Full Course Description

Bringing the Body into Therapy: Clinical Tools from Relationship Repair and Somatic Experiencing

When it comes to tapping into clients’ natural resources for healing from trauma, the body is an invaluable tool. Not only does it store information about our early attachment experiences, but it shows the signs of epigenetic and transgenerational influences. The body reveals how trauma negatively impacts relationships with friends, partners, colleagues, and loved ones. But research and experience show that trauma behaviors aren’t set in stone. Pulling from the latest developments in Somatic Experiencing and neuroplasticity, this recording will teach you a dynamic toolkit of body-oriented approaches for treating early developmental trauma as well as helping clients improve nervous-system regulation and repair relationships. You’ll explore:

The neurophysiological and embodied underpinnings of healthy relationships
How to create a vibrant experience of resilience and wholeness in your work
How implicit memory shapes our physiological and psychological responses to trauma and recovery
Three skills to work with the autonomic nervous system to rebound from trauma and overwhelm

Program Information

Objectives

Appraise the concepts of attachment theory, interoception, and the window of tolerance in the treatment of psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Evaluate the theory that traumatic memories are stored primarily in implicit memory.
Formulate a treatment process based on the approach of Somatic Experiencing for the treatment of trauma and discuss risks and limitations.
Practice three skills to work with the autonomic nervous system to rebound from trauma and overwhelm.

Outline

Introduction to Rupture and Repair cycles in attachment relationships, Interpersonal Neurobiology from a somatic perspective
Present Somatic Experiencing and the Window of Tolerance in the Autonomic Nervous System Model
Introduce interoception-based tracking and stabilization tools
Utilizing interoception in Relational repair models with demonstration
Explore attachment theory from a physiological lens
Mirroring intervention for attachment disruption

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Art Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/11/2022

Treating Collective Trauma with Hakomi: Listening to the Body

The Hakomi Method is a multidimensional somatic approach to deep healing rooted in an understanding of the silent language of the body. In the moment-by-moment unfolding of their somatic awareness, clients learn to access the unconscious core beliefs that shape their response to trauma, even when it’s woven within the larger context of collective trauma. Discover how the therapist’s own somatic awareness can help clients untangle the complex area where individual and collective trauma meet, and learn techniques to stay attuned and somatically grounded to effectively work with trauma. In this recording, you’ll explore:

The key Hakomi concepts of applied mindfulness and somatic awareness to help clients change rigid mental models
Attachment- and compassion-based skills that facilitate a gentle inquiry into the body’s messages
How to apply gentle interventions that can yield clients’ emotional defenses and trauma identities
How to stay self-regulated, somatically grounded, and open-hearted when working with trauma-sensitive processes

Program Information

Objectives

Use the key Hakomi concepts of applied mindfulness and somatic awareness to improve outcomes when treating trauma.
Apply attachment- and compassion-based skills that facilitate the experiential process into the body-mind.
Develop an experiential mindset to hold the multilayered complexity of trauma in sessions.
Demonstrate the essential Hakomi personhood skills that help therapists stay grounded and self-regulated while in therapeutic engagement.

Outline

Implement the key Hakomi concepts of applied mindfulness and somatic awareness to improve outcomes when treating trauma.
- Applied mindfulness is an integrated skills set by the Hakomi therapist to facilitate an in-depth process
- Learning to ask targeted questions to facilitate a safe somatic awareness for clients
- Not all somatic or mindfulness interventions are suitable for trauma clients, learning to differentiate what tool fits which client is essential for treatment success
Apply attachment- and compassion-based skills that facilitate the experiential process into the body-mind.
- Hakomi holds the value of loving presence of the therapist as essential to convey compassion to the clients traumatic experience
- Applying attachment theory informed interventions to regulate clients internal somatic states
Develop an experiential mindset to hold the multilayered complexity of trauma in sessions.
- Learn what it means to be an experiential therapist by trying out present moment and safe experiments that include play, breath and movement
- Recognize that trauma clients don’t fit one treatment approach size fits all
Explain the essential Hakomi personhood skills that help therapists stay grounded and self-regulated while in therapeutic engagement.
- The role of the therapist is not just about a skill set but how they embody themselves and stay curious about their own process
- Developing a somatic repertoire to stay grounded in the body when clients trauma feels overwhelming or triggering

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals

Copyright : 02/16/2021

The Modern Abolitionist

Somatic abolitionist. It’s how Resmaa Menakem, popular trainer, speaker, and bestselling author of My Grandmother’s Hands, defines himself. He’s managed military counseling services for more than 50 bases in war-torn Afghanistan, consulted on trauma and healing for large school districts and police departments, and trained with top trauma and somatic experts to refine and teach his particular healing path of Cultural Somatics: an embodied, antiracist way of living.

For years, he’d watched as well-intentioned therapists tried reading, talking, and thinking their way past the intangible, living nature of racism in order to do good, culturally aware work. But white supremacy lives in the body, just as racial trauma does.

In this recording, Menakem will show us how intergenerational trauma comprises brutal experiences and realities, compounded over time, from which our ancestors couldn’t heal. He’ll offer a road map for learning how to slow down enough to discern, in ourselves and others, historical from personal pain, and the role we may be unwittingly playing in keeping the effects of racism alive in our bodies.

