Somatic Therapy to Tame the Survival Response and Heal Implicit Trauma Memories

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Abi Blakeslee, SEP, CMT, MFT, PhD Related seminars and products

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Abi Blakeslee, SEP, CMT, MFT, PhD, is an international expert in the field of trauma recovery and the founder of Implicit Psychotherapy. She is senior faculty at the Somatic Experiencing International and additionally legacy faculty for Dr. Peter Levine’s Ergos Institute for Somatic Education. She is the Director of Training and Education for the Neuro-Consulting Group.

Dr. Blakeslee holds a PhD in clinical and somatic psychology and an MA in counseling and depth psychology. Her dissertation generated original research on the role of implicit memory in healing trauma. Dr. Blakeslee integrates the study of implicit memory and psychophysiology in clinical research, secondary trauma interventions, and the psychobiological principles of attachment and shock trauma.

Dr. Blakeslee teaches and consults worldwide. She lives in Bozeman, Montana with her husband and enjoys the snow, mountains, and rivers with their three children.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Abi Blakeslee is the founder of Implicit Psychotherapy, co-founder of Relationship Repair and maintains a private practice. She has employment relationships with Somatic Experiencing International and Ergos Institute for Somatic Education. Dr. Blakeslee receives a speaking honorarium and product royalties from Psychotherapy Networker and PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Dr. Abi Blakeslee is a member of the American Association for Marriage Family Therapists, the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy, the Women in Neuroscience, and the Society for Neuroscience.

 

Objectives

1. Integrate the use of imagery and felt sense of safety/feeling into clinical work. 
2. Practice somatic exercises for the fight, flight, freeze response.  
3. Integrate polyvagal theory into clinical observation and understanding of client’s body and trauma history. 
4. Utilize different forms of attention to access interception. 
5. Assess which part of the nervous system is active in a client. 
6. Develop exercises the increase a client’s window of tolerance. 
7. Formulate questions and reasons that invite conscious awareness of bodily sensation.

Outline

• Neuroanatomy of a threat response and a thwarted threat response
• How survival responses impact attachment
• Harness the opportunity for change in “transitional states”
• Learn how to support and observe up regulation in your client’s body

• Learn the difference between how to support your clients moving through transitional states of survival physiology vs Biological Completion of Procedural Movements
• Observe the difference between Voluntary vs Involuntary Movement
• How predatory movement, building impulse and Agency helps clients heal
• Learn how to engage how tension patterns can move the body toward self-protection and new learning that reconsolidates implicit memories of helplessness 
• Observe and learn step by step Interventions to work with the Sympathetic Nervous System and Active Defensive Responses

• Skills to work with Animal Imagery to support a client’s connection to their own ability to Protect, Respond, and connect to Instinctual Power
• Learn Push Hands Exercises
• How the completion of Survival Responses relates your Client’s attachment style
• How to support Speaking up
• Exercises for boundary work with client
• Skills to work with freeze physiology
• Identify primary, secondary, and tertiary dissociation

Target Audience

• Counsellors
• Social Workers
• Psychiatrists
• Psychologists
• Case Managers
• Addiction Counsellors
• Therapists
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Psych Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals