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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Hi, I am a School Counselor in training; I am gearing up to complete Internship II in a few months. Trauma and crisis are my calling as a school counselor. Coming from a developing country and relocating to the US about 15 years ago was perhaps one of the best things that happened to me. I was a teacher back home, and I can tell you at that time, there were no school counselors, social workers, occupational therapists, or any other kind of accommodations for students with diverse needs or traumatic backgrounds.
I will use this information to increase my knowledge and help other school staff become trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed. I am still a student, so I wasn’t able to watch all the parts or buy the gold membership, but whatever I got was awe-inspiring; I intend to keep educating myself and others.
I have watched the entire series. Each day I have taken away something that reinforces an element of our research into frequency-based therapeutic compositions. At the end of this last episode, where Ruth talked about the connection between the emotional part of of the brain and the thinking part of the brain, it explains why we are having so much success. Music, often evokes an emotional response. We have all felt it while watching a movie. By combining a specific frequency with harmonically compatible musical elements, and then adding in movement to the musical elements, it connects the thinking and emotional parts of the brain. We can now explain it better to our research subjects and clients.Thank you for providing this series for free this week.
Thank you for your generosity, warmth and kindness.
The reference to vertical and horizontal integration provides me a simple, go- to visual framework.
Thank you very much Dr. Ruth Buczynski for making this very helpful information so readily available. There were some great “AHA” moments…
I work with musicians who often have experienced trauma in their training. Especially classically trained musicians in the Conservatory model. This is exactly the kind of work we do to help them release their limitations they’ve learned and to grow into being able to fully express their artistic voice.
For example, young musicians spent so much time being told what to do in lessons and being corrected, that they often lose connection with their own body. They dim their senses so they can do what the teacher says is “right“. They try so hard to be right that they are afraid of being wrong, which translates into fear of moving. So many similarities.
Oh that is so cool. It dovetails into our research so perfectly.
Thank you team. It was well presented and the content was of much value. I counsel students who come up with traumatic experiences and require counselling. ( I head the School of Liberal Arts in a Private University in India and teach psychology). The sessions helped me to gain new insights into the role of brain in traumatic experiences
Wishing you the best. Can you consider reducing the gold subscription for developing countries?
Hi Priya, thanks for your suggestion! We offered the program as a free broadcast for the purpose of allowing people in different countries in different time zones to have the opportunity to access this broadcast. I can pass this along to our senior staff so they can consider this for the future!
Thank you so much for this wonderful training! It’s given me so many ideas about how to apply theses concepts and techniques in my own work.
Thank you extremely much!!! I am really very thankfull for the couse. For sure I will take it with me in helping my clients as a social worker. You do an immensely good job for a better and more healthy world.
Thank you!!
Jenny
Simply beyond good. Yesterday it took me a couple of hours to process the information. I now know what’s gonna happen in the next couple of hours to me today… amazing. Thank you SO much!!!
I’m going to use these course to integrate new ideas in my work with my clients. I am a Yoga and studying to became Somatic healing coach, and this course was amazing to grab really new point of views, especially with dissosiation, that is one of my trauma problems too.
Thank you so much, I will support your work everytime I can!
❤️Thank you, this was very intresting.
😄🙏
Natasha
Cathy Bowman, P.S.H. therapist, Australia. Healing the subconscious-mind creates emotional shifts that aligns the whole body towards equilibrium. The body speaks is a good expression. Thank you for these very informative talks.
Thank you all so much. Very helpful and clear. As a budding forensic pediatrician, to be reminded that medical training has a focus on spotting what’s ‘wrong’ or ‘abnormal’ with a patient, but working with trauma is far more about listening to the story the body is telling, as its story is not random, and honoring that inner knowledge.
As a commenter mentioned below, it would be incredibly helpful to have more insights on working with clients/patients with learning/cognitive difficulties and disabilities who deserve excellent trauma-informed care.
I am a layperson about to train as a therapist. This week of your hourly psychology talks on trauma has been accessible and fascinating. I have learnt so much, as well as experiencing hope that historical family patterns can be released. I am excited about my chosen professional vocation and my future.
Kind regards,
Jacqui
Thank you all. I learned a lot. I am retired and not a practicing therapist. I clearly can and will use some of the information in my own life.
I hope this will help myself and also in my path towards volunteering or fostering kids.
