This course is designed for practitioners at an intermediate or advanced skill level, and will offer training to enhance their treatment of couples. Common issues involved in couples’ patterns of dysfunction often include detachment and/or emotional hyper-reactivity. Understanding of how dorsal vagal response plays a part in detachment is influenced by the work of Steven Porges (2009) and Deb Dana (2018) and will inform the diagnosis and treatment of couples. Treating emotional hyperactivity will also draw experientially from the work of Porges and Dana to help participants utilize their social engagement system to reduce excessive surges of sympathetic arousal that can both accompany and trigger hyperreactivity in the couples we treat. This course will augment the existing skills of participants with experiential practices designed to broaden their capacities of perception, reception and expression through the lens of seven channels of experience and explicit use of “I-statements” incorporating moment-to-moment tracking. (Mars, 2011, 2017) This series of seven monthly training sessions is designed to cultivate the internal capacity, skills and awareness of each training group member to treat patients using enhanced bodily awareness. We will meet for two hours each time from 8 to 10 AM PST. This Seven Channels Process Training Group provides a medium through which participants deepen their skills and effectiveness in engaging couples in a transformative process directed toward building bonds and connectedness and healing attachment level trauma and deprivation. Mindful self-compassion practices and exercises (Neff and Germer, 2012) will be incorporated into the training sessions to enhance both intra-relational (self-talk) and inter-relational safety. We will apply principles from Frederickson (2013) and others about the beneficial effects of positivity as a lens through which we can learn to perceive both our own experiences and those of others.

Target Audience: Psychiatrists, Psychologists, Therapists, MFTs and Social Workers

1. Describe dorsal vagal response.
2. Identify two ways to establish a secure base.
3. Describe two ways to regulate emotional reactivity. 
4. Name the Seven Channels of Experience. 
5. Demonstrate moment-to-moment tracking through the seven Channels of Experience 
6. Transform affect through slowing down the process and generate an experience of safety and connection. 
7. Show the safe base generated through deepening the therapeutic bonds within the coaching context of the group sessions.
8. Recognize openings to create successful relational engagement.
9. Show how dissociation can be identified and reduced through engaging the caregiving system.
10. Explain how being in an active, relationally attuned meditative state in sessions helps to prevent therapist burnout and improve treatment outcomes.
11. Define the value of the core affect of surprise.  (*Frederickson, 2013)
12. Integrate core affect through slowing down. (*Iwakabe, S., Edlin, J., Fosha, D., Gretton, H., Joseph, A. J., Nunnink, S. E., Nakamura, K., & Thoma, N. C., 2020)

 

10:00 – 10:20 AM PT Orientation and opening eight-minute Channels of Experience meditation
10:20-10:45 AM PT Check-in and discussion of each participant’s response to the meditation and any breakthroughs of awareness that they want to share 
10:45 to 11:45 PT Discussion in the context of demonstrating grounded alternatives to reflexive reactivity while practicing using process language.
11:45 to 12:00 PM PT Metaprocessing and closing 
 

January 8, 2025

Participants must have paid tuition fee, signed in, attended the entire seminar, completed an evaluation, and signed out in order to receive a certificate. Failure to sign in or out will result in forfeiture of credit for the entire course. No exceptions will be made. Partial credit is not available. Certificates available after satisfactory course completion at credits.education

Credits.Education is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs. Credits.Ecucation maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.  Course meets the qualifications for 10 hours of continuing education credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.