recorded sessions, available on demand:
1. Dissociation and the Finding Solid Ground Program
2. Grounding & Separating Past from Present
3. Trauma & Breaking the Self-Injury Cycle
4. Trauma-Based Thinking
5. Awareness and Comfort (with their emotions, bodies and parts of self)
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& Receive Continuing Education Credit!​​​​​​
Learn from Ruth and Bethany to answer these questions:
How do you work with clients who are terrified to get grounded because they fear being overwhelmed by emotions and memories?
What critical steps do you need to take with your client BEFORE focusing on self-harm and risky behaviours?
How can I engage and motivate clients who have found that "treatment never helps"?
Learn more:​
Live Training: Working Through Roadblocks Using Finding Solid Ground
3 Session Course - Live Sessions Recorded October-December 2025
With Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD and Bethany Brand, PhD
You’ve learned the Finding Solid Ground program — or maybe you’ve just heard about it and are curious. Now, take the next step. This immersive 3-part advanced training will help you implement Finding Solid Ground even with the most complex clients — without losing hope, clarity, or connection.
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This advanced, 3-part training is designed for clinicians who want to deepen their ability to apply Finding Solid Ground with clients facing some of the most complex clinical challenges: severe dissociation, resistance to grounding, and repeated engagement in unsafe behaviors.
Whether your client resists grounding, cycles back into unsafe relationships, or struggles with internal conflict, this series offers advanced guidance on what to do next.​
​​​The course is led by Dr. Ruth Lanius and Dr. Bethany Brand, two of the field's leading experts on complex trauma and dissociation, who co-founded this program along with Dr. Hygge Schielke. This course is intended for all of us to come together to connect to see how we can find and maintain solid ground in this difficult world.
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This immersive training brings clarity, compassion, and clinical depth to the hardest moments in trauma treatment —when clients are stuck, scared, or spiraling. You’ll walk away with language, strategies, and insight grounded in science and shaped by decades of real-world therapeutic experience.
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Backed by research. Centered in hope. Grounded in reality. Rooted in compassion. Built for real clinical work.
Learn how to move through the hardest parts — together.
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Who is this course designed for?
​​​This course is intended for clinicians who have already either:
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🔗 Completed watching the 5 Session Intensive Training (which is the course listed above)
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🔗 Read through the Finding Solid Ground book and client workbook
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These resources provide essential context and foundational language that will enhance your understanding of the advanced strategies taught in this course.
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What you will get out of it:
Day 1: How do you help clients who feel outside of their body? Is there a necessary step before working on bodily awareness?
Day 2: How can I help clients who are stuck in or drawn to unhealthy relationships?
Day 3: How should I help clients who fear that grounding will cause emotional flooding or other aversive experiences?
​​​​​​​​This course will help you build on the foundational skills of Finding Solid Ground and help you feel more empowered and confident in using Finding Solid Ground with the most traumatized clients. Each session addresses a core clinical roadblock with practical, research-informed tools:
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Day 1 – Locating the “Where Self” in Severe Depersonalization
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Learn how to gently introduce the concept of the “Where self” to clients who experience themselves from outside their body—whether from a corner of the room or observing through birds outside the window. You’ll explore how to build safety and co-regulation before working toward bodily presence.
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Day 2 – Working with Cycles of Unsafe Behavior and Internal Conflict
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Explore how to support clients who feel drawn to abusive or unsafe dynamics due to deeply embedded childhood survival strategies. Learn to navigate internal conflicts — between parts that want to please an abuser, parts that punish for disobedience, and overwhelmed adult selves — while affirming the client’s inherent right to safety and self-compassion.
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Day 3 – Overcoming Resistance to Grounding and Fear of Overwhelm
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Discover how to support clients who fear grounding will trigger emotional flooding, psychogenic non-epileptic seizures (PNES), or other overwhelming experiences. Learn to validate these fears, pace interventions thoughtfully, and create gradual, somatic-based pathways to stabilization.
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& Receive Continuing Education Credit!​​​​​​
Live Training Dates
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Session 1: October 16, 2025
12-4pm ET (11am-3pm CDT)
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Session 2: November 6, 2025
12-4pm ET (11am-3pm CDT)
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Session 3: December 11, 2025
12-4pm ET (11am-3pm CDT)
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Can't make it live? All of the sessions are recorded to view at your own pace.
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We look forward to seeing you there and helping you feel confident and equipped to handle anything that comes up in clinical practice.
