Peter Levine – Healing Trauma Workshop Series

Description Of Healing Trauma Workshop Series

ABOUT THIS WORKSHOP

“I have come to the conclusion that human beings are born with an innate capacity to triumph over trauma. I believe not only that trauma is curable, but that the healing process can be a catalyst for profound awakening—a portal opening to emotional and genuine spiritual transformation.”
— DR. PETER LEVINE

Join Dr. Peter Levine, Founder of Somatic Experiencing (SE™), in this four part workshop series exploring different aspects of understanding and healing trauma.

Somatic Experiencing (SE™) is a body-oriented therapeutic model applied in multiple professions and professional settings—psychotherapy, medicine, coaching, teaching, and physical therapy—for healing trauma and other stress disorders. It is based on a multidisciplinary intersection of physiology, psychology, ethology, biology, neuroscience, indigenous healing practices, and medical biophysics and has been helping individuals find release and healing from trauma & stress for more than four decades.

This four part-series with Dr. Peter Levine explores key topics in Somatic Experiencing (SE™) and its approach to trauma therapy. Each session will offer rich and insightful overviews into each of the topic areas:

In an Unspoken Voice – How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness: Mind, Brain, and Body in the Transformation of Trauma

Trauma and Memory – Brain and Body in the Search for the Living Past

Shame and Pride; the SE™ Approach

Syndromes and Chronic Pain; the SE™ Approach

Who Is This Workshop Series For

This course is open to anyone and is especially beneficial to mental health professionals, bodyworkers, yoga devotees, mindfulness practitioners, coaches, and anyone seeking to find a greater sense of internal harmony, acceptance, confidence, calmness, wisdom, compassion and connectedness.

What You’ll Learn In Healing Trauma Workshop Series

EACH WEEK IN DETAIL

WEEK 1: IN AN UNSPOKEN VOICE
In an Unspoken Voice – How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness: Mind, Brain, and Body in the Transformation of Trauma with Peter Levine Ph.D., Developer of Somatic Experiencing®.

Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma and other stress-related disorders. SE offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. It offers practical skills appropriate to various healing and helping professions, including mental health, medicine, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, educators, and more.

During this unique program, Peter Levine, Ph.D., the developer of Somatic Experiencing, will demonstrate how SE addresses trauma through a combination of theoretical explanation and body-oriented experiential exercises. Participants in this program will learn the underpinnings of trauma and explore how nervous system regulation and awareness of bodily sensations can bring clients out of a trauma state and into a more embodied and regulated sense of authentic self.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS SESSION:

• Differentiate between top-down and bottom-up processing and discuss how they can work together.
• Classify the trauma response as a set of defensive bodily reactions mobilized to protect us.
• Describe how shame, defeat, and humiliation, associated with the original traumatic event, replay themselves repeatedly in the body.
• Define how trauma-based perceptions remain fundamentally unchanged until the internal experience of the body changes.

WEEK 2: TRAUMA AND MEMORY
Trauma and Memory – Brain and Body in the Search for the Living Past with Peter Levine, PhD, Developer of Somatic Experiencing®.

Factual memories and false/inaccurate memories have been a debated topic in the therapeutic world for a long time. In regards to trauma, where memory is so often shattered and incongruent, this presents a major problem as we all need some form of narrative, i.e. a way to explain to ourselves and to others the disturbing emotions and physical sensations we are feeling. However, from a Somatic Experiencing® standpoint, we minimize false memories by working from the “bottom up” (moving from the non-verbal) so that we can access the implicit procedural memory of the body.

This primal memory is initially without context. In accessing, completing and contextualizing, at this core level, we enter the realm of the emotional and episodic memory functions. This, in turn, allows us to then weave a coherent narrative, a potent mythic identity that propels our life forward. In this way we can avoid many of the pitfalls of the recovered memory conundrum as we are guided towards vital, meaningful, and fulfilling lives.

This groundbreaking class, based on Dr. Levine’s most recent book Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in the Search for the Living Past, will explore the significance of lower level memory systems and their application in the healing of trauma. Dr. Levine will discuss his hierarchical memory model, as well as demonstrate how to avoid one’s tendency to stay in a rational framework, and how to support trust in the discovery of the innate self-protective responses to threat, and their inner connection to the True Self.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS SESSION:

• Learn the theoretical framework to understand the substratum of memory.
• Discover the various forms of memory; from the most-conscious and verbal to those somatic/procedural memories that are non-verbal and non-conscious.
• Learn tools to identify which memory systems are operative and how to access these (memory) components in a systematic fashion to promote maximized integration.
• Explore practical tools for working with emotions.

