The bioenergetic approach is a strong model for helping clients understand and assert boundaries, since it relies heavily on body-based interventions and movement to increase feeling, expand awareness, and promote overall health. When working with the body in therapy, clients often become more aware of the relational trauma they’ve suppressed.

Last month, the Networker's director of CE, Zach Taylor, hosted therapist, author, and polyvagal specialist Deb Dana for the inaugural installment of "Networker Live," a series of live conversations and Q&As with the magazine's top contributors.

By Daniel Siegel - A therapist’s skill base and experience are vital to good therapy. But they’re rarely enough. The following story, taken from Daniel Siegel's 2017 Networker Symposium Dinner Storytelling piece, highlights the need to bring vulnerability and some measure of risk into the treatment room, letting go of any secret ambition to become a Master of the Therapeutic Universe. There’s no such person.

By Deb Dana - The three elements of our autonomic nervous system act as our largely subconscious surveillance system, working in the background to read subtle signals of safety or threat. Here's how to help clients become aware of their patterns of response to ease and distress.

In the past, resilience was thought of as an immutable trait: something we're born with that predetermines how well we can tolerate stress. In reality, Linda Graham explains, “resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity.” It's something that can be developed with training, like a muscle.

We have a biological need to be in connection with others that’s being challenged right now. Even if we’re staying at home with others—children, a partner, a mammalian pet—our nervous systems are asking to be cared for in a way that we're not used to doing.

By Bonnie Badenoch - Initially, it can seem like a huge leap to link abstruse and complicated brain science to the relational world of therapy. But, some day, it may seem absurd that we didn't study the processes we're expected to treat. Once my clients understand where their brain wiring is underdeveloped, they become eager to do whatever it takes to build better neural connections.

Stephen Porges, originator of the Polyvagal Theory, transformed the way we understand the underlying mechanisms of traumatic response and how safety, caring, and trustworthiness are conveyed unconsciously. Here, he explains how to spot healthy connection in the body.

According to neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel, we've spent much of modern history thinking that physiological brain activity determines everything, and ignoring what goes on in the mind. In the following video clip from his Networker Symposium keynote, Siegel challenges us to help the mind rise above the brain's inborn, evolutionary vulnerabilities.

By Mona Delahooke - What’s at the root of children’s aggressive, defiant, and oppositional acts? And how can we better help the children who exhibit these behaviors? Polyvagal Theory shows that the drive to avoid threat and secure safety is what guides human behavior. As such, what we often label as “bad” behaviors are actually fight-or-flight behaviors.