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

I am a SE faculty and a marriage and family therapist. I have a master’s in counseling and Depth Psychology and a Ph.D. in Clinical and Somatic Psychology. My dissertation, with a committee that included Dr. Daniel Siegel, generated original research on the role of implicit memory in Somatic Experiencing. My clinical experience is with individuals, couples, children, and families treating a broad base of issues. I draw from over a decade and a half of experience with SEI, teach throughout the country and internationally, and consult worldwide. I am currently conducting evidence-based research on SE to promote its use in trauma-informed statewide care initiatives. you can access several SE research publications I have written on my website. I reside in Bozeman, Montana (right outside of Yellowstone National Park), and currently specialize in providing SE individual and group consultations for SE students of all levels. I have faculty-level online group case consultations on Saturday of most months. You can join by going to my website www.abiblakeslee.com. I focus on giving practical details in building SE skills and how to integrate various frameworks into your SE practice such as psychodynamic therapy, object/relations, the psychobiological principles of attachment, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, EMDR, and SE touch skills. Please feel free to email at somatics4healing@yahoo.com, or sign up to receive information about trainings, lectures, and SE research at www.abiblakeslee.com.

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Dr. Abi Blakeslee is the founder of Implicit Psychotherapy, maintains a private practice, and has employment relationships with Somatic Experiencing International and Ergos Institute for Somatic Education. She 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