Format: Audio MP3 file download $16 - Compact Disc $20

Presenter: Lawrence Graber, MA, C-BT; Katherine Rosemond, M. Ed., LPC

Hypnotic procedures represent salient historic dimensions of healing and remain prominent within indigenous healing traditions. Music, dance and poetry also represent universal healing modalities that emphasize embodiment, emotion and meaning across cultures. Though the role of hypnosis and the body in trauma treatment was prominent at the outset of modern psychotherapy, only recently have interventions focusing on sensorimotor and expressive arts been recognized among best practices for complex trauma. Persons living with posttraumatic stress are often troubled by experiences encoded nonverbally. Difficulty verbalizing trauma reveals the importance of body-based therapies as a bridge between nonverbal and verbal meanings of trauma. Body psychotherapies and some indirect hypnotic approaches utilize minimal words to support experiential exploration, establishing a felt-sense of safety and grounding as foundational to processing emotional and traumatic content. Furthermore, hypnotic methods are effective for ego-strengthening and building resources to potentiate cognitive, interpersonal and emotional regulation skills in trauma treatment. We integrate hypnosis into a culturally congruous, phase-oriented, multimodal approach to trauma psychotherapy that shares elements of cognitive hypnotherapy and creative arts. We draw from the construct of soul wounding within indigenous cultural epistemologies and reflected in western depictions of the wounded self as an underlying dimension in phase-oriented integrative treatment. This workshop will provide didactic and experiential focus on cultural and somatic dimensions of trauma and present examples that integrate clinical hypnosis into phase-oriented trauma treatment. Embodied writing, the GRDP, along with hypnotherapeutic music making will be used to demonstrate braiding client resources and somatic resonance in trauma resolution.