Distinguished Guest Speaker: Bessel van der Kolk, MD

The Body Keeps the Score

Mind, Brain, Body in the Healing of Trauma

April 10, 2015, Marriott at Sable Oaks, South Portland, ME

The Maine Medical Education Trust designates this activity for a maximum of 6.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)^TM

The Maine Association of Psychiatric Physicians is pleased to offer its 9th Annual Clinical Conference this Spring to be held April 10, 2015 at the Marriott in South Portland.  We are fortunate to have a distinguished speaker, Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Medical Director of the Trauma Center in Boston.   

Who should attend?

Psychiatrists, primary care physicans, psychologists, nurses, social workers and other disciplines with an interest in the effects of trauma on children and adults.

Sponsors/Exhibitors:  Please contact  MAPP for an Exhibitor Prospectus at dpoulin@mainemed.com.

The Body Keeps the Score

After having been traumatized, the brain is re-set to respond to ordinary challenges as existential threats, and the body continues to pump out stress hormones that make people feel frazzled, agitated, or shut down. In response, traumatized individuals tend to organize much of their energy on not feeling and sensing their inner experience. The sad side effect of this is that they pay with their capacity to fully engage in activities and relationships. After the brain has been rewired to over-focus on danger it has trouble paying attention to subtle changes in one’s universe. Research over the last thirty years has elucidated the nature of these processes. These have profound implications for clinical treatment and effective intervention.

The last twenty years has provided us with a great deal of information about the impact of trauma on the developing brain, and on its interference with the capacity to pay attention, concentrate and filter out irrelevant information. In this workshop we will review these discoveries, and , using videotaped interventions demonstrate how bottom up processes, which involve, touch, movement and  breathing, as well as top-down processes which utilize mindfulness and interception, can help traumatized children and adults to regulate their arousal and regain mastery over their own ships.  In this workshop, you’ll learn how traumatic imprints can be integrated using techniques drawn from yoga, theater, neurofeedback and somatic therapies.

You’ll learn:

1. Breathing, posture, facial synchrony, and vocal exercises to energize your therapeutic presence and enhance being in synchrony with patient’s posture and expressions
2. Techniques for bringing parts of the brain on line that are knocked out by hyper and hypo-arousal
3. Tracking physiological arousal in body language and movements
4. How the only way to achieve self-leadership is through activation of the areas of the brain involved in interception and mindfulness.