Raja Selvam - Trauma, Development & Attachment
About Raja
Raja Selvam, PhD, is the developer of Integral Somatic Psychology™(ISP) , an advanced approach for integrating body, energy, and consciousness into psychological processes in all therapeutic modalities. ISP is a master training for experienced clinicians. ISP seeks to improve clinical outcomes through greater embodiment of all experiences and all levels of the psyche in the physical body of the individual.
Raja’s eclectic approach draws from bodywork systems of Postural Integration, Biodynamic Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Polarity Therapy, body psychotherapy systems of Reichian Therapy, Bioenergetics, Bodynamic Analysis, Jungian and Archetypal psychologies, psychoanalytic schools of Object Relations and Inter-Subjectivity, Somatic Experiencing® (SE), Affective Neuroscience, Quantum Physics, Yoga, and Advaita Vedanta.
Raja is also a senior trainer in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing professional trauma training program and a former member of the board of the Foundation for Human Enrichment (FHE), also known as the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (SETI).
Raja teaches ISP and SE in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Turkey, Israel, Russia, India, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, mainland China, South Africa, and Brazil.
Raja Selvam lead teams to India in 2015 and 2016 to treat tsunami victims and to train counselors to increase the local capacity for treating trauma. He led teams to Sri Lanka after the civil war in 2011, 2012, and 2013 to train local counselors to treat traumas of war, violence, loss, and displacement, in collaboration with Kindermissionwerk, Germany, and Don Bosco, Sri Lanka. He is currently involved in increasing trauma treatment capacity among mental health professionals working with underprivileged communities in India, in collaboration with Prafulta, a Don Bosco organization based in Mumbai, India.
Marianne Bentzen - Trauma & Spirituality
Trauma & Spirituality
Marianne Bentzen
Although traumatic events and life experiences most often leave us with a painful and even devastating personal aftermath, it can also be a hidden gift, a doorway into deeper and wider levels of consciousness that are only now beginning to be explored by science.
Some people who have survived severe and ongoing trauma report that in their darkest hours they found the deepest resource; the unshakeable feeling of great meaning, or a sense of spirit, or of God. This feeling often stays with them, as a sense of faith, of gratitude, or as a constant reminder of the preciousness of life. For this reason, trauma can sometimes be experienced as a gateway to spirit, or to the discovery of an indestructible part of our being. Despite their differences, spiritual openings and traumatic responses have a great deal in common at the brain level.
At the deepest level of brain organization, the autonomic nervous system, trauma often activates the highest arousal levels and the deepest immobility at the same time. In formal spiritual training systems, the same spontaneous emergence of arousal and immobility in the organism heralds deep experiences of spiritual opening. There are other similarities between the brain function of the traumatic and the spiritual states.
In this workshop we will explore the theory and research that bridge the gap between trauma and spiritual openings, and explore some of the methods that can allow deep feelings of connection to emerge from the darkest experiences.
We will explore therapeutic methods and spiritual practices as reflections on two questions:
How can we discover the spiritual or life-enhancing elements that may be hidden in traumatic experience?
How can we access the doorway into the archetypal and spiritual levels of meaning more often in our daily lives?
The format of this training will alternate between practical exercises, demonstration therapy, theoretical presentations and discussion.
About Marianne
I mostly teach professional post-education trainings in Scandinavia and Europe. Over the years I have taught in sixteen countries and presented at more than 35 international and national conferences. I have authored and co-authored a number of articles, books and chapters, many with my close colleague, psychologist Susan Hart.
My understanding of human consciousness and behaviour is grounded in research-based neuroaffective developmental psychology, from cradle to grave. My theoretical and practical maps include psychomotor development, evolutionary psychology, trauma theory, body-based mentalization and system-oriented perspectives. My work is also influenced by a spiritual approach developed through decades of spiritual training, empathic mindfulness training and meditation.
