How to Work with the Limbic System to Reverse the Physiological Imprint of Trauma
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with Pat Ogden, PhD ;
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with Pat Ogden, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; and Ruth Buczynski, PhD
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I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to receive and be aware of all these insights and techniques. It helped a lot of self awareness and observation of my own patterns and healing and I know it will continue to support me and possibly others in the future. Thank you very much, many blessings 🙏🤍
I want to thank you all very much for all this. I watched three episodes, wished I had been through all five of them.
What I will use, I do not know until the next TWW time I will have. know that has given me confirmation regarding myself and it helps a lot and makes me stronger.
Over the years, TWW has shown me how important it is to be present and trust higher intelligence, energy and enjoy gaining more self-knowledge, enjoying our heartbeat and ‘unity consciousness’. Together we are so amazing.
The energy or higher intelligence completes everything, integrates and then it moves and also shakes the body, has to happen through our whole being.
You are admirably smart, aware and rewarding for so many. Very informative.
Thank you very much and good luck to you and everyone who participated, or made this possible.
With respect
G
Best course ever. Love the information to assist clinicians and the naming and explaining the associated area of the brain involved in the execution of appropriate redressing behaviours
Thank you Ruth and everyone who spoke on The healing from Trauma on this series. This is the second time I have listened to this series and I learn more everytime. I would buy your Gold package if I could, however I am not able to financially. So I totally appreciate that you have let us watch these for free!!!
I am not a therepist however I was an Educational Assistant for years where we worked with students with disabilities and learning disorders and other difficuties. I called us E.A.’s “The front line workers” as we were the ones who were “head on”/side by side highly traumatized students. We recieved a lot of their behaviours and words and emotional “relationship” “stuff” . In many ways we delt with more than the teachers as we were the one who they called on when a student had to leave the room. We had to help these students calm their nevous systems down (in the later years, we had a “Sensory Room” where they could go to calm down in various ways. One student we wrapped in a blanket (with his consent–he loved it!) and he wanted us to pull him down the hall–we did). I learned a lot. I have also for years and years delt with my own abuse background(sexual as well as a Father who flew into rages). I have done a whole lot of work in many different ways. So this series on Trauma really called to me. I am so grateful that you have made it public for us non-therepists and folks living on a fixed income.
Much of what you all are saying and how you are working with Traumatized clients makes so much sense to me and a bunch of it I have learned myself in one way or another. I do understand that “just pillow wacking” doesn’t work. Yes, we used to work that way, but part of me saw that it wasn’t enough. That balance of hearing the story information, but moving forward to reverse the body trauma response. I learned more here about using all the parts of the brain–slowly working with the action of the body at the same time as speaking the strong words that are affirmative for defense and strength of self. Reading the body language and changing the perceptual patterns repetitive loops. Also very fascinating is the actual Neurology of the brain and which parts are affected.
Again, thank-you.
Anni
This was so fantastic! Yet again, plenty of take away messages linking in with the population I worked with and my (easy to read) research entitled: “Lives unseen: unacknowledged trauma of non-disordered, competent Adult Children Of Parents with a Severe Mental Illness” at The University of Melbourne, Australia. If people google my name Suzette Misrachi that research should come up. Today also touched on some of the short articles on trauma and grief I’ve been invited to write by a psychiatrist for an e-publication (aimed at psychiatrists and various mental health practitioners) which I then put on medium.com for free for the general public. The field of trauma is expanding so beautifully, and so I hope that continues… despite COVID.
I was left wondering whether a new series could be put out dealing with trauma and the current Covid pandemic and how would this terrible current situation we are all trapped in (whether we believe this is the case or not) impact on the body of all people with preexisting traumas?
Thank you to all staff at NICABM for this critical topic. I so value all of your amazing presenters! Suzette
This was a wonderful informative course, thank you. I am retired now, however previously held dual qualifications in physiotherapy and medical engineering (PhD) and worked for 41 years in trauma physical rehabilitation. Following a Churchill Fellowship (where I spent much time in 4 National Military Rehabilitation Centres overseas-) there were 2 standouts for me- Walter Reed in the US and Centrum 45 and Militair Revalitatie Centrum Aardenburg in the Netherlands. I reported on the multidisciplinary treatment for both physical and psychotrauma using EMDR/3MDR, yoga, writing, art and high technology (my area of interest) including treadmills with 6 degrees of freedom in an augmented reality setting for therapy . My question for this amazing group of specialists is how would limbic therapy be achieved in those who have sustained physical loss- eg I saw triple amputees and those who have sustained spinal cord or brain injury leading to paralysis?
