“We all have a home in a ventral vagal state of safety and connection.” Deb Dana

Coming Home is an online course over 8 weeks. You’ll be led by an experienced psychotherapist through structures to map your own autonomic nervous system and learn to recognise states of protection and connection. We’ll adventure together through your inner landscape, find the ways to navigate and the paths that lead you home.

What is the autonomic nervous system?

We all have an autonomic nervous system. It operates mostly below the level of conscious awareness, constantly asking the question, am I safe? If there are cues of safety, we feel secure and connected, sure of ourselves, calm and grounded, able to make decisions and manage our lives. If there are cues of danger, the nervous system takes us into a state of protection. This might be a high energy place of anxiety, sympathetic arousal, overthinking and urgency where we feel the need to move. It might be a dark, frozen place of stillness, immobility and silence, a dorsal vagal state of shutdown.

Why learn about it?

This system is always working in service of our survival. We can’t stop it, and don’t want to, but we can learn to become active operators. We can learn to track our state, notice where our biology has taken us, and regulate our system. We can understand why we react or overreact to some situations. We can find ways to navigate the system which throws us into panic or makes us lose our words at the worst moments. We can learn why some situations touch and awaken old pain, and how to manage the cues of safety and danger that our system is searching for.

What will we do?

Over eight sessions we’ll work together as a small group - a maximum of 12 people - meeting online. You’ll be led through a series of structures designed to help you map your own system and discover your own cues of safety and danger, and how to regulate your system. There will be taught sections, lots of space for discussion and feedback as a group and in pairs, and a workbook to accompany the course. You’ll fill this in during sessions and in between to create a user manual for your autonomic nervous system, a record of the tools you’ve learned that support you.

At the end of the course you’ll have a clear understanding of how your biology affects your mood, emotions and ability to function and connect. You’ll have a tool kit of strategies to regulate and shape your system, and you’ll know the way home to a ventral vagal state of calm and contented safety.

The course is on Friday mornings for eight weeks on Zoom, beginning on the 5th April 2024 and running until 24th May from 10am to 12 noon. The cost is £200 – just £25 per session - which includes all sessions, workbook and online support from the group and facilitator between sessions. A limited number of Early Bird tickets are available until the end of March at £180.

Please make sure you’re able to attend all sessions before booking a place. I understand that last minute problems are sometimes unavoidable, but the intention is that the group and experience is consistent and building through the course.

My work is trauma informed and welcoming of neurodiversity. Please get in touch to talk about any accessibility issues, including reduced price places. BIPOC, those with disabilities and other marginalised groups will be prioritised for concession places. The space is Queer centric and trans led but open to everyone. Feel free to get in touch with any questions, I'd love to hear from you.

I'm also running this course in person as a weekend workshop in Manchester at the end of May - details and tickets are here https://buytickets.at/qchanges/1113726