LEARN WITH DR. LANIUS: COURSES
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Recorded Courses
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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 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.
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It 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"?
An Advanced-Level Approach to Treating Complex Trauma and Dissociation:
How To Use The Finding Solid Ground Program for Dissociation
With Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD and Bethany Brand, PhD
When working with complex trauma, instinct might tell you to establish safety and stability before helping your client ground in the present. But what if that’s not the best starting place? What if safety actually feels dangerous for your client?
You see, this is true for many clients with a history of complex trauma. It’s part of what makes it so challenging to help these clients move forward. So what steps can we take instead to more effectively treat clients with complex trauma?
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Drs. Lanius and Brand have co-developed a unique program to address some of the most difficult challenges experienced by patients who dissociate, called the Finding Solid Ground program. This is a unique therapeutic approach that builds upon their decades of research and clinical experience, and they crafted this program with feedback from patients with complex trauma and dissociative disorders.​
What you will get out of it:
Get 3 CE/CME Credits or Clock Hours!
In this recorded interactive training, you'll get practical, manageable steps and key points from the Finding Solid Ground program that you can immediately use for your most challenging cases. This will help to reduce dissociation and trauma symptoms in a healthy, compassionate way. You'll learn:
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How to work with clients who are terrified of feeling safe and becoming grounded
Critical steps to take BEFORE focusing on safety and stabilization
Why some clients are afraid to give up dissociation (and how to help them rely on it less)
Strategies to help clients separate past from present (and connect to the present moment)
How to interrupt patterns that contribute to risky, unhealthy, or unsafe behaviors
Specific language to help clients engage in treatment and avoid activating their dissociative response
Deep Brain Reorienting Hybrid (Virtual & In-Person) Conference - September 13 & 14, 2025 in Toronto, Canada
Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR) is a transformational trauma psychotherapy based in an understanding of the key role of midbrain neuroanatomy in traumatic experiences which have clinical consequences. The DBR Conference is open to interested professionals in the field of psychological trauma. The programme has been designed to cover the evolution and development of DBR over the last seven years and the implications for trauma psychotherapy in general. Up-to-date neuroimaging and the latest EEG findings, supportive to the theory, will also be presented. A unique event not to be missed.
Here are just a few of the expert speakers with unique insights on trauma treatment:
Frank Corrigan
M.D., FRCPsych
​The Founder of DBR Psychotherapy
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1. The Development of DBR: Implications for Trauma Psychotherapy
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2. Attachment & Dissociation:
The DBR Perspective
Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD
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Neuroscience Unlocked: A Transformative Comprehensive Clinical Framework for Trauma Recovery
Sebern Fisher
MA, LCMHC, BCN
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Shock and the Frequency Domain in Developmental Trauma
Sensory Pathways to Healing from Trauma: Implications for DBR
Insights from their new book written with Dr. Ruth Lanius
Learn how the approach in the new book, bridging research and clinical practice, has implications on using Deep Brain Reorienting to improve trauma treatment outcomes
Image credit: Images of Presenters from the Deep Brain Reorienting Conference Website
Breanne E. Kearney, PhD​​​​​​
Sherain Harricharan, PhD​
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Benjamin Pandev-Gerard
M.OT
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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?