In this webinar, we will discuss how key neuroscientific understandings, when informing mindfulness-centered techniques, can make body-centered psychotherapy even more effective. We will draw on the work of Allan Schore, Daniel Siegel, Antonio Damasio, Alan Fogel, Jaak Panksepp, and Darcia Narvaez, among others, to illuminate why therapy works, how we can work more skillfully with emotions, and how we can build resilience in our clients and strengthen their capacity to bear conscious witness to their inner experience. At the deeper levels, we will examine the potency of mindfulness-centered skills in the re-organizing of core-level psychological experience. In addition, we will try out, in the webinar itself, experiential exercises that demonstrate how powerful our somatic psychotherapy can be when informed by these neuroscientific understandings.
About our presenter: Shai Lavie, M.A.
Shai is currently the lead trainer in the Hakomi Professional Training in Los Angeles, and has also recently taught in Helsinki, Finland.
He is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, works with adults, adolescents, and families in private practice in San Anselmo, California. He got his Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in 1995, and received his MFT license in 1999.
Shai is certified in the Hakomi Method of mindfulness-based psychotherapy, and is a Certified Hakomi Trainer on the faculty of the Hakomi Institute of California (see www.hakomicalifornia.com). He is also certified in the Somatic Experiencing method of working with trauma, developed by Peter Levine. Shai serves as adjunct professor at Sofia University (formerly the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology), where he teaches "Mindfulness and Psychotherapy," and also teaches occasionally at John F. Kennedy University and at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Shai has also served on the faculty of the Marin Mindfulness Institute, teaching professionals about using mindfulness with adolescents.
For over 10 years, Shai led therapeutic groups in Marin County and San Francisco schools. He also led over a dozen wilderness Rites of Passage programs for youth through Wilderness Reflections (see www.wildernessreflections.com), Stepping Stones Project, and The Marin School. He is certified as a Wilderness First Responder.
Shai has been practicing Vipassana meditation for over 25 years. For many years beginning in 2001, Shai taught meditation in the Teen and Family Program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center (see www.spiritrock.org).
Shai has done psychotherapy trainings for therapists at Family Service Agency, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Apple Family Works, New Perspectives/Bay Area Community Resources, JFK Counseling Center, Community Institute for Psychotherapy, various chapters of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, Aldea Treatment Services, Dominican College, Chapman University, and Holos Institute. He has spoken to parent groups at Parent University (Marin County Office of Education), Mill Valley Middle School, San Rafael High School, Drake High School, Branson School, the Bay School, and Marin Academy.
Shai Lavie Bio
Published Writings
Please look for articles from Shai Lavie in the September/October 2011 issue of Psychotherapy Networker (“In Search of a Lost Self”) and in the September/October 2011 issue of The Therapist (“Mindfulness-Based Family Therapy”).
These articles can be found on the Hakomi Institute website.
Please also look for Shai's chapter ("Experiments in Mindfulness") in the book:
Hakomi Mindfulness-Centered Somatic Psychotherapy: A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice (W.W. Norton, 2015).
Shai's newest article, "Held Experience: Using Mindfulness in Psychotherapy to Facilitate Deeper Psychological Repair" was published in the Fall 2015 issue of the International Body Psychotherapy Journal.
