Bringing Trauma-Informed Yoga into Mental Health Clinical Practice

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Debra Alvis, Ph.D. Related seminars and products

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Debra Alvis, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist and private practitioner with over twenty-five years of clinical experience. She specializes in an integrative approach bringing together polyvagal, neuroscientific, and somatic principles to treat trauma and co-morbid disorders.

Debra discovered that the polyvagal approach facilitates a mindful awareness of the biological reactions influencing the therapist/client relationship and the client's sense of safety in the world. Integrating physiological, brain-based, body-focused approaches with traditional psychotherapeutic orientations helped clients to recover more easefully and quickly from trauma. In addition, with an increased sense of safety and connectedness, clients more frequently practiced the strategies required through her work in private practice and as a clinical supervisor, educator, and consultant.

Dr. Alvis developed and led the Mind/Body Program at the University of Georgia where she now teaches health psychology graduate students to apply polyvagal, neuroscientific, and somatic approaches, serves as project director for federal grant focusing on integrative healthcare, and develops mindfulness-based research studies. A thirty-year personal contemplative practice and over a thousand hours training as a mindfulness and yoga teacher further enrich her presentations.

 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Debra Alvis is in private practice. Dr. Alvis receives a speaking honorarium from PESI, Inc.
Non-financial: Debra Alvis has no relevant non-financial relationship to disclose.

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Objectives

1. Evaluate ways that autonomic nervous system dysregulation contributes to PTSD symptoms.
2. Determine symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder which can be decreased through a trauma-sensitive yoga practice.
3. Practice trauma-informed chair yoga postures for use in the individual or group psychotherapy session.
4. Determine the benefits of bringing yogic deep relaxation into the therapy session.
5. Utilize yogic strategies to help reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression in clients.
6. Apply applications of chair yoga and three-part deep breathing practices into your clinical work, using scripts and practice sessions.

Outline

• Yoga, Patanjali and MIR’s
• The importance of heart rate variability (HRV)

• The Triune Brain: left out of traditional psychotherapy?
• Regulating the brain’s trauma center
• Tracking body sensation and breathing deeply
• A frame of reference from Somatic Psychotherapy
• Neuroplasticity and interpersonal neurobiology

• The evidence in evidence-based yoga practice
• Yoga and polarities
• Guided script for chair yoga:
  • 5 trauma-informed chair yoga postures
  • Guiding and integrating the poses into your existing treatment modality (EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, etc.)
• Chair trauma-yoga:
  • Tracking body sensation
  • Gaining self-mastery
  • Increasing self-regulation
  • Expanding present-moment awareness
• Experience a chair yoga warm up and posture sequence

• Respiration and the autonomic nervous system (ANS)
• Breathing techniques to regulate the ANS and calm symptoms of trauma, anxiety and depression
• Experience the three-part deep breath and script

• Evaluating the client
• Opening the session
• Healing polarities:
  • Inner/outer
  • Sympathetic/parasympathetic activation
  • Sensing/action
  • Cognitive/somatic
• Healthy symptoms of trauma discharge
• Key points in making referrals to yoga classes

• The benefits of sleeping while awake
• Varieties of Yoga Nidra
• Guided experience of Satchidananda’s Yoga Nidra
• Discussion of Yoga Nidra script

• The relaxation response
• Mindfulness meditation: open-focused meditation
• A guided experience of both styles of meditation
• The benefits of meditation in the trauma psychotherapy session

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