Raja Selvam

According to Advaita Vedanta, one of the important qualifications for attaining enduring enlightenment or non-dual wisdom is the ability to tolerate opposites on all levels of the psyche. Because awareness has a tendency to constrict to levels of being that are lacking such capacity, transcendent non-dual awareness beyond those levels can be hard to maintain. And because awareness also has the opposite tendency to abandon levels of being lacking such capacity, it can be difficult to have imminent awareness of all levels of psyche that is characteristic of the non-dual state. Traumatic experiences that fragment our physical and subtle bodies can severely compromise our ability to tolerate the opposites in on both levels. Contacting and working through the polarities in traumatic experiences that are often split off offer potential opportunities for greatly enhancing the physical body container for extreme physical, emotional, and relational experiences. And the physical body thus strengthened can provide a strong container for transforming disturbances in the subtle body from overwhelming experiences, from past and present lives. There are also other potential benefits of such work.  Those who have had spiritual breakthroughs from traumas can embody their wisdom to a greater extent. Greater fluidity between physical and subtle bodies can bring more well-being to all levels of the psyche. And ultimately, the increase in the ability to maintain the non-dual level of awareness from a greater ability to tolerate opposites on all levels of the psyche, with minimal constriction to or splitting of from any level of the psyche, can make available the incomparable non-dual wisdom to self and others on a more consistent basis in every context including psychotherapy.

In the workshop, Raja will present the above ideas in depth through lectures and demonstrations using the Integral Trauma Resolution (ITR) approach. ITR is a neurophysiology and energy based approach for treating symptoms of stress, trauma, emotion, and attachment that is precise, efficient, consistent, embodied, and evidence-based. It has been developed by Raja Selvam, PhD from treating such symptoms in cultures as diverse as the U.S., Europe, Brazil, Israel, India, and China; and from teaching and further developing Somatic Experiencing (SE), a trauma resolution approach initially developed by Peter Levine, PhD.

Raja Selvam, Ph.D.,a senior Somatic Expericing (SE) trainer and a faculty member at the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, lectures and teaches in the U.S., England, France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Israel, India, China, and Brazil. Raja’s increasingly eclectic approach draws from bodywork systems of Postural Integration and Biodynamic Cranio-Sacral Therapy, body-psychotherapy systems of Bioenergetics and Bodynamic Analysis, Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, psychoanalytic schools of Object Relations and Inter-Subjectivity, Somatic Experiencing (SE), Affective Neuroscience, and Advaita Vedanta, a spiritual tradition from India.