Session Topics

Session 1 Autonomic Intuition

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 the process of neuroception, the autonomic nervous system makes moment-to-moment decisions about safety and survival. In this session participants will use the safety-danger equation and discernment practices to get to know how neuroception shifts autonomic state and creates stories about self, others, and the world.

Session 2 Regulated and Regulating

As practitioners, our own autonomic regulation is an essential element in successful work with clients.  Guided by the question “What does my nervous system need in this moment to anchor in ventral?” we can return to regulation, find our anchor there, and offer a regulating presence to clients. In this session participants will get to know autonomic patterns and the emergent properties of states of survival and safety through a process of autonomic mapping.

Session 3 Safely Connected

From a state of regulation we can create an environment that supports connection and be present with clients in a way that invites them into the autonomically regulated state of safety that is necessary for successful treatment.  The nervous system broadcasts and receives information through the pathways of the social engagement system. In this session participants will explore the process of co-regulation and learn ways to use the five pathways of the social engagement system to enter into autonomic attunement with clients.

Session 4 Shaping New Pathways

The ability to flexibly move between states is a sign of well-being. It is when we are caught in a survival strategy, unable to find our way back to regulation, that we feel physical and psychological distress.  In the therapy hour as we help our clients bring regulating energy to their dysregulated places, habitual survival responses are interrupted and new pathways are shaped. When we attend to micro-moments of safety, we help our client begin to move away from patterns of protection and travel pathways of connection. In this session participants will engage in practices that bring awareness to moments of ventral regulation and explore ways to help clients anchor in autonomic regulation.