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COURSE

A Guide To Healing Trauma

With In Memory of Ralph De La Rosa

The difficult emotions and repetitive patterns in our lives are almost always rooted in adverse, often unspeakable, experiences that we’ve survived but haven’t yet fully processed. This course will give you a wealth of tools for working with strong emotions in meditation as a means of healing the pain, shame, fear, and reactivity too many of us live with. In these 10 succinct modules, psychotherapist, author, and PTSD survivor Ralph De La Rosa draws from Tibetan Buddhism, neuroscience, Western trauma theory, and the “parts work” of Internal Family Systems Therapy to provide you with a fully integrated and thoughtful framework. Meditation can be used for stress reduction and self-care, but traditionally it has always been aimed at deep personal transformation. This course begins with the stress reduction approach as a foundation, and incrementally moves into the deeper end of the pool. This course is not a quick fix, but rather offers a deep, intelligent, and incremental approach to lasting change. These lessons are intended for personal enrichment and are not designed to diagnose or treat serious mental illness or to serve as a substitute for competent mental health treatment.

Draw on an integrated and supportive framework for healing trauma.

11 Days

25.2k students

4.8 stars

15 min / day

English

About this course

Pendulation Practice

IFS Self-Led Meditation

Counted Breathing

Meet your Teacher

In Memory of Ralph De La Rosa

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Brooklyn, NY

Ralph De La Rosa is a psychotherapist, meditation instructor, author, and PTSD survivor. He is the author of the #1 bestselling "The Monkey Is the Messenger: Meditation & What Your Busy Mind Is Trying to Tell You" by Shambhala Publications and is a therapist in private practice. Ralph is known for his online courses and retreats that blend Tibetan Buddhism, trauma theory, Internal Family Systems therapy, neuroscience, and intersectional feminism to foster transformative experiences.

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11 Days

25.2k students

4.8 stars

15 min / day

English

Lesson 1

The Holding Environment

In today's lesson we will explore the neuroscience behind the basic needs and motivations of all humans for safety, gratification, growth, and belonging. We will be introduced to psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s concept of 'the holding environment' and discuss how we can bring these qualities into meditation practice to create a personal 'holding environment'. We will then undertake a “heart breathing” mindfulness meditation with an emphasis on invoking the qualities of the holding environment as well as setting the breath in its natural rhythm.

Lesson 2

Cultivating Resilience

The good news: every aspect of our being is fundamentally oriented around our survival and wellbeing. In today's lesson we will discuss what our minds look like when we perceive real or imagined threats, and when we perceive safety, gratification, growth, and belonging. Today's practice will incorporate breathwork for calming anxiety and overwhelm: 4-8-12 Breathing, Belly Breathing, Ninefold Clearing (nadi shodhana).

Lesson 3

Aftercare Instructions

As we enter deeper aspects of this work, it’s important to know what to do in between sessions. We will be introduced to the concept of “pendulation”: like a pendulum swinging, we need to go all the way into the shadow work and also all the way to the other side of just living and enjoying life. In fact, these two sides enhance one another: the shadow work is what clears room for more joy, for sukha – and the joyful side of life is what gives the strength, courage, and resilience to do the shadow work. This can have an “upward spiral” effect. Today's practice will involve a sun-based body scan and a “heart breathing” mindfulness practice to adjust the breath to its natural rhythm and settle the nervous system.

Lesson 4

How Trauma Works

In today's lesson we will learn how adverse experiences when left unattended create “frozen” imprints within our nervous systems. This feeling can amount to an internalized and continuous sense that life and the world are not fundamentally safe and is the root cause of repetitive and compulsive patterns in our cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal lives. These repetitions however, which are the experience of the Eastern concept of samsara, are actually our body-mind’s attempt to get our attention, to call us to healing. We may have inherited a legacy of pain, shame, and fear, but that legacy can end with us.

Lesson 5

The Masks We Wear

In today's lesson we will present the view of the layered or multiple self. We will then undergo a brief intro to “The Four Cardinal Energies of Mind:” 1. Buddha nature or “self-energy,” 2. Hurt parts or exiles, 3. Reactive defenses or firefighters, 4. Pre-emptive defenses, i.e. functional masks we wear to keep our lives in order and to prevent pain and too much vulnerability (aka managers). In today's practice you will meet your manager. This is a deeply insightful practice of self-inquiry that entails expressing curiosity towards parts of us that run laundry lists, distract us, plan, strategize, remember, and fantasize when we meditate. When we express curiosity and appreciation towards these parts of us, they always offer us more information.

Lesson 6

One Heart, Many Parts

In today's lesson we are offered a deeper overview of the Internal Family Systems model: Four categories of parts, how to recognize self-energy or Buddha nature, why self-energy must be present in order for us to heal, and why self-energy is most easily discovered when we’re working with our neurotic parts, not when we go looking for it (it’s vulnerable to do so and we’re hardwired to defend against vulnerability). Today's practice follows on from the previous lesson: Meet Your Managers Part Two. This practice encompasses heart breathing and we are invited to offer curiosity to managers but this time with an emphasis on noticing the four “C”’s of self-energy/Buddha nature: calm, clarity, curiosity, and compassion.

Lesson 7

Honoring Our Inner Gatekeepers

In today's lesson we learn how our defenses are the gatekeepers to our wounded parts. Together, we come to understand why we must get their permission in order to do the work safely and effectively and how to have empathically attuned conversations with our defensive parts to get them to allow us to go deeper into healing work. Today's practice is the third part of Meet Your Managers, comprising heart breathing and a guided template for conversing successfully with pre-emptive and reactive defensive parts.

Lesson 8

Addressing Overwhelm

Today, we come to understand why our thoughts and emotions “scream” at us: they want to be heard, how to offer empathic responses to upset parts of us, and how to use reflective listening as a precursor to requesting that our upset parts turn down the volume, ultimately allowing us to feel better. Today's practice is a Parts Work Meditation with Firefighters which involves heart breathing and utilises the three-step overwhelm technique.

Lesson 9

Our Inner Children

Now that we know how to properly calm defensive parts of us, we can begin accessing deeper hurts in a safe manner. Today we look at what these parts of us need most: for us to bear witness to their story, empathize, and offer the curiosity and caring of self-energy or Buddha nature. We will undergo a Parts Work Meditation with Exiles that incorporates heart breathing and the invitation for hurt parts to emerge and tell us what they want us to know. You will be offered guided suggestions for how to stay in self-energy and respond effectively. You are given the invitation to return to revisit overwhelm technique and breathwork practice recordings as needed.

Lesson 10

Rewriting The Past

Today, we discuss the concept of “model scenes” and how parts of us get trapped in time. This is evident in the way we tend to “relive” rather than remember when certain memories arise. In this lesson we will learn how we can enter these scenes in our minds, support our inner children in standing up to any aggressors and how this can be effective in rewriting the past at the level of our nervous system. Today's practice is: Parts Work with Exiles in Model Scenes.

Lesson 11

Bonus Module: Keep Going

This bonus module is designed to help you continue the journey from here. Ralph emphasises the benefits of a daily practice and the importance of engaging multiple modalities at once. There is no such thing as wasted effort or backsliding. Just keep going and it all comes out in the wash.