Thank you to Ruth and the team for a most valuable series of presentations that I will use in my work with clients. I appreciate that you have made these free of charge and the multiple times for being able to view each session has meant that I could view them at a convenient time. The use of multiple modalities especially somatic ones was very helpful for understanding integration. Understanding how martial arts and yoga work to help trauma survivors was useful. Pat Ogden’s client examples were very helpful in understanding how she uses mindfulness with body work, uncovering patterns and completing defensive actions and other movements to bring integration.
So professional and helpful! Great teachers and having Ruth connect everything for us was perfect!
Confirms many experiences I’ve had with a client; lights the way for me to use and emphasize certain activities
that will further relieve the past’s terrible effects, i.e. imagining a different sound or color or voice with a trauma memory.
What was said about showing the client that you can hold the painful memory and stay with him/her through it, I have found to be very significant to traumatized clients. They know I can walk away, but I haven’t, and it matters!
Thanks to all of you for staying with people’s pain to the depth you do. God bless you!
I’m currently training as a bmc educator, and have previously worked as an ece and then youth educator. I’m also a bodywork therapist and aromatherapist. I’m also a sufi healer and trained in the mystic.
This programme and the previous two, have given me a fantastic tie in of all sorts of methods that I’ve been looking at independatly for years. The reason I did not train in psychology earlier in my life was because it was so pathology based, and talk focused, and as an artist, a healer and a sense based person, I knew something was seriously missing.
This work that’s evolved from such thorough research gives me confidence I’m on the right pathway. I’m more confident that my instincts were right, and that there are now useful specific skills that can be integrated in a more meaningful purposeful way that I can trust is effective, and I also have confidence in that from my own body’s knowing. For me, the main take away is to validate what I already sense, and to continue to follow my awareness not as “intuition” but as intelligent reliable knowledge, the same way I’ve learned to palpate the body with extreme sensativity, I now have the validation that my observations and felt sense of the traumas people carry and where and why they sit there is right on. What I love about bmc is that its a partnership if education, rather than a pathology/superiority dynamic, so I will take this shared humanity and acceptance of the naturalness of all the body responses with me, deeper into the work.
Thank you so much for making this available world wide, its going to have such reach, and I’m looking forward to living in an era where this work is more widely understood and worked with.
Thank you for this introductory session…I found it helpful to learn the latest approaches. I especially appreciate how they are grounded and accessible. I work with members a church community. I will consider purchase of the sessions but have a few questions…Are they permanent downloads or just for a set period of time?
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Once again thank you. Kathleen
I am not a therapist but rather a Spiritual Director. Today I was working with a woman whose husband died 4 months ago from Covid. She has developed severe anxiety which prevents her from functioning in her daily work. I used some of the techniques I learned in this seminar to talk to her about self-soothing and what works best for her. I also taught her the activity of placing one hand under her arm near her heart and the other on her opposite shoulder, then taking time to breathe slowly in and out and to concentrate on her breathing. She tried this and was able to notice how more relaxed she felt and she could feel the anxiety disapating. She was surprised at this but decided to adopt this as one method of self-soothing she could practice. I also encouraged her to engage in other forms of body movement like yoga or mindfulness meditation to help he quell her anxieties. These were all techniques I had learned from this course. Thank you!
Thank you all so much for increasing my insight; I foster pre-adoptive babies, often traumatised in utero, and I feel better equipped to recognise the repercussions of this and then nuture accordingly.
Kate Finlay UK
That’s such beautiful work.
Having worked in ece for 15 years including infant work.. Do you know the methods of The Pickler Technique/RIE?
I also recommend Hand in Hand Parenting, and also some of the BMC infant work. They are all fantastic methods for working with traumatised children from infancy through to the end of childhood /pre-teen age. They all have solid research based studies verifying positive brain and behavioural changes. Many have been used for adopted children. It would be great for the adoptive parents to have access to these models to continue trauma sensative parenting. They are very supportive and low effort, with high results.
Wishing you well in your work.
Thank you for sharing! The information presented was insightful, educational, and reaffirming. Additionally, to make these webinars complimentary was very generous! Keep up the great work.
