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Live Webinar

Polyvagal Essentials for Every Clinician: Practical Applications for Safety, Attachment, Trauma and Anxiety


Speaker:
Debra Premashakti Alvis, PhD
Duration:
Full Day
Product Code:
LWC056185
Brochure Code:
PWZ90030
Media Type:
Live Webinar - Also available: Digital Seminar | Live Webinar

Dates

     $249.99  $49.99 - Exclusive offer when combined with this live training.
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Description

Many of our clients struggle to find and maintain the safety needed to face the risks and the wonder inherent in living.

The Polyvagal Theory has been termed the science of safety. This safety allows us to regulate our emotions, process our trauma memories, and engage with others successfully.

This work gives us a psychological and physiological understanding of our shifts through mobilization, disconnection, and engagement. Dr. Stephen Porges’ evidenced perspective shapes new approaches to trauma treatment, relational concerns, and mood disorders.

Your presenter, Dr. Debra Alvis, will give you the science and theory in easy to understand language…and in an applied manner. End the day knowing how to map the autonomic response and how to repattern the autonomic nervous system for safety.

Experiential exercises and worksheets provided in the live webcast will guide you in the application of polyvagal knowledge to clinical work.

Join Debra for this exciting day of theory, research, and application. A well-seasoned and national presenter, she brings an extensive background in neuroscience, the experience of a twenty-five-year clinical practice, and a love of whole-person treatment approaches to the seminar.

Enjoy anecdotes, take in clinical scenarios designed to clarify application principles, and practice interventions with Debra’s expert guidance. Return to your practice with:

  • New, evidence-based approaches to replace clients’ maladaptive protective patterns
  • Ways to enhance your clients’ capacity to connect to the self and others
  • A transformational understanding of the autonomic nervous system to promote healing from trauma wounds

Credits

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.



CE Information Coming Soon

Continuing education credit information is coming soon for this live webcast.
 



Handouts/Brochure

Speaker

Debra Premashakti Alvis, PhD's Profile

Debra Premashakti Alvis, PhD Related seminars and products


Debra Alvis, PhD, is a licensed psychologist and private practitioner with over twenty-five years of clinical experience. She specializes in an integrative approach bringing together polyvagal, neuroscientific, and somatic principles to treat trauma and co-morbid disorders.

Debra discovered that the polyvagal approach facilitates a mindful awareness of the biological reactions influencing the therapist/client relationship and the client’s sense of safety in the world. Integrating physiological, brain-based, body-focused approaches with traditional psychotherapeutic orientations helped clients to recover more easefully and quickly from trauma. In addition, with an increased sense of safety and connectedness, clients more frequently practiced the strategies required to move toward thriving. Debra has refined the application of this integrative model through her work in private practice and as a clinical supervisor, educator, and consultant.

Dr. Alvis developed and led the Mind/Body Program at the University of Georgia where she now teaches health psychology graduate students to apply polyvagal, neuroscientific, and somatic approaches, serves as project director for federal grants focusing on integrative healthcare, and develops mindfulness-based research studies. A thirty-year personal contemplative practice and over a thousand hours training as a mindfulness and yoga teacher further enrich her presentations.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Debra Alvis maintains a private practice and receives a speaking honorarium from Asadis Training, Essential Therapy Training, Georgia Museum of Art, Bascom Museum of Art, and Mountain Area Health Education Center. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Debra Alvis is a member of the American Association of College Student Personnel, the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, the Association of Specialists in Group Work, the Athens Area Psychological Association, and the Georgia Psychological Association.


Additional Info

Access Period for Live Webcast

For live CE credit, you must watch the live webcast in its entirety at its scheduled time and complete the CE quiz and evaluation within one week. You will have access for 90 days after the program for review.


Webcast Schedule

Please note: There will be a 70-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks; one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Lunch and break times will be announced by the speaker and at their discretion. A more detailed schedule is available upon request.


Questions?

Visit our FAQ page at www.pesi.com/faq or contact us at www.pesi.com/info


Objectives

  1. Analyze how the Polyvagal Theory expands therapeutic knowledge and treatment concerning trauma, anxiety, depression, and social engagement disorders.
  2. Compose everyday language to better explain the Polyvagal Theory, helping clients understand their symptoms and increase their motivation.
  3. Assess client states of threat, risk, and safety and identify effective polyvagal interventions.
  4. Integrate therapist co-regulation tools designed build the client’s self-regulation capacities.
  5. Apply interventions to enhance self-regulation, support internal calm, increase feelings of safety, and increase social engagement.
  6. Utilize awareness-based approaches to strengthen resiliency.
  7. Employ contemplative practices that strengthen the clients’ capacity to shift their nervous system to better manage physiologic responses.

Outline

The Polyvagal Theory & How It Drives Behaviors
  • The biology of safety and danger
  • Evolutionary changes and adaptive functions
  • Social engagement, fight/flight, and shutdown
  • The human response hierarchy for challenges
  • Face-heart connection – the how and why of nervous system regulation
  • Gestures, vocalizations, facial expressions
  • Polyvagal theory risks and limitations in clinical practice
Building Skills to Assess & Increase Safety
  • Recognize how environments trigger physiological states
  • Identify adaptive physiological reactions and maladaptive behaviors
  • Build greater nervous systems flexibility:
    • Play as a neural exercise
    • Listening as a neural exercise
    • Attending to visceral feelings and social cues
Strengthen Self-Regulation Skills
  • Increase autonomic state awareness to strengthen emotional regulation
    • Map vagal states with writing, drawing, & mirroring
    • Identify social cues that initiate defensive reactions
    • Explore the regulation/dysregulation continuum
Establish Disorder-Specific Skills to Address Mood and Attachment
  • Recognize & shift characteristic nervous system states for depression, anxiety, and attachment
  • Soothe anxiety
    • Navigate the sympathetic response
    • Escape the tiger!
  • Enliven from depression:
    • Engage with awe, experience wonder
    • Savor moments and states
  • Repair attachment to self & others:
    • Belongingness treasures
    • Explore the face/heart connection
Negotiate Trauma Treatment – Explore Abuse and Neglect Responses
  • Name defense strategies of fight, flight, and immobilization
  • Highlight adaptive functions of immobilization, fight, & flight
  • Label defense reaction behaviors
  • Repattern social withdrawal & shutdown responses
Recognize Autonomic States & Strengthen Resiliency Through Contemplative Practice
  • How contemplative practices enhance nervous system responses
  • The five senses & the polyvagal system
  • Build present moment & witnessing skills
    • Autonomic meditations
    • Gentle movements and interoceptive awareness
    • Titrate movement into stillness
    • Tone the vagal nerve with breath, sound, & imagery
Expedite Recovery, Increase Well-Being – The Polyvagal Therapeutic Container
  • Co-regulate with the client
    • Recognize, Reach, Resonate, Regulate
    • Conclude the session with a return to social engagement
    • Yawn and stretch
    • Body calming
  • Evoke safety through room & exterior design
Returning to Practice Integrating a Polyvagal Approach
  • Establish relational reciprocity & repair skills
    • Perfect Nurturer Imagery
    • Syncing the breath
  • Build relationships with self and others
    • Self-compassion practices to fuel empathy
    • Connection through compassion

Target Audience

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

Reviews

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