Full Course Description

Facing a Pandemic with Radical Compassion

Program Information

Objectives

Apply core principles of mindfulness to the new challenges posed by the Corona virus epidemic
Utilize the RAIN technique to effectively manage fear and anxiety

Outline

Finding togetherness in a virtual environment

Prioritizing and facing fears

Impact of pandemic across individuals and societies

Responding with awakened compassion
Transforming suffering with growth

Guided meditation – envisioning an evolved self
Identifying blocks in the paths of awareness and peace
Key elements in responding effectively to Corona virus
Responding directly to fear with RAIN

Processing “after the RAIN” – turning states into traits

Preparing the nervous system for mindfulness practice

Customizing and individualizing mindfulness approaches
Bargaining with fear

Radical compassion – touching vulnerability
RAIN exercise
Bringing radical compassion to others

Challenges of Corona virus on stress management practices
Domains of radical compassion

Reflection exercise

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/19/2020

Has Neuroscience Lived up to its Promise?

Program Information

Objectives

Evaluate what research has taught us about the most important clinical applications of neurobiological principles.
Assess how a better understanding of the relationship between mind and brain can change your interventions with clients.
Determine how new research may shape the future direction of psychotherapy and inform clinical treatment.

Outline

Integrating neuroscience research into psychotherapeutic practice

“Decade of the Brain” – early formulations
Biological psychiatry – role of genetic predisposition

Iatrogenic effects of autism and schizophrenia misconceptualizations
Initial research into medication interventions

Differences between trauma and classic psychiatric disorders

Limited generalization of brain scan techniques

Influence of movement on trauma

Synrhythmic regulation

How brains express interest with affection

Brain structure and development

Experience expectant and dependent processes

Development of secure attachments

Trauma impact on brain integration and self-regulation

Modes of communication and attachment

Contingent communication across cultures
Effect of mindfulness training on children
Effective psychic responses to Covid 19

Increasing resilience in the presence of trauma and disruption

“Healthy mind platter”
Sleep and trauma
Resources for resilience

Use-dependent brain development

Modulating limbic activity with frontal lobe involvement
Effects of experience on neurological responsivity

Alteration of brain structures and functions in response to trauma

Multiple pathways of therapy – achieving integration

Resources for facilitating mindfulness and coping with current crisis

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/19/2020

The Body as Healer: Working from the Bottom Up

Program Information

Objectives

Integrate the clients’ awareness of their internal experience and your observations of their nonverbal behaviors, including involuntary gestures, posture changes, and external indications of shifts in their autonomic nervous system.
Develop your capacity to read your own somatic cues as a means of resonating and connecting with the client’s experience.
Assess the often-fleeting physical cues of their internal states that indicate crucial resources clients can access as they move toward healing.

Outline

From Trauma to Awakening & Flow

Trauma Vortex & Counter Vortex
Emotions & Touch

Core Regulation: Working from the Bottom Up

The Roots of Traumatization
Terror & the Freeze Response
Neuroception & the Activation of Arousal
Unsafe Touch

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/19/2020

Couples in Quarantine: Staying Together Apart

Program Information

Objectives

Develop an understanding of Systemic Family Therapy and Contextual Couples Therapy and how they apply to the current climate of world and couples during these times.
Develop an understanding of families in crisis during a disaster and the impacts (negative and positive) this can have on relationships.

Outline

Systemic Family Therapy

Stimuli
Pulls within relationships

Differences in couple relationships

Complimentary
Polarization
Differences = strengths

Contextual Couples Therapy

Impacts on where relationships are at
Impact of morals
Impacts of heightened stress

Parenting

Our own childhood experiences
Adult children

Virtual Space

How to connect
Affordable
Podcasts

Relationships

Intimate
Work

Types of family responses

Catastrophic
Difficult but optimistic
Manageable
Small compared to previous disaster

Continuity Principle

Role continuity
Relational continuity
Historical continuity

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/20/2020

Emotionally Focused Therapy for Individuals

Program Information

Objectives

Determine the key elements of the attachment perspective on personality and its significance for clinical intervention.
Apply the process of change and the elements of the EFT Tango in sessions.
Apply the micro-interventions used by the EFT therapist to gradually move clients into transformative moments.
Assess the applicability of EFIT for different clients with different symptomatology.

