Category: Transforming Trauma Podcast

“We don’t fight defenses; we support them. Nonviolence and organic unfolding are radical acts in trauma healing.” – Shai Lavie

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, CTTC Senior Trainer Brad Kammer welcomes his colleague, old friend, and Hakomi Trainer Shai Lavie, LMFT to discuss the intersection of individual and collective healing, relational and somatic practices, and how they are supporting therapists to work with clients’ multi-layered suffering.

Brad invites Shai to trace the arc of his work from early encounters with Hakom, to training to become a Hakomi Therapist and Trainer, to integrating Somatic Experiencing in support of a more regulated and embodied approach to depth work. Together they discuss how mindfulness can support and enhance relational co-regulation, and how important it is to hold the larger relational context that includes communal and collective healing.

Shai shares that honoring protective strategies is not a detour, but the path itself. They both agree that the goal is not to conquer one’s defenses, but to befriend them so that they can support new ways of being in the world.

Shai names a quiet pivot that changed everything for him. He shares a story of Ron Kurtz’s (founder of Hakomi Therapy) formative moment in a bioenergetics workshop, when instead of pushing against an arching back, Kurtz placed supportive hands beneath it. The body softened. The story became a north star for Hakomi’s principles of nonviolence and organic unfolding. Shai states, “there is an intelligence in what looks like resistance.”

Mindfulness, for Shai, is not a solo sport. He frames it as co-regulated awareness, echoing Daniel Siegel’s view that the neural circuits for sensing inner experience and being accompanied by another strongly overlap. In practice that means helping clients feel difficult sensations while noticing they are not alone and in a supportive relationship. From there, the work often drops through what Shai describes as a parabola that becomes an hourglass. At the waist of that hourglass, something opens. Archetypal material, ancestral threads, and a sense of belonging can surface without being forced or named prematurely.

Shai also reflects on the cultural shadow. He challenges the moral superiority that can sneak into helping spaces and the ways growth culture can accidentally marginalize the very parts that keep us safe. His antidote is context and compassion. He shares that he reflects to clients the reasons a protective part exists, and genuine care for why it had to. Then he observes as the system re-organizes. Shai and Brad reflect on the similarities between Hakomi and NARM®, two depth-oriented, relational psychotherapeutic approaches.

Transforming Trauma is grateful to Shai for reminding us that healing is both deeply personal and irreducibly communal. The future he points toward is not more technique, but better relationship: within the self, with one another, and with the wider field we share.

GUEST BIO
Shai Lavie, M.A., LMFT, is a mindfulness-based psychotherapist in private practice in San Anselmo, California. He earned his M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (1995) and has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist since 1999.

Lavie is a Certified Hakomi Trainer with the Hakomi Institute of California and Hakomi Mallorca and is also certified in Somatic Experiencing, Peter Levine’s body-based trauma method. He has taught mindfulness and psychotherapy at Sofia University, CIIS, JFK University, and the Marin Mindfulness Institute, and has trained therapists throughout California.

A longtime Vipassana meditation practitioner, he taught in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and led wilderness rites of passage for youth through Wilderness Reflections and other organizations. His writings include articles in Psychotherapy Networker and The Therapist, as well as a chapter in Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (W. W. Norton, 2015). Lavie lives in Fairfax, California, with his wife and daughter.

At the core of Jungian psychology lies the concept of individuation, a lifelong journey of growing into one’s whole self. It’s a process of self-discovery that can feel both inspiring and challenging as each layer of inauthenticity or protective strategy surfaces, then sloughs away. One therapist combines her Jungian background with NARM’s spirit of inquiry to help her clients embrace the nature of individuation and reconnect to their unique selves.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth welcomes Megan Holm, psychotherapist, NARM® Master Therapist, and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner to discuss the beautiful and unsettling unfolding that can occur when we commit to exploring depth within ourselves. The pair also explores where NARM and Jungian psychology overlap – developing the capacity to hold tension that arises with deeper self-exploration and creating space for noticing rather than judging. 