Respectfully,
S. Reid
NLP & Hypnotherapy Practitioner
Thank you for making this content available it has been very informative and has given me some tools for processing my current situation in dealing with an abusive ex partner. My mother (retired psychologist) has also been watching the series with me and enjoyed it very much. It is wonderful to see the field progress and encompass body work not just the mind.
Fabulous series! I work in a residential treatment facility with adjudicated juveniles who have sexually offended, virtually all of whom have been traumatized in one or many ways. I love everything you provide on working with the limbic system!
I’d would love to get hep with a patient that had multiple operations (14). He is traumatized at a physical level thereofe emotional and intellectual. I don’t know where to find any literature on the subject.
These lectures have been helpful somehow. Thanks!
Thank you for such an excellent series. Great speakers, so informative.
Thank you Ruth and NICABM, I really appreciate access to this important life changing information.
Very helpful series. Concepts tied together organically. Thank you!
Thank you so very much for all your care and wisdom and helping us all in the healing work.
Wonderful and clear!
great deep knowledge transfer for public / me! thanks so much for sharing it kindly!
My deep appreciation for sharing these for free. These are helping me personally and professionally.
Thanks so much. We have this idea of integration in our Feldenkrais work, which is a somatic awareness method. He died 40 years ago and his work was not understood then. It is so interesting that these ideas are also used in therapy. It was very enjoyable to hear about your work.
I have really enjoyed this series. Very informative and useful
I am a Board Certified Registered Art Therapist and have have seen amazing results from adding this modality . Have you considered incorporating Art Therapy into your trauma series? The power of Art Therapy is that it bypasses the ego and can bring up primary traumatic memories even before the client may be consciously aware. And then these images are worked with only when the client is ready and feels safe.
Lorraine Feber, M.Ed., ATR-BC
I signed in with my name for the above reply so I don’t know why it says “Anonymous.” In case it drops my name again, It is Virginia Almon, LCSW.
great material. invitation and contribution to the conversation in my experience.
mindfulness. is there another word we can use?. you have a mind, you have a body, but you are not the mind, when you are present, that is NOT mind. it is presence. awareness does not require thoughts. thoughts are things symbols pointers and have unique meaning to everyone who uses them. presence is awareness, of body and mind and thoughts. to become aware is not mind-ful-ness. there is no mind, and we are certainly not full of it. i just find this term confusing.
Thank you so much for this excellent series so clearly presented. I am not a therapist but have spent decades doing personal development work. Now I finally understand why after all those years of screaming and beating pillows I still feel I need to do something else. I really liked the explanations of being mindful and describing feelings while completing defensive actions. It all makes so much sense. After hearing what Bessel van der Kolk had to say I will be taking up some physical practice – Tai Chi or maybe even Qigong. Right now there is a huge coming together in Ireland and abroad around violence against women after the recent killing of a young woman out jogging in broad daylight. It strikes me that self defence training for girls at school could be very helpful in addressing this issue.
I have bought a couple of other shorter workshops which I never watched as I thought that I probably wouldn’t understand them but now I am really looking forward to watching them. I am so grateful for this series. Thank you so much to all involved.
Áine O’Loughlin
Ireland
A big thank you to Dr. Ruth Buczynski, and her team at NICABM, and each presenting Doctor,(Dr. Ogden, Dr. Levine, Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, and Dr. Lanius, Dr. Porges and Dr. Bill), for so profoundly delivering each salient point, laid out on how to deal with Trauma, and providing examples of how it plays out, and how if the right therapy is received, one can see change and eventually recover, from the damage that the Trauma they experienced, may have caused on their lives, and those they are in relationships with. Understanding, why disassociation takes place, and how the Limbic system is affected, but working with certain criteria’s from top down, and bottom up, one can receive help.
A key thing that Dr. Ogden pointed out, when working with someone, is to Listen and praise them for using the resources they have, and used to get to where they are at, and then work to help them improve how much more they can achieve to experience a better quality of life and lifestyle.
I work as an assistant counselor, and i am a strong advocate for using mindfulness to help kids, and adults understand, that one has to live in the moment, work with what resources and tools they have, but always seek to improve their quality of life, and strive to help those around them that need, and want to be helped.
This week of webinars/presentations were the best I have ever sat through, the interactions were over the top.
Ricardo F.
Cayman Islands
Such a wonderfully informative series. Thank you!
