This video resource pack contains two complete workshops (CPD hours: 15 / CE credits: N/A) that cover:

Part 1: Body-Oriented Therapy for PTSD & Complex Trauma: A Somatic Approach to Complex Traumatic Stress (Dr Janina Fisher, CPD hours: 3 / CE credits: N/A)
In surviving trauma, individuals are left with a host of easily re-activated physical responses and an inadequate memory record. Traumatic reminders keep the trauma ‘alive’ by repetitively re-activating the stress response system and survival responses. As a result, our clients continue to feel that they are still in danger, still inadequate or at fault.

In this intellectually stimulating and therapeutically oriented seminar, psychotherapists and counsellors will learn how to assess and make sense of trauma-based somatic symptoms and how to apply neurobiologically informed therapy techniques drawn from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy – a body-oriented talking therapy.

Using a mindfulness-based approach, participants will be introduced to understanding ‘trauma’ not as an event but as a ‘living legacy’ of overwhelming emotions and sensations, intrusive images and memories, impulsive acting out, numbing and disconnection.  

Workshop outline:

• The neurobiology of trauma: why we need to work with the body
• The ‘living legacy’ of traumatic experience: what perpetuates post-traumatic stress
• Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: principles and interventions for befriending and resolving trauma symptoms

Part 2: Revolutionising Trauma Therapy: Expanding Therapy Options and Tools for Therapists and their Clients (Babette Rothschild, CPD hours: 12 / CE credits: N/A)
This professional training will equip participants with neurophysical and psychophysical theory and principles and apply them to update the mind, brain, and nervous system to recognise when trauma is over – whether or not trauma memories are ever processed. Through a variety of activities, including lecture, discussion, exercises, practice, and video demonstrations, participants will gain knowledge and skills for treating traumatised clients of all ages and backgrounds.

This professional training is consistent with and a beneficial adjunct to any method of psychotherapy, or specialised trauma therapy (e.g., analytical, dynamic and somatic approaches, cognitive-behavioral, and EMDR).

Attendees will be able to:

• Provide options for trauma recoveryand trauma resolution
• Predict and distinguish those clients who will benefit from processing trauma memories from those who will not
• Gain specific skills for helping both groups
• Discuss the structure of the body’s nervous system
• Develop the ability to interpret and modulate the body’s nervous system (sensory and autonomic) to regulate arousal levels in clients and for safer trauma therapy
• Also develop the ability to interpret and modulate the body’s nervous system (sensory and autonomic) to regulate arousal levels for professional self-care
• Differentiate two types of freeze statesfrom two classes of hypo-aroused states
• Employ the sensory nervous system to mediate flashbacks and nightmare
• Discern a relaxed (muscular) state from a calm (nervous system) state
• Adapt mindfulness, yoga, and physical exercise to be accessible to clients with dysregulated nervous systems and PTSD
• Identify and acquire recovery options and strategies for trauma clients inappropriate for trauma memory processing, particularly for those who don’t want to and those who decompensate or dysregulate from memory work
• Employ the sensory nervous system for instantstabilisation during therapy sessions and in daily lives of clients
• Identify both obvious as well as previously unrecognised resources as antidotes to traumatic stress states
• Revived the (too-often) neglected application of therapeutic contracts and treatment planning
• Gain tools to enable trauma clients to make better (and safer) use of mindful practices such as meditation, MBSR, and yoga