“There’s so much to wonder about,” says Megan, whose professional interests include relational dynamics and trauma. “That’s what ultimately led me to NARM. I wanted to understand some more of that, both for myself and my clients.” Once she completed her original training as a NARM Master Therapist, she continued as a Training Assistant in NARM Trainings, before embarking on an immersive program in Jungian psychology at the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. 

“What was really the driver to NARM was partly my own self,” says Megan. “I just thought, Ugh, there’s so much I don’t understand about myself and my own anxieties or repeated patterns, and then just feeling like some of the skills I have or how to go there with my clients, I just felt so helpless about it.” She credits the NARM training with encouraging her to become more self-aware and to assess her hesitance about going to therapy. “The environment I was raised in, people didn’t ask a lot of questions. It was so automatic to not ask and just to assume something.” 

As Megan began asking more questions of herself, her interest in depth psychology blossomed, specifically Carl Jung’s work on the collective unconsciousness and the symbolism of myths and fairytales. “Why fairytales? Jung says there’s something scary about what we’re not so conscious of or we’re not aware of in ourselves,” says Megan. “So there’s just the unsettling to interact in the world. But then, what’s in our inner territory that we repress or suppress? This is why symbolism is really important in psychology. It’s the best thing to express something that is unexpressible or that we can’t quite explain, which is what’s symbolic and that’s really alive.”

Megan observes that our symptoms are a doorway for self-exploratory work, inviting us to notice what has gone untended or under-nourished. Jungian psychology’s focus on fantasy, imagination, and dreams offers further guidance, and, while the language differs between it and NARM, Megan says that both provide a roadmap for recognizing and releasing maladaptive strategies so that we can fully live into our true nature. “The first half of life, Jung would say, is really about adapting to the collective, to our environment, to culture, to society, to our families. The second half of life is more about adapting to our own inner self, things that, for many of us, we kind of put aside in order to fit in.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Megan for sharing her insights with our community and encouraging us to embrace self-inquiry as championed by transformative healing approaches like Jungian psychology and NARM. 

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

International School Of Analytical Psychology 

The Secret Garden

Brother Lustig

GUEST BIO

Megan Holm is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), NARM® Master Therapist, and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner in private practice. She has served as a training assistant in NARM Therapist and Master Therapist Trainings. Megan is currently a training candidate at the International School of Analytical Psychology (ISAP) in Zurich, Switzerland. She continues to see clients in the US, working on themes of relationship patterns, belonging, grief and loss, and self-discovery.

Megan is most interested in what Carl Jung calls Individuation: the lifelong process of becoming one’s own unique and whole self. It is a process of self-realization and discovery, seeing ourselves as we are rather than as we wish to be. Our symptoms are a door for this work – they invite us to look inwards, to listen to what has gone untended or under-nourished. Fantasy, imagination, and dreams offer further guidance, helping us to see more clearly who we are and what we uniquely bring to the world. Knowing oneself is an undertaking – a humbling journey that Megan feels honored to take together.

In this special Transforming Trauma series, we will be exploring the “origin stories” of influential therapists. These episodes offer a rare opportunity to peek behind the curtain and understand what inspired these therapists to pursue healing work, and how they have brought their life experiences into their professional work, impacting and inspiring many people along the way. By learning from seasoned master therapists who openly share their professional journeys, as well as the painful personal life lessons along the way, we gain valuable insights to support our own growth, both professionally and personally.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth is thrilled to welcome back Brad Kammer, Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC) Director, Senior Trainer in the NeuroAffective Relational Model® (NARM®) Senior Trainer, author, and executive producer of this podcast, to discuss his eclectic personal and professional journeys. Brad also details the experiences that have shaped his approach to the treatment of trauma and informed the creation of CTTC. 

Brad’s story is compelling, revealing an inquisitive nature and passion for healing complex trauma shaped by his early experiences. Reflecting on his family’s intergenerational trauma, Brad shares about his grandparents escaping persecution of Jewish people all throughout Europe in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and how they came to the United States to build a safe future for themselves and their children. “I think what I was brought into was my parents really wanting to assimilate and having their own internal challenges around what that looks like.” 

