SOMASOURCE

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1. Somatic Intelligence Competencies
   • Be able to clearly articulate why the body is important in your work.
   • Name the nature of your somatic practice(s). Know your current growing edge with this.
   • Name all 5Rhythms®. Using your own words, describe how the rhythms move in your body, in nature, in other arenas of inquiry that are relevant to you (for example life cycles or one specific cycle).
   • Have a basic understanding of the difference between shock and trauma. Be able to simply describe what each feels like in your body.
   • Be able to identify and track sensations in one’s own body and to articulate that to others.
   • Authentically embody the present moment and move through diverse energies as they arise. (For example: Using the body as a way to communicate and liberate one’s current state, current emotion, etc.).
   • Understand basic principles of somatic resourcing and how you use that concept for self-regulation. Know how this concept can be applied with others.
   • Be able to facilitate a movement-based group process, such as an intervention, learning tool, discovery process, warm-up, ice-breaker, name game.
   • Sustain an active and steady personal embodiment practice.
   • Recognize how the above concepts relate to your field of study such as BMC, Authentic Movement, Yoga, DMT, Somatic Therapy, Wilderness Ed., psychotherapy, mentorship, education.
   • Read at least three books from the Somatic Intelligence Reading List (or other approved books).
2. Rites of Passage/ Threshold Work Competencies
   • Participation in Surfing The Creative (STC) at least 2 times.
   • Understand, identify, and articulate Arnold van Gennep’s three phases of a rite of passage (ROP).
   • Be able to identify how STC works with each phase of a ROP.
   • Be able to express or articulate something about one’s personal ancestral rites of passage and the work that you are engaged in understanding more. (For example: a personal rewriting the Passover Haggadah or the deconstruction of Christian holidays and the seasons).
   • Design and potentially implement a ROP curriculum for a chosen stage of the life cycles (For example: young men, pregnant women, pre-adolescent girls, elders, etc).
   • Ability to help create, catalyze, and contain sacred and transformational space (Ceremony/ Ritual).
   • Read at least three books from the ROP Reading List (or other approved books).
3. Social and Emotional Intelligence Basic Competencies
   • Identify the sequence of emotions based on the 5Rhythms® Map. Capacity to demonstrate this sequence through movement in an authentic way.
   • Be able to move each of the foundational emotions through each rhythm. (Example: moving fear through each rhythm.)
   • Demonstrate competency in moving through each emotion. Identify patterns of personal emotional habit, experience, expression, with a clear idea of what work needs to be continued.
   • Understanding that this layer of the work is personal practice only. Speak to how this can be adapted to work with youth, children, elderly, your community of practice.
   • Be able to identify all four aspects of Council. Ability to hold Council with a group.
   • Basic understanding of a variety of personal boundaries (as related to the Boundary Game).
   • Identify basic group agreements relevant for chosen stage of development (including topics such as confidentiality, completion, diversity needs, boundaries, touch, honoring the source).
   • Read at least three books from the attached Social/Emotional Reading List (or other approved books).
4. Equity and Inclusion Basic Competencies
   • Define and understand basic concepts of diversity including: diversity, inclusion (how power plays into this), exclusion, privilege, oppression, power, etc. How are you currently continuing your learning?
   • Identify your personal biography in terms of how it relates to your privilege and to your intersectionality.
   • Identify and work with one’s own feelings as they relate to diversity issues.
   • Define the Four I’s of oppression: Ideological, Institutional, Internalized, Interpersonal.
   • Be capable of holding space for others who are expressing personal feelings and/or experiences related to power and oppression.
   • Dedicate oneself to a lifetime of learning about the dynamics of equity and inclusion and how to daily be a force for liberation.
   • Read at least three books from the Social Justice Reading List (or other approved books).
5. Human Development Basic Competencies
   • Possess a basic understanding of the stages of human development, using a chosen map (Freud, Erikson, Steiner, Plotkin, Roth, etc.).
   • Understand how ROP relates to catalyzing or marking a transition from one stage of development to the next.
   • Read at least three books from the attached Human Development (Life Cycle) Reading List (or other approved books).
6. Professional Ethics
   • Have a thorough understanding of the code of professional law and ethics related to your field(s) and somatics, psychology. Set yourself up to be legally sound in your field.
   • Agree to abide by the regulations and standards of where one practices or teaches, including licenses, insurance, continuing education, professional disclosure, liability statements, confidentiality statements, supervision, etc.
   • Comprehension of basic intra-psychic phenomena such projection, transference, counter-transference, somatic-counter-transference, erotic-counter-transference.
   • Understand basic dynamics of power and privilege in the student/teacher relationship.
   • Commit to receiving and offering respectful feedback and to making amends when integrity of relationship(s) have been breached.
7. Shadow Work Basic Competencies
   • Have basic understanding of what Shadow work is. Articulate what you are currently working with inside yourself and how.
   • Understanding the Shadow related to becoming a teacher. Ego of teacher.
   • Shadow Dancing Workshop with this community. (Part of Summer 2020 Practitioner’s Training)

In addition to the above learning objectives, leader will also attend:

• STC: Two Surfing The Creative Programs, or comparable programs with Melissa
• Gender Work: One Gender weekend Journey (or longer) with Golden Bridge (Ex. Shakti Sisterhood, Women’s Blossom Project, Divine Siblinghood, Benevolent Brotherhood, or comparable programs)
• Depth Work: Dance of Adolescence, Youth On Fire, Ground of Being, Breath of Intimacy or at least one other relevant depth work with Melissa
• Foundations Work: SomaSource Online Foundation Course (Recordings will be accessible Nov 1 – Dec 31, 2019)
• Social Justice Series: Online courses applying social justice theory and framework to SomaSource principals (Jan-June 2020)
• SomaSource Leadership Courses: Embodied Leadership, Anatomy, Music, Ritual, Ethics, Shadow Work, and Social Entrepreneurship (Jan-June 2020)
• Project: Project development or personal reflection on SomaSource as it applies to your work (February 2019 – August 2020)
• 10-day Required Completion: Life Cycle Workshop + Practitioner’s Closing Process & Graduation (July 2020)
• Mentoring Work: As needed, additional direct mentoring work with Melissa and the Golden Bridge team (through December 2020)

Limits of this certification:

• No overt teaching of the 5Rhythms® unless you are formally trained to do so by 5Rhythms® Global. When you include the 5Rhythms® in your work, you must say that you are not trained to teach this work. You are welcome to say that you have been a student of it for x# of years. Use of the 5Rhythms® logo is not permitted in any of your marketing, advertising, and promotion.
• If there is a call for a Surfing The Creative program, literal or minimally modified, in your community of practice, we request that you bring the request to Golden Bridge and together a team is built to enact the program. Please do not replicate this work with your peers without consulting Golden Bridge. Ultimately, that may be where this goes, but for now, please consider the wider community.

Benefits of the SomaSource Life Cycle Certification process:

• You will be credentialed to lead somatically centered rites of passage programs serving your clients in diverse communities and cycles along the human journey of development.

• You will be overtly linked to Golden Bridge and this lineage and your work will be highlighted on the Golden Bridge website. As the world reaches towards us to bring this material into their communities, you will be part of the core group of leaders considered to co-lead and guide in other communities.

• You will be blessed to create your own innovative programs that include the basic foundations of this work. Of course, many of you are already doing this.

• You will have the opportunity to sit in intimate conversation with Melissa about this work going forward in ways that will not be available to others. Aka, supervision and one-on-one mentoring and colleagueship.

• You will overtly be a part of a learning community that can lean on each other and continue to develop this work going forward.

Click here to take the SomaSource Competencies Self-Evaluation: