2-Day Intensive Training: Mindfulness Certification Course

CPD

Handouts

Speaker

Debra Premashakti Alvis, PhD Related seminars and products

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Debra Premashakti Alvis, PhD, a licensed psychologist, developed the Mind/Body Program at the University of Georgia, providing clinician training on the integration of mindfulness and contemplative practices into psychotherapy. Her work as a professor at the University of Georgia included the supervision of doctoral students and co-leading a research team investigating mindfulness.

In addition to teaching, Dr. Alvis maintains a private practice and has more than 25 years of clinical experience in treating clients with a variety of conditions by mindfulness principles, body-oriented principles and traditional psychotherapeutic approaches. She also has an over 30-year personal contemplative practice.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Debra Alvis maintains a private practice and receives a speaking honorarium from Asadis Training, Essential Therapy Training, Georgia Museum of Art, Bascom Museum of Art, and Mountain Area Health Education Center. She receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Debra Alvis is a member of the American Association of College Student Personnel, the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education, the Association of Specialists in Group Work, the Athens Area Psychological Association, and the Georgia Psychological Association.

Alternate Options

Objectives

1. Investigate the empirical support for mindfulness and connect this information to clinical implications for various conditions.
2. Evaluate how understandable descriptions of neurological processes underlying disorders, in conjunction with understandable explanations of how mindfulness affects those processes, can motivate clients to engage in treatment.
3. Assess for situations that may contraindicate the use of mindfulness with clients.
4. Support how mindfulness training can enhance the cultivation of the therapeutic relationship.
5. Employ mindfulness practices to impact the stress reaction and shift clients to a relaxation response.
6. Evaluate how mindfulness interventions utilized in treatment plans for anxiety can help counter automatic patterns of thoughts.
7. Assess how mindfulness can be taught in the clinical setting to help depressed clients manage negative self-talk.
8. Support how mindfulness can enhance addiction treatment and help clients identify triggers that could lead to relapse.
9. Investigate how mindfulness and breathing techniques that reduce the body’s anger response can be taught in-session to help clients manage their angered outbursts.
10. Employ grounding techniques and breathing exercises that can be used to increase feelings of safety in traumatized clients.
11. Assess how integrating mindfulness as an adjunctive therapy can help clinicians diversify available clinical techniques and individualize treatment.
12. Distinguish between individual and group mindfulness practices and identify which types of clients would benefit from each.
13. Differentiate between formal and informal mindfulness practices and characterize how they can be used in conjunction with one another to address the unique needs of clients.

Outline

• Empirical support for improved symptomology and well-being
• The latest research on therapists who practice mindfulness
• Your mindfulness practice and how you can embody mindfulness
• Situations that may contraindicate applying mindfulness in session
• Research limitations

• Mindfulness vocabulary
• Visuals and metaphors to explain mindfulness
• Motivate clients with neuroplasticity

• Overcoming barriers
• Affect regulation techniques for therapist and client
• Strategies to create empathetic connection
• Exercises to build clients trust in themselves

• Tips for teaching clients about the senses and awareness
• Strategies to shift from “Automatic Pilot”
• Skill building interventions to increase responsiveness & reduce reactivity
• Strategies to cultivate attunement
• Approaches for deepened experience of mindfulness
• Brief and other informal practices
• How to adapt practices to special populations

• Effectiveness of group vs. individual mindfulness
• How to set up and conduct a mindfulness group
  • Screening for individual goodness of fit
  • Encouraging client buy-in and commitment to practice
• Mindfulness interventions specifically designed for groups

• Breathing practices that break the rumination cycle
• Guided visualizations to lower the stress response
• Movement strategies
• Multi-sensory regulation techniques
• Mindfully reduce the intensity of panic attacks

• Muscle tension releasing – exercises to counter fight or flight
• Guided meditations to disempower intrusive thoughts
• Grounding exercises and sample scripts

• Recognize self-criticism and respond with self-love
• Manage negative self-talk with awareness of thoughts
• Meditations to boost well-being

• Awareness vs. autopilot -- relapse prevention
• Mindfulness for triggers
• Emotional regulation for cravings

• Breathe through anger
• Distraction and grounding techniques
• Self-soothe with calming words and imagery

• Adapt mindfulness experiences with cultural sensitivity
• Assess appropriateness of mindfulness interventions for individuals
• Negotiate the treatment plan

• Right here/right now – stay in the moment to reduce anxieties
• Effective and healthy ways to manage your emotions
• Change limiting stories about caring for yourself
• Release the negative – 3 steps to countering negativity bias

Target Audience

• Counselors
• Social Workers
• Psychologists
• Marriage and Family Therapists
• Addiction Counselors
• Case Managers
• School Counselors
• Nurses
• Other Mental Health Professionals

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