How to Work with the Limbic System to Reverse the Physiological Imprint of Trauma
 |
with Pat Ogden, PhD ;
|
 |
with Pat Ogden, PhD; Peter Levine, PhD; Bessel van der Kolk, MD; Ruth Lanius, MD, PhD; and Ruth Buczynski, PhD
Sign up for a Gold Subscription
This is a learning community for practitioners. We can’t wait to hear what you’re going to use with your clients
But please do NOT:
- seek advice for personal problems
- ask for referrals
- post links or advertise a product
- post about technical problems
Thank you so much for providing free access to everyone. The integration of top-down and bottom up approach is the most important concept that I would bring in with my clients.
I have experienced over 25 years of talking therapy since remembering a trauma from when 16 years old, which enabled my body to begin to open up during my 40s, and allowed other sensations from an early childhood sexual assault to surface. I had no conscious memory of that early trauma but it fitted with family history that I had been told as I grew up.
I arrived at a point in my early 60s when I felt completely STUCK. My job was constantly triggering me every day all day long. I became more &more dysregulated & fatigued. I ended up losing my job and being forced to retire at 66.
I instinctively knew talking therapy would not help as the trauma was pre-verbal. Now that I have been able to watch this GENEROUS and OUTSTANDING resource series, I now know that I will need to activate my body to be able to complete my defensive urges so I will attend my local Box-fit class and seek a musical therapist which I know will activate my right brain.
I know that this will help to reintegrate my top-down and bottom-up brain functions as described in the final video.
I feel an immense sense of RELIEF that I can choose my actions to help myself get unstuck, without it being expensive or have to be on a very long wait list for an available therapist which was my only option before watching this series.
With IMMENSE GRATITUDE to the makers of this series you have given me HOPE FOR MY RETIREMENT!
You have enabled me to feel EXCITEMENT for my future and given me tools to help become my whole SELF again. My hope now is possible: to fully participate in present time with access to all my emotions
to be able to contribute meaningfully to my community
to reconnect with people, and create new healthy relationships
to be able to access my natural JOY & HAPPINESS which got buried by the trauma.
Most of all I will be able to ‘pay it forward’ and break another cycle in my family with my own healing, and I can now look forward to planning fun activities for my remaining years on Earth.
Nga mihi nui
Isabell Booth
NZ
Excellent and clear explanations that are directly applicable to practice. Thank you so much! I was able to apply discussions to developmentally traumatic events that left people stuck and cycling through dysfunctional defenses that harmed their adult functioning.
In my practise I will be more attentive to my clients body language, to postures, etc, rest there and be attentive. Love you for this.
Dear people from NICABM, I am not a practitioner, but I also learned a lot
of things from this webinar. Thank you so much for makimg it available for free for people all over the world.
Thank you for pointing out that meditation/mindfulness can be tricky for trauma survivors. I highly recommend David Treleaven’s work on trauma-informed mindfulness, and for cancer patients/survivors, Dr. Linda Carlson’s Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery. And thank you for this invaluable series!
Many, many thanks for this series.
I’ve found it extremely interesting and helpful, and I’m grateful to you all.
Best wishes
Lizzie ☺️
Thank you so much for the chance to watch again. I am a retired psychotherapist who has her own childhood surgery trauma that needs attention. Watching your series again helped me identify my own pattern that keeps me stuck in the trauma response, which is a frozen panic symptom upon waking from sleep. Years and years of additional unhelpful medical experiences made me hesitant to reach out again for help. Now, I will advocate for myself by getting Neurofeedback. You have all been so significant in my work as a trauma therapist. Now, I feel empowered and deserving of my own trauma therapy.
Ich bin nicht nur Logopädin seit 25 Jahren. Ich lebe auch mit PTBS seit 35 Jahren und musste viel ohne Trauma Therapie integrieren. Sehr hilfreich waren für mich Feldenkrais, Yoga, Theater, Tanz, Ostheopathie, Reiki, Singen, Tagebuch schreiben und sichere Beziehungen als das Trauma in meinem Kopf und Körper explodierte. Ich habe durch die 5 Videos sehr viel Bestätigung für meinen Weg bekommen. Ich wende bereits in meiner Arbeit mit Kindern vieles an und berate Eltern. Trauma verliert seinen Schrecken. Lernen, gestalten, Selbstwirksamkeit. Freude am Leben finden. Das tut gut. Wunderbar Videos!!!!!