The information & techniques you describe are very helpful. I have found that some type of cross-body stimulation (EMDR) enhances them greatly. Over the 20 years that I have been doing EMDR, I have been doing many of the body based techniques and appreciate the way you have organized & named them in an integrated system, I am a semi-retired LMFT with a PhD in Anthropology, living in a very rural, economically depressed area and I appreciate that you made this available for free.
I value the focus on retraining the reaction to stimuli, whether it is a physical sense stimuli or procedural memory. I have seen this be effective before but without understanding why or how to repeat the results. I think that this normalizing a body sensation/movement or creating a new response to a stimuli can be a game changer to clients who are not ready to open pandora’s box on purpose, but who can start to heal “from the bottom up.” Thank you.
I am going to try to incorporate chair yoga into the beginning of my grief groups and less meditation. I want to focus on the breath and self regulation, without providing too much stillness and space where clients might feel unsafe.
The information was life-changing and will let me use techniques to heal different types of past trauma through multiple modalities. I will use the insightful information from this week to write about trauma — to help others understand general concepts about what’s available and going on in the field of trauma.
Thank Ruth and colleagues for your excellent series. I am a retired social worker/assistant professor/psychotherapist from Queen’s University Dept of Family Medicine in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. I felt affirmed by your series with respect to my 45 yr career throughout Canada working with traumatized patients, and challenged to continue my private practice online. Please continue your important work, and thanks for making it free to practitioners around the world. I have signed up for a Gold subscription.
Evelyn M. Bowering MSW RSW
thank you very much for the program. it was very helpful to watch and learn from the experts, and your comments and summering up, ruth, made things easily sunked in.
Thank you for showing this free of charge. I am a retired clinical social worker who specialized in trauma, especially adults who had been abused as children. The new knowledge of the brain and tactics to help resove trauma helped to reinforce some methods I used. it was very interesting. I hope to pass information on about this series to other therapists who could benefit from this. Thanks again. It was excellent.
I have decided that I am not going to use the terms Higher brain and Lower brain because people place so much more importance on their brain than the rest of their body and on our species compared to other species who don’t have a newer brain. I am going to say Older brain and Middle brain and Newer brain to honor this stance. Would love to have reactions.
I guess your thinking about easy ways to describe to clients so they can engage with the process?
I heard the speakers using the terms frontal brain, and lymbic brain/primal brain. Middle brain seemed consistent. I think newer and older could be confusing for some patients who don’t have an idea of the evolution of brain biology, or what that’s for.
I think describing it as frontal thinking brain, middle emotional, and reptilian “cockroach” survival brain, helps people understand what part of themselves is causing what reactions. Loosely.
I am grateful for the program I’d worked at that allowed Yoga to be a part of it’s intensive outpatient program. It is so good to be reminded of how easy it was at the time to do these bottom up therapy approaches and then in the next hour clients and clinicians could do yoga together and to see the effects that had on the client outcomes. Now that I’m in a different therapy setting, I will make it a point to encourage participation in Limbic / Midbrain therapies, encourage yoga or other forms of movement to help contradict what the body has learned from trauma.
A friend of mine who was a psych nurse trained as a yoga teacher, and ran group sessions at a clinic she used to nurse at. She consistently saw improvements and had feedback from the current nurses about improvements in patients by combining the movement sessions with the other therapies, as well as the chance for patients to make friends and feel less isolated socially.
While I agree that meditation can open up Pandora’s box, I have learned mindfulness meditation with Tara Brach, PhD and watched hundreds of others gain in skills allowing them to pause, relax, notice thoughts and feelings without attachment – all skills helpful to resolving trauma. Tara’s husband Jonathan Foust brings in breathing practices and body-centered inquiry from Gendlin’s work – like Joan mentioned here. Together these practices are powerful. Not sure that it is fair to say that yoga is more effective or that meditation may not be helpful.
I’m going to use this alongside my hypnotherapy and yoga work.
Thank you it’s been so interesting
Thank you so much. This has been invaluable learning which I will be integrating into my work with children and parents, and using in my own life too!
I found this very interesting and informative. however I am curious to know how I could use movement with a person who is physically restricted in a wheelchair and with spinal rods – who was attacked and robbed of her purse. Her arms are fairly restricted in movement too.
