Advanced Class Curriculum

Class 1: Palpation
I believe that human beings are more sensitive and perceptive than most medical devices. As practitioners we all have our own personal relationships with energy, heat and cold, fluid and wave movements in the body, morphogenic fields, perception, and intuition. Developing our palpation skills enhances our ability to more deeply understand where and how pre and perinatal shock is held in the body. Once we have been trained in birth conjunct points and pathways and the prenatal sites, a relationship with our palpation skills begs to be developed.

This class is designed to help you understand your own natural palpation style. Many students are already palpating consciously or semi-consciously, responding to and tracking the energy and somatic expressions of their client. Some practitioners are shy or even afraid that they won’t be able to palpate, but in my experience so far, with many classes, everyone can learn to do it. The curriculum invites students to experiment with palpation styles and develop skills and range as a palpator. We will study how to calibrate to our patient (the palpatee is actually the one who trains us how to palpate). We will also learn how to palpate energetically, the difference between diagnostic and activating palpation, and how to help release shock through palpation. We will learn to understand the difference between birth and prenatal broadcasts. In the first lesson of the course we work in pairs to learn calibration and diagnostic palpation, then we will construct body maps with our dyad partner. Next, after switching partners, we examine the 3-D threshold between diagnostic and activating palpation in the morning, and then in the afternoon we take our dyad partner into regression through activating palpation. Switching partners again, we work in dyads to learn to palpate the body and search for unresolved shock, including vectors, shock cysts, shock fractures, and differentiation between the shock body and the non-shock body. Again, in the afternoon, with a new partner, we take turns doing regressions in connection to the shock maps we have discovered. The final regression day we work with new dyad partners, assess each other through palpation, and do regressions. One of the great things about this course is that we not only get a lot of practical practice to become expert palpators, but we get to do a lot of regressions and work on our selves. Throughout the week we take time in the circle to share our experiences and to ask questions and receive answers.

Class 2: Advanced Birth Simulation Postures
This class teaches you multiple specific and subtle skills for simulating the birth process and activating unresolved birth issues when you are working one on one. Detailed tips on how to resolve birth trauma are also offered. Practitioner postures using the hands and other body parts are explained and then practiced such that many practical issues are addressed: 1) How can a small person simulate birth process for a larger person? 2) How can we simulate the intensity of birth in a physically safe and integrous format? 3) What are the best ways to work on details in certain stages? 4) How can I support myself so I don’t experience fatigue while facilitating long or intense sessions? This class also teaches you how to monitor the shock levels of your client and support your client for efficient research and repatterning. Instruction is also given on ways to track and maintain contact without interrupting client process or leading too strongly. A lot of birth regressions and mini-regressions are done in this class, so it is an excellent opportunity to work on your self and clear any lingering birth issues.

Class 3: Modality Scanning
Years ago I had a wonderful NLP therapist who then became a friend. During the course of our discussions I became interested in various processing modalities and studied auditory, kinesthetic, and visual processes. The more time I spent meditating with each format, the more consciousness I seemed to have when I was working with my own clients. As I learned more about how my own brain could work I experimented with my facilitation technique, sometimes emphasizing only one modality for a whole session. I experienced that this opened up “room” for my clients to work more purposefully and increased my ability to really know at a deeper level what was going on with them.

One day I was working with a client while focused on hearing (my own auditory process was getting exercised) when I suddenly spotted a dramatic skin color change at the throat. In that moment I deliberately shifted to a visual process and, as if the client could feel some shift in her environment, an enormous vocal release emanated from deep within her body. Later on in the session she asked me if I had “done something” and I explained how I had shifted my awareness of her. She thanked me and shared that somehow she had felt this, and it allowed her for the first time to contact a substantial cord trauma that had restricted and restrained her self-expression. I realized I was on to something when I deliberately shifted from one sensory modality to another throughout the course of the next session. This client said he had never before felt so well tracked and held by any session. So I reviewed all my NLP notes and my personal process diary and put it together that different modalities are more effective at different times depending upon what is happening for the client. Sometimes observing them visually is more important and sometimes listening is. Then I began practicing moving from one modality to another during each session. I realized my conscious awareness of what was going on for my client expanded considerably. I either intuitively followed which modality seemed to give the client the most support, or, timed myself, switching methodically from one modality to another. For me this resulted in a quantum leap as a practitioner. My clients were happier and I started getting more referrals. I finally taught this technique to a small group of advanced students, and there was enough positive response for me to officially include this course in my advanced training.

The class consists of a day focused on each of the three main modalities. For each of the first three days we discuss theory and do a group meditation in the morning, then in the afternoon we practice by doing a session using only that one modality. For example, the kinesthetic session is undertaken by the practitioner while wearing a blindfold and earplugs. On the last two days we practice scanning from one modality to the other, first by shifting every five minutes from one to the next, and finally by shifting from one to the next based upon intuition.