Outline

Introduction to Susan Johnson
Introduction to Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

Summary of EFT w/ Couples
The Focus of EFIT
Importance of Attachment Theory
Case Study Video 1: Natalie

Understanding the Theory Behind Emotionally Focused Therapy & Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

Attachment Theory Implications for Practice
Core Tenets of Attachment Theory

Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy

Goals of EFIT
How to Reach EFIT Goals
EFIT Stages & Steps
5 Basic Moves of EFIT
Dancing the EFT Tango
Exercise: Tango Dance Move 3
Case Study Video 2: Natalie

Q&A

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/20/2020

Hope for Treatment-Resistant Depression: A Sensorimotor Approach to Change

Program Information

Objectives

Choose how educate clients about depression as a somatic state, not just a psychological state.
Employ cognitive schemas that reinforce depressive states to improve client outcomes.
Use a Sensorimotor Psychotherapy approach to understanding depression in sessions.
Use three body-centered interventions that increase energy and focus in depressed clients.
Evaluate Sensorimotor interventions that transform depressive beliefs.
Determine the use of the social engagement system and its role in evoking an internal sense of safety as it relates to treatment.

Outline

Explore the foundations for Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

DSM-IV Symptoms of Depression
Trauma
Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Responses
Implicit Memories

Describe the process through which depression is conditioned in bodily responses

Compliance as a Survival Resource
Depression and Hypoarousal
Procedural Learning

Describe Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and explore the ways that it can be used to address the physical and cognitive symptoms of depression

Mindfulness
Action and Curiosity
Dis-identifying from Symptoms and Reframing
Other Interventions
Social Engagement
Leavening Distress States with Positive States

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/20/2020

Compassionate Inquiry

Program Information

Objectives

Demonstrate how to keep clients engaged in present-moment experience using a mind-body framework.
Explain how to help clients access emotional states through body awareness.
Discuss how to uncover early traumatic events of childhood and unconscious feeling states.
Explore how to cultivate deeper therapeutic presence by bringing attention to what remains unexpressed in clients’ everyday awareness.

Outline

In this workshop Dr. Mate weaves together scientific research, his practice and personal experiences to present a treatment modality that transforms and heals.

Part I

Mate defines and introduces Compassionate Inquiry as an approach to psychotherapy in which both the individual and therapist uncover the level of consciousness, mental climate, hidden assumptions, implicit memories and body states which forms the real message that words both express and conceal.

This session will:

Review the basic assumptions of Compassionate Inquiry
Understand the importance for both the therapist and client, to embody their true nature and co-create a new paradigm
Recognize the limitations of the DSM and of using diagnoses as labels
Look at emotional and physical diseases that can be addressed by Compassionate Inquiry
Recognize the importance of relational aspects of diagnosis
Explore questions that create conditions under which a new paradigm can develop

Part II

Mate builds on his book, When the Body Says “No”.

This part of the session will:

Understand the belief that who gets sick is not accidental
How to challenge a client’s processing system
Understand the role of stress in the development of disease
Review the stress reaction from a systematic understanding
Identify the risk facts and the primary adaptations to stress and how it affects: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health
Look at several case studies that used Compassionate Inquiry to bring about transformation and healing

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Copyright : 03/22/2019

IFS in Action: Leading Clients to Self-Leadership

Program Information

Objectives

Apply strategies used in IFS to contact the core Self.
Specify how to shift the role of therapist from the primary attachment figure to a container who opens the way for the client’s Self to emerge.
Use methods for transparently handling situations in which you get emotionally triggered by your client.
Analyze how to get clients’ polarized, deeply conflicted parts to negotiate with each other.

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Outline

Internal Family Systems (IFS): Origins and Contacting the Core Self

Identify Diagnoses & Symptoms: Open the Way for the Client’s Self to Emerge

Access Internal Strengths & Resources for Healing

Handling Situations in Which You Get Emotionally Triggered

IFS Techniques to Get Client’s Deeply Conflicted Parts to Negotiate

Copyright : 03/22/2019

Couples Therapy for Treating Trauma: The Gottman Method Approach

Program Information

Objectives

Determine the impact of PTSD on a couple’s relationship to inform the clinician’s choice of treatment interventions for both the individual and couple.
Apply simple yet effective clinical interventions in session to help clients acquire a new perspective of PTSD and a more adaptive approach to managing symptoms.
Assess the often ignored social and interpersonal symptoms of PTSD in clients.

Outline

What is PTSD?

