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Exploring the Essential Features of “Deb Dana – The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy”
Navigating the Nervous System: The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy
The autonomic nervous system and trauma
The autonomic nervous system is at the heart of daily living, powerfully shaping our experiences of safety and influencing our capacity for connection.
Polyvagal Theory, developed by renowned scientist Stephen Porges, has revolutionized our understanding of how this system works and given us a deep appreciation of the ways experience shapes the nervous system and of the pathways that lead to healing.
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.
Practical application to help your clients
With an updated map of the autonomic circuits that underlie behaviors and beliefs, we have a new understanding of the characteristic post-traumatic patterns of hyperarousal, hypervigilance, disconnection, and numbing, which can reliably lead our clients out of adaptive survival responses into the autonomically regulated state of safety that is an essential element in the process of change.
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.
Navigating the Nervous System: The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy
During this workshop series you will:
- Learn the art of befriending the nervous system.
- Explore how to use micro-moments to reshape response patterns.
- Experiment with ways to engage the body’s natural pathways of connection.
- Discover how to use your own autonomic nervous system to create an environment of safety for your clients.
This workshop series combines didactic teaching with experiential practices to support participants in developing an embodied understanding of the organizing principles of Polyvagal Theory and bringing the principles alive in their work.
At the end of the workshop series, you will be able to:
- Describe the autonomic hierarchy and the emergent properties of states through a process of autonomic mapping.
- Determine ways neuroception shapes behavior.
- Apply strategies that utilize the co-regulating pathways of the Social Engagement System in clinical work to improve clinical outcomes.
- Practice skills to identify and interrupt patterns of protection and shape the system toward connection.
- Utilize the guiding questions of Polyvagal-informed therapy to make clinical choices.
Workshop 1: The Autonomic Hierarchy — Moving from Survival to Safety
The autonomic nervous system activates patterns of connection and protection in predictable ways.
During this workshop you will:
- Discover how you move between safety and survival.
- Explore the emergent properties of dorsal, sympathetic, and ventral states.
- Learn an autonomic mapping process to begin to track movement along the hierarchy.
Workshop 2: Neuroception — Exploring Patterns of Connection and Protection
Through the process of neuroception, the autonomic nervous system makes moment-to-moment decisions about safety and survival.
During this workshop you will:
- Explore the embodied, environmental, and relational pathways of neuroception.
- Use the safety/danger equation to identify cues of safety and danger.
- Experiment with ways to rebalance the equation to support practitioner-client connection.
Workshop 3: Co-Regulation — Connecting Through the Social Engagement System
The pathways of the social engagement system form a biological safety circuit that creates the platform for co-regulation.
During this workshop you will:
- Explore the role of the social engagement system in the process of co-regulation.
- Learn how eyes, ears, voice, and head movements send warnings to others to stay away or invitations to approach and connect.
- Discover ways to create the conditions that help clients move out of protection toward readiness for connection.
Workshop 4: Application — Integrating a Polyvagal Approach
Ventral vagal energy is an essential element in the therapeutic change process.
During this workshop you will:
- Learn to use the guiding questions, “What does my nervous system need in this moment to be anchored in regulation?” and “What does my client’s nervous system need in this moment?”, to frame your session.
- Track the flow of a session through autonomic responses.
- Experiment with practices that interrupt clients’ habitual survival patterns.
- Offer micro-moments of safety and connection.
Meet the teacher
Deb Dana
Deb Dana, LCSW is a clinician, consultant, and author specializing in complex trauma. Her work is focused on using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma and creating ways of working that honor the role of the autonomic nervous system.
She is a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute, consultant to Khiron Clinics, and an advisor to Unyte. Deb is the developer of the signature Rhythm of Regulation Clinical Training Series and is well known for translating Polyvagal Theory into a language and application that is both understandable and accessible for clinicians and curious people alike.
Deb’s clinical work published with W.W. Norton includes The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client Centered Practices, the Polyvagal Flip Chart, the Polyvagal Card Deck, and Polyvagal Practices: Anchoring the Self in Safety. She partners with Sounds True to bring her polyvagal perspective to a general audience through the audio program Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory and her print book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop series is intended for mental health professionals. We invite Psychotherapists, Counselors, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Social Workers, Coaches, Teachers, Body/Movement Therapists, Yoga Teachers, and Meditation Teachers.
We also invite anyone wanting to gain a deeper understanding of the Polyvagal Theory for self-healing.
How it works
The whole process has been structured so you can go through it at any time, at your own pace. Explore almost 10 hours of video material – it’s important that you find the right space to immerse yourself in this process.
The recording contains didactics and demo sessions, so you will be able to do personal work in your own time.
Remember that you get unlimited access to the workshop recordings, which means you will be able to view them in a year or even in a few years.
A detailed description of experiential activities:
Please note that the teacher will respond to the needs of the group and because of that, the chosen activities may change
– Q&A sessions
Each of the workshops will have space for questions from the audience.
– Short, live demos
These are session demonstrations in which the teacher does a live session with a volunteer. It may be a short, role-played session or a whole, longer session. Sometimes teachers show videos of sessions they recorded in the past.
Please see the full list of alternative group-buy courses available here: https://lunacourse.com/shop/
