“Staying Alive” Conference
Psychotherapists are invited to the second annual Process Therapy Institute Conference. This year’s theme is Staying Alive! The quality and success of experiential psychotherapy is dependent on the psychotherapist staying present and being alive to: the subtleties of the present moment, the inner, outer and relational worlds, and the ever present legal and ethical obligations of the profession. Come join us for one of the most unique conferences in the bay area for psychotherapists, reconnect with friends and colleagues, earn CEU’s, rediscover your growing edges, and renew your commitment to experiential psychotherapy.
Agenda
Friday March 1
Advanced process Class Reunion 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Certified Process Therapy Instructors are invited to reconnect with each other and the Process Model. The model and material has been updated. Receive new material to use in your classes, share your experiences making use of the model in practice, teaching, workshops, etc., and come celebrate community with kindred spirits. (2 CEUs)
Opening Circle and Reception 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Padmini Nagaraj, Conference Chair
Saturday March 2
Session 1 8:30 a.m. – Noon
Can You See Me? Working with Immigrant and Cross Cultural Issues from an Experiential Perspective
In working with clients with immigrant and/or cross-cultural backgrounds, clinicians are invited to access their internal experience and to distinguish this from their cognitive knowledge of these issues and populations. Participants are invited to be aware of the felt body experience of sitting in a room with someone of a different culture and to be in non-resistance to the counter-transference that arises from this experience. From this place of non-judgement, clinicians are invited to then become familiar with the mental health challenges unique to this population: trauma and loss, cultural expectations of therapy, biases and stereotypes, etc. (1.5 CEUs)
Break
Untangling From Your Client
When we are caught up in our clients, we lose connection with ourselves, making it hard to catch ourselves becoming co-behaving and counter-transferred.
Participants will learn about the three most common ways of getting entangled with the client’s process. We will also explore how to know when we are entangled and what we can do to release ourselves from it. Once we re-establish a connection with ourselves, we can return to the state of being objective, without agenda, and unattached. From here we can offer our client unconditional allowance for their work.
Don Hadlock, LMFT has been entangled and found his way out of the entanglement thousands of times, and considers himself a qualified guide in these matters. (1.5 CEUs)
Luncheon Noon – 1:30 p.m.
Session 2 1:30 – 5:00 p.m.
Dance and Movement in Psychotherapy
Dance and movement therapy is primarily a body oriented approach and has paramount implications in keeping the therapist present and spacious. It can help the therapist develop and expand their own internal faculties and gain more knowledge of their depth. The therapist can grow personally and mature in the ways that shape their life through their body’s movement. The therapist can also then become a greater role model for experiential learning and moving through emotions and trauma with the client. Dance therapy is extremely effective with trauma, not only for the client, but also for the therapist to clear out secondary trauma symptoms from their muscle memory between sessions. It can improve the therapist’s ability to attune to the client and develop greater sense of what therapists call “parallel process,” which is the therapists ability to utilize their internal faculties and subtle inner guidance to access information about the client. Regarding crisis with clients, movement therapy is an extremely grounding endeavor and can fortify the therapist to hold space for clients and bring an embodied presence into the room. (1.5 CEUs)
Break
The End of the Path: Facing Life’s Limits of Aging and Mortality with Grace
How do you stay present and open to a client who brings up really triggering issues, such as fear of death, aging, imminent physical and cognitive decline? I believe that in order to hold the welcoming space for our clients working with their darkest thoughts and feelings, we as therapists need to be aware and allowing of our own existential limits. In this experiential workshop, participants will be invited on a multimodal journey to encounter their experience of aging and mortality, and explore individually and in small groups their feelings and beliefs about these inevitable limits of life as we know it. (1.5 CEUs)
Sunday March 3
Session 3 9:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Embodied Attunement: Teaching Couples to Listen to Their Bodies Together
Loving, intentional, attuned touch is something so many of us are yearning for but may not know how to co-create with a partner. As therapists we have our own memories and patterns of mis-attunement and supporting our clients in this way touches on our yearning, disappointments and fears. Being aware of our own attachment needs and connection to our own body is key and this workshop will help build that awareness. Specifically talking about, and practicing, how to be more intentional in the way we touch one another opens new insights into our partners, our selves, safety & consent, and pleasure. It is a much needed conversation.
Developed by Holistic Sex Therapist & Certified Mindfulness Mediation Teacher Melissa Fritchle, LMFT, Embodied Attunement is an experiential approach to therapy or coaching sessions that invites clients to tune in to their own body sensations, their partner’s body cues, and the collaborative dance between them. Using Mindfulness practices to build compassionate awareness creates a foundation for non-sexual touch exercises that clients can be guided through in session. This trauma-informed sex positive therapy practice helps clients heal attachment wounds, trauma patterns, relationship trust issues, and to slow down and enjoy more sensual connected sex.
Inviting clients to learn more moves while they continue to go through the motions of sex, without supporting them in becoming more attuned to what is happening for them and their partners, is missing the point. By teaching intuitive internal and external listening, mindfulness of sensation, and present-moment communication you give clients skills to co-create evolving, deeply sensual, connecting sexual experiences with new or long term partners.
You will be invited, but not required, to participate in some non-sexual touch exercises as part of this workshop. (1.5 CEUs)
Break
Working with Clients in Crisis
Participants are invited to a panel conversation about clinicians’ experiences while working with clients in crisis. Some of the topics explored will be maintaining access to an expansive observer self in the therapist, the impact of orienting to the present moment and therapist resourcing. (1.5 CEUs)
Padmini Nagaraj with panelists Melissa Fritchle, Svetlana Kreimer, Sara Nasserzadeh