Past faculty in the Somatic Doctoral Program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute (2000–2010), she is deputy editor of the International Body Psychotherapy Journal and vice president of the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP). LaPierre is a graduate of Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara, and The New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles, and is trained in many body-centered modalities, including Somatic Experiencing®, Continuum, Body-Mind Centering, acupressure, as well as craniosacral, deep tissue, and neuromuscular bodywork. He co-founded the Gestalt Institute of Denver and is a senior faculty member for the Somatic Experiencing Training Institute.Īline LaPierre, PSYD, is founder and director of the NeuroAffective Touch® Institute and developer of NeuroAffective Touch® specializing in teaching the integration of therapeutic touch and psychotherapy. Laurence Heller, PhD, is the originator of the NeuroAffective Relational Model©, a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma. While not ignoring a person’s past, NARM emphasizes working in the present moment to focus on clients’ strengths, resources, and resiliency in order to integrate the experience of connection that sustains our physiology, psychology, and capacity for relationship.

Heller and LaPierre introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model ® (NARM), a method that integrates bottom-up and top-down approaches to regulate the nervous system and resolve distortions of identity such as low self-esteem, shame, and chronic self-judgment that are the outcome of developmental and relational trauma. They describe how early trauma impairs the capacity for connection to self and others and how the ensuing diminished aliveness is the hidden dimension that underlies most psychological and many physiological problems.

An essential piece of trauma literature, this “well-organized, valuable book” draws from somatic-based psychotherapy and neuroscience to offer “clear guidance” for coping with complex PTSD (Peter Levine, author of Waking the Tiger)Īlthough it may seem that people suffer from an endless number of emotional problems and challenges, Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre maintain that most of these can be traced to five biologically based organizing principles: the need for connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, and love-sexuality.

Laurence heller aline lapierre