WEEK 3: SHAME AND PRIDE
Shame and Pride; the SE™ Approach with Peter Levine, PhD, Developer of Somatic Experiencing®.

Chronic shame is one of the most corrosive emotions that people experience. perhaps it comes, initially, from a severe scolding by a parent or teacher, along with a breaking of connection and a rupture of trust. The shame then “metastasizes” and spreads, affecting the entire organism, collapsing the body, polluting the spirit, and undermining our basic sense of wellbeing and worthiness.

Shame is associated with a very specific body posture and autonomic pattern. It is a pattern which is similar to those we see in trauma, including hyper-arousal, hypo-arousal and shutdown. The opposite body experience of shame is the direct experience of the somatic/autonomic posture of triumph and pride.

It is physiologically impossible to experience shame while one has a rooted and embodied sense of pride and an inner sense of dignity. Utilizing this dynamic relationship, within the context of a therapeutic alliance, shame can be transformed to a core sense of self-respect and self-compassion. This integrative process is essential for promoting overall health and wellbeing.

Work with shame requires learnable skills of body reading, tracking physiology, and a therapeutic understanding of interpersonal dynamics. Participants will have the opportunity to practice how to help client’s move from shame into triumph, pride, and mastery, along with a renewed sense of dignity and Self-hood.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS SESSION:

• Explore the effect of shame on the body-mind and learn how to access and work with it therapeutically.
• Learn the nuances of difference shame states and postures and how to move through and out of them.
• Develop a broad understanding of the neurobiological, developmental, and evolutionary underpinnings of shame and trauma.

WEEK 4: SYNDROMES AND CHRONIC PAIN
Syndromes and Chronic Pain; the SE™ Approach with Peter Levine, PhD, Developer of Somatic Experiencing®.

Many Somatic Experiencing® practitioners struggle to help the individual who presents with a seemingly endless array of unpredictable, labile and mutating symptoms. These conditions include migraines, vertigo, rapid heart rate, heart arrhythmias, POTTS (rapid heartbeat and fainting), chronic pain, regional complex pain syndrome (CRPS), fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), asthma and, particularly certain auto-immune conditions.

These syndromes are often associated with various anxiety and depressive, and mood disorders. These autoimmune disorders appear to be associated with neglect, early attachment difficulties, as well as molestation and sexual abuse.

It is important to recognize that these perplexing symptoms have a common root as a single underlying syndrome involving core dysregulation of the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis. This system influences, in turn, autonomic, endocrine and immune functions throughout the body. Rather than chasing after individual symptoms, we uncover the underlying stress conditions that are of the root cause of this dysregulation. If these stress conditions can be identified, then they can then be effectively treated by utilizing special SE techniques.

During this class, you will gain an introduction to important concepts such as: autonomic balance, tuning, and kindling. We will learn how to identify the syndromes of core dysregulation, understand their underlying dynamics, and receive an introduction to working with them using Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory as a guide.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN IN THIS SESSION:

• Understand the physiology and basis of functional syndromes.
• Support clients in understanding the functional nature of their symptoms through “psycho-education.”
• Identify the mapping of the polyvagal system on the various organ systems – both skeletal and visceral.

About Peter Levine

Dr. Peter Levine holds doctorates in both medical biophysics and psychology. He is the developer of Somatic Experiencing® (SE), a naturalistic body-awareness approach to healing trauma, which he teaches all over the globe. Dr. Levine is also the founder of the Foundation for Human Enrichment and was a stress consultant for NASA during the development of the space shuttle.

An accomplished author, Dr. Levine penned Healing Trauma, Sexual Healing and the bestselling book, Waking the Tiger. He also co-authored with Maggie Kline Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes and Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. His latest book, In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, is a testament to his lifelong investigation into the connection between evolutionary biology, neuroscience, animal behavior, and more than 40 years of clinical experience in the healing of trauma.

Dr. Levine was honored in 2010 with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP) and is a Senior Fellow at Meadows Behavioral Healthcare.

More courses from the same author: Peter Levine