We often hear clients say that they feel like their body was hijacked in the face of a triggering event. They can’t think, their nervous system seems to have a mind of its own. They lose their sense of home with their sense of self compromised. Mindfulness and somatic regulation practices can be key factors in returning to a secure experience of their felt-sense, a return home to safety.

Mindfulness and Somatic Regulation:

A Response-side Approach to Healing Developmental Trauma

Michael Shiffman, Ph.D.

July 27, 2019
10:00 am – 5:00 pm

https://insightcenter.org/product/somatic-regulation-2019-2/

1404 Greenfield Avenue #1
Los Angeles, CA 90025

$195 – Full Tuition
30% off for pre-licensed students in clinical training.
Use the coupon “student30”

We often hear clients say that they feel like their body was hijacked in the face of a triggering event. They can’t think, their nervous system seems to have a mind of its own. They lose their sense of home with their sense of self compromised. Mindfulness and somatic regulation practices can be key factors in returning to a secure experience of their felt-sense, a return home to safety.

The integration of mindfulness and somatic awareness into therapeutic practice is often misunderstood and frequently misused. However, a somatically grounded, neuroaffective and psychodynamically informed perspective can support our clients to transform their adaptive strategies.

These adaptive strategies can change by cultivating the awareness of energetic, affective and neurophysiological responses. It is truly response-side therapy and not about simply integrating the body into the therapeutic discourse. It takes is the initial crack in the egg and the willingness to be curious about all things experiential for these strategies to change, but mindful awareness does not somatic therapy make.

Somatic therapies engage cognitive, behavioral, emotional, neurobiological and energetic systems to help clients become more organized and alive. Interventions are bi-directional, moving from cognition to neurobiology and from neurobiology to cognition. As we say, somatic therapists work top-down and bottom-up.

At the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Differentiate between mindfulness and somatic awareness;
2. Describe top-down and bottom-up therapeutic interventions;
3. Identify strategies for integrating mindfulness practices into therapeutic process;
4. Identify strategies for integrating somatic practices into therapeutic process;
5. Integrate somatic practices within their current clinical perspective.
6. Describe how somatic practices can enhance awareness of transference-countertransference processes.

https://insightcenter.org/product/somatic-regulation-2019-2/

Michael Shiffman, Ph.D., is a relational body therapist at the Insight Center in West Los Angeles.  He founded LA Dharma in 1999 and co-founded the Insight Center in 2006. Michael has studied with numerous Western Buddhist teachers and currently studies with Rev. Hye Wol Sunim. He has been meditating since 1994 and teaching mindfulness and insight meditation since 2002.

Michael is a certified practitioner of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner with substantial training in the use of touch for nervous system regulation and the repair of attachment ruptures.

Michael has an extensive background working with anxiety, panic, traumatic stress, substance abuse and recovery, relapse prevention, and somatic oriented therapeutic practices. He teaches meditation and somatic therapy.  Michael is a photographer whose work is shown on his website http://shiffmanphotos.com, enjoys cooking and is frequently happy in his new life in Encino.

Continuing Education:

Continuing Education Units are available. A CE certificate is issued for a $20 charge. Instructions for purchasing CE certificates will be emailed once registration is completed and certificates are issued after the workshop is completed.  Continuing Education Certificates must be purchased within thirty (30) days of the event.

Psychologists: The Insight Center is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Insight Center maintains responsibility for this program and its content. This course is provides 6 CE units.

MFTs / LCSWs / LPCCs:  The California Board of Behavioral Sciences accepts APA CEs. This course provides 6 CE units.