I am not a practitioner. I am a survivor of complex trauma. The information shared during the 5 sessions has been incredibly helpful. Collectively, it brought clarity and insights from science and the panelists’ long-time experience in the field. Their insights were hugely helpful. Importantly, it was validating and brought hope: in recognising that dredging up all of the past yet again can be re-traumatising and counter-productive to healing and moving forward with my life. The message was clearly conveyed that being traumatised is “not a death sentence”. There is liberation from putting a name to a collection of feelings and experiences from a traumatised Past and in Knowing there is the opportunity to heal in the work being done.
Thank you for your understanding of this, your commitment to it and your willingness to share it openly. It has made a huge difference for me. I have been on a healing journey for 2 decades, finding my way forward through instinct, rationale and gratefully encountering very helpful people, ideas and techniques like meditation. I was only recently introduced to Complex Trauma. It has described and framed everything and set me on a course to more healing. I am very, very grateful to have encountered this series.
It has been a significant challenge to find a therapist who is trained in complex trauma. I can only hope the one I found now is as insightful, trained and helpful as the panelists involved in this series.
Thank you.
This has been incredibly informative. Thank you so much for this program. I have learned a lot about myself as I continue to ove through my healing journey an insights about others. This has truly been a blessing for me.
Julie Gardner
I’m not a therapist, but I am very interested in these topics. One group that seems to be overlooked in all these discussions are PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES. I’d love to know if there is any research about this group.
I am looking for ways to help a client: a young mother who gave traumatic birth to her middle child en route to the hospital, wherein both her life and the baby’s were nearly lost, she endured excruciating pain, and she suffered lingering injury. The trauma still clearly resides in her body. There was not a perpetrator, so some of the trauma-resistance examples do not apply. Somatic therapy seems necessary. I also have a lot of other clients it would apply to.
Thanks so much for these interesting sessions.
When talking about a bottom up approach it might be helpful to mention Awareness Through Movement which is the work of Dr Moshe Feldenkrais.
Moshe considered his work in the 1970s and 80s to be somatic education and his theories of neuroplasticity and his lessons of exploratory movements for self observation are certainly one tool which might help many trauma patients to feel comfortable in their skins.
Moshe claimed his work was a way “ to fulfill unavowed dreams “ and Ruth’s goodbye echoed this sentiment with “ helping clients in ways which they never imagined”
Once again thanks and it is interesting that modern therapy is developing on parallel lines to somatic education.
I am going to try to have a client of mine tell me about where in his body he feels the sensations when he is “triggered”. His usual reaction to such a trigger is some kind of angry outburst. I am think from the way he carries himself generally that the sensations he feels will originate in his chest and shoulders. If so, I’d like to allow him to practice “sitting with that” while focusing on his breathing and relaxing on the exhale, so that he can hopefully let his anger subside and flow out with his breath, rather than letting it build in his chest and shoulders. That way, he could respond to loud voices or heavy criticism without a verbal outburst of his own.
I was able to link in to watch only the very last session and am feeling so excited and fascinated to learn more, especially linking movement with being stuck in trauma. I am a new generalist Counsellor with many years of working in child safety area with vulnerable and traumatised children and their parents. This session has just ignited such a new way of thinking about helping my clients rather than the extensive talking therapy that is exhausting for client and myself. I have so much to learn and thankyou for this opportunity.
Karen from beautiful Gippsland, Melbourne Australia
I am an Anesthesiologist, MA Military Psychologist, and Chaplain interested in trauma- PTSD, suicide, and many other aspects of mental and physical health (the same). I am currently investigating Psychedelic Medicine and the connection of trained spiritual and therapist roles and techniques to “activate” the healing process before, during, and after, the medication is administered. This training appeals to me more than many of the other options I have investigated for working with patients for the best outcome.
Do you have the data from Project Artichoke?
Thank you so much for this series. I am doing a pilot body-based trauma healing methods class for a small group of moms in an inner city pediatrics practice in upstate NY. They are having ‘ah ha’ moments all the time, and are getting tools to use. I actually added something from day 2 to the class content this afternoon. This is going to help me with the final version of the course.
Thank you. I really value the concept of brain integration – of all parts of the brain and the function of body work in particular yoga in this process.it raises many questions and reflections on particular therapeutic work with clients. I think of one of my clients who believed that she was betrayed by her body that felt sexually excited by her abuser (a parent) but ashamed, frightened and anger.
