Indigenous Focusing Oriented Trauma Therapy

What is IFOT?

Healing that starts at the root, not the surface

IFOT works with the felt sense, the body's own knowing of where pain lives. Rather than managing symptoms, practitioners guide people to locate and release the original wound, using frameworks drawn from Indigenous knowledge systems: the Four Directions, the Medicine Circle, and the Trauma Awareness Wheel.

All programs are delivered by Jules Inishinapay-Tapas (I.C.C., I.F.O.T.T.), one of the few certified IFOT Coordinators in Canada, certified in 2012 under Dr. Eugene Gendlin and Shirley Turcotte.

Tiers 1 and 2 are open to anyone, survivors seeking to heal and become more informed, and frontline workers with their own reasons to take the training. All nations welcome.

Curriculum

The 7 modules

Each module is delivered in-person over three days, working with the inner child and the felt sense.

Module 1. Experiential Therapies

• Advanced listening skills including body language awareness
• Evocative empathy and person-centred therapy principles
• Role play, Gestalt, emotion-focused, existential, narrative, and transpersonal therapy
• Indigenous healing approaches, mind, body, and spirit
• Ethics, confidentiality, and client safety
• Focusing psychotherapy in cross-cultural settings

Module 2. Complex Trauma

• Definition, assessment, and treatment of Complex Trauma and PTSD
• Impact of neglect and physical, sexual, emotional, and group abuse
• Intergenerational abuse, residential school trauma, colonization, and oppression
• Attachment disorders, child development effects, and family violence dynamics
• Traumatic bonding, secondary trauma prevention, and grounding techniques

Module 3. Basic Focusing and Complex Trauma

• The six movements of Focusing, foundational application
• Brain imaging research (Van Der Kolk) on memory and PTSD
• Declarative vs. non-declarative memory; real vs. false memory
• Dissociation, splitting, projection, fragmentation, attachment disorders
• The client's inner critic; transference and countertransference
• Practice: leading a client through a basic Focusing session

Module 4. Intermediate Focusing and Complex Trauma

• Vicarious traumatization, effects, prevention, and self-care
• Focusing in couples therapy and relationship-based Complex Trauma
• Suicide intervention and its community impact
• Addictions and Complex Trauma; Focusing in addiction treatment
• Cross-cultural case management, charting, legal issues, debriefing

Module 5. Advanced Focusing and Complex Trauma

• The Medicine Circle concept in Focusing psychotherapy
• Defense mechanisms: suppression, repression, dissociation, DID
• Advanced PTSD symptom management: flashbacks, rage, self-injury, nightmares
• Amnesia and hypo/hyper trauma states
• Practice: advanced Focusing session facilitation

Module 6. Advanced Focusing Psychotherapy and Complex Trauma

• Integrating experiential therapies in advanced Focusing sessions
• DSM, personality disorders, and differentiating from PTSD
• Mood disorders and clinical depression assessment
• Psychodrama, grief, loss, and working with speechless clients

Module 7. Spirituality, Dreams & Applied Project

• The role of spirituality in healing, ceremonies, rituals, sacred boundaries
• Indigenous spiritual healing values, meanings, and memory energies
• Whole-body Focusing; dream analysis and art therapy techniques
• Applied Project: facilitate a community-relevant healing project