Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy

• Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy Training Summary
• Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy Workshops
• Trauma and the Body: Level 1 and Level 2
• Mindful Psychotherapy: learning to stay with painful experience
• Chronic Pain: a challenge and an opportunity
• Overwhelming Experience in PTSD and Chronic Pain:
  healing through the body
• Mindfulness in Psychotherapy: Unfolding the moment in Relationship
• Listening to the Body
• Working with Strong Emotions: Anger, Fear and Hate
• Therapeutic Presence: Being, Doing and Failing
• Communicating for Connection
• Wisdom of the Body
• Mindful Meditation and Movement
  
  

This professional training brings together the practice of Mindfulness Meditation with Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy to assist both therapists and their clients to be fully present, from moment to moment, with their experience. Accessing, and staying with, the core processes (thinking, feeling, moving, external sensing, and internal sensing) allows us to explore the core material which shapes our lives. Thus, the body becomes a door that can be opened to reveal the whole character and belief system of the individual. Core Process Therapy is a powerful way of accessing and transforming limiting beliefs and behaviours. Through self-study in experiential exercises and mindfulness meditation, students on the training have the opportunity to look deeply at their core beliefs and core schemas to help them be more compassionate, fully present and skilful in their practice of psychotherapy and assist their clients to do the same in their lives.

Features of the training: Body-Centred, Experiential, Process-Focussed 

•  Cultivation of a personal practice of mindfulness meditation;

•  Exploration of the developmental sequence through the following themes:

•  Safety and Belonging
•  Needs and Longing
•  Separating and Differentiating
•  Will, Power and Control
•  Becoming Authentic
•  Being and Doing
•  Love and Sexuality

•  The four foundations of mindfulness meditation and core processes;

•  Use of mindfulness in psychotherapy;

•  Development of a mindful and compassionate therapeutic presence;

•  The practice of non-violent communication;

•  Assisted Meditation as a bridge to psychotherapy;

•  Developmental and Traumatic wounds, and Developmental Trauma;

•  Processing at Somatic, Emotional and Cognitive levels;

•  Management of arousal to reduce overwhelm, differentiate the core processes, facilitate processing, and discover meaning;

•  Application in working with anxiety, depression, anger, trauma and chronic pain. 

INQUIRIES, TRAINING DETAILS and APPLICATION FORM:
Contact Rosemary McIndoe on (03) 9347 5083 Email : rmcindoe@bigpond.com

TRAUMA AND THE BODY: Part 1 and Part 2

The workshop is designed to teach participants to work safely with high states of arousal and strong emotions. It is suitable for all psychotherapists, not just those working in the field of trauma. Level 1 is a module for the 2-year diploma in Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy (MbCPT) and is best done before commencing the 1 or 2-year professional training in MbCPT. I highly recommend doing Levels 1 & 2 before the training.

Trauma is a fact of life, but it doesn't have to be a life sentence. We humans have the natural capacity to ''thaw'' these frozen moments, and move on with our lives. By understanding why animals in the wild are rarely traumatized-though their lives are threatened routinely, we find the key to healing trauma. We do not have to cling to the past, reliving devastating events again and again. By gently awakening this innate capacity for resilience that we share with all living organisms, the straitjacket is loosened. As we are unbound from the past, a future abundant with new possibilities unfolds. Our ability to be in the present expands, revealing the timeless essence of the ''now.'' Trauma can be hell on earth; transformed, it is a divine gift.” (Peter Levine)

“I find it safest to approach trauma therapy in a similar way that I approach driving an automobile. My logic stems from the observation that both driving and trauma therapy involve controlling something that can easily go out of control”. (Babette Rothschild)

Rosemary will draw on the work of several leaders in the field of experiential and trauma therapy: Ron Kurtz, Pat Ogden, Babette Rothschild, Peter Levine, and John Briere.

Rosemary will integrate her training, and continuing interest, in psychology, physical therapies, experiential psychotherapies, mindfulness, meditation and hypnosis to teach Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy. Participants will learn to work with the core processes of feeling, thinking, moving, internal sensing and external sensing as a way of managing arousal and re-negotiating the traumatic experience. Skills in observing and contacting the client's core processes will be taught, and participants will be encouraged to observe their own core processes simultaneously. Safety will be created by working slowly, gently and mindfully. Talks, discussions, videotapes, and experiential exercise will be used in both workshops.

There will be a brief review of the psychophysiology of trauma, an introduction to resolving trauma by working through the body, and development of skills through experiential exercises.

Safety, containment and grounding will be emphasized throughout the workshops.

Level 1 can be done on its own and provides an introduction to this approach.  Participants will gain basic skills in MbCPT for working with trauma.  Level 1 (previously Part 1&2) is a prerequisite for Level 2.  Level 2 will be an opportunity to explore complex trauma and associated treatment issues, as well as developing more skill and confidence in using this method.  Both Level 1 and 2 are 4 days long with a rest and integration day in the middle of each level.  There are 2 rest and integration days between Level 1 and 2.

