Precision, Presence, and Change in the Therapeutic Process

(The Foundation Training) 

Here is What You Will Learn:

1. The Seven Developmental Stages.
2. Characteristics, Themes, and Somatic Techniques to Address Therapeutic Challenges
3. How to Develop Resources that Promote Change
4. How Attachments styles form in the Initial Three Stages
5. Body-Reading for Each Stage
6. Boundary Formation and Support for Each Stage

The Theories that Underlie the Training
 
•  Somatic and psychological development occurs in an interpersonal field.
 
•  Defenses and attachment styles are an attempt to solve the problem of how to be oneself in relationship with another.
 
•  At different times in a child's life certain themes are the focus  of the problem solving.
 
•  Change is facilitated in the present by developing new   resources, new skills and abilities.
 
•  New resources are both somatic and psychological. They are specific and related to a particular stage and issue that was derailed in childhood.
 

Training Format and Content: The Foundation Training gives health professionals, psychotherapists and bodyworkers an in-depth introduction to Bodynamics. Trainings include an overview of the seven character types that can emerge. Basic tools for the application of Bodynamic techniques will be learned through lecture, demonstrations, experiential exercises, discussions, and practice sessions.

A New Map of Childhood Development:
The Bodynamic character structure system offers one of the most developed and innovative theories of personality dynamics to emerge in the field of somatic psychology. It gives practitioners a powerful new understanding with which to investigate mind-body experience. It includes:
 

1. A positive understanding of defenses and a language that supports self-acceptance, self-worth, and transformation.
    
2. A clear vision of healthy development.
    
3. A detailed understanding of how somatic, psychological, and emotional developmental processes lead to character formation.

The Seven Stages include: 

1. Existence (womb - 3 Mo.): where a basic imprint of one's right to exist and sense of being alive is formed, from womb life, birth, and very early infancy.
    
2. Need (Birth - 18 Mo.): where the infant's experience of having core satisfaction of basic needs is established.
    
3. Autonomy (8 Mo. - 2 years, 6 Mo>): The child begins to move out and explore the world through an explosion of psychomotor skills. An imprint of the child's impulses toward autonomy is formed.
    
4. Will (2 - 4 years): The child's task at this age is learning to focus, express and contain power in relationships and the world.
    
5. Love/Sexuality (3 - 6 years): Where the child learns to love in a romantic way and learns to integrate heart and sensual/sexual feelings.
    
6. Opinion Forming (5 - 8 years): The child learns to open up the world through thought, and learns to deal with rules, norms and culture.
    
7. Solidarity/Performance (7 - 12 years): The child finds a place in culture by learning  to become a member of groups and communities. A time of exploring competitive and leveling impulses, and of acquiring and mastering many skills.

In each Developmental Stage there are three possible Positions:
Depending on our experience during a developmental stage, we may have one of three imprints, "Early", "Late", or "Healthy". In the Early position, the imprint is dominated by experiences that have led to a resigned stance to the world within that developmental stage. In the Late position, the imprint is dominated by experience that led to an over-controlled stance toward the world. In the Healthy position, the imprint has been one that encourages the basic need or task, and the appropriate skills (resources) have been learned.

By determining what position a client occupies in each of the seven stages, we develop a powerful map that reveals overall patterns of resignation, rigidities, and health. The fullness of this map gives depth, clarity, precision, direction and richness to the therapy process.

The Foundation Training will give an overview of each of the seven character types; what happens within each stage developmentally, what experiences lead to the formation of Early, Late and Healthy positions, as well as basic clinical approaches for each character.

Resourcing and the Building of Structure:

Prior to empirically determining the psychological function of each muscle. the basic model of body-oriented psychotherapy approaches worked with muscular armor or tension. This led to techniques that tended to release emotion and break down structure. This was very useful for some clients, inappropriate for others, and left out crucial elements of therapy for many.

Bodynamics developed from the understanding that if there are severe or early disturbances in a given stage, there will be a tendency to give up the impulse to do or feel the related developmental task. The discovery that muscles respond to overwhelming stress by becoming resigned (called hypo-responsive in Bodynamics) has created a paradigm shift in somatic psychology. It changes the fundamental way that we understand and work with character structure issues. We are now able to recognize and help clients build the missing abilities.
 

Resourcing constitutes a set of techniques that awaken skills in the client by activating psychomotor processes that were given up or were never developed. Resourcing help them kindle their own developmental forces that can move them toward health. This is particularly helpful for people who are missing basic skills in work, relationships, and in manifesting life goals.

Somatic Aspects of Ego Development: In the Foundation Training, participants will learn the basic principles of resourcing and in particular, how to identify missing abilities and how to work with ego building techniques. The material covered will include:
 

1. Boundary Formation
2. Containment
3. Stress Management
4. Cognitive Grasp
5. Centering
6. Grounding
7. Contact Abilities
    

Clinical principles introduced will include:

1. Waking specific levels of body awareness
    
2. Resourcing and waking ego capacity
    
3. Developmental "containment" - a process of holding a client in a specific age level/issue and creating a new imprint
    
4. Working with later structural issues before working with earlier ones
    
5. Distinguishing shock trauma patterns from developmental patterns.

For more information, contact:
 

Joel Isaacs, PhD
(310) 914-9414, Ext. 2# (voice mail)
 

For registration, CEU info, or credit card payment, contact:
 

The Bodynamic Institute USA
P.O. Box 1708, Novato, CA 94948

(415) 258-4805 (voice mail)

Graduate credit towards an advanced degree is available for this training. Contact Santa Barbara Graduate Institute at www.SBGI.edu