Somatic Resourcing and EMDR

Barbara Maynard, MA, MFT

Course Content Description

This course will include a brief introduction to Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, while providing clinicians with a theoretical understanding of somatic resourcing, along with concrete exercises and approaches to expand their ability to develop and strengthen somatic resources for their clients. Combining Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and EMDR can enhance the effectiveness of both treatment approaches and increase the clinician’s ability to deepen the client’s ability to heal.

For those who use and value EMDR, we have had those moments when the clients’ ability to tolerate their affective and somatic arousal overwhelms the best planned EMDR session. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy is a body-oriented talk therapy that helps facilitate clients stay mindful in the present moment, while expanding their ability to tolerate the combined affective and somatic arousal that often accompanies a triggered implicit memory. It is a style of working with clients that accommodates itself quite easily to the EMDR protocol. The use of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy allows therapists to work with clients to increase their affect tolerance while working at optimal levels of arousal. This combined ability allows the client to experience deeper transformation and integration of old traumas into new, complete narratives that are far less likely to become triggered in the future.

Bio

Barbara Maynard, MA, MFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in practice in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost 20 years and a practicing EMDR therapist for over 8 years. Her specialties include using a somatic approach to working with issues resulting from trauma, abuse, dissociation, chronic pain other medical problems and disorders in attachment. Her training in Somatic Psychotherapy includes the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute Trauma Training, Psycho-Biomechanics, attachment, dissociation, psycho-neurobiology of trauma and Parent Infant Mental Health. She is currently working with Pat Ogden PhD, Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, on a workbook on Somatic Resourcing Exercises for psychotherapists.

Workshop Objectives: