This in-person workshop with Deb Dana, LCSW, offers 6 CEs.

The ability to successfully navigate the challenges of everyday life is a marker of well-being and is dependent on the autonomic nervous system. Polyvagal Theory, developed by renowned scientist Steven Porges, provides a guide to the autonomic circuits that underlie behaviors and beliefs and an understanding of the body to brain pathways that give birth to our clients’ stories of safety and survival.

Clients come to treatment with a compromised ability to regulate their autonomic responses. The response patterns that were once adaptive and necessary for survival now bring suffering. Without intervention, adaptive survival responses become habitual autonomic patterns and pathways of connection are replaced with patterns of protection. When we look to the autonomic nervous system we find a path to creating new, resourcing patterns of connection. With an updated map of the nervous system, we can reliably lead our clients into the autonomically regulated state of safety that is necessary for successful treatment. 

A Polyvagal informed approach to therapy offers a roadmap to bring the essential element of autonomic regulation into your clinical interventions and safely work with dysregulated states.  Using the principles of Polyvagal Theory you can help your clients tune in to their states and rewrite the stories carried in their autonomic pathways. 

In this workshop we’ll use the essential principles of Polyvagal Theory to understand the physiological and psychological impact of trauma and discover practices that reduce or resolve the impact of trauma and engage the regulating pathways of the nervous system.  We’ll explore the science of safety and connection and learn ways to bring science into clinical application as we accompany our clients on their healing journeys.

Learning Objectives:

1. Develop an understanding of how the autonomic nervous system shapes  behaviors and beliefs.

2. Assess client responses through autonomic state and state shifts.

3. Track client and clinician states of regulation and dysregulation. 

4. Construct an autonomic map to identify the emergent properties of states.

5. Categorize the distinct stories that emerge from autonomic states.

6. Determine ways neuroception shapes behavior. 

7. Apply polyvagal-informed processes to help clients move from dysregulation to regulation.

8. Apply strategies that utilize the co-regulating pathways of the Social Engagement System in clinical work to improve clinical outcomes. 

9. Utilize tools to help regulate your own autonomic state to create an environment of safety for clients.

Deb Dana, LCSW, is a clinician, consultant, author and speaker specializing in complex trauma. Her work is focused on using the lens of Polyvagal Theory to understand and resolve the impact of trauma in our lives. She is a founding member of the Polyvagal Institute, consultant to Khiron Clinics, and advisor to Unyte. Deb’s work shows how an understanding of Polyvagal Theory is applicable across the board to relationships, mental health, and trauma. She delves into the intricacies of how we can all use an understanding of the organizing principles of Polyvagal Theory to change the ways we navigate our daily lives. Deb is well known for translating Polyvagal Theory into a language and application that is both clear and accessible and for pioneering Rhythm of Regulation® methodology, tools, techniques and practices, which continue to open up the power of Polyvagal Theory for professionals and curious people from diverse backgrounds and all walks of life. 

Deb’s clinical work published with W.W. Norton includes The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy: Engaging the Rhythm of Regulation, Polyvagal Exercises for Safety and Connection: 50 Client Centered Practices, Polyvagal Practices: Anchoring the Self in Safety, Polyvagal Prompts: Finding Connection and Joy through Guided Explorations, the Polyvagal Flip Chart, and the Polyvagal Card Deck. She partners with Sounds True to bring her polyvagal perspective to a general audience through the audio program Befriending Your Nervous System: Looking Through the Lens of Polyvagal Theory and her print book Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory. Deb can be contacted via her website, www.rhythmofregulation.com. 

• Early bird pricing is valid through 9 August 2024.
• First 15 registrants will receive a free polyvagal card deck!
• Check-in opens at 8:30 am. Breakfast and lunch buffets will be provided, including GF and vegetarian options.
• If you are a member of NHAMFT and a pre-clinical fellow (post-grad / pre-licensure), please email Christine Lazdowski before registering to obtain the contributor rate.