At a very early age, Brad’s curiosity led him forward. “I was one of those kids in high school who was always looking up at the stars and asking these really big questions. Do I belong? Who am I? How do I show up?” At the same time, he was searching for his place. 

Psychology seemed like the obvious course of study for someone drawn to understanding human experience and supporting human connection. But first Brad needed to take a different path. Upon completing college, he left the U.S. to travel, working and studying all around the world. It was on this journey he deepened into his passion for spirituality and learning about other cultures. “This was a big turning point for me in my early twenties.”

During his travels, he lived on the Thailand-Burma border working with Burmese refugees. Brad reflects, “It was a life-changing experience because instead of being from an outside Western aid organization that never really integrates with the people they’re serving, we lived and worked amongst the people we were working with…This is the beginning of my understanding of trauma.” Brad got a first-hand experience of individual and collective trauma, and became determined to do his part in the healing. 

Brad and his new family settled back in the U.S. where he enrolled in a graduate program renowned for its experiential approach including self-designed curriculum and mentorship-based learning. “I created this awesome graduate program for myself based on spirituality, shamanism, somatic psychology, and relational therapy,” he says. Even though he was studying to become a therapist, this was a deeply personal process. “I was on a healing journey,” he says. 

His personal and professional journey led him into the Somatic Experiencing training community where he was introduced to Dr. Laurence Heller, the creator of NARM. Brad began studying under Larry and working closely with him in the development of NARM, which eventually led to a partnership in the creation of the NARM Training Institute and the two books they wrote together: The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma and The Workbook for Healing Developmental Trauma.

After years of being part of clinical trainings, Brad began to feel into a need from therapists beyond clinical training. So alongside his close colleagues and friends Stefanie Klein and Marcia Black, Brad created an organization focusing on mentoring therapists. They created the Complex Trauma Training Center in early 2024 that offers clinical trainings (like NARM), as well as other programs supporting therapists in building their capacity for connection, depth, and heart. Brad says, “I’ve gotten a lot of really amazing mentorship over my adult life, and so I’m excited to continue getting that, of course, but also now giving it back.” 

Brad proudly launched a new program in 2025 called the SPACE Inner Development Program that speaks to this purpose of support and community for therapists. “Being around a group of therapists is so comforting because people are reflective and caring,” he says. “We’re bringing all these different elements together and offering other folks to join us.” 

Transforming Trauma is deeply grateful to Brad for his curiosity, openness and heartfelt commitment to compassionate mentorship and building community – as well as for the creation of this podcast!

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

Supporting Presence, Awareness, Connection, and Embodiment for Mental Health Professionals with Brad Kammer and Stefanie Klein of the Complex

Trauma Training Center

Creating SPACE for Self-Discovery and Community Support for Therapists

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

University Of Texas at Austin

Tao Of Poo

Wilhelm Reich

The Function Of The Orgasm

Phish

Goddard College

Laurence Heller, PhD

Healing Developmental Trauma

The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma

Trauma & Civilization: The Relationship Between Personal Trauma, Social Oppression, and the Transformative Nature of Trauma Healing 

Peter A. Levine, PhD

Somatic Experiencing

GUEST BIO & CONTACT

Complex Trauma Training Center

Brad Kammer, LMFT, LPCC, is the Training Director and Senior Trainer for the Complex Trauma Training Center. Brad is responsible for the creation of the CTTC professional development programs, including the SPACE Inner Development Program for Therapists. He also is a Senior Trainer in the NARM® Therapist and NARM® Master Training Programs offered through CTTC. Brad guides the mentorship programs involving CTTC faculty, training assistants and participants; the diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB) efforts; and is the executive producer of the Transforming Trauma podcast. Brad has a passion for cultivating a professional learning community that provides ongoing training opportunities and mentorship to a diverse group of mental health professionals in their work with complex trauma. Brad is also the co-author of The Practical Guide for Healing Developmental Trauma and the upcoming Workbook for Healing Developmental Trauma.

