Neuroscience for Clinicians: Brain Change for Stress, Anxiety, Trauma, Moods and Substance Abuse

• Integrate the new brain science into your practice!
• Activate the brain for change and wellbeing
• Overcome anxiety, stress, trauma, depression and substance abuse!
• From neurons to structures to pathways to networks – how common psychological disorders alter them

Bring the latest findings from neuroscience into your treatments. Learn interventions to literally alter the brain’s neurons, structures, pathways, and networks. Recent research reveals that neuroplasticity takes place all through life, so you can offer hope for real nervous system change no matter how long your client has suffered. You will discover how and where neuroplasticity occurs, and ways to use it therapeutically. You gain the background you need through enjoyable experiences combined with clear principles for utilizing the nervous system in your work. Learn how to think multi-dimensionally as you see the brain in 3-D and sense it in action. Then you will be able to draw on multiple modalities to overcome resistances, activate creative responses, and turn problems into potentials.

This seminar teaches you how to promote transformation in the traumatized, stressed, addicted, anxious, and depressed brain in positive ways. By initiating change using top-down, bottom-up, and horizontal methods, you add new dimensions to each therapy session. This seminar gives you tools through concepts and experiences to help you build your own techniques for creative individualizing. And in the process, you will find yourself feeling more relaxed, alert, and present as you activate your own brain in positive ways!

OUTLINE

Tour through the Brain: What clinicians need to know from neurons to structures, to pathways, to networks

• Feel your neurons activate
• See brain structures in 3-D
• Experience how the brain processes top-down, bottom-up, and horizontal
• Actively engage your brain structures for change
• Work with implicit and explicit memories
• Learn how to rebalance key pathways with your interventions:
  • Pain Pathway
  • Reward Pathway
  • Fear-Stress Pathway

Nervous System Networks and the Social Brain: We are wired for attunement

• Default Mode (DMN) and Task Mode Networks (TMN)
• Healing attachment
• Activate mirror neurons bottom-up

Neuroplasticity and Neurogenesis: How the brain can change

• Three timeframes for change
• Neuroplasticity at the synapse
• How to foster neuroplasticity in clients
• Neuroplasticity in action: Exercise your brain!

Integrating Mind and Brain, East and West: A network theory for understanding the mind-brain-body system

• From Indra’s Net to neural nets
• Integration of mind and brain for more treatment options

Practice the Interventions for Healing: Bottom-Up, Top-Down, and Horizontal

• Sensory Awareness
• Meditation and Mindfulness Body Work
• Unconscious and the DMN
• Experience and activate the direct Mind-Body Link

INTEGRATE THE BRAIN INTO TREATMENTS

Stress

• How stress alters the nervous system
• Calm the stress/fear pathway
• Develop alert/relaxed attention for better coping

Trauma

• Develop security through self-soothing methods
• Foster confidence with yoga body positioning
• Extinguish traumatic memories
• Reconsolidate implicit memories

Anxiety

• The anxious brain reaction
• Work top down/ bottom up/ horizontally
• Calm the limbic system bottom up with movement
• Soothe the insula through meditative sensory awareness
• Deconstruct sensations mindfully
• Balance the nervous system

Substance Abuse

• Brain areas involved in addictions
• Rewire the reward pathway
• Detach from pleasure and pain
• Activate the parietal lobes for sensory relaxation and enjoyment
• Develop prefrontal connections for better judgment

Depression

• The depressed brain pattern
• Activate an under-activated nervous system with yoga postures and energy meditations
• Regulate the limbic system by activating links to prefrontal cortex and cingulate gyrus with mindfulness turned outward
• Practice the 4-step method to overcome negative self-suggestions
• Unify real and ideal
• Foster joyful relationship through mirror neurons
• Develop compassion and gratitude

6 Principles for Incorporating the Brain Into Your Therapy

OBJECTIVES

1. Communicate key nervous system structures, functions and pathways.

2. Predict brain alterations that occur from anxiety, trauma and stress, substance abuse, and depression.

3. Support how commonly applied treatments such as CBT, DBT, dynamic therapy, meditation and hypnosis can foster healthy brain change.

4. Break down neuroplasticity and types of experiences that elicit it.

5. Apply interventions that can be used to return the nervous system to natural balance using methods drawn from neural-feedback, psychodynamics, mindfulness, sensory awareness, hypnosis and bodywork.

6. Demonstrate specific techniques that enhance attention, interoception, affect regulation and sensory-motor awareness.

7. Practice six principles that guide you when including the brain during treatment.