A course in integrated trauma-informed practice
Compassionate Inquiry & Acupuncture for Emotional Trauma
There is a threshold in healing work where technique alone no longer serves.
Where treating patterns without understanding their story leaves both practitioner and patient incomplete. Where the body holds what the mind cannot yet speak — and something deeper is waiting to be heard.
Every person carries a song within them. Shaped by early experience, written in the body's tissues, echoed in the patterns that repeat across a lifetime. Most healing approaches address the symptoms of that song — the anxiety, the pain, the disconnection. This course invites you to trace it to its source.
Tracing Your Deep Song offers a rare integration: the psychological depth of Compassionate Inquiry with the somatic wisdom of Unified Acupuncture Theory. Together, these two traditions create something neither could achieve alone — a path to the emotional truth held in the body, and the tools to help it move.
This is not another technique course. It is an invitation to become a different kind of practitioner — one who listens not just with the hands and the mind, but with the whole of their presence.
The body remembers what the mind has set aside. Our work is to create enough safety that it can finally be heard.
Course structure
The course is designed deliberately — foundation first, integration second, consolidation last. You arrive at the in-person intensive already rooted, so that the weaving of acupuncture and CI can happen at depth.
Phase One
Building the Foundation
Nine weeks · Online
A deep immersion in Compassionate Inquiry — the trauma-informed approach developed by Dr. Gabor Maté — giving you the relational and somatic skills that underpin everything that follows.
Phase Two
The Integration
Five days · In-person
With your CI foundation established, we gather to weave in the acupuncture. This is where the two traditions begin to speak to each other — in your hands, in the room, in the presence you bring.
Location: Mount St. Anne's Retreat & Conference Centre, Killenard, Portarlington, Co. Laois, Ireland.
Phase Three
Integration & Closing
Two sessions · Online
The learning doesn't end when we leave the room. These two follow-up Zoom sessions give you space to bring your real clinical experiences back to the group — to reflect on what has shifted, troubleshoot what feels uncertain, and consolidate what you are growing into.
Dates & investment
| With accommodation | Without accommodation | |
|---|---|---|
| Launch Pricevalid through August 16, 2026 | €2,500 | €2,000 |
| Early Birduntil end of August | €3,100 | €2,600 |
| Full Price | €3,700 | €3,200 |
Course pricing above is in EUR. The optional CI CE credit fee (CAD $150) is separate, billed in CAD, and applies only to the Phase One / FSC portion of the course.
The framework for transformation
Drawing from ancient wisdom traditions, this course works through three essential and interwoven components. Together they create the conditions for genuine transformation — not just symptom relief.
The Vessel
Safety before depth. Acupuncture patterns that create containment and structure — the conditions under which overwhelming emotions can finally be met without flooding.
The Prima Materia
The emotions themselves as the substance of healing — not pathological excess to be eliminated, but vital qi seeking its proper expression and flow.
The Fire
The catalytic process where stuck emotional energy begins to move. Where the story held in the body is finally heard — and released into something new.
What you will learn
Traditional Chinese Medicine has long viewed emotions as potentially damaging forces. This course offers a different and more generative understanding — emotions as types of qi with vital functions, seeking expression rather than suppression.
The full facilitated short course with Dr. Gabor Maté's teachings — the psychological and relational skills that make everything else possible.
How emotional trauma manifests in the channels, organs and extraordinary vessels — and what that reveals about the patient's deeper story.
Acupuncture patterns that create safety and containment when emotions overwhelm — the essential foundation before transformation can begin.
Five Element treatments that restore the proper flow and function of each emotion — working with them rather than against them.
Structural treatments that support integration of deep emotional work — holding the space as the patient's system reorganises itself.
How to read the moment — when a patient needs containment, when they are ready for transformation, and how to move fluidly between the two.
Who this course is for
Not every practitioner is ready for this work. Those who are will recognise themselves here.
Your guides
Jonathan Shubs
Acupuncturist · Developer of Unified Acupuncture Theory
Jonathan brings 20 years of clinical practice and a lifetime of deep study of channel theory. His development of Unified Acupuncture Theory — a comprehensive understanding of the channels and their interactions — and his training in Compassionate Inquiry create a rare bridge between technical precision and psychological depth. He brings the rigour of the clinician and the openness of someone who has sat with profound suffering and learned to listen.
Mary Lennon
CI Practitioner · Mentor · Short Course Educator
Mary is a Certified Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner, Mentor and Short Course Educator whose background spans Traditional Chinese Medicine and aviation — two disciplines that share an uncompromising commitment to safety and precision under pressure. She creates learning environments grounded in trust and practical application, where practitioners feel genuinely held as they do their own deepening.
Your patients are already carrying their deep song. This course gives you the ears to hear it — and the hands to help it move.
Enquire about the next cohort