I am a member of the European Association for Bodypsychotherapy and the Danish Psychotherapist Association.
Marianne‘s Association With Peter Levine
“I met Peter in Copenhagen in 1987, and immediately caught fire with the world of understanding and delicate interventions that he opened with SE. Peter, on the other hand, was delighted with the intricate psychomotor developmental understanding that I brought to my psychotherapy, and we shared a deep grounding in ethology and the evolutionary perspective. This led us to many hours of exciting exchanges and even an early article that we basically wrote on the phone (landline back then) between Copenhagen and Reno, Nevada! Unfortunately, the article was more than a decade ahead of its time and it was only published many years later in Ian MacNaughton’s book Body, Breath and Consciousness. We also did a number of workshops together both in Denmark and the US, and I taught in a couple of his US trainings in the 90’s.
In those years I was also developing the theory of Neuroaffective Developmental Psychology with Susan Hart and getting serious about a meditation practice. Peters and my work took off in different directions as his first book “Waking the Tiger” catapulted him to wide international acclaim overnight. Then, in the mid 00’s, Peter invited me to Zurich to do Postadvanced trainings with him as well as creating trainings for the SE trainer teams. My husband David is taking over the assistant trainings, but my Postadvanced Neuroaffective trainings have spread to the SE communities in several countries. Peter and I are still doing workshops or presenting at conferences together once a year or so – and still plotting new adventures!”
Cost and Booking
This workshop is open to professionals and SE students who are interested in working with the deeper layers of trauma and are interested in spiritual aspects of life.
The cost of the three-day workshop with Marianne is £490. There is an earlybird discounted price of £440 if you book before 23rd May.
Maggie Phillips – Freedom From Emotional & Physical Pain
About Maggie
Maggie Phillips, Ph.D., lives and works as a licensed clinical psychologist in the Oakland Hills above the San Francisco Bay. As the author of four books and numerous papers, chapters, and articles on trauma, dissociation, pain, ego-state therapy, hypnosis, and mind-body healing, she specialises in the treatment of traumatic stress, dissociation, and pain disorders. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and co-recipient of its Crasilneck award for the best writing in the field of hypnosis. Maggie is also a Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, and co-recipient of its Cornelia Wilbur award for contributions to the study and treatment of dissociation. She has taught at major conferences and presented invited addresses and workshops on Energy Psychology, Somatic ExperiencingÒ, trauma, hypnosis, Ego-State Therapy, EMDR, and behavioural medicine, in the U.S., the UK, Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Scandinavia, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia, and Japan. Her most recent best-selling books,Freedom From Pain (co-authored with Peter Levine) and Reversing Chronic Pain: A 10-Point All-Natural Program, were released in 2012 and 2007.
She is creator of a companion online pain self-help program and a pain CD coaching program available at www.reversingchronicpain.com. Maggie is also creator and host of a popular monthly teleseminar/webinar and newsletter series (www.maggiephillipsphd.com), which has featured a recent webinar series with Peter Levine and Stephen Porges on Polyvagal Solutions to Pain and Trauma and several e-courses co-presented with Peter Levine, including an audio series on Somatic Approaches to Treating Pain and Trauma, which provided the genesis for their joint best selling book, Freedom From Pain. Maggie has also released two e-books on Ego-State Therapy (co-authored with Claire Frederick, MD): Empowering the Self through Ego-State Therapy, and Ego-State Therapy in Mindbody Healing. She has also recorded two pain CD programs, “Hypnosis: The Pain Solution” and “Hypnosis: The Headache Solution” distributed by www.hypnosisnetwork.com. Her earlier books are Finding the Energy to Heal (W.W. Norton, 2000) and Healing the Divided Self (W.W. Norton, 1995), co-authored with Dr. Claire Frederick, MD. As an innovator in mindbody healing and in the treatment of persistent pain and trauma, Dr. Phillips is particularly interested in the interface of trauma, dissociation, and emotional and physical pain conditions.