A319 The Neurophysiology of Healing

The term healing has been used loosely to describe the goal of therapy, but what does it really mean? This course offers an eye-opening description of the nature of psychological healing, founded in neurophysiology, and what the latest finding in neuroscience and Somatic Experiencing can tell us about how to extinguish the internal cues of trauma and reregulate the brain and nervous system. You'll learn somatically based methods to counteract clients' helplessness and create and experience of safety that's the foundation for neurobiological reregulation.

Meet The Instructor

Robert Scaer, M.D. was formerly associate clinical professor of neurology at UCHSC, Denver, Colorado. He's published numerous articles and two books on the neurophysiology of trauma, diseases of trauma, and concepts of healing--The Trauma Spectrum and The Body Beats the Burden.

Course Contents

Session 1: How the brain operates in traumatic stress • Neurophysiology, neurochemistry, memory, and conditioning

Session 2: The trauma spectrum: Trauma as a universal life experience • Resiliency vs. vulnerability • Attachment theory • Nature vs. nurture

Session 3: Trauma reenactment • Conditioned recapitulation • Trauma as dysregulation of homeostasis

Session 4: Dissociation theory • Conversion hysteria revisited • Somatiform vs. somatic dissociation • Boundary concepts

Session 5: The chronic illnesses of life trauma • Debunking psychosomatics • Syndromes of the freeze, procedural memory and somatic dissociation

Session 6: Somatic implications for trauma therapy: Drugs, talking, tapping and discharging • Mechanisms of therapy • Critical ingredients, barriers • Healing and transformation

Learning Objectives

1. List current concepts of life traumas to include an array of "little traumas," negative life experiences that are culturally based, occur every day and shape most aspects of our character
2. Utilize an expanded knowledge of the neurophysiology of trauma to formulate new treatment plans
3. Apply new concepts of dissociation to identify the root causes of psychosomatic syndromes