Yoga and Mindfulness: Mind-Brain Change for Anxiety, Moods, Trauma and Substance Abuse

CPD

Handouts

Faculty

Debra Alvis, Ph.D. Related seminars and products: 7

---

Debra Alvis, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist, professor, and workplace wellness consultant whose trainings to address compassion fatigue have helped healthcare and mental health professionals around the country, including the medical staff at a flagship state university health center.

Over the last 20 years Dr. Alvis has designed individualized and group programs to promote stress hardiness, work-life balance, and resiliency for nurses, physicians, social workers, counselors, and others working in jobs with excessive demands on their empathy. Her work in a range of medical and mental health settings provides her with a keen understanding of these demands and the potential impact on professionals across disciplines.

Dr. Alvis also developed and led the Mind/Body Program at the University of Georgia that specializes in addressing anxiety, stress, and depression in individuals with physical health concerns and co-morbid mental health issues.

Dr. Alvis lectures, leads retreats around the world, and maintains a private practice in Georgia where she treats clients with anxiety, trauma, shame, depression and relational concerns. She continues to serve as a professor at the University of Georgia where she supervises the clinical work of doctoral students, teaches health psychology, and co-leads a research team.

 

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.

Additional Info

Program Information

Access never expires for this product.

Objectives

1. Incorporate simple yoga and mindfulness practices that can be used as clinical skills.
2. Incorporate breathing interventions/practices to help reduce anxiety and depression.
3. Practice body awareness techniques to help stabilize your client with trauma, anxiety, depression and substance abuse.
4. Teach clients how to practice self-compassion using mindfulness techniques.
5. Develop a four-step meditation to aid in affirming positive thoughts and decreasing negative ruminations.
6. Analyze the neuroscience of anxiety, trauma and depression and how it impacts your clinical work.

Outline

Neuroscience of the Mind-Body Unity

• Your responsive nervous system: Neuroplasticity and neurogenesis, and how to activate the brain for change
• Mind-body link: How the mind changes the body and the body changes the mind to transform
• Networks of interaction and influence: Mirror neurons and attachment
• How yoga breathing, mindfulness, and meditation bring balance and wellbeing to dysregulated nervous system and a troubled mind

Mindfulness and Yoga as an Evidenced- Based Clinical Intervention: Multicultural Approaches

• Multicultural guidelines
• Culturally sensitive applications

A Holistic, Mind/Body Approach

• Unifying by intention: One with your true being in mind, body, and spirit
• Top-down: Harness the healing power of thought
• Bottom-up: Use the body and the breath to activate the vagus nerve for calm and balance
• Horizontal: Cross modalities and hemispheres to work around defenses and elicit new potentials

Find Courage from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic

• Turn from fearful anticipation of the future to the mindful present
• Quickly reduce heightened anxiety with moving meditations
• Breathing to reverse the fight, flight, freeze stress response
• Reset the nervous system to find a calm, confident balance

Posttraumatic Growth: A Journey to Transform Trauma

• Convert implicit memories from the source of pain to a resource for strength
• Create an internal safe sanctuary
• Meditative breathing to develop self-regulation and inner control
• Resonate with inner strength: Mantra and posture practice
• Elicit the brain's natural capacity to heal through the mind-body link
• Nurture compassion for self and others

The Path from Depression

• Reconnect the disconnect between frontal and limbic areas in depression to stop unproductive ruminations
• Four-Step method to observe and detach from negative thoughts that elicit depression
• Develop non-judgmental awareness
• Breathing and body meditations to balance energy
• Leave the past by living in the present moment
• Mindful attuning to your radiant deeper nature
• Gratitude meditations to nurture a positive life

Rewire the Compromised Reward Pathway in Addiction

• Detach from drugs
• Go beyond pleasure and pain
• Soothe with comfort practices
• Mindful acceptance
• Develop a healthy and wise inner compass
• Find joy from life itself in the present moment

Target Audience

Reviews