Program Information

Objectives

Assess the stress signs and symptoms of racialized trauma.
Integrate the basics of the HIPP model (historical, inter-generational, persistent institutional, personal) of racialized trauma into your clinical practice.
Demonstrate one resourcing technique to use with trauma clients.

Outline

Racialized Trauma: The myth of race and historical trauma
How the body carries racialized trauma
Resilience and community in healing
A roadmap for healing

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Art Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/10/2022

Helping Clients Who Can’t "Feel"

Nothing defeats a therapist more than a client who’s numb or disconnected. When you ask why they’ve come for help, they may say, “I’m depressed” or “I’ve lost all hope,” but they can’t describe how they feel.

How can we help clients like this deepen into the work of therapy?

This recording offers a body-centered approach to helping clients access emotion and connect to themselves in a way that can’t be defeated by numbing. You’ll learn to use simple movements and sensations as a therapeutic entry point to help clients appreciate how their bodies prevent them from experiencing the emotions they’re entitled to feel.

Program Information

Outline

Why therapists need clients to ‘feel’

What the client cannot feel is not available for treatment
Therapeutic models emphasize emotional connection

The role of the autonomic nervous system

Numbness and avoidance as autonomic symptoms
How emotional numbing helps children survive

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: a somatic approach

Addressing numbness and ‘avoidance’ as somatic issues
A somatic approach to increasing the sense of safety
Using ‘feeling’ alternatives
Integrating movement and play into psychotherapy
Empowering clients to self-connection

Objectives

Reframe emotional and somatic numbing as a body phenomenon to improve clinical outcomes.
Discuss the role of emotional numbing in the client’s survival or adaptation to trauma.
Describe the autonomic arousal model and its role in emotional numbing.
Identify body-centered interventions that increase sensation or energy.
Implement strategies that increase autonomic arousal.

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/22/2019

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Body Oriented Therapy Techniques for Trauma and Attachment

The body’s intelligence is largely an untapped resource in psychotherapy. Few educational programs in psychology or counseling emphasize how to draw on the wisdom of the body to support therapeutic change, leaving therapists mostly dependent on a client’s verbal narrative. Yet the story told by the “somatic narrative”—gesture, posture, prosody, facial expressions, eye gaze, and movement—is arguably more significant than the story told by the words. This talk will elucidate the wisdom of the body and how to tap the body itself to support therapeutic goals.

Program Information

Outline

The Wisdom of the Body

Why the movement and posture is important target of intervention
How to use mindfulness to tap the wisdom of the body (embedded relational mindfulness)
Discovering resources of the body to stabilize arousal

Legacies of Trauma and Attachment

Use of movement to process traumatic memory
Use of movement to support adaptive relationships

Objectives

Choose three somatic resources to regulate arousal
Determine “bottom up processing” to resolve traumatic memory
Distinguish proximity-seeking actions and how they relate to the client experience
Integrate embedded relational mindfulness within treatment planning for client sessions

Target Audience

Counselors
Marriage and Family Therapists
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Other Mental Health Professionals

Hope for Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Sensorimotor Approach to Change

The very nature of depression often thwarts efforts to treat it. After all, it’s difficult to change when you have no energy, no hope, and no capacity to concentrate. How can we challenge these chronic states? Using interventions from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, this recording will introduce ways to help clients relate to their depressive symptoms mindfully, rather than identifying with them, and to manage physical symptoms through changes in posture, breath, and energy. You’ll discover how to:

Help clients separate depressive thoughts from physical symptoms so that each can be treated separately
Counter cognitive beliefs that reinforce depressive states by experimenting with new words, new actions, and new habits
Use body-centered interventions, such as movement, to increase energy and focus in depressed clients
Facilitate development of an “antidepressant lifestyle” rather than habitual engagement in the opposite

Program Information

Objectives

Differentiate to clients depression as a somatic state, not just a psychological state.
Determine cognitive schemas that reinforce depressive states to improve client outcomes.
Appraise a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy approach to understanding depression.
Assess three body-centered interventions that increase energy and focus in depressed clients.
Evaluate Sensorimotor interventions that transform depressive beliefs.
Evaluate the use of the social engagement system and its role in evoking an internal sense of safety as it relates to treatment.

Outline

Explain to clients about depression as a somatic state, not just a psychological state.

Depression and the nervous system
How depression aids survival in childhood

Identify cognitive schemas that reinforce depressive states to improve client outcomes.

Making meaning of depressive feelings and states
How negative beliefs affect the body and nervous system

Describe a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy approach to understanding depression.

Teaching clients to become curious and interested
Studying the interaction of thoughts, feelings and body reactions

Identify three body-centered interventions that increase energy and focus in depressed clients.

Experimenting with movement and posture
Techniques for increasing energy in the body

Explore Sensorimotor interventions that transform depressive beliefs.

Beliefs condition the body
The body conditions and reinforces beliefs

Discuss the use of the social engagement system and its role in evoking an internal sense of safety as it relates to treatment.

The social engagement system as a neural or somatic system
How therapists can make use of somatic communication to enhance therapeutic effectiveness

Target Audience

Counselors
Social Workers
Psychologists
Psychotherapists
Therapists
Marriage & Family Therapists
Addiction Counselors
Case Managers
Physicians
Nurses
Other Mental Health Professionals