Topics will include:

Level 1

• Review of the psychophysiology of trauma;
• Understanding the mindful brain
• Using mindfulness in psychotherapy;
• Tracking levels of arousal;
• Making contact with a client's present experience for each of the core processes;
• Applying the brakes to prevent re-traumatisation;
• Teaching client's how to stay with experience.
• Resourcing client’s before working with trauma
• Using the body as a resource;
• Working with frozen states;
• Sensorimotor sequencing to process traumatic symptoms and memories

Level 2

• Using the body and mindfulness to modulate arousal, hyper-arousal and freezing;
• Advanced practice in managing arousal and dissociation;
• Phases of trauma treatment;
• The impact of trauma on the brain;
• Re-wiring the brain with mindfulness;
• The social engagement system and Polyvagal Theory;
• Developmental trauma, and attachment disorders and repair;
• Dissociative disorders and Structural Dissociation;
• Complex trauma and DESNOS;
• Understanding and working with boundaries.

This workshop introduces Mindfulness-based Core Process Therapy and focuses on its use with painful experiences, both physical and psychological. We tend to react to pain by avoiding and resisting it but in this approach we learn to stay with it and potentially reduce and/or transform the experience. Automatic reactions to pain can become conscious responses when we learn to face fears and allow the experience into our awareness. Participants in the workshop will find this approach valuable in their work with clients and also in their personal lives. Good self-management practices will be taught and can be applied both to therapist self-care, and client self-management.

Mindfulness is being used in programs worldwide. Well-known examples include MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn; DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) developed by Marsha Linehan; ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) developed by Steven Hayes; and MCBT as developed by Segal, Williams and Teasdale’s in “Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for prevention of relapse in depression”. These programs teach mindfulness and/or mindfulness meditation whereas, mindful psychotherapy, brings mindfulness to the therapeutic work and relationship. By bringing a non-judgemental awareness to our moment to moment experience in therapy, we can gain access to core material and learn to regulate ANS arousal so that developmental and traumatic wounds can be processed and integrated.

In this workshop we will explore both uses of mindfulness: the practice of mindfulness meditation and mindful psychotherapy. Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy will be introduced by exploring the following topics through talks, discussion, live demonstrations, videos, and experiential exercises.

Part 1

• The 4 foundations of mindfulness meditation;
• Health benefits of mindfulness meditation;
• How the brain changes with meditation/mindfulness;
• Mindfulness in meditation and psychotherapy;
• Cultivating a compassionate therapeutic presence;
• Making contact with a client’s present experience;
• Tracking experience and levels of arousal;
• Staying with painful experience;
• Therapist self-care: client self-management.

Part 2

• The Biopsychosocial perspective
• Links between trauma and chronic pain
• The challenge of working with chronic pain/illness;
• Mindfulness for anxiety and depression;
• Practice in tracking, contacting and assisting clients to stay with their experience;
• Sensorimotor psychotherapy;
• Using the body as a resource for healing;
• Character styles and chronic pain/illness.

How can we help someone with chronic pain when all the treatments have failed and the person has lost hope? This workshop addresses the complex issues involved in working with someone who has chronic pain. Rosemary will draw on her personal experience of chronic pain and her experiences over 18 years of working with people experiencing chronic pain. She will integrate her background in physiotherapy with her current practice of psychology, Hakomi Experiential Psychotherapy, Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy ( MbCPT ), and mindfulness meditation. This integrated approach is suitable for all practitioners interested in working with chronic pain.

This 3-day workshop will introduce Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy and apply this method of psychotherapy to working with overwhelming experience in PTSD and Chronic Pain. Paradoxically, it is in the body where profound healing can take place, when it is the body which is avoided because the symptoms of trauma and pain can be overwhelming. This approach to psychotherapy, as well as certain meditation practices, offer a way of being able to stay in the body to reduce the overwhelm and allow healing to take place.

Management of Arousal has emerged as a key component of Mb CPT. It may involve either reducing, or increasing, the level of arousal to keep the client in an optimal band of arousal (window of tolerance) where processing and meaning-making can take place. By managing arousal when there is overwhelm, both developmental and traumatic wounds can be renegotiated. In addition, core processes can be differentiated providing more information and contributing to a greater sense of wholeness.

Rosemary will draw on the work of several leaders in the field of experiential and trauma therapy: Ron Kurtz, Pat Ogden, Babette Rothschild, Peter Levine, and John Briere . The meditation teachers who have been particularly influential in developing this approach of learning to stay with overwhelming experience are: Pema Chodron, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Shinzen Young

Rosemary will integrate her training, and continuing interest in experiential psychotherapies, mindfulness meditation, psychology, physical therapies and hypnosis, in this workshop. She will also draw on her personal experience of chronic pain and 18 years of working with people experiencing chronic pain .

