Description:

The incidence of persistent and chronic pain conditions have become a public health crisis with more people suffering from chronic pain than from diabetes, cancer, and heart disease combined. The cost of suffering (human and financial) is huge and in part results from the fact that pain is so complex—ranging far beyond the intersection of neural transmission and sensory experience. The puzzle of pain involves a complicated labyrinth of emotions, sensations, culture, individual experience, genetics, spiritual meaning, as well as habitual physiological reactions. This workshop presents both the art and science of working with the resources of the body to reverse the effects of physical, emotional, and trauma related pain. From our many years of experience, we have found that the one factor that has not been sufficiently considered in the war on pain is the role of unresolved trauma that is held in the body. We will present a multi-level approach to the treatment of pain and trauma including: ways to work with trauma that may have caused the pain through accident, injury, disease or other overwhelming events; discovering how persistent emotional and physical pain become traumatizing in and of themselves; working with unresolved trauma that predates the pain condition that becomes triggered by the current pain problem; exploring how early childhood trauma, perinatal stress, and attachment trauma become barriers to healing and how to help resolve these residual patterns. We will demonstrate skills of emotional and sensate self-regulation, body awareness, work with pendulum rhythms, somatic resourcing, expansion of innate resilience, and how to recognize and break free of the posttraumatic pain trap. You will also learn strategies for dealing effectively with dissociation; anxiety, fear, and panic; helplessness and hopelessness; and anger, rage, and irritability that are often associated with pain. Opportunity to consult with us about specific pain conditions including fibromyalgia, migraines, chronic regional pain, and back, neck and shoulder pain will also be provided.

Educational Objectives:

1. Identify 5 types of trauma involved in the treatment of pain.
2. Practice two self-regulation skills that can help with physical, emotional, and trauma-related pain.
3. Practice two techniques to work with various reactions related to fight, flight, and freeze responses that maintain chronic pain.
4. Practice two strategies to shift bracing and constriction patterns in the body that contribute to pain.

*Sessions may be edited for content and to preserve confidentiality*