Trauma: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness with Peter Levine, Ph.D.

• Learn from the Originator and Developer of Somatic Experiencing®
• Levine’s Nine Principles in Successful Trauma Healing
• Peter Speaks on the Full Scope of his Life’s Work & Discovery

Join international trauma expert and author, Peter A. Levine, Ph.D., to learn how sensation-based (as opposed to emotional or rational) treatment is the key inroad into the trauma, and how to slowly uncouple fear from the natural immobility state. He will discuss his nine principles in successful trauma healing, all told through his own successful renegotiation of a personal traumatic event.

Representing the full scope of his life’s work and discovery, Dr. Levine will discuss the evolutionary underpinnings of trauma. The day will include an in-depth review of how trauma is related to the ethnological concept of tonic immobility, the importance of the so-called “primitive” Vagus system, and how its connections through the viscera and body are a key ally in trauma therapy.

OUTLINE

CHILD DEVELOPMENT: THE SIGNS OF TRAUMA IN EACH DEVELOPMENTAL PERIOD:

Pre-Natal

• Hormonal interactions between mother and child
• Birth Stress

Year One

• Safety, affection and containment
• Proprioceptive development

The Dopamine System

• The space to explore one’s effect on the world
• The formation of a self that is different from Mom and Dad
• Testing boundaries

Age 3-5

• The Biology and balance of shame
• The importance of shame in society
• The signs of overshaming
• The signs of undershaming

The initial forays into sexuality

• The importance of flirting
• How these sames stages replay themselves out in later life

THE NATURALISTIC MECHANISMS OF TRAUMA

Understanding our primary survival tactics and how they play out in the body: Flight, fight, freeze and collapse

500 million years of evolution: Our Polyvagal underpinnings

• How the Dorsal Vagal System is related to shutdown and collapse
• Fight or flight: Sympathetic/adrenal
• System mobilization, Returning to the our Mammalian birthright: The Ventral vagal system and social engagement

How we get “stuck”

• Tonic immobility - The fallback to freeze
• Freeze couples with Fear
• Dissociation
• Bracing and terror
• Euphoric dissociaton
• Collapse

Somatic and emotional - syndromes and complexes

• Emotional – anxiety, depression
• Somatic – chronic pain, fibromyalgia
• Autonomic – migraines, irritable bowel

RESOLVING TRAUMATIC REACTIONS

The importance of “Bottom-Up” processing

• The Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain- In an Unspoken Voice

Somatic Experiencing©

• Renegotiation vs. Reliving.
• Restoration of self-regulation
• Trauma isn’t about the event, but the body’s inability to process and integrate the nervous system charge
• The importance of developing a felt sense

The nine basic stages of trauma treatment

• Containment of strong sensation and emotion
• Pendulation – The dual opposites of sensation
• Titration – going gradually
• Completion
• Renegotiation of active for passive responses
• Allow things to settle: Self-Paced termination

Simple exercises that you can use in your practice

SPIRITUALITY AND TRAUMA

Trauma as one of the 4 avenues to enlightment

• Lessons from the Kundalini
• A feeling of “okayness”, wholeness and trust in the world
• And other side effects of effective trauma treatment
• The importance of maintaining balance in one’s life

OBJECTIVES

• Describe the four major development stages that increase our vulnerability to trauma, and how to recognize them in your clients.
• Explain the naturalistic mechanics of trauma and survival responses of flight, fight, freeze and collapse.
• Describe the evolutionary underpinnings of trauma and the Polyvagal theory.
• Define the importance of “Bottom-up” processing versus “Top Down” processing.
• Summarize the process of how overwhelming stress leads to somatic and emotional syndromes.
• List Dr. Levine’s nine stages for successful trauma healing.
• Provide a detailed description as to how trauma therapy can be a conduit to a deeper spiritual understanding, and the social implications this feeling of connection can have on the world as a whole.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Peter A. Levine, Ph.D., holds doctorates in both medical biophysics and psychology. The developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a body-awareness approach to healing trauma, and founder of the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, which conducts trainings in this work throughout the world and in various indigenous cultures, with 26 faculty members and over five thousand students. Dr. Levine was a stress consultant for NASA on the development of the space shuttle project and was a member of the Institute of World Affairs Task Force of Psychologists for Social Responsibility in developing responses to large-scale disasters and ethno-political warfare. Levine’s international best seller, Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma, has been translated into 22 languages. His recent interests include the prevention of trauma in children, and he has co-written two books, with Maggie Kline, in this area: Trauma Through a Child’s Eyes and Trauma-Proofing Your Kids. His most recent book: In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, was recently released to rave reviews. Levine’s original contribution to the field of Body-Psychotherapy was honored in 2010 when he received the Life Time Achievement award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP).

To order the book, In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness, please visit our product store.

To order the book, 101 Trauma-Informed Interventions: Activities, Exercises and Assignments for Moving the Client and Therapy Forward, please visit our product store.

To order the book, The Five Core Skills of Mindfulness: A Direct Path to More Confidence, Joy and Love, please visit our product store.