Through talks, discussion, experiential exercises, demonstrations and videotapes, participants can explore the following topics.

Introduction to Mb CPT

•  Mindfulness in meditation and psychotherapy ;
•  Bringing a client into present experience;
•  The benefits of working through the body;
•  Tracking a client's present experience;
•  Contacting a client's present experience;
•  Accessing the core processes of thinking, feeling, moving, internal and external sensing;
•  Staying with the core processes;
•  Assisted meditation as a bridge to psychotherapy;

Working with overwhelming experience

•  Safety, Grounding, and Containment;
•  Psychophysiology of overwhelming experience;
•  Tracking levels of arousal;
•  Self-regulation for client and therapist;
•  Learning to stay with overwhelming experience;
•  Using the body as a resource;
•  Sensorimotor sequencing of autonomic arousal;
•  The Biopsychosocial perspective in chronic pain;
•  Chronic pain as trauma (inescapable internal threat);
•  Turning reactions to pain into responses to pain.
•  PTSD symptoms and diagnosis

How are PTSD and Chronic Pain linked?

Many survivors of childhood trauma experience chronic pain syndromes such as fibromyalgia. Avoidance is a defining symptom of PTSD and avoidance behaviours are common in chronic pain. Avoidance of the traumatic memories and experiences, or the physical pain, occurs because the experience is overwhelming. However, it is accepted that exposure is necessary for recovery from PTSD and may be just as important in recovery from chronic pain. But, the risk of exposure therapy is re-traumatization, and Rothschild suggests that this is quite common in trauma therapy. Body-centred and mindfulness-based psychotherapies are being used to minimize the risk of re-traumatizing clients. Whilst the body remembers the trauma and exhibits the symptoms of the trauma, it can also be used as a resource in somatic psychotherapies. By “applying the brakes” and paying attention mindfully, safe trauma therapy becomes possible. ANS arousal can be sequenced through the body (Sensorimotor Processing) to reduce the symptoms of hyper-arousal, dissociation, numbing, and re-experiencing as well as offering a path for re-negotiation of the traumatic material through sensorimotor, emotional and cognitive processing.

Mindfulness is being used in programs worldwide. Well-known examples include DBT (Dialectical Behaviour Therapy) developed by Marsha Linehan; ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) developed by Steven Hayes; MCBT as developed by Segal, Williams and Teasdale's in “Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for prevention of relapse in depression”; and MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn. These programs teach mindfulness and/or mindfulness meditation but, in contrast, mindful psychotherapy brings mindfulness to the therapeutic work and relationship. By bringing a non-judgemental awareness to our moment to moment experience in therapy, we can gain access to core material and learn to regulate ANS arousal so that developmental and traumatic wounds can be processed and integrated.

In this workshop we will explore both uses of mindfulness: practice of mindfulness meditation and mindful psychotherapy. Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy will be introduced by exploring the following topics through talks, discussion, live demonstrations, videos, and experiential exercises.

•  The 4 foundations of mindfulness meditation;
•  Assisted meditation as a bridge to psychotherapy;
•  Accessing the core processes of thinking, feeling, moving, internal and external sensing;
•  Mindfulness for cultivating a compassionate therapeutic presence;
•  Bringing a client into present experience;
•  Tracking a client's present experience;
•  Contacting a client's present experience;
•  Staying with the core processes;
•  Using mindfulness in psychotherapy to unfold the moment in relationship;

This workshop introduces Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy and the use of mindfulness meditation as a foundation for cultivating a compassionate and mindful therapeutic presence.

Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy is a way of accessing and transforming limiting beliefs and behaviours . The body becomes a door that can be opened to reveal the whole character and belief system of the individual. The body's structures and habitual patterns become a powerful access route to unconscious core material. Work that may take months, or even years, in more traditional talking therapies can frequently be done in less time. The following topics will be introduced:

• The 4 foundations of mindfulness meditation;
• Mindfulness and therapeutic presence;
• Cultivating compassion;
• Using mindfulness in psychotherapy;
• Bringing a client into present experience;
• The benefits of working through the body;
• Tracking a client's present experience;
• Contacting a client's present experience;
• Accessing the core processes of thinking, feeling, moving,
  internal and external sensing;
• Staying with the core processes;
• Core Beliefs or Core Schemas;
• Gaining co-operation of the unconscious mind;
• Self-Care for therapists.

The workshop will emphasize self-study through meditation and experiential exercises. Participants can learn to work more sensitively and compassionately with clients and themselves.

Strong emotions evoke strong reactions in others. As therapists we may feel challenged when faced with strong emotions in our clients.

