The Em-BODY-ing Conversations Training Group

Are you interested in exploring an affective-discursive approach to clinical work that integrates EMDR Therapy and somatic-oriented practices with a Narrative Therapy both philosophically and practically? Through didactic presentation, experiential exercises and client tales, this training group will explore what becomes possible when we create different kinds of scaffolding using sensations, images, affect, and memories in non-discursive ways. The training will explore how the following shapes discernment in moving between different landscapes in our clinical work: Relational Constructionism, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Memory Theory, The Affective-Discursive Turn in Psychotherapy, Moral Imagination, and the Politics of Experience.

Severe and early trauma seems to rob clients of memories and cast sensations, images and memories as the enemy, and can disconnect people from what has shaped moral virtues, intentions, and a sense of “myself” across time. We will explore how integrating alternative approaches can make visible the complexities of lived experiences, allowing for the discovery of different visual metaphors, new associations and a shift in a felt sense of bodily experiences. These discoveries help reinvigorate a re-connection with moral virtues, a language for inner life, and new possibilities for action and movement in accordance with cherished intentions, values, hopes, dreams, beliefs, purposes and commitments.

When the language of sensations, images, and memories are engaged in this way, people—with child-like creativity—connect with real and imagined allies, responsibility for abuse is assigned where it belongs, and preferred solutions and subordinate stories emerge. This sense of “aliveness” and authorial agency, restores dignity and creates new possibilities for relating.

This training is appropriate for mental health workers who are curious about moving toward integrative work and have some familiarity with one or more of the following modalities: Narrative Therapy, EMDR Therapy, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Somatic Therapies and are curious about moving toward integrative work.

Note: This training group will meet  1.5 hours per month via Zoom. We hope to begin a new group in 2020. PLEASE CONTACT US TO BE PUT ON WAITING LIST!

Participants will learn:

1. The value and effects of integrating an affective-discursive practice with Narrative Therapy;
2. How to construct language and practices around integrating EMDR, IPNB and somatic practices with a Narrative Approach both philosophically and practically, while escaping recruitment into interiority ideas and binaries of body/mind, inside/outside/thinking/feeling and resources/deficits;
3. How trauma impacts memory systems and how integrative work contributes to restoring visualizations, discovering memories not ordinarily accessed, concept development, a language for inner life, authorial agency, and an ability for abstraction that are foundational for narrative construction;
4. Frames for guiding discernment (memory theory, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory) in moving between linear and nonlinear work when working with clients who feel hijacked by the effects of trauma;
5. How to construct different forms of scaffolding using visual and somatic openings in ways that make visible the complexities of lived experiences and generate and thicken preferred and subordinate stories, possibilities for responding to habits of body, re-contextualizing dilemmas, engaging moral imagination, re-populating lives, a sense of agency, and new possibilities for relating;
6. How to ethically and collaboratively experiment with alternative practices, considering both potential benefits and possible contraindications.

Lynne V. Rosen, LCSW (Los Angeles, California) has been engaged in therapeutic work for over 25 years in medical, residential, inpatient, community and private practice settings. She found her therapeutic and philosophical home in the early 90’s when she traveled to New York to hear Michael White and David Epston. Most recently, she has focused her attention on integrating Narrative Therapy with EMDR, Somatic Therapies and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) with clients who are living with the effects of Trauma, Eating Problems and other difficulties that compromise relational well-being. Her favorite proverb is an African one: “Until lions have historians, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.” Lynne has had a long-standing interest in bringing forward lions’ tales, stories and experiences at the margins, where there is wisdom and knowledge that can transport us all. She continues to feel passionate about teaching, supervising and public conversation work and for many years, she had the privilege of working as Core Faculty and Director of the Postmodern Therapy Training Program at PGI and Co-Founder of WPLA (Women’s Project Los Angeles).

Lynne Rosen talks with Maggie Carey & SuEllen Hamkins about her work Integrating Narrative Practice, EMDR and somatic-oriented practices.

Maggie Carey, SuEllen Hamkins and Lynne Rosen talk together about some of their considerations in integrating other approaches with a foundation in narrative therapy.