Multidimensional Approach to Trauma, Body, Mind, and Spirit and Why it Matters

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The Gestalt Center
5 Saturdays:
10/9/21, 11/6/21, 12/4/21, 1/8/22 & 2/5/22
10am - 6pm (1 hour lunch break)

Presenters:
Judy Choix and Matthew Whaley
Price: $895.00 for all 5 days; $800.00 early bird incentive if signed up by August 1st

The body, mind, and psyche have a natural hierarchy that, when aligned, naturally orients the system toward health. When this happens, we are able to regulate and experience connection, support, and "flow" in daily life. We suffer and have a crisis in life not because we are broken, but because we are out of alignment and/or disconnected somewhere in this multi-dimensional field.

Through a Gestalt lens, using field theory and neuroscience, this workshop this five-day, comprehensive workshop on trauma proposes a multidimensional diagnostic model for identifying what trauma looks like in a client's body, mind, and psyche, and offers concrete methods of treatment to restore vitality and wholeness.

October 9th, Day 1: introduction

  • Theoretical framework

  • Holism and the field

  • What is trauma: single incident, acute, complex: (Note that this workshop will touch on but not go into depth around intergenerational, social and collective trauma. It is beyond the scope of this workshop)

  • The prevalence of trauma in our society

  • Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACE’s) and the importance of recognizing ACE’s experiences in our clients

  • The Triune Brain

  • How trauma effects the brain and brain development

    • The neurobiology of trauma – what’s going on In the brain when someone experiences trauma?

  • Neuroplasticity

  • Psychoeducation

November 6th, DAY 2: the body

BOTTOM-UP PROCESSING; The Reptile Brain: Intrapersonal

  • The Autonomic Nervous System and how trauma gets stuck in the body

  • Polyvagal Theory

  • ANS States: Recognizing and working with charge in the system

  • Neuroception, interoception and proprioception and the role they play in feeling safe in our body, relationship and in the world

  • How to help clients tolerate dysregulation and come back from hyper and/or hypoarousal

  • Help clients befriend the body and mitigate avoidance of sensations

  • Restoring sense of self through embodiment: grounding, sensing, orienting and self-touch

  • Using your body as therapist bas a regulating tool

December 4th, Day 3: the mind

THE BRIDGE: The Limbic/Emotional Brain: Interpersonal

  • Types of Relational trauma

  • How to Work with the limbic system to reverse the physiological imprint of trauma

  • Emotions and emotional regulation and its role in trauma

    • Affect tolerance

    • Completing unfinished business in the body and in relationship

  • Attachment Theory

    • How early trauma effects brain development

    • How a Client’s Attachment History Impacts the Treatment of Trauma

    • How to work with different attachment styles

  • The Role of Memory in keeping clients stuck in a trauma loop and how to eradicate the charge

    • Memory Reconsolidation

  • Therapist as a secure attachment

  • The importance of positive affect in transforming trauma

January 8th, Day 4: spirit

TOP-DOWN PROCESSING; The Thinking Brain: Transpersonal

  • Consciousness and Dissociation

  • How to work with implicit core beliefs ingrained by early trauma

  • How Trauma derails the time-keeping part of the brain and how to get it back online

  • How to work with dissociation and shift a client to present time

  • What is prediction bias in the brain and how to work with it

  • Self-States: Working with Parts

    • Chair work

    • Child work

  • Inner Critic

  • Creating a cohesive narrative

  • Imagination

    • The Future Self

February 5th, Day 5: integration

Review: Putting it all together; FLOW

  • Healing the fragmented Self

  • Post Traumatic Growth

  • Vicarious Trauma

  • Self-Compassion