BodyDreaming: Integrating body, mind and psyche in the treatment of developmental trauma
Friday 19 March 2021 - A Live Webinar
A one-day workshop with Marian Dunlea and Wendy Bratherton
- This event will not be recorded
In this webinar, Marian will guide participants through her embodied therapeutic approach, BodyDreaming. Marian’s approach is the integration of 30 years of dedicated study and clinical work from perspectives including analytical psychology, psychoanalysis, Marion Woodman’s BodySoul Rhythms, Focusing, Authentic Movement, Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and Organic Intelligence. Here she describes her way of working.
READ MORE...“Here at last I had a means to address the body in one-on-one therapy sessions, to listen to the body’s deep impulses, intuitions and resonances without the need for the client to do floor work and move around in the room to access the body. Through tracking felt sense experience, the client and I could access internal physical sensation, mapping feeling in the body and opening both client and therapist to the embodied imaginal as a result.” (p.23)
This method has the clinical relationship as central with the aim to restore the balance of a dysregulated psyche and nervous system and to activate innate healing capacities. Through the body and dream work we can see how it is possible to change our default responses to trauma of “fight, flight, freeze” and to create new neural pathways. This methodology is useful for psychotherapists, art, dance and movement therapists, and body workers.
Wendy Bratherton will weave in a practice of Qigong during the day to help facilitate an embodied learning of BodyDreaming.
FULL PROGRAMME
10.00 GMT (06.00 EDT)
10.00
Introductions and Zoom Housekeeping
10.05
Marian Dunlea
Introduction to BodyDreaming
This is an embodied practice and we hope to offer participants the experience of learning through the body. The session will offer an overview of the practice of BodyDreaming, its origins and place in a dysregulated contemporary world. Marian will demonstrate how she has come to the practice of BodyDreaming through understanding the body’s physiology, polyvagal theory and the nervous system, and Jungian psychology. This work holds that if we regulate the Autonomic Nervous System we gain greater access to the messages and signals emanating from the somatic unconscious and dreams.
10.45
Wendy Bratherton
Qigong
Wendy will introduce us to the practice of Qigong. Qigong means energy work . It taps into the natural flow of life energy to promote resilience, health and coherence. This ancient Chinese practice helps with regulating the nervous system . This will be followed by a short period where participants are invited to use art materials to take the energy onto paper.
11.15
Break out in small groups of 5
11.30
Comments, questions and sharing in large group
11.45
Break
12.00
Marian Dunlea
‘I may be able to find some peace here’
In this session Marian will demonstrate the fundamental importance of attunement in the working through of developmental trauma. Insecure attachment patterns are the result of the dysregulated nervous systems, of both mother and child. Drawing on Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory and the social engagement system we will see how attunement and regulation help to repair insecure attachment patterns. The practice of BodyDreaming builds a learned secure attachment to the body, which supports the development of a core sense of self.
12.45
Break out in small groups of 5
13.00
Comments, questions and sharing in large group
13.15
Break
13.45
Wendy Bratheron
Qigong practice including a short return to using art materials to take the energy onto paper
14.15
Marian Dunlea
I’m yielding to it
In this session Marian will discuss how BodyDreaming supports the client to create new responses outside the patterned ones of Ambivalent; Dissociative and Disorganized insecure attachment. The client develops a greater capacity to tolerate emotion in the face of activation.
15.00
Break
15.15
Breakouts in small groups of 5, to gather questions for the final discussion
15.30
Marian Dunlea
The bushes don’t have panic attacks
Marian will demonstrate how to work with numbness, dissociation and disoriented attachment using BodyDreaming. In this session Marian will describe how nature can support the body and psyche’s innate capacity for self- regulation. When we foster a greater coherence in our system the dream can bring us to a different level of understanding and experience of symbols and images. In this session Marion and Wendy will read material from a client case in the book.
16.00
Discussion
16.30
End