Institute for Creative Mindfulness

Trauma-Focused Approaches to Meditation, Breathwork, and Yoga-Based Somatic Movement in 

Clinical Settings

July 29-31, 2022

Robert Morris University

(Specific Location TBA)

Day 1 and 2: 8:30am-5:30pm ET,  Day 3: 8:30am-3:00pm ET

Description

The evidence supporting the power of mindfulness meditation, yoga-based strategies, and breathwork in clinical settings, specifically as part of embodied strategies for trauma-focused care, continues to mount. This training program enables those with a personal meditation and/or yoga practice the ability to acquire the skills for facilitating these holistic practices within their current scope of clinical work. Although primarily developed for clinical trauma professionals (counselors, social workers, psychologists), we also open the course to corrections workers and anyone working in the field of addiction recovery. In this course participants will enhance their knowledge of how trauma affects the brain and the body and will discover and implement the latest clinical and empirical knowledge from helping professions on how meditation, breathwork, and yoga/somatic movement can promote healing and recovery. This training program teaches you to seamlessly fold these interventions into your existing strategies for clinical treatment planning within evidence-based models. Attention is paid to individual, group, and community work. Participants will develop the skills to facilitate sequences for embodied healing to reach those who may otherwise not have the chance to benefit holistically from such practices, while also learning when it is most responsible to refer clients elsewhere for yoga-related interventions. This training counts towards Module B of the Certificate of Expressive Arts Therapy program offered by the Institute for Creative Mindfulness.

Objectives

After completing this workshop training, Expressive Arts Therapy Module B, participants will be able to:

1. Recognize the presence of unresolved trauma and how it shows up as both clinical and sub-clinical symptoms in clients and consumers of services
2. Explain the concept of “the body keeps the score” in trauma recovery and relay, in client-friendly terms, how practices like meditation, breathwork, and yoga can help to promote trauma-focused healing
3. Instruct at least 3 breathing techniques used to help reduce anxiety, create balance, and/or allow tension to release
4. Implement these 3 breath strategies across the three stages of the consensus model for trauma care
5. Create at least 2 types of short trauma-focused meditation practices that can be facilitated during a clinical session, a group, or in a community wellness setting
6. Describe potential boundary issues with clients and determine appropriate responses
7. Design and implement simple movement sequences that can be delivered within the scope of one’s clinical practices that can be facilitated across the consensus model for trauma-focused care in individual, group, or community wellness settings
8. Identify potential “trigger” words in all of the practices covered in the course and optional/invitational language suggestions based on trauma-focused care knowledge
9. Develop strategies and approaches for redirection in addressing potential behavioral challenges and challenging individual, group, or community environments 
10. Identify 3-4 other clinical modalities and discuss how trauma-informed yoga can be incorporated into teaching skills and interventions in these modalities (e.g., DBT, EMDR therapy, ACT, etc.)