Coming to Your Senses: Recovering from Trauma by Learning to Safely Inhabit Your Body
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The Emergence of a Polyvagal-Informed Therapy: Harnessing Neuroception of Safety in Clinical Treatment
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Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Body Oriented Therapy Techniques for Trauma and Attachment
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A Mind-Body Approach to Race-Based Traumatic Stress Recovery
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The Body as a Shared Whole: Using Visualization Techniques to Treat Dissociation
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Panel Discussion & Conference Closing - Day 1
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Energy psychology (EP) (e.g. Tapping) is an evidenced based approach (over 125 published studies) to treat trauma, anxiety, stress and other important clinical problems. This presentation will show you can use Emotional Freedom Techniques and other EP approaches to rapidly down regulate the body so that your clients can better process and respond to stressful and traumatic events. Learn how these approaches can be used within a trauma informed framework and integrated with other clinical skills. Discover how you can use these approaches both as an empowering tool for self care for both clients and therapists as well as a rich and flexible clinical tool that allows for deep healing of traumatic events without abreaction and re-traumatization.
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Trauma imprints a legacy of hopeless, despair, and shame which prevents building a foundational sense of self and interrupts resolution. Using the Parallel Lives model, Becoming Safely Embodied helps clients discover how the past is intruding into their present. Using a mindfulness-based approach, they can learn to track triggers, slow down reactivity, and let internal experience rise, crest, and fall.
This presentation presents the Becoming Safely Embodied model and its integration of ancient traditions from the yoga and mindfulness world into attachment theory and psychotherapy. These practices help clients to build new pathways that remap their internal experience and facilitate a solid sense of self capable of holding whatever comes up. With greater internal capacity, the client can contain and tolerate the emotional intensity that healing requires.
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After years of doing body-based trauma resolution work, as a psychodynamic, relationally-oriented psychotherapist, I have arrived at the conviction that what lives in the body determines much of what we feel and how we perceive ourselves and the world. We think the body lives in the present, but it actually responds most vividly to unmetabolized trauma responses that are alive and well in the nervous system.
Somatic Experiencing® offers approaches that allow us to help clients move from the disorganization of unmetabolized trauma responses to the organization of a coherent, regulated system. We are, in a very real sense, bringing the body up to date when we invite clients to notice their physiological responses and help them to learn how to allow old responses that are “stuck” in the body to move through and complete themselves.
Because we each carry a blueprint for health at the core of our body-mind being, the natural tendency of the body to move toward health and wholeness becomes our constant companion in this healing journey. We also cultivate the benevolent observer, so that clients are supported to be able to move through unresolved trauma responses with awareness and a whole, integrated brain.
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We live in a time of collective trauma. It is a shared experience that impacts the psychological and somatic health for both clients and therapist. The trauma therapist experiences the same systemic and societal forces as the clients they work with. The ongoing nature of the collective stress can feel groundless and can lead to overwhelm, hopelessness and bodily disconnect. This presentation will provide clinical tips on how to utilize somatic interventions for both client and therapist. We will examine the impact of collective trauma on the therapist-client work and how to apply a mindset towards resiliency. Through understanding the importance of somatic intelligence, a concrete pathway towards more compassionate capacity becomes available.
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Those oppressed by violence in daily life struggle due to lack of access to everything that provides refuge and safety. This presentation will share embodied breath, somatic and movement practices that offer stabilization, grounding, and state-shifting for both client and therapist well-being.
Recognizing that the most essential ingredient for client co-regulation is therapist self-regulation, this presentation offers embodied approaches that equally serve the therapeutic alliance.
A mix of theoretical and scientific principles from Polyvagal-informed Dance/Movement therapy will buoy these practices, developed by the presenters 23 years working with survivors of complex, relational and historic trauma seeking refuge from war, violence and torture.
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Join the day’s speakers as they come together to discuss the various approaches that were collectively discussed. Hear the key highlights each speaker learned from each of the presentations and how mental health clinicians can best integrate the science and skills offered during the day’s conference.
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Neurobiology has proven to us that we must “come to our senses” when it comes to restoring mind and body after trauma. Expressive arts therapy is a somatically-based approach that addresses not only through brain-wise methods, but also the body’s sensory experience of trauma in ways that no other methods can.
This presentation provides you with the basic concepts necessary to apply expressive approaches to help clients access embodied awareness and to effectively address experiences that leave individuals stuck in terror, isolation, and shame. Participants will specifically learn how to integrate simple rhythmic, movement-oriented, image-making, and other techniques that will help traumatized clients begin to once again feel safe, calm, and enlivened.
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Somatic Intervention skills are an essential addition to every relationship therapist’s toolbox. There is no conversation worth having if the nervous system isn’t in a settled state. When couples become emotionally charged it’s because they’re feeling threatened. Their nervous systems become alert, ready to defend. This defence serves to keep vulnerable feelings buried and interferes with their ability to effectively engage with their partner. In this presentation, I will offer strategies to enable couples to settle their nervous systems in order to delve more deeply into the sources of distress so that constructive solutions can emerge.
The body “holds” so much emotional information that isn’t always accessible through words. Participants will learn to identify subtle physical signs that one or both partners are feeling threatened or distressed and be able to intervene on a somatic level. Where words alone often fail, these interventions can lead to a deeper exploration of what underlies their unhappiness.
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Dreamwork as contemplative practice facilitates psychospiritual wellness through the medicines of rest and restful activity and gentle contemplation of personal embodiment and sensory experience(s).
This presentation provides practitioners with an overview of the theoretical foundations and guiding principles of contemplative dreamwork and the basic progression of contemplative dreamwork to support clients in accessing embodied awareness and increased aliveness.
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Watch this workshop recording for a unique opportunity to participate in an intensive, experiential and rejuvenating experience while learning techniques to help your clients. You will learn the latest scientific brain research related to yoga and mindfulness and how to implement brain changing practices, yogic interventions, specific mindfulness techniques, and self-compassion techniques in all phases of your therapy sessions.
This recording takes it a step further because you will experience first-hand the transformative power of meditation and mindful activities during clinical exercises and demonstration. Each day contains a balance of lecture with times of clinical meditation exercises, clinical yoga practices, and lunch will be provided for you to practice mindful eating.
Watch Mary and Rick NurrieStearns, who have co-led yoga and meditation workshops and retreats for several years and bring close to 70 years of combined experience in clinical meditation and clinical yoga practice. They are experts at showing clinicians how to empower clients to:
This is a rare opportunity that you won’t want to miss! You are sure to leave feeling refreshed and excited to take this back to your clinical practice!
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