She projected her anger onto her body by punishing her body (self harming). Bringing the fractured parts of self/body/mind/ emotions/ social self together through healing, new perception and integration is an extraordinary and special process. We are privileged to have a part in this process and to be on the receiving end of your wisdom and experience. Thankyou
I am very thankful for this series of lectures with diverse angles on trauma, both theoretical and methodological. I am a psychodramatist and family therapist working with psychosomatic patients, mostly in groups. We realised that talking therapies are unsuitable for many of these patients since there is no connection between the body and the mind, between the limbic&middle brain and the upper brain system.
In psychodrama, the patient can play the bodily symptom – feeling it, putting words on it and having a dialogue with her/himself in that role. this way building the bridge between body and mind. The gestures, the voice, and the posture talk (creating a movement vocabulary (as Pat Ogden calls it).
So these sessions were beneficial for me in strengthening my competency and having a bigger knowledge of how the brain and the nervous system function.
I am strongly considering signing up for the package, but I have already bought Dan Siegal’s lectures and others from other companies.
Thanks again!
Thank you for this series of webinars. I will use everything I have learnt in my own healing. There is virtually no decent trauma therapy in the NHS. Services are essentially oppressive and add their own trauma to the original, particularly in terms of epistemic injustice. NHS England recently tried to roll out criminalisation of patients in the SIM model and were only prevented from making that national policy by a group of service users who raised the issue with the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It was an ‘intervention’ that used coercion of police officers as an alternative to medical treatment for mental health patients with trauma-related presentations. The situation here is unsafe, so any knowledge out there that can help might be literally life-saving.
The ‘cap’ on a shoelace is called an aglet, just fyi. I only know that because I have excavated one from an archaeological context. It’s not quite a fair exchange of knowledge, but it’s all I have.
Ruth et al. I have worked with clients and trauma as an LCSW for fifty years and long ago attended Bill O’Hanlon trainings and many trauma trainings since, but the impact of viewing and listening to this series on 5 consecutive days has been BiG! My sense is that may be due to how you shift often from one of the other master therapists to yourself, and repeat. I think it is almost like a bilateral shift that you are asking the viewer to make and it helps disrupt previous learning and input
all the newer brain, body , mind research and learning. At least, I think it does that for me as a psycho dynamically trained clinician who moved into family therapy in the 1970’s and later integrated some CBT, a lot of narrative theory and EMDR over time. Thank you for presenting the theory and practical tools together, I see a handful of clients now, but this content validates and gives me some new approaches to use in our work to establish stronger and healthier responses.
Thank you so much for that amazing program. I have learned a lot from it. Specially about what parts of the brain are affected by trauma and how to counter that affect. I also appreciated Ruth’s restating in simpler words what had been stated by other, but rephrase it in easier to grasp terms. I went to grad school in the 80’s and 90’s and don’t feel that I have been taught enough about how to heal trauma.
I have been familiar with Bill O’Hanlon and Peter Levine’s work, but not with the work of many other pioneers in the field. I am now educating myself about trauma and watching this program as been part of that education.
Very useful information about trauma’s connection with the body. I will be able to use the practical tips about how to help my clients by using aspects of body movements and the bottom-up approach. I have already used movement with one client who goes into complete withdrawal and I hope to help her access deeper awareness and integration. It is impressive how you have packed in so much knowledge and practical tips into 5-6 hours, time being so critical in our lives. Thank you for all the great work and the sharing. Kamna A Pruvost, Oxford
Ruth, Ruth, Bessel, Peter and Pat, thank you so much for putting together methodologies that are not anti Christian so can be used to help real Americans individuals!
Thank you so much! Such helpful information. I already utilized what I had learned through this series with a client today–encouraging them to notice what they were feeling in their body related to their trauma. We took a break at that point and walked around, did breathwork and took sips of water.
The words are not as important, somatic narrative–good stuff!
Thanks again,
Marisa Kaprow, LCSW
Chadwick Center, San Diego
I believe it is crucial to keep at least the basic of this information publicly available at no cost. THANK YOU for all those who did the research to enable these insights to be know and for those who made sharing these insights possible. And to all those who were able to pay so that the work can continue.
Thank you for making this series free of charge. I am not counselling trauma clients but do CBT for tinnitus patients as Audiologist. I quite often encounter patients/clients with some form of trauma, and need to know when to refer onwards. This series helped me to understand trauma clients better and what to watch out for.
thank you so much for your insightful sessions. I am not a practitioner, but someone who has experienced trauma, and there were so many ‘aha’ moments. It means a lot to me. Sorry I can’t afford a gold subscription and it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for me, but having had so much talk therapy over so many years, I have to say that one of the moments that stuck out to me was when Bessel said ‘put your hand over your heart’ and what comes up for you? I firstly wanted to cry, then my hands went to my head where I was trying to fend off blows from my mother. So profound and worth a thousand talk sessions. Thank you again, Lisa
absolutely outstanding, thank you 🙂
Thank you for this training. I will be using this in my practice of working at a social services agency where I counsel adults and children from foster care and intact families. There is some kind of trauma (or multiple trauma) with every client, so this is very helpful to know the cutting edge information. Thank you again for offering this for free.