DSM-5
Ignored PTSD Symptoms
Epidemiology
Cases of PTSD
Neuroscience of PTSD
The Physiology of PTSD

Effective Treatments of PTSD

Individual Treatments
Couples Treatments
- Emotionally-Focused Therapy (EFT)

Couples’ Therapy for PTSD

PTSD’s Affects on Relationships
The Non-PTSD Partner
Effects on Sound Relationship House
- Love Maps
- Turning Toward
- Conflict Management

Intervention for Couples with PTSD

Surfacing
Exploration
Returning to Couple Interaction
Specific Interventions
Creating Shared Meaning

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

The Art and Science of Presence: Applications for the Consulting Room

Program Information

Outline

Questions from Audience
What is Presence?
How does awareness relate to attention?
What is the overlap between the social brain and consciousness?
What does energy and information flow as a fundamental aspect of Mind have to do with consciousness?
A proposal about the Probability Distribution Curve of Energy and the Nature of Mind
Integration and Well-Being
Cultivating mental health through the integration of consciousness

Objectives

Argue why integration—the process of creating differentiated linkages among different brain systems and aspects of personality functioning—is essential to the process of psychological healing
Utilize clinical tools to enhance the integration of consciousness, including The Wheel of Awareness, a reflective exercise that opens up pathways to expanding personal identity and moving beyond the limiting sense of a skin-defined self
Evaluate how to increase your own sense of moment-to-moment immediacy and presence in creating healing connections with your clients

Target Audience

Psychologists, Physicians, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Polyvagal Theory in Action

Program Information

Objectives

Employ exercises designed to engage the neural circuits of your client’s Social Engagement System to improve clinical outcomes.
Catalogue moments of autonomic disconnection and find the right repair in sessions.
Create an environment of autonomic safety using the “inside, outside, and between” guide.
Use your own Social Engagement System to effectively coregulate with clients.
Assess the impact of trauma on the autonomic nervous system.

Outline

The Autonomic Nervous System

The Autonomic Impact of Trauma
Flexible vs. Rigid Autonomic Nervous System

Polyvagal Theory
3 Organizing Principles

Neuroception
Hierarchy
Co-regulation

The Social Engagement System

The Power of Eyes
Prosody
Vocal Bursts
Reciprocity-Rupture-Repair
Breath
Movement

Guiding Questions & Conclusion

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Becoming Solution Focused in Therapy

Program Information

Objectives

Identify the differences between solution-focused and problem-focused approaches.
Explain effective ways to use the Solution-Focused Approach to improve clinical outcomes with clients.
Assess the research on the Solution-Focused Approach as it relates to case conceptualization.

Outline

Attendees to this recording will leave inspired and filled with a new perspective on using the Solution Focused Approach.

Share stories of my success from my practice.
Live demonstrations of SFBT skills in action.

Attendees will come away from this recording believing that they can use this approach with any client with any problem.

Review current research to demonstrate the efficacy of SFBT
Show video examples of therapy sessions with a variety of issues highlighted.

Attendees will be reminded of the truest and most positive aspects on the human experience and how this can be leveraged in a therapy session.

Interactive exercises.
Stories of hope and resilience will be shared.

Target Audience

Psychologists
Physicians
Addiction Counselors
Counselors
Social Workers
Marriage & Family Therapists
Nurses
Other Behavioral Health Professionals

Applying Mindfulness in Therapy with Jack Kornfield and Trudy Goodman

Program Information

Target Audience

Psychologists, Addiction Counselors, Counselors, Social Workers, Marriage & Family Therapists, Nurses, and other Behavioral Health Professionals

Objectives

Articulate methods by which meditation can be integrated with psychotherapy practices to improve clinical outcomes.
Determine the clinical implications of secondary trauma on the therapist and identify simple yet effective meditation interventions to alleviate symptoms of secondary traumas and improve the therapeutic relationship.

Outline

Silent Meditation Sitting The Integration of Psychotherapy and Meditation

The Therapist and Secondary Traumas
Meditation Exercises to Use with Fear and Anger
Mindful Questions to Ask the Client
Naming and Acknowledging Experiences
- Expanding the Window of Tolerance

Mindfulness
Loving-Kindness Practice
Using Gratitude and Appreciation to Help Heal
Audience Q&A

Trauma within Communities
Working on Internal vs. External Relationships
- Relationships within the Moment
Using Mindfulness
- The Ethical Underpinning of Mindfulness
Zen Training

The Joy Practice