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Micropractices: Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Anyone exploring mindfulness meditation will find that there are so many different styles and approaches. This can be liberating or confusing, or both! Luckily, there is something for everybody. The most important is that we each find what is helpful for us. This might be a process of trial and error. “Micropractices” is one way…
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COVID-19, Essential Trauma Concepts, IP-Integrated Practices for Healing Trauma Groups, Trauma-Informed ServicesIntegrated Practices in the Time of Coronavirus
In the 10 years I have been facilitating Integrated Practices (formerly Becoming Safely Embodied) group, before this past March I had not considered providing them online. I have run groups consistently throughout these years as a part of my practice and I am deeply connected to this aspect of my work. Due to the…
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The Power of Bearing Witness
Over the past week, I have been reflecting on the article Holding, Containing and Bearing Witness: The Problem of Helpfulness in Encounters with Torture Survivors by Dick Blackwell (1997). In the article, Blackwell (1997) explores the role of the therapist in supporting our client’s wants and needs in therapy, especially with respect to survivors of …
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An Evidence-Based House of Cards
Here is my bias: I believe that therapy is unavoidably complex. How could it be otherwise, encountering as it does all manner of human experience? Wrestling as we do, both client and therapist, with suffering and meaning? It stands counter to reason and intuition alike that formulaic clinical practices would result in solid treatment outcomes. …
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What if there’s nothing wrong with your body?
“What if there’s nothing wrong with my body?” This is an astonishing question – or at least it felt that way to me the first time I asked it of myself. It’s a question that multiple and interlocking systems of oppression such as racism, misogyny and fatphobia rely upon us not asking ourselves. Not to…
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Why I Believe 4-7-8 Breath is a Good Daily Practice
Deepening our capacity to mindfully attend to internal experience (thoughts, feelings and sensations) in the present moment is an important part of healing from the effects of trauma. Various mindfulness practices (of which there are no shortage these days) can be useful in this pursuit. However, some mindfulness and meditation practices…
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Food, The Body, and Trauma and Attachment
The Body Isn’t the Problem; it’s the answer. – Rachel Lewis-Marlow In our CCIH Study Group in August we decided to change up our usual routine and discuss a podcast. We choose Food, The Body, and Trauma and Attachment with Guests Paula Scatoloni & Rachel Lewis-Marlow from the Therapist Uncensored podcast series. I have often…
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Yoga-Informed Psychotherapy: Yoga can happen off the mat
Yoga – so very misunderstood. I still remember when I thought that yoga was just exercises with some breathing thrown in. I was 12 years old and very bendy when I picked up a yoga book and thought the poses were cool. It wasn’t until I took the yoga teacher training at the Temple of…
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Why I Love Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Approaches
Like many therapists, my education and training in clinical psychotherapy primarily comes from a psychodynamic framework. I learned all about relational and attachment psychotherapy, family systems theory, as well as some cognitive-behavioral approaches and basic mindfulness techniques here and there. I am so grateful for all of this foundational framework and I consider it all…
