The Seven Channels Process Group series focuses on giving and receiving the transformative gifts of the kind of secure base that we aspire to create as therapists. Our focus will be integrating and deepening the self of the therapist. We will work to offer alternative pathways to the counter-transference reactivity that can show up in us with certain psychotherapy clients and especially in working with couples.

 We will practice whole body moment-to-moment somatic tracking and speak in explicit I-statements about our internal experience. This produces an atmosphere of subtle discernment and evokes surprises of selective perception, bottom-up awareness, selective reception and mindful expression.   This small group series accesses and builds upon self-at-best skill development of heart-to-heart compassion, inner reflection and acknowledgment of self and other. We will be learning about affective neuroscience and transforming attachment patterns via teaching moments integrated with the experience of the group sessions.

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

• Identify at least four of the Seven Channels of Experience and describe their relevance to clinical assessment and intervention.
• Explain why identifying internal states through multiple perceptual channels—beyond emotion alone—supports accurate case conceptualization.
• Describe how attunement to the energetic channel can enhance therapist self-regulation and therapeutic presence with clients.
• Identify indicators of increased dorsal vagal response and explain how these indicators may impact a client’s capacity for engagement and responsiveness to relational cues.
• Apply awareness of subtle emotional cues in couple members to facilitate therapeutic dialogue in couple or group therapy.
• Describe at least one way that tracking somatic sensations of tension or relaxation can be used to support co-regulation with clients in treatment.
• Demonstrate the use of present-tense awareness and language when guiding clients through healing portrayals or experiential interventions.
• Differentiate between interventions based primarily on projection/judgment and those informed by moment-to-moment body-based awareness in clinical practice.
• Identify early signs of therapist reactivity and describe strategies for self-regulation in session to maintain therapeutic effectiveness.
• Identify one primary channel of experience commonly used as an attunement anchor (“North Star”) when tracking client states in session.
• Identify at least one channel of experience that may present as less accessible or under-developed and describe how this may impact therapeutic attunement.
• Demonstrate a structured body-scan intervention to support client access to internal awareness during therapy.
• Explain how use of the visual channel can assist in identifying early indicators of escalating tension between couple members.
• Provide examples of auditory-channel attunement strategies that support emotional regulation in individual therapy sessions.
• Describe how observation of movement and gesture can be used to assess relational dynamics in individual, couple, or family therapy.
• Apply the imaginal channel to help clients articulate relational needs and longings within the therapeutic process.

10:00-10:20am: Orientation and opening five-minute Channels of Experience meditation

10:20-10:45am: Check-in and discussion of each participant’s response to the meditation and any breakthroughs of awareness that they want to share are invited. Questions about the Seven Channels of Experience or mindful and selective access to them are part of the process.

10:45 to 11:45: Facilitated interaction that demonstrates grounded alternatives of affective regulation and moment-to-moment tracking as alternatives to potential reflexive reactivity, and negative judgment, while practicing selective perception, reception and expression using I- language and the seven channels.

11:45-12:00pm: Metaprocessing and closing

16

The cost for 16 Continuing Education (CE) credits will be $40. An email from Credits Education will be sent to all participants who complete the course.

This course is live on zoom, and interactive. 

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, #1032827, is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists to sponsor continuing education for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs. Credits.Education maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content.  Course meets the qualifications for 16 hours of continuing education credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

 

All Other States: Most other states accept CAMFT approved courses for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and LEPs.  Check with your state board.