In this special Transforming Trauma series, we will be exploring the “origin stories” of influential therapists. These episodes offer a rare opportunity to peek behind the curtain and understand what inspired these therapists to pursue healing work – and how they have brought their life experiences into their professional work, impacting and inspiring many people along the way.  By learning from seasoned master therapists who openly share their professional journeys, as well as the painful personal life lessons along the way, we gain valuable insights to support our own growth, both professionally and personally.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth re-introduces Stefanie Klein, a licensed clinical social worker who is Faculty and Assistant Training Director for the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC). Stefanie shares the pivotal a-ha! moments that guided her path to becoming a therapist, her post-graduate placement trajectory, and the healing modalities that have most influenced her life and professional work.

“When I think about what made me into a therapist, I often joke that it was debilitating symptoms of developmental trauma.” Stefanie’s opening line sets the tone for a candid discussion that will resonate with many mental health professionals and those considering a career as a helping professional. “I was a very young child suffering with so much anxiety,” she continues. “Nobody understood anything then. So, I was just the identified patient in my home.”

For those unfamiliar with the term, an identified patient refers to a family member – generally the most sensitive child within a family – who is viewed as the primary source of the family problems.  “Everyone in the family starts to focus on that person and makes them feel like if they could just ‘be normal,’ then everybody would be okay,” says Stefanie, who asked for professional help at age 10. “I had a parent who was in therapy and was open about being in therapy,” she recalls, adding, “That’s how I knew it was okay to ask for it.”

Stefanie began as a young client in the 1970s, a time she remembers as having fewer modalities focused specifically on childhood developmental trauma. “I was in therapy for two years straight with this very Freudian type, pipe-smoking man. It was crazy and, ultimately, amazing!” Stefanie’s sessions included talk therapy, dream analysis, and building model airplanes together. “I came to understand what was going on with me,” she says.

Those early experiences informed Stefanie’s decision to become a therapist. She eventually enrolled at UCLA and worked at the Betty Ford Clinic. “I did a lot of addiction work, but I never really asked myself, what do I want? What’s my passion?” She stumbled upon the answer — trauma and spirituality — after attending an event featuring Peter Levine. “It was so hopeful! I didn’t understand that I had a body or nervous system or anything, nor was I doing therapy with people in a way that included the body,” she recalls. “All of a sudden, all of these pieces kind of fell into place, and I was like, I’m doing this three-year training!” 

But that was just the beginning. Stefanie went on to train with Lawrence Heller, MD, the creator of The NeuroAffective Relational Model®. “NARM really still feels like the model that speaks to me in the way I wanna work,” she explains. “It’s a brilliant model, but I think what I discovered from years of NARM teaching, consultation, and everything, was that my real passion was mentoring therapists.” 

This led to Stefanie joining long-time colleagues and friends Brad Kammer and Marcia Black in developing the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC). In their many years of supporting mental health professionals, they saw that therapists were searching for more than just clinical training, but looking for personal support through professional community. They wanted to create an organization that reflects the passion that they had developed through their work as therapists, teachers, consultants, and mentors. Stefanie is especially proud of the work the team has done to launch the SPACE Inner development Program for Therapists. “No matter what model someone practices, it’s turning the focus inward to inside-out learning, and nurturing the person.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Stefanie for her generosity of spirit and giving us this special glimpse into the transformative journey of how someone seeking healing from a young age can share their learning with the world in deep and meaningful ways.

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

Supporting Presence, Awareness, Connection, and Embodiment for Mental Health Professionals with Brad Kammer and Stefanie Klein of the Complex

Trauma Training Center

Creating SPACE for Self-Discovery and Community Support for Therapists

GUEST BIO & CONTACT

Complex Trauma Training Center

Stefanie Klein is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker who serves as the Assistant Training Director for the Complex Trauma Training Center (CTTC) where she is also a consultant and faculty in NARM® Trainings and the new SPACE program for psychotherapists. Stefanie has 30 years of experience practicing psychotherapy with adults in her Los Angeles private practice and has specialized in treating trauma and anxiety for the past 20 years. In her role as a mentor and teacher of psychotherapists working with complex trauma, she is most inspired by the desire to support other therapists to not only feel more effective in their work with clients, but to also experience more ease and fulfillment in their professional roles.