I am excited to explore using these tools in the context of interweaving EFT tapping.
I really enjoyed the training, and learned a great deal. I kept listening to hear whether a Gold Subscription carried forward to other trainings in the form of discounted pricing?
This series was awesome. Thank you so much!
How do I find the right therapist that does these techniques?
Lisa ONeill
Namewantedtaken@gmail.com
Thanks so much for making this available to people who can’t afford it right now.
Play time versus trauma time
The joys of physical play allow all of us, regardless of age, to experience better sense of self, better sense of family, better sense of community wellness.
This is a great compilation of excellent professionals with expertise in the field of trauma. Thank you!
In my clinical supervisory role I recommend your training tools to many mental health practitioners I supervise in different countries some of whom are Spanish speaking. I wonder if this incredibly rich training material and other series you produce could be accessible to Spanish Speaking communities in their language, in line with your aim to make good quality training on trauma-informed practice widely available in the world. Thank you!
Maria, UK
fantastic. I’m a childhood trauma survivor and much of what is spoken about directly relates to the self work I’ve been doing. The 2 most powerful therapies that have helped me transform myself is DBT coupled with the Wim Hof method everyday. I intentionally revisited the painful trauma I hid from! everyone and myself for 30:years. When my wife wanted to seperate I knew there was something broken in me. I threw away all my dysfunctional coping mechanisms which threw me into amygdala hijack. I lost 15kgs in a couple of weeks lost all appetite and couldn’t sleep. I had suicidal ideation. I then started rebuilding healthy coping mechanism with a CBT therapist but found it wasn’t enough and then luckily found Marsha Lineham and her DBT therapy and used a New Harbinger workbook to build new healthy coping mechanisms from scratch. The combination of that with the Wim Hof Method showed me first hand I can have control over my physiological and psychological responses. I successfully started creating space between the emotion and reaction. I now almost religiously do a 13min cold shower every morning in the garden rail, hail or snow combined with the breathing technique beforehand. I feel the most important lessons here is the power of psychological therapy combined with physiological therapy. I believe personally that the 2 must be combined for a lasting rewiring of a trauma survivors neurobiology. The mind/body connection is critical and I feel the 2 pronged approach is essential. I’m now on a path to try and help others. I’ve just completed a certificate 2 in child and young persons mental health here in the UK. First steps towards a career shift. Big love James x
How awesome!
James, thank you so much for this valuable look into practical and effective healing practice. May your journey continue to guide others.
I am not a therapist/health practitioner but I am going to use this information to find the right therapist for me. I have visited well meaning therapists but they have unfortunately made me feel worse and I have continued to feel stuck.
I have tried CBT, Hypnotherapy/kinesiology and EFT with no success. I think the two key take aways from this whole series is finding a therapist that 1. Makes me feel safe first before applying any therapy and 2. Focusing on sensations in the body, someone who can read the ‘Somatic Narrative’ (Movement Vocabulary).
Also the knowledge that early/long term trauma is more complex than single event trauma. I noticed some therapist became frustrated with me…they couldn’t understand why I was still feeling the same way.
Thank you so much for this free information, it really is life saving!
Great insights!
The whole series has been extremely impressive and relevant to my work as a Family Therapist .working in public service child and family mental health settings.
I have found the content of each section very helpful to me personally and, since my work has a clear relational focus this will be to the benefit of families I work with.
It is also very welcome to be able access the wisdom of such experts free of charge. A lot of my work has been done in recent years for no remuneration.
Thank you.
These talks are very useful in helping me understand PTSD trauma better.
I really appreciate it. And I am looking forward to hearing from you about C-PTSD trauma treatment procedures soon.
Thanks Ruth. So helpful to update on new findings and approaches, and beautifully presented.
This has been very interesting as a great overview of trauma, the body brain response and trauma interventions. I will be using these ideas and content with other recent training in training sessions I am delivering with clinicians in a local community mental health agency. Thank you so much. Sorry I can not afford to purchase as I did in the past.