I remember very good the pillow punching, shouting and screaming 40 years ago and just today I had a talk with another psychologist that the missing link for integration was using the senses and talking about what we saw, felt, ect.. I smiled when you were mentioning that time today. In my work as a speechtherapist I am working with a 25 year old man with selective mutism. He had a very difficult childhood and to connect with his body to feel what is good and what is wrong is every difficult for him. But to come out of that freezing posture I try to invite him to use his senses in the moment. I am curious what will happens next.The body is the key to the brain. Thank you for these 5 very important sessions.
Praise Moves by Wynette Wiilis is available on a website. it is a mrthod she developred as an alternative to yoga using similar movement but without the Eastern theology. It is basically Christian. She was the daughter of various yoga teacher. As an adult she also became a yoga teacher. Then she created her own “fitness” method for people who did not want the Eastern beliefs that were popular at the time. They were based on the east coast, New York and her mother in Florida at the time. I heard of her work thirty years ago when yoga was experimental and not mainstream. I recommended her materials to several women I counseled who were trauma survivors. They could not do meditation because of their symptoms so the meditative aspects of yoga were disruptive to them. The Praise Moves method has continued to be developed. This is merely a suggestion for clients who might want to try movement set to music.
Greetings all! I’m a psychologist currently residing in Kyiv, Ukraine. And I’m so grateful for this program! It really helps me integrate my knowledge from my studies and professional experience and to understand better when to apply what kind of approach. I also have personal experience with somatic and dance-movement approaches and I see how powerful and healing it can be. But while working with groups and people here in Ukraine now, I also come across various resistances when I bring up body awareness. I’ve been looking for some narrative and how to guide clients through it, show how important and useful it could be. And these series gave me the structure I needed. I’m so grateful for the content and also for this unique opportunity to have free access right now!
Deep gratitude!
I am excited because I was inspired from two parts – first I will be incorporating more Yoga practice into my work and the second was something that Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk related about the power involved in challenging our bodies and finding success, i.e. adventure/strength training like in basic military training to change how we relate to our body so I will be finding ways to build this into my practice. Thank you so much for this free resource!
I am not a therapist. I am a c-PTSD conqueror and HeartMath®️resilience coach. I not only find these sessions extraordinarily fascinating and helpful personally but they also help make me a more trauma-sensitive individual. Deep respect and gratitude – thank you all!🌻
$ 200 is equivalent to 10,000 Egyptian pounds which is too much. I was wondering if there could be a discount for developing countries.
I am a consultant psychiatrist, 32 years experience and interested in trauma
I really enjoyed the insights gained from this program. I have a much deeper understanding of trauma and somatic responses. I will be much more tuned into the body postures and movements of my clients in order to call attention to it and explore for healing.
The sound of Pat presentations was not clear . All the others were very clear. I missed a lot of what she said. In adition the captions for her were not available. All the others were.
Technical issues unfortunately made me miss important information.
Thank you so much for making these series available for free, as I couldn´t afford them at the minute, so loving this model. I have understood much better the theory of trauma with the practical interventions, tips, things to consider, examples, summaries you shared during these 5 days. Very good points to take straight away for my practice with clients:
-offer, invite, seek consent and explore interventions, as everyone experiences in different ways.
-somatic experiencing of memories or topics, sit with the body sensations
-pay attention to body movement, face gestures, voice, tone, expressions
-offer something different to clients reprocessing their traumatic experiences: different smells, postures, voices, etc.
My favourite:
-Contradict with real actions what the body (limbic system) is predisposed to do, feel or believe.
Thank you so much!
Brilliant lecture series. Interesting, putting hands out to say stop. I used this in order to cycle past a site in the road where 8 months earlier I had a head on collision and concussion as a Car pulled out across me whilst riding my bike. The body often naturally does what is needed, if we listen. Great to have that coping technique pointed out. As a result of your lectures and my accident and my passion in nutrition, I’m considering an MSc in neuro science psychology. Everything you said rang true to me with how I am with post concussion syndrome. Very helpful. Thank you
I was left wondering if after she saw that Jewelry thief in the car park, which she recognised, did she ring the police?
Thank you again for providing this resource. It was interesting to go further into the parts of the brain and ‘bottom’ up body based approaches. I was interested to hear about pelvis opening triggers for people who have been violated and how to gently introduce opening the body to reconnect with physical parts that may have become numb.
I use NLP all the time both in terms of noticing non verbal cues, (it is very much a part of understanding how interventions are being integrated) and also changing sub-modalities for people to change their perception of what has occurred, it works so well and at times ridiculously fast and permanently.
