Trauma and Spirituality

Catalog description

The field of trauma studies has evolved significantly in the last few decades. This course will introduce students to a whole-person approach to understanding and treating trauma, which encompasses the biological, somatic, social, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of human nature impacted by traumatic experiences. While learning skills for a trauma-informed approach, this course will discuss individual trauma as well as collective trauma, attending to the impact of socially based trauma, including race trauma, among others. As a result of the limited way spirituality is conceptualized in mainstream trauma theory, this course will discuss a spiritual trauma framework. Sri Aurobindo & The Mother's Integral Psychology will provide a theoretical framework within which the indivisible existential and transcendental aspects of trauma may be understood in a body-mind-psyche-spirit continuum. This course will seek to overcome the limitations of the way trauma is understood in mainstream psychology and psychiatry. This will lead us to a whole-person model of trauma, uniquely positioned to address the multidimensionality of trauma, the diversity of responses to traumatic events, and the uniqueness of individuals' healing and self-integration process.