Format: Audio MP3 file download

Presenter: David Alter, PhD, ABPH

The Body?s Mind: The Role of Relationship in Integrating Body and Mind in People with Psychophysiologic Disorders

Long before there was a conscious mind and its partner ?a self-aware brain? our bodies were incessantly engaged in conversations between and within the trillions of biological parts of which it is comprised. Selfregulation ruled the day. Unceasingly adjusting and adapting to the dynamics of the external world, the body was constantly activating, inhibiting, shifting, and sustaining its internal systems and elements in harmony with the surrounding and evolving outer environment. There is perhaps no more intimate relationship than the one involving our body?s biological multi-dimensional dance of life. The emergence of our self-aware self, inextricably embedded in social relationships and actively shaped by various levels of custom and culture, brought with it new adaptive challenges. Some of these challenges manifest in the various forms of psychophysiologic and somatization conditions that don?t fit neatly into medical or sychological bins, but which are often the bane of both.

This half-day workshop is designed to provide the participant with a clearer appreciation of the relational interplay between our psychobiology and our social psychology as it plays out in various forms of psychophysiologic and somatic distress and disorder. Using a combination of didactic presentation, group discussion, and experiential practices, participants will leave the workshop more able to utilize the interpersonal therapeutic relationship to influence the client?s intrapersonal neurobiological relationships.

The interface of the embodied mind and the physical body are where psychophysiologic conditions (e.g., IBS or HA/migraine) and somatization conditions congregate. These conditions are a challenge to the health care system on many levels, including patient despair, provider exasperation, insurance benefit coverage and cost challenges, and vast sums of dollars reflecting the toll of disrupted or derailed personal functioning and workforce productivity losses. The nature of hypnosis and its use in the interpersonal context of the therapeutic encounter has much to offer in terms of restoring health to the client?s body-mind relationship, facilitating healthier access to the self-system?s inter- and intrapersonal resources.

The workshop has three primary aims. To: 1) Frame psychophysiologic and somatic symptom pattern expression as both literal and metaphorically expressed body-mind messaging that charts a path to healthier functioning. 2) Highlight the unique characteristics of the hypnotic relationship that support the harmonizing of dis-associated or dis-integrated aspects of the healthy self-system. 3) Demonstrate methods of working with individuals exhibiting psychophysiologic and somatization patterns using body-mind-oriented and hypnotically informed therapeutic interventions.