I find that group therapy /discussion for people with shared experiences can be very beneficial, however always preceded with emotional down regulation otherwise triggering can occur so easily. Personally I promote Havening Touch in session to enable people not take on others traumatic experiences.
Once again thank you so much for all the practical information from this week.
thank you so much for this great series. all of the sessions have contributed greatly to my understanding nuances of what goes on with trauma. today in particular, I was able to appreciate the meaning of one client having been able to reach out with her hand to STOP what we were doing in therapy. possibly the first time in her life when she was able to say NO, thus completing the NO action she could not do when she was being abused as a child. thank you!
I work as a therapist in the UK and ran a addiction charity for 20 years! Working with the Limbic was so effective and we taught them how to respond. However, I am interested in the work with the body / somatic / as this is where so much expression can be identified. Great to listen too. I will be researching more on the subject. Many thanks for your free session!.
I cannot purchase the Gold as too pricey for me as I am now retired but planning to help train in my own community.
Mary
I’m a Yoga Therapist/ Teacher and Holistic sex, love & relationship coach
I LOVE how Bessel talked about how yoga was more effective than mindfulness practices alone for ppl with trauma, and listed all the reasons why. i also love how Pat talks about posture and mentioned “Movement vocabulary”. These are areas that i am so passionate about. I talk about them in my classes/sessions but now have more information and proven reasons why they are so effective. It’s inspiring me to create a workshop on Yoga for Trauma!
So very grateful to have these courses Ruth. Thank you!
I really do appreciate all the work that went behind this series…thank you so much! It really has been helpful! I will now be more cautious about aiming toward integration.
This workshop affirms the power of resonance with the horses in coaching clients in EAS. I feel a tightness in my body when a client only talks about their trauma rather than moving to take some physical action of connection and emotion. Once a person takes physical action to connect with horses or donkeys, there is a definite shift from the thinking to the feeling brain. I am a bottom-up kind of educator/coach. It goes deeper to combine processing with physical actions, but I could never just do talking alone.
I know someone who vaguely remembers being adversely affected by her mother’s hostile memory of difficulties before she was born and this has affected her self-worth even though she is highly accomplished. Today’s session is helpful in getting her to identify the body sensations connected with an image of her mother and to work in re-framing that image to connect new interpretations and sensations for her, allowing her to shift the negative perceptions of herself away from being unworthy.
Believe have this training from before but things have changed with clients. Want to work on the brain from the lower brain up with some clients. Now due to our major east to west coast browser and phone attack/problems we have here, my systems were damaged. Need to know how to access if this training was purchased and which system it is on in three of my damaged computers Believe have this training from before but things have changed with clients. Want to work on the brain from the lower brain up with some clients. Now due to our major east to west coast browser and phone attack/problems my systems were damaged. Need to know how to access if this training was purchased and which system it is on in three of my damaged in which three of my computers have been compromised. This has created, in itself, a trauma response in my research.
Also due to my personal memory that thas been compromised in past few years in our area due to personal trauma created by our land being compromised and problems in society I need to access those trainings. I work with clients whose trauma was stronger in a more cyclical manner.
Thanks to your speakers I have been able to stay abreast of the ramifications during this pandemid the entire time but it seems to be starting to excalate recently in compromise systems that house my videos and trainings since global wars and the pandemic. Many are awakening but to some different responses including the isolated area of my state. Thanks for the workshop. Let me know if I already have it, where I can track it down in four compromised systems in four systems to research. The IT has caused tremendous trauma for my aging brain that is slowly despite my precautions to remain in my three areas of the brain that knows brain trauma due to ongoing fears in society and in my own neighborhood in violence and vandalisms.
Also due to my personal memory that thas been compromised in past few years in our area due to personal trauma created by our land being compromised and problems in society I need to access those trainings. I work with clients whose trauma was stronger in a more cyclical manner. Thanks to your speakers I have been able to stay abreast of the ramifications during this pandemid the entire time but it seems to be starting to excalate recently in compromise systems that house my videos and trainings since global wars and the pandemic. Many are awakening but to some different responses including the isolated area of my state. Thanks for the workshop. Let me know if I already have it, where I can track it down in four compromised systems in four systems to research. The IT has caused tremendous trauma for my aging brain that is slowly despite my precautions to remain in my three areas of the brain that knows brain trauma due to ongoing fears in society and in my own neighborhood in violence and vandalisms. I specially appreciate Ruth Lannius input and have been looking for a book that was spoken of a few years ago?
