Welcome to The NeuroAffective Touch® Institute
We Bridge The Divide Between Psychotherapy & Touch
Therapeutic Use of Touch as a Bridge to Body-Mind Integration
Our early experiences of touch lay the groundwork for our relational life. An attuned, caring touch is of the greatest importance to our brain’s development and emotional and cognitive maturation.
Under the direction of Dr. Aline LaPierre, our Institute trains mental health and body-centered practitioners in the therapeutic use of touch as a bridge to body-mind integration. We address trauma-based, unconscious emotional responses that cannot be reached through talk therapy or bodywork alone, establishing an integrated somatic foundation from which clients can build a stable, self-aware identity.
The Foundation Training
Our Foundation Training interweaves psychotherapy with a therapeutic relational touch to access the body’s interoceptive wisdom. Learners integrate a true somatic body-mind approach — a dual focus that is now at the forefront of advances in healing attachment wounds and developmental trauma.
Find Your Training
We offer our training fully in-person and in a hybrid online/in-person format to accommodate learners’ diverse geographical locations and needs. To help ensure the training is a good fit for you, we ask you to fill out a short application in the registration process.
Attuned Touch for Couples
Many couples are deeply connected but discover that something more profound needs healing. Before they can truly connect through shared vulnerability, they often need healing to help the body trust again. Our workshop, Thriving Together, blends gentle somatic practices, attuned presence, and practical, consent-driven tools to help couples deepen their connection and restore patterns of ease, warmth, and delight.
What is NeuroAffective Touch?
NeuroAffective Touch is a professional psychobiological approach that integrates the key elements of somatic psychotherapy, attachment and developmental theory, and affective and interpersonal neurobiology. Polyvagal-informed, our training uses intentional, mindful touch to bring the unconscious memories held in the body into conscious awareness. Through offering direct communication and support to the body at the nonverbal level, where we all receive our first imprints, NeuroAffective Touch treats lifelong emotional traumas to reconnect us to the wholeness of our relational matrix.
Simply the Best
"Aline is simply the best at bridging the divide between bodywork and talk! I highly recommend studying with her."
The fastest, safest, most gentle approach
Aline creates a very supportive and safe environment to practice the tools of bodywork techniques and client-centered therapeutic self-directed touch. I am now able to gently assist clients in moving past defenses and projections. This enables them to experience the trust, relaxation, and internalized sense of safety they had never experienced before.
Effectively working with relational trauma
Karen Bauman, MA, NMT, SEPI consider myself incredibly fortunate to learn from Aline. Her knowledge in the field of somatic psychology is vast. Her compassion is palpable. And her ability to help me grasp what she knows and feel what she feels has been a gift — I have no doubt Aline will be known for years to come as a pioneer in integrating bodywork and psychotherapy.
Integration of relational and somatic models
The integration of relational psychodynamic and somatic models makes the work especially useful for most of my clients struggle with: an arrest at one stage or another of their development.
Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship
The international bestseller co-authored by Dr. Aline LaPierre. More about Healing Developmental Trauma >
“Healing Developmental Trauma provides clear guidance to help us hold, with knowledge and self-compassion, those seemingly irreconcilable opposites and is a vital and accessible map supporting emotional maturity and psycho-spiritual growth.”
Peter A. Levine, PhD
Founder of Somatic Experiencing
Who is Dr. Aline LaPierre?
Aline is the creator of NeuroAffective Touch and director of the NeuroAffective Touch Institute.
Dually trained as a psychotherapist and a bodyworker, she has been pioneering the integration of body and mind for over 35 years.
She was faculty in the somatic doctoral program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute for ten years and is currently President of the United States Association of Body Psychotherapy and Editor-in-Chief of the International Body Psychotherapy Journal.
More about Aline >
Initiating Post-Trauma Growth
“By fostering safety, trust, and curiosity, we can rewrite our life stories. When we bring talk and touch together, we access our innate wholeness and cultivate the heart-centered connection that supports post-trauma growth.”
—Aline LaPierre
