District Meeting | Restoring the Wisdom of the Nervous System through Brainspotting, Trauma Healing and Emotional Resilience

Description: Historically, psychotherapy has focused on the internal world of the client with a strong emphasis on exploring thoughts and feelings. With the onset of somatic therapies, the mind-body-spirit connection encourages therapists to ask questions such as: What’s happening in your body right now? Or What do you notice physically? These inquiries build somatic awareness in our clients as they identify their regulated vs. dysregulated states. Talk therapy engages the neocortex—sometimes referred to as the thinking brain—while somatic therapies access the subcortex where trauma and distress is stored. Neuroscientific research reveals that unpleasant, painful memories often get stuck in the non-verbal, non-cognitive subcortical brain which takes away from the capacity to live fully in the here and now. As a result, some people experience such dysregulation as panic attacks, rage, or dissociation or just the sense of not feeling like themselves. On the other hand, somatic therapies such as Brainspotting helps clients process experiences that were too much to process at the time of the event—a healing opportunity to provide relief and perspective.