Working with the Nervous System in Therapy
The Clinical Application of Polyvagal Theory
Friday 17 March 2023
A live webinar with Deb Dana and Joseph Falkner
CPD Credits: 3.5 hours
- Includes a subtitled recording of the event and a transcript, with access for a year (14 days post the event)
- Bookings close at 9:00am GMT Tuesday 14 March
The ability to meet the challenges of everyday life is a marker of well-being and is dependent on the autonomic nervous system. Our nervous systems shape the way we navigate living, loving, and working. Polyvagal Theory, through the organising principles of hierarchy, neuroception, and co-regulation, has revolutionised our understanding of how this system works.
READ MORE...We now know that trauma interrupts the development of autonomic regulation and sidetracks building the circuitry of safe connection. Without intervention, adaptive survival responses become habitual autonomic patterns and pathways of connection are replaced with patterns of protection.
Working with the autonomic nervous system brings the science of safety into practical application with ways to help clients identify and interrupt their familiar response patterns and strategies to shape their systems toward connection. When we partner with the nervous system, we can reliably guide clients into the autonomically regulated state of safety that is necessary for successful treatment.
Through didactic teaching and experiential practices, participants will explore how to use the body’s regulating circuits to help clients regain a sense of safety and skills to engage the nervous system’s natural pathways to regulation. We will also have Joseph Falkner with us to answer questions in the Chat and throughout the event to support Deb’s teaching.
FULL PROGRAMME
14.00 GMT
Introductions
14.05
Deb Dana
States and Stories
We are by nature storytellers and it is through our autonomic nervous systems that we first create, and then inhabit, the stories that guide our daily living. As our biology changes, so do our stories. In this session participants will explore the emergent qualities of states and bring attention to the different experiences each state brings to life through the practice of autonomic listening and creating autonomic landscapes.
15.00
Break
15.15
Deb Dana
Broadcasting and Receiving
Our biology comes with a built in safety circuit – a sending and receiving system that is continuously inviting or discouraging connection and looking for signs of welcome or warning. Through neuroception and the social engagement system our nervous systems work to balance the drive to survive and the need for connection. In this session participants will practice tracking cues of safety and danger and explore ways to use the individual elements of the social engagement system to create the conditions that support connection.
16.00
Q&A
16.15
Break
16.30
Deb Dana
Shaping New Pathways
The ability to flexibly move between states is a sign of well-being. It is when we are caught in dysregulation, unable to find our way back to regulation that we feel physical and psychological distress. When we attend to micro-moments of safety, we begin to move away from patterns of protection and travel pathways of connection.
In this session participants will engage in glimmer and savoring practices that bring awareness to moments of ventral regulation and explore ways to help clients anchor autonomic regulation.
17.30
Discussion with Q&A
18.00
End