The Sensory Exchange: 4-Webinar Live Book Club
with the Authors of the Recently Published Book
Sensory Pathways to Healing from Trauma
This four-part discussion series offers participants a unique opportunity to engage directly with the authors of Sensory Pathways to Healing from Trauma, a pioneering book that explores how trauma impacts the brain's sensory systems and the role of sensory-based interventions in recovery.
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Each session will focus on specific chapters of the book, beginning with an introduction by the authors and followed by a community-driven discussion. Participants are encouraged to read the chapters in advance and submit questions to guide the conversation.
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Dates: Tuesdays: September 30th-October 21st from 12-1pm EST
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If you register at the link below, you will have access to a recording of the webinar if you can't attend live.
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Participants who complete this course are eligible for 4 Continuing Education (CE) Credit Hours.
By the end, you will be able to:
Identify the body’s eight sensory systems processed in the brain and discuss how trauma can impact internal and external sensory perception.
Identify key regions in the brain critical to processing sensations and describe how these regions work together to form brain networks.
Describe brain-based healing tools used in clinical practice to empower trauma healing and promote a restoration of the self in the aftermath of trauma.
Trauma, Development and Neuroplasticity:
​How Can Therapy Help to Restore a Sense of Self After Trauma?
This course brings to life Ruth's work on trauma and the brain. This six-part webinar explores critical brain systems that are affected frequently by trauma and how altered functioning of each brain system can be associated with certain trauma-related symptoms.
The effects of a variety of present- and past- centered therapies, including mindfulness training, body-oriented approaches, neurofeedback, heart rate variability training, brain stimulation, EMDR, CBT/prolonged exposure, will then be discussed to illustrate how trauma treatment can lead to the restoration of critical brain networks and contribute to healing from traumatic stress.
In this short video, Ruth provides a glimpse into the course, including how the brain is impacted by trauma and how this can inform therapeutic approaches to promote healing.
What you will get out of it:
When you complete all 6 sessions, you will get 6 APA Continuing Education credit hours!
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Get access to watch the recording as often as you like for 90 days
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Learn from Ruth to answer these questions:
What brain systems are affected by trauma?
What effect do different therapies have on these brain systems?
What therapies can we integrate to restore these brain networks and promote healing?
What people are saying:
"Ruth's work and the emerging sense of self is what reaches me the deepest and what I relate to personally. She said that those of us with developmental trauma are trying to give birth to a sense of self. She differentiated developmental trauma from later life trauma. "Give birth to a sense of self" - respectful and beautiful. Instead of referring to us as people without a body, without a self, needing restoration - she sees us as trying to give birth to a sense of self. I felt no stigma."​
Debbie Ingraham
Trauma, Balance and Recovery:
How to Restore Emotional Regulation, Balance, and A Sense of Self In the Aftermath of Developmental Trauma
Join Ruth to explore new emerging neuroscientific research to learn effective treatment approaches for developmental trauma. In this course, we look particularly at research and clinical practice with the vestibular/balance and cerebellar systems. New evidence suggests and supports the evidence base for brain-training and other bottom-up therapeutic modalities.​​
In this video, Ruth describes this course, delves into what you will learn, and answer questions.
What you will get out of it:
​In this course, we examine evidence-based, bottom-up treatment approaches that target sensory, vestibular, and motor experience to regulate critical higher cognitive functions, including emotion regulation, cognition, and theory of mind. Participants will come away with a grounded understanding of the emerging neuroscience, based on research with developmentally-traumatized individuals, that supports this integrative approach for traumatic stress syndromes.
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& Receive Continuing Education Credit!​​​
Learn from 4 sessions:
Trauma and the Vestibular/
Balance System
Trauma, Sensory Processing and the Vestibular Balance System: Treatment Implications
Trauma and the Cerebellum
Restoring Emotion Regulation, Balance, & a Sense of Self - In Conversation with Sebern Fisher
How Can Neurofeedback Enhance Trauma Therapy?
A Dialogue With Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD, and Bessel van der Kolk, MD
In this highly informative and interesting 60 minute session, Drs. Ruth Lanius and Bessel van der Kolk meet to discuss their views of trauma and trauma treatment. They cover such topics as emerging biomarkers in the EEG and fMRI analyses of trauma victims. This discussion includes the cognitive, emotional and behavioral symptoms often seen in people with trauma histories that are associated with these brain biomarkers. They then proceed to a discussion of psychophysiological interventions that, based on research and their experience, are seen as part of the therapeutic toolbox needed to address the symptoms associated with complex trauma.
What you will get out of it:
With these international specialists, you will learn:
What biomarkers in an EEG/fMRI relate to trauma?
What method of neurofeedback training has been shown to reduce trauma symptoms, and how does it work?
What is the role of the brain's Default Mode Network in trauma?