Thank you for this opportunity to recognize, understand,organize, and open ways of working with many presentations of traumatic experiences. These are some of my take-aways to incorporate this content:
listening and observing more keenlyand compassionately for insights to client’s experience and coping
asking open questions, inviting client to self observe, to feel in their body for sensations that form a pattern either in movement or stillness
provide psycho ed re: how the brain is working with the body to understand and tolerate traumatic pain/distress
share language to express verbally the thoughts, feelings, effects of the trauma
Being an Alternative Practioner Psychotherapy, this series has helped me to become more clear about how important it is to integrate bodywork into our client’s journey also in the form of movements and postures. So it seems a real good fit to recommend taking yoga classes / Chi Gong to support our work as therapists, moving to a more and more holistic approach.
And now I know, why I have been favourizing walking meditation over “sitting still” myself in the past: this obviously has been a necessity to trauma in my own body.
Having been working on my own trauma remainders incl. cultural / collective aspects for a while now, the result shows on many levels: not only do I enjoy “just being” today, I also was able to take in a lot more content of this series compared to last year’s broadcast.
So, for me, everything is not only about our clients, but also about ourselves.
Thank you so much Ruth Buczynski of NICABM for all these opportunitiesis you are providing for all of us. I am very grateful. 🧡🙏
The insights in this series make those highlighted in the 2020 version of the course seem dated, and that is incredibly good news.
So many of the somatic practices described herein, trauma survivors have come to instinctively, e.g., former Miss America and childhood incest survivor Marilyn Van Derbur taking up martial arts (as many women do); yoga, therapeutic movement, hiking, etc. This literally represents science catching up to the body’s natural wisdom.
One key premise yet to be discussed is how these therapeutic regimens must become “practices,” just as one must take a prescription drug on a regular, typically daily, basis. One must “practice” mindfulness, yoga, walking, dance—whatever modality is available and working—on a regular basis. We’re talking about physical systems here—no different than “working the abs,” but doing so with mindful intention. I expect this mindfulness/movement training is the future of addiction treatment in all but the most severe of cases.
Also, this is the first time I’ve seen the slightest differentiation between “mental illness,” (Dr. Lanius example of a bipolar patient) and what amounts to limbic dysregulation. I hope I live long enough to witness this understanding become common knowledge.
And finally, Tara Brach, Ph.D, offers excellent, 20-minute body-scan meditations, similar to that described by Dr. Borysenko near the end.
Namaste, good people.
Thank you so much for this free series. I had done it before and it has been a great help to help my clients better self regulate and self soothe especially when they faced some traumatic experience. Lots of great insights in there for both practitioners and clients.
I am wondering if this will assist me in noticing when the subjects I am bringing up are comfortable to the other person (colleague or friend.) In other words are we within a person’s “window” of comfort. And will I better allow myself to say No to being around people who I do not feel safe with (usually family.)
I recommend to people I know, who have experienced trauma, to find a counselor who have had this training. I hope they are able to find one. And me too when I find require counseling. I have been processing trauma for many years and this program has the effective combination of knowledge of the brain with compassionate understanding and effective observations & practices unique to the client’s situation. Big thank you. Such a priceless contribution.
This was a wonderful 5 day series. Thank you so much. However, I run support groups and work with people and family members affected by what we refer to as an Asperger’s profile. Asperger’s is genetic as well as often having many co occurring conditions such as anxiety, depression, and OCD. People coming to us are realizing that their parents are or suspect they are, on the autism spectrum. These people have attachment issues, complex PTSD issues and also a lack of education about autism. Much of what you discussed is relevant. The prior therapy or support these people have had was missing the education about autism. Where do you feel this fits into your work since talk therapy generally is not advised for individuals with autism and many of these people also are autistic, very bright, and suffering.
Some years ago Bessel’s book saved my life. The positive ripple effects since, have been massive. Thank you SO much to you all. I feel very blessed to be able to learn from such amazing minds. The practical techniques with the physiology explained will be extremely helpful in all areas of life.
Thank you so much for providing this for free. I am profoundly grateful to you. It is so empowering for me as a trauma survivor and very painful too to understand myself more deeply, although the associated grief has been deeply healing.
I have sadly experienced trauma therapists with very little understanding of the need to work with or indeed pay attention to the body. Some trauma therapists are not able to stay grounded or integrated themselves whilst doing this work, nor seemingly aware of this….
Yet I have made significant progress with a combination of EMDR, yoga and meditation and continue to do so.