“Integrating Somatic Psychotherapy with EMDR Therapy”
Natural Processing Trainings: Part 1
Tracking Resiliency • Pacing the Work • Deepening Processing
Craig Penner, LMFT, EMDRIA Approved Consultant and Therapist
6-day Hybrid In-Person/Online, or 6-day all Online Interactive Online training for expanding effectiveness of EMDR
EMDR has proven to be a highly effective methodology for reprocessing trauma, working through unfinished material, building strengths and resources, and integrating new learning and states of being. The EMDR protocols take advantage of our natural drive for completion, yet can be a limited guide for adjustments therapists need to make with difficult client dynamics. Natural Processing expands on that base, with a somatically based and process-oriented approach that gives more precise and flexible assessment about tracking resiliency and the effective use of bilateral stimulation.
You will learn to identify somatic sensations to notice hypo- and hyper-aroused activation to fine-tune your assessment of resilience, utilize present reactions to focus effectively moment-by-moment, and use sustained awareness of body sensations to work directly with chronic nervous system responses.
There are nuanced aspects of our beliefs, postures, reactions, orienting responses, nervous systems, cognitive structures, and muscular and organ systems that are not accessible through words. They are driven by parts of the brain, and primitive functions of the nervous system, which do not have verbal language.
Increased somatic awareness helps you track your clients’ process, and deepen their engagement with themselves when activation makes noticing challenging. We can make effective interventions that directly impact habitual nervous system reactions that more cognitive approaches can’t reach.
In this intensive training, therapists will learn to assess and intervene from a somatic perspective while using EMDR, to enhance the therapy process. Heightened awareness of the functioning of the body and nervous system aids the therapist in pacing the work well. This approach taps into our natural inclination towards completion, expanding beyond the understanding of the EMDR AIP model. Therapists can increase their skills in tracking and developing resiliency, crucial for the many moments in therapy when our clients struggle to stay regulated.
Use of heightened somatic focus in combination with a process-orientation to EMDR serves many advantages:
1) It helps the client to be more present, and regain presence when activated.
2) It aids the therapist in the task of tracking that presence closely, in ways that go beyond verbal reports.
3) As levels of activation shift, both before and during bilateral stimulation processing, this tracking helps the therapist assess the client’s ongoing resiliency.
4) Similarly to using bilateral stimulation during resource installation, focusing on somatic experiences with judicial use of bilateral stimulation can aid in assessment of resiliency and heighten the opportunity to expand on this resiliency somatically
5) Close tracking and pacing gives the client and therapist access to engaging in nervous system processes that normally happen outside our conscious level of awareness.
6) Tracking resiliency allows the therapist to pace the work well, in order to help the client stay within the Window of Tolerance, so the work can be integrated.
7) This enables the therapist to more accurately assess the client’s ability to process through difficult material, in the face of strong emotional reactions.
8) When new capabilities emerge, adding a somatic focus helps clients to integrate the resources into their bodies and nervous systems, thus enhancing their access.
9) As clients’ resiliency builds, and their ability to notice and tolerate physical sensation increases, this strongly enhances their discernment and helps them to slow down assessments, such the difference between “danger” vs. “discomfort.”
10) With somatic interventions, clients are often able to hold a focus in a “stuck or looping” process, and work through it, without having to return to the target.
11) Tracking “sequences” of body and nervous system reactions helps to bring unconscious processes into awareness, making them easier to work with.
12) Attending to the small movements of orienting responses can allow early moments of activation to be exposed and reprocessed, and thus unraveling larger dysfunctional patterns.
13) Moments of dissociation, across the spectrum from the most subtle to the most severe, are more easily identified.
14) Skills can be built to identify and intervene in dissociative processes as they present in sessions which can enhance the ability to embody resilience and stay more present.
15) Developmental challenges arising from poor early attachment manifest in the body and nervous system, and can be recognized and addressed with a somatic focus.
16) The disconnections in attachment dynamics are often non-verbal, and non-presenting problems, so working the dynamics through the body is advantageous.
17) Adding enriched somatic awareness to ego state work helps to track resiliency, ground the processing, and deepen the resolutions and connections
18) When “traumatic” reactions, both big and small, are thoroughly worked through the body and nervous system, we see a heightened generalization of positive effects of the reprocessing.
19) Using bilateral stimulation to “install” detailed somatic awareness of positive shifts that occur spontaneously in EMDR sessions furthers the integration of the growth.
20) As clients learn to track their own resiliency through their bodies, they gain a truly felt sense of trusting their own natural abilities to process and heal.
21) As therapists gain confidence in working from a non-interpretative position of “not knowing,” it frees up their noticing skills to track subtle signs of activation with greater acuity.
This training includes lectures and “prezi” presentation, discussion, demonstrations and/or videorecorded sessions, and triad practicum sessions with highly personalized feedback for participants.
This is designed as an advanced training for EMDR clinicians. No prior training in somatic psychotherapy is required. Non-EMDR trained therapists need to contact Craig Penner to assess what pre-training needs we will provide to prepare you to engage in the practicums.
Lecture topics include:
Nervous system responses to trauma and attachment challenges - episodic and developmental
A somatic understanding of the Cycle of Experience
The Window of Tolerance as a co-creative assessment tool with the client
Implications of the polyvagal theory
Inherent dilemma between drives for completion and drives for safety/protection
Psychophysiology of self-awareness
Uses of bilateral stimulation to enhance somatic awareness and resiliency
Establishing presence, and working to regain presence with a somatic and sensation based focus
Understanding the value and necessity of well-paced therapy
Value and practice of integrating greater somatic focus into EMDR
Common errors when the therapist is not well attuned to the client’s signs of resiliency
Assessing when explicit somatic focus is important, and when subtle tracking suffices
Somatic indicators of attachment difficulties, and implications for treatment
Specific skills for tracking somatically
Specific skills for assessing resiliency and signs of dissociation
Specific skills for helping clients to return to the Window of Tolerance from both hyper-aroused and hypo-aroused state
LEARNING OBJECTIVES Part 1
Participants will be able to:
Describe the Window of Tolerance and how using it as an active lens in sessions positions the therapist well
List 3 advantages of tracking clients activation somatically before and during bilateral processing
List 3 ways to assess resiliency somatically
Describe 3 ways that tracking resiliency is foundational for pacing sessions well
Identify 2 somatic signs of subtle dissociation
Describe 3 elements of working directly with dissociative dynamics
Describe “bracing” and 2 examples of how it can look in a session
Demonstrate 2 interventions for working with moments when clients are hypo-aroused and 2 interventions for hyper-aroused
List 2 ways that “sustained awareness” engages our existing “drive for completion” and facilitates growth
Give 3 examples of how clients '“disconnect” from full presence, and ways to work those dynamics effectively