Believe have this training from before but things have changed with clients. Want to work on the brain from the lower brain up with some clients. Now due to our major east to west coast browser and phone attack/problems we have here, my systems were damaged. Need to know how to access if this training was purchased and which system it is on in three of my damaged in which three of my computers have been compromised. This has created, in itself, a trauma response in my research.
Also due to my personal memory that thas been compromised in past few years in our area due to personal trauma created by our land being compromised and problems in society I need to access those trainings. I work with clients whose trauma was stronger in a more cyclical manner. Thanks to your speakers I have been able to stay abreast of the ramifications during this pandemid the entire time but it seems to be starting to excalate recently in compromise systems that house my videos and trainings since global wars and the pandemic. Many are awakening but to some different responses including the isolated area of my state. Thanks for the workshop. Let me know if I already have it, where I can track it down in four compromised systems in four systems to research. The IT has caused tremendous trauma for my aging brain that is slowly despite my precautions to remain in my three areas of the brain that knows brain trauma due to ongoing fears in society and in my own neighborhood in violence and vandalisms. I specially appreciate Ruth Lannius input and have been looking for a book that was spoken of a few years ago?
The two things i learned from this session and will watch in myself and others are these:
Bessel said that the “midline of the body is where trauma lives”…recalling that which is heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching.
Such a good clue to what has happened! And Joan said than mutual body scanning with a partner is a right-left
brain integrator. I never thought of it this way! As always thank you!
Thank you for this awareness of somatic psychotherapy! Very useful and intuitive.
I agree that it’s so important to steer folks away from that old fashioned idea of hitting a pillow when angry or to respond to their trauma. When we hit a pillow, we’re not being mindful, we’re rehearsing aggression and violence. When it’s all over, after pounding a pillow, the person is left with nothing – like she said, their thinking brain wasn’t integrated in the action, so nothing changed. They’re left feeling as impotent and ineffectual as when the trauma happened and they couldn’t do anything about it. Treatments and movements that integrate the whole brain are far more effective for the client.
Thank you so much. I am looking with different eyes at it after having faced a severe health crisis myself and had to work my own way out of (transgenerational) trauma.
Now, I will be able to share the wisdom you are giving away here from my own experience which makes a huge difference as it looks to me.
And as you say: y o u r work makes a real difference in the world, thank you so much again for this. 🧡💙🙏
thank you all very muth for shering your work and kwnowledge with us. for me this is presiouse!!!
I will listen to the story, while making a shift to enquire about bodily sensations = the Somatic Narrative.
Profound!!! I am strongly contemplating on specialising in Trauma. I am a Clinical Psychologist (MA) but most of the learning here in Kenya is theory based. Are there opportunities for fellowships in the USA for Trauma Therapy specialists. I would love to work with Dr. Van der Kolk. It will be such an honour.
Once again Thank you for organising this program. It’s been mind opening. And as Dr. Ruth always states, when we help one recover from trauma ,we change the course of time.
I wanted to express a sincerest thanks to NICABM for sharing these tips and techniques for helping our clients cope with their trauma. I’m looking forward to introducing many of these strategies in my sessions.
I am not clear about what step preceded the “hands up and saying no”
by the jewellery salesperson when she was reorganizing the
experience of helplessness during the robbery ?
What did the psychiatrist tell her to do to start remembering the face of the robber and healing from the trauma ?
Hi Sylvia, the process of saying no and completing the action allowed the client to take back agency. The change in the periaqueductal grey which is linked to the part of the brain that is involved in face recognition then enabled the client to recall the perpetrators face.
I have had similar experiences when using Havening.
Hope that helps
Gill (working with anxiety, stress and trauma based emotional overwhelm)
Good question Sylvia!
Thank you very much for this great opportunity to learn! I am a coach, live in Venezuela. Icould not pay, so I am very grateful for this free Series.
Many thanks for a most interesting and helpful series of webinars.
Hello Ruth, I truly love the work that you do!
I’m not a therapist by profession; I’m an artist.
My doctoral research is investigating ways in which creative activity can help build healthy family connections.
Thanks for the free offering 🙂
Regards,
Shabnam
Opening up speaking about a negative secret and tabu has ben part of my path towards recovery. The other person can be the mirror telling me that molestation and abuse is not a normal an ok to bring up a child. And talking can help me to accept my past in spite of denying.
But for real changes to happen I always needed my thinking brain, my emotional brain and survival brain to be “aligned.”
For me it was a very useful session. Thank you so much!