1. How can we ensure safety for our clients and ourselves as we work with strong emotions?
2. How can we assist in reducing the intensity of the emotions and discover meaning?
3. How can we assist with resolution of trauma and the impact of other triggering events?
4. How can we assist in resolving conflict when emotions are intense?
   
   By exploring the following topics we will attempt to answer these questions.

This workshop introduces Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy and the use of mindfulness meditation as a foundation for cultivating a compassionate and mindful therapeutic presence.

The following topics will be introduced:

• The character map as a way of knowing ourselves and our clients.
• Mindfulness and therapeutic presence;
• Cultivating compassion;
• Using mindfulness in psychotherapy;
• Bringing a client into present experience;
• Tracking a client's present experience;
• Contacting a client's present experience;
• Accessing the core processes of thinking, feeling, moving, internal and external sensing;
• Staying with the core processes;
• Core Beliefs or Core Schemas;
• Gaining co-operation of the unconscious mind;
• The sensitivity cycle and its barriers;
• Tracking and regulating arousal in clients;
• Self-regulation for the therapist;
• Knowing ourselves to minimize the potential for harming our clients.

The workshop will emphasize self-study through meditation and experiential exercises. Participants can learn to work more sensitively, intelligently and compassionately with clients and themselves.

When emotions are strong it can be difficult to stay connected with those close to us; family, friends and colleagues at work. Anger, frustration, disappointment and hurt can lead us to blaming and shaming, or withdrawing from, those we need to stay connected to at home and at work. In this workshop, we will use the Non-Violent Communication model developed by Marshall Rosenberg as well as learning simple ways of making contact to create better connections with others. Techniques for self-regulation in the face of strong emotion will also be explored.

In Non-Violent Communication, Marshal Rosenberg uses a 4-step approach (observation, feeling, need, request) for assisting with self-empathy, honestly expressing ourselves, and empathically receiving others. This approach is valuable for self-study as well as meeting our needs and other people’s needs. We can move from frustration to satisfaction as we learn to listen to our needs, express our needs and listen for other people’s needs. By owning our feelings and linking them to our needs we can make realistic requests of others and not blame complain, and criticize others when our needs are not met.

This workshop introduces Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy with a focus on ways of listening to the body to develop understanding and compassion for ourselves and others.

Mindfulness-Based Core Process Therapy is a way of accessing and transforming limiting beliefs and behaviours. The body becomes a door that can be opened to reveal the whole character and belief system of the individual. The body’s structures and habitual patterns become a powerful access route to unconscious core material. Work that may take months, or even years, in more traditional talking therapies can frequently be done in less time. The following topics will be introduced:

• Using mindfulness in psychotherapy;
• Developing empathy and compassion for self and others;
• Listening to the body’s signals;
• The benefits of working through the body;
• Discovering meaning in the body’s signals;
• How to Contact a client’s present experience;
• Learning to stay with the core processes;
• Core Beliefs or Core Schemas;
• Gaining co-operation of the unconscious mind;
• Self-Care for therapists: living well and working well.

In our busy lives it can be very easy to put self-care low on our list of priorities. For some people this results in chronic problems with muscular aches and pains and for others it results in feeling tired and being unable to relax or have fun. This 2-day workshop is an opportunity to take time-out to re-charge and learn the skills for developing your own program for good self-care. It is suitable for people with conditions such as fibromyalgia, overuse injuries, back and/or neck pain, chronic fatigue but is also designed to meet the needs of health care practitioners who want to learn more about life enhancement skills and their own self-care.

Mindfulness Meditation is being taught in many programs around the world to calm the mind, enhance well-being, and reduce symptoms such as chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. In this workshop you will be introduced to the four foundations of Mindfulness Meditation:

• Body and breath;
• Sensations;
• Moods and Emotions;
• Thoughts (Mind)

There will be an opportunity to design your own program of meditation and movement to make this a part of your daily routine.

Rosemary has developed an integrated movement program which addresses aerobic fitness, releasing movements for holding patterns and muscle tension, stabilizing for the shoulder girdle and lower back, and general strengthening. This program evolved from her experience of chronic pain, and 15 years of working with people experiencing chronic pain. Rosemary has been influenced by the Feldenkrais Method, Alexander Technique, and yoga. She uses this program to keep herself fit and pain free.

During this 2-day workshop you will be taught:

• Mindfulness meditation;
• Exercises for improving posture;
• An integrated movement program for the Upper Body and Lower Back;
• A graduated strengthening program;
• How to design a daily program incorporating aerobic fitness, SSS (stretching, strengthening and stabilising), and meditation;
• Ways of making self-care a priority;
• Ways of balancing work, rest and play

INQUIRIES, WORKSHOP DETAILS and REGISTRATION FORM:
Contact Rosemary McIndoe on (03) 9347 5083 Email: rmcindoe@bigpond.com