Body Wisdom, Lost and Found

Today’s luncheon address featuring Pat Ogden, a clinical leader on the forefront of incorporating bodywork into therapy, was fabulous. Throughout her address, she used video demonstrations to reflect her insights about integrating mind/body into therapy, which made everything she was saying feel both so present and so vivid. She also had us “try on” different gestures and postures to see how they feel.
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Over the last 35 years, one of the most noteworthy aspects of the Networker Symposium has been the depth and wisdom of the keynoters who address the conference. This year’s Symposium is no exception.

Opening the conference with a morning keynote on Friday is Andrew Weil, the world’s leading proponent of integrative medicine. He’ll be discussing the meaning of integrative mental health and how therapists can enrich their knowledge and understandings to help clients—and themselves—achieve optimal health. To learn more about integrative mental health, see the recent Networker article on his work here.

Next will be Scott Miller’s luncheon address on “Charting Your Path to Clinical Excellence,” a topic that’s been much discussed in the Networker community during this past year. He’ll share what research is showing us about how to achieve excellence, and how we can apply these understandings to gain mastery in the consulting room, as well as in our personal lives.

Mary Pipher has achieved national renown as the author of Reviving Ophelia, and she will be inspiring attendees as the Saturday morning keynote speaker. Her subject—“Facing the Challenge of 21st-Century Activism” is a compelling presentation of her vision of  the many ways therapists can influence the world-at-large and why doing so can make us feel more joyous, connected, and empowered.

Pat Ogden will be Saturday’s luncheon address speaker and she’ll cover her transforming, trailblazing work that incorporating bodywork in psychotherapy.

Later that day, Jane Fonda will be speaking with Networker Editor Rich Simon about her life, career, and beliefs about how to improve your life while growing older. Yes, that’s right… Jane Fonda will be at the Networker Symposium! You really won’t want to miss this conference and especially not this particular dinner event.

Finally, Sunday holds even more opportunities for discovery, as brain science pioneer Dan Siegel will be discussing whether our growing knowledge about brain science is making us wiser. If you’ve never heard Dan Siegel speak before—or even if you have—his presentations are always a treat.

For more information about the incredible lineup of Symposium 2012 speakers, click here. Make sure to check back for more Symposium blogs soon—this blog will continue to give you a detailed view of the people and events coming up at Symposium 2012. Whether or not you decide to travel to Washington, D.C. this spring, it’s definitely worth knowing about all the exciting features this year’s conference has to offer.

Linda Bacon, researcher, professor, and author of Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, will discuss the evidence illustrating that popular ideas regarding weight loss as equal to positive self-care can actually hinder a healthy lifestyle. She’ll cover the science that disputes conventional perspectives about health and weight, how working toward weight-loss goals can undermine a client’s ability to achieve positive, healthy habits, how to help clients understand that self-nourishment is more important than weight loss, and much more.

After listening to the session, please share on the Comment Board what you learned and any questions you may have. What was most interesting or relevant to you? We invite you to include your name and hometown with your comment, and to take a few minutes to read and respond to other participants’ comments.

If you have any technical questions, please feel free to contact support@psychotherapynetworker.org. Thanks for your participation.

This year’s 35th-Anniversary Symposium will not only offer an up-to-the-minute perspective on the field’s recent innovations and advances, but a vision of its future. We'll be exploring how all the ferment of the moment--the exciting possibilities opened up by brain science, the growing understanding of the mind-body connection, the clinical influence of mindfulness practice, the emerging science of human performance--will shape therapeutic practice in the years to come.

In his Symposium keynote address, "The Vision of Integrative Mental Health," Andrew Weil, world-famous pioneer in the development of complementary medicine, will explore the new skills and knowledge the practitioner of tomorrow will need.  We interviewed him recently and here's what he had to say:
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Curious about the presenters and approaches attracting the most attention at this year’s Symposium? Here’s your chance to find out. In addition, with the early registration deadline just around the corner (February 6th), now’s a good time to consider workshop choices. You can peruse the Symposium program a number of easy ways—online, via our digital brochure, or in print—but we wanted to let you know about the workshops people seem most excited about so far. In reverse order, the 5 top workshops to date are:

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Explore RAIN, a simple but powerful technique for directing attention to one’s inner world, with Tara Brach, a leading Western teacher of Buddhism, known for her ability to integrate psychotherapy with meditative and mindfulness practices. Understanding and learning how to implement RAIN into your clinical practice will allow you to help clients discover the thoughts, emotions, and feelings that make up their true inner experiences, and will open the door for deconditioning unconscious patterns.

After the session, please take a few minutes to engage in the Comment Board and let us know your reflections. What do you think about this technique and how it might be implemented into your professional or personal life?

We invite you to share your thoughts, questions, and revelations, as well as including your name and hometown with your comments. If you have any technical questions, please feel free to contact support@psychotherapynetworker.org. Thanks for your participation.

Join Judith Beck, one of the world’s leading cognitive-behavioral therapists, in this second session of “Diets and Our Demons.” She’ll cover the skills that are necessary for successful dieting, and detail what’s most important to effective weight loss.

Beck will explain how to help clients follow through on a healthy lifestyle by facilitating the development of pre-dieting skills, regularizing eating, changing food selection, planning for special occasions, and keeping the motivation to integrate these skills into everyday life in a long-term manner.

After listening to the session, please share on the Comment Board what you learned and any questions you may have. What was most interesting to you or relevant to your professional or personal life? We encourage you to include your name and hometown with your comment, and to take a few minutes to read and response to other participants’ comments. As always, if you have any technical questions or issues, please feel free to email support@psychotherapynetworker.org anytime.