One of the most transformative learning experiences for me in 60 years as clinical psychology practitioner, now retired but now inspired to go back to work but in this way. And I will spread the word with colleagues who missed this series. I wish I could afford the gold subscription right now but will have to wait! Thanks for this great inspiration
Peter Trower
Thank you Dr. Ruth, and all. As I listen, I take notes & ideas that resonate with me. I often “star” especially relevant points. Normally I “star” about a half dozen during a presentation. Today was off the charts! At least 15 different “stars” or important ideas, that I will take forth to aid in discovery and healing. Thank you for your great offerings and professional wisdom.
These programs have been very healing over the years – I’ve had lots of therapy but the lack of focus on bodily symptoms was always lacking – I’d bring up how nervous I was, panic attacks, etc. – but the emphasis seemed to be on “left-braining” problems, which also created shame, unfortunately. So this is amazingly helpful, even in retrospect – in a “the truth shall set you free” kind of way. Maybe when you have integrated mind and body and know your story – it’s so great to understand how/why a symptom developed – then you can tell it. Having a story to tell vs. over-analyzing. Great stuff – I mention NICABM to anyone I think might relate to it and have bought several programs before. Thank you!
yoga was mentioned. For clients who are of a belief system that would not permit them to use yoga, an alternative is mentioned here: Praise Moves by Lynette Wills. She is a former yoga instructor who developed her own method that does not have the Eastern religious beliefs..
Yoga in actuality doesn’t have “ religious” belief content- however that’s irrelevant to someone who has the idea that it does! So this would be a good alternative. I do object to the continuation of the idea that yoga is based in a religion. It is not. It is wrong to propagate that false concept. .
Thanks to Dr. Ruth and the NICABM-Team and thanks to all the gold subscribers who make it possible for the others to watch for free! I am very grateful to get such important an helpful information! I am not a practitioner but a patient in Germany, who is suffering from complex PTSD and many other diagnosises like CFS. I haven`t had a “normal” life for decades now and I am not getting much help here in Germany. Even at the Institute of Psychotraumatology at the University of Cologne, I was told that they could not help me and didn`t know anybody who could help me with my complex case. After watching the series now I have hope, that I can help myself – at least a little bit – with the information, for example I will start with mindfulness, Yoga, Breathwork etc. But the most important fact for me is to know, that I am not crazy, but my brain is different from other brains because of trauma.
God bless you all!
Hello Claudia,
I know of a German therapist based in the US who may be able to provide support, depending on your situation. If it interests you, you can write me at riveracucu@gmail.com.
Yes, you will be able to help yourself. Speaking from my own experience which finally brought me to work in the field of Psychotherapy myself.
What has been very valuable to me, was being able to take in the information in the English language and the sort of “step by step” presenting it to the “German speaking” part of my brain, as I grew up with that language and most acquired trauma of mine seems to be related to that language (a mixture of explicit + implicit memory I guess). As it looks to me today, here in Germany many of us share a specific type of transgenerational trauma, which is so far not addressed by traditional therapy methods.
And so, following NICABM’s / Ruth’s work over years has been tremendously helpful and valuable to me. I also very much like the “Psychotherapy Infographics”, as they are addressing both hemispheres. And I found it helpful to translate some of them into German for myself to present their content through all of my senses to my German speaking parts.
As you mentioned CFS, it might be helpful for directly addressing that to look for the work of Alex Howard, a British Therapist, who is explicitly offering free seminars + also trainings into “Therapeutical Coaching” on this topic as he is able to speak from his own experience there. His main book on the topic has also already been published in German, you will find it i.e. on Amazon. I hope, this will not be classified as “advertising a product”.
Wishing you all the best and a good recovery. 🧡💙🙏
I am looking forward to applying the ideas to the work with my students and clients. As a psychologist and spiritual healer I usually work with a client on the conscious, intellectual and emotional levels and with spiritual energy transfer on the fundamental energy level, and as a Feng Shui Master I can enlarge their awareness of the influences in their environment, Now, with more of an understanding of how the experience of traumatic events affects the physical expression of the client, I’m sure it will enhance the way my clients and I communicate with each other. Although I have used NLP exercises and hypnotherapeutic techniques to restructure their world view perceptions, I can utilise the understandings and techniques leant here to fast-track their process of integration. I feel as if I’ve found an important missing piece of a complex jigsaw! I’m impressed with the quality of these five sessions and have bought the Gold Package. Thank you for a week of enriching study.
Excellent information, I have a private practice and work with many veterans cljents via referral from VA, so these are strategies I can use and/or combine with other resources. Thank you for this opportunity.
Once again, this course has been incredible, thank you! Excellent presentation and flow of learning material.