Many graduate students in psychology, counseling, and social work struggle to find their theoretical and clinical footing. As graduate students get closer to graduation, many feel under-prepared and ill-equipped to provide effective therapy to clients. Despite the differences between training in a depth-oriented model like NARM and studying traditional coursework required for a clinical degree, one student celebrates bridging these two different modes of learning to become a more confident and effective beginning therapist.

On this episode of Transforming Trauma, host Emily Ruth welcomes Caleb McNaughton, a graduate student currently seeking licensure in Tennessee. The pair discuss Caleb’s path that led him to enroll in the NARM Therapist Training as a graduate student. They also explore the friction that developed as Caleb began bringing back into his graduate program what he was learning in the NeuroAffective Relational Model, leading him to question, and at times push back on, his graduate school education and training. 

“Grad school can be like a jungle gym. It feels very confusing, like, what you’re supposed to take with you,” says Caleb. Hungry for finding a solid ground in a new career, Caleb stayed open to new ideas and approaches, which led him to explore depth-oriented clinical models like NARM. Studying NARM during his graduate program provided exceptional support. “I’m just so grateful to have the growth that I’ve had through this [NARM] training in a way that… impacted so many things around me”, Caleb reflects. “I love incorporating NARM into my papers, presentations, and things like that for grad school”

Caleb started grad school in his mid-20s. By then, he was already married and eager for answers to existential questions regarding his personal worth and professional belonging in the field. He was introduced to NARM through his father, Jason McNaughton, a NARM Master Therapist, and even though he had just started graduate school, Caleb decided to begin the NARM Therapist Training. “The training in NARM has provided so much growth”, says Caleb. “Every [NARM] module just kept going deeper. It just keeps cutting deeper every time and, the deeper it has cut, I feel like the more I understand about me.”

Although Caleb felt pretty familiar with NARM by the time he entered the clinical training, he wasn’t prepared for the personal shifts that occurred during the training. Caleb reflects on his process, “I’m going to get trained in this in-depth model, but it doesn’t feel like just a training. It’s like I’m getting to explore some very deep parts of my own life whilst I’m going through the training.” 

But, this deep clinical and personal growth often conflicted with what he was learning in his graduate program. Caleb began to question and even challenge his program, feeling that it wasn’t teaching what future therapists needed to learn. He was often met with lack of curiosity, and even outright resistance from his professors, who were quick to dismiss NARM. “I held a lot of judgment towards my professors,” he concedes. 

However, looking back now, Caleb says he wouldn’t change anything about his journey. “I feel like [NARM] made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. I don’t feel as stuck or running through that jungle gym wondering which branch to grab onto.” 

He also believes strongly that to better equip future therapists, traditional graduate programs in psychology, counseling and social work should incorporate more depth-orientation into their programs. Based on Caleb’s experience, he says, “I’d be really lost without NARM.”

Transforming Trauma thanks Caleb for his spirit of curiosity. We appreciate his willingness to explore new territories, even despite the push-back he received, and giving our community a glimpse into what can occur when we’re open to new learning and pathways for healing. 

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

Self-Discovery as a NARM Therapist with Alex White & Sabrena Ness

Supporting Presence, Awareness, Connection, and Embodiment for Mental Health Professionals with Brad Kammer and Stefanie Klein of the Complex Trauma Training Center

GUEST BIO

Caleb McNaughton, a graduate student, is currently seeking licensure in Chattanooga, Tennessee, alongside training in complex developmental trauma. Caleb received his undergrad in Sports Management from Covenant College. After graduation, Caleb spent a year as a missionary in Mexico. It was during this time that he felt led to pursue a degree in counseling. Caleb was introduced to the Neuro Affective Relational Model (NARM) through his father Jason McNaughton and his colleague Heather Parker, both NARM Master Therapists in Birmingham, AL.