Class 4: Practitioner Shock Management
This class offers one of the ultimate forms of supervision and is extremely popular among practitioners. Each student is digitally filmed while facilitating a session. During video feedback sessions with each facilitator Karlton identifies trauma and shock activations in the facilitation postures, soma, voice, and facilitator style. All the students are invited to participate or ask questions during each feedback session, and our natural strengths and our challenging edges are discussed. Transferential issues are pointed out and so are possibilities for alternative techniques and alternative directions the facilitation could have taken. This class is great for building your confidence as a practitioner, and can help you understand how the pre and perinatal work can augment your existing practice in a way that is usually very satisfying for your patients and clients. Invariably students learn a lot from the video feedback of their classmates. After all of the video feedback sessions are finished the facilitators get to do a regression to work on any unresolved issues that arise.

Class 5: Active Subtle Contact
For years, in my own process, I worked with some of my favorite Rolfers, who I believe happen to be among the best in the world, and some of my favorite sessions were Rolf movement sessions. In these sessions I began tracking patterns in my own body, and I realized there was some relationship between my own prenatal shock and a certain quality of “holding” in my joints. William Emerson has always taught that shock is held in the joints, and in the mid-90’s we did some work together exploring the possibilities of working with joints to help release somaticized shock. Since then I have undertaken research on joints and prenatal anatomy. It became clear that there exists a relationship between shock, as it is held in the joints (sometimes in the synovial fluid itself), and certain Umbilical Affect patterns. Another interesting principle emerged: the wrist joint, the most complex joint in the body, with the most individual bones of any joint, seems to carry a more detailed record of the various shocks and can be a doorway to the record of one’s prenatal trauma and shock. To my amazement, by contacting and moving the wrist slowly and attentively, I determined I could track somatic and energetic patterns throughout the body. Invariably these patterns had something to do with Implantation Trauma and Umbilical Affect, and Embodiment Shock.
Prenates, including the implanting blastocyst, govern and distribute incoming toxicity and shock (most often inadvertently or unconsciously) by various means, including: shunting, decision making, defense, contraction, flexion, reaction, and random or desperate deflection of shock waves throughout the somatic system. Implantation trauma impacting the syncytiotrophoblast probably catalyzes these constrictions, contractions, expansions, and other reactions. Such early somatic experiences appear to be retained in the system represented as an energetic form. I call this form the Primary Border Pattern. It seems to be directly related to the cells that develop into the connecting stalk, which then develops into the umbilical cord. The Primary Border Pattern, which acts something like a choke on a flow line, affects anything passing through the umbilical cord and shock is distributed throughout the fetal system into a network called the Primary Somatic Pattern. The Primary Somatic Pattern is affiliated with Primary Emotional and Psychological Patterns, and corresponding neurology.

With proper contact at the wrist, we can detect shock as it is held in the body, in the pericardium or diaphragm for example. Once our attention is brought to the shock site it somehow permits space for the client to process and release. I named this treatment technique Active Subtle Contact (ASC). With ASC, am convinced that even certain neurological patterns can release and re-arrange. I don’t know exactly how or why it works, but I have plenty of students and clients who can attest that it does work, and it is in response to demand that I am offering this course. I will teach the theory and the anatomy; we will learn how to work with the wrist; we will make maps of the Primary Border Pattern, the Primary Somatic Pattern, and work to release shock from the affiliated Primary Emotional and Psychological patterns. We will also take turns treating each other in dyads.

Class 6: Intuition Course
If you have a direct and consistent access to your intuition, which is actually always working if you can find it, you can hardly ever go wrong. This course starts by helping you find a very basic consistent location in your body that will give you either a “Yes” or a “No.” If that is all you develop from the class you will have an exceedingly powerful and reliable tool, especially if you can become sophisticated at asking the right question: “Should I make physical contact with this person in this moment?” “No.” “Should I be silent right now?” “No.” “Should I ask her a question?” “Yes.” “Should I ask her if she is feeling angry?” “No.” “Should I just ask her, ‘What is happening for you right now?’” “Yes.” Don’t underestimate the power of accessing Yes or No intuition. Because the impartial mind as detected in the soma (not the brain or the ego or the practitioner persona) is answering the questions, there is no attachment to outcome, effect, or consequence. Transferential issues can be avoided. Some aspect of the collective unconscious, as shared by the two of you in session, seems to take over responsibility for the course of the session, governing the process by a high principle. The concept of working within the context of permission is protected, and clients feel very safe and very satisfied.

In this class “Yes or No Intuition” practice sessions are undertaken in dyads. The second half of the class is devoted to exploring personal tendencies and talents in connection with intuition. Each student has a chance to test the efficacy of their existing intuition model, and determine where projections and transferences or personal agenda issues may be interfering with true intuition. Finally, students are asked to stretch their innate intuition by backing up or rejecting sometimes radical session possibilities or strong leads with the “Yes or No Intuition.” This exercise can help you develop a lot of confidence invoking healing power just as it can protect you from making unconscious mistakes. The goal of this course is to help you develop a very reassuring and confident relationship with your intuition which is not only useful in your therapeutic practice, but also in your everyday life. “Should I have another slice of this delicious cake?” “No.”