Bessel van der Kolk, MD and Linda Thai, LMSW
Dear Therapist
Where were you when you first read The Body Keeps the Score?
Were you a student or therapist? Or did you just grab the book that everyone was raving about?
Do you remember how it impacted you?
Most of us had an “aha” moment, when the mosaic of mental health clicked into place. This was more than just a book; it was a seismic shift in our understanding of the brain-body connection, and it touched us, our peers, and—most importantly—our clients.
Bessel van der Kolk’s book inspired a new generation of therapists to approach trauma from a body-centric perspective. Linda Thai has worked alongside Bessel for nearly a decade. While Bessel provides theoretical, research-driven insights, Linda focuses on providing actionable therapeutic strategies, such as somatic techniques for nervous system regulation.
You can learn from both of these brilliant healers in an exclusive, 6-hour training.
In this course, you’ll delve into:
- What Bessel has learned about complex trauma in his illustrious 60-year career.
- Linda’s interpretation of Bessel’s work through the intersection of trauma healing and social justice.
- The latest evidence on the neurobiology of trauma, and discover the latest innovative and evidence-based approaches for working with clients who have experienced complex trauma.
- The latest data and research on the benefits of yoga, mindfulness-based interventions, somatic experiencing, and psychedelics to increase pleasure, engagement, control, and trust.
By the end, you’ll have a toolkit to:
- Deepen your understanding of trauma and the nervous system.
- Create unique treatment plans for each client’s needs.
- Help clients restore mind-body integration.
- Free your clients from a body that is dysregulated by trauma.
Traumatized people continue to be trapped in bodies held hostage by their history. Now you can learn from Bessel and Linda how to change the never-ending cycle of fight or flight, freeze or fawn.
Join us as we welcome Bessel and Linda to our stage.
A 3-hour pre-recorded Working with Complex Trauma training call with Bessel van der Kolk and Linda Thai
Two 90-minute on-demand integration sessions with Linda Thai
Downloadable Course Materials
Private Member Dashboard
Here’s what you’ll receive in Working with Complex Trauma: Innovative Approaches for Restoring Mind-Body Integration
Innovative Approaches for Restoring Mind-Body Integration led by Bessel van der Kolk (3 hours)
Bessel van der Kolk will provide an overview of his groundbreaking work on the neurobiology of trauma, shedding light on how trauma affects the body, brain, and nervous system. Because of altered neurobiological systems, traumatized people continue to be trapped by their history and react to current experiences in a myriad of ways as a replay of the past.
Based on his pioneering research, Bessel will delve into innovative and evidence-based approaches that mental health professionals can use to help clients restore a basic sense of calm and safety. This exploration will also include emergent treatment approaches identified by the latest advances in research on trauma.
You will learn about:
- The latest research on trauma and its impact on mental health.
- Techniques to regulate emotions and improve overall well-being that you can use to support your clients.
- Emerging treatments and techniques that mental health professionals should know about.
Stuck in Survival Strategies: Getting beyond Fawning & Appeasement Led by Linda Thai
Trauma can force us to develop strategies to help us survive what we experienced. These actions of survival get stuck inside the nervous system and the body. By learning to recognize and work with these survival responses, we can manage anxiety and overthinking, emotional flooding, and overwhelm. New choices become available that allow us to cultivate self-awareness around past behaviors, thoughts, and emotions.
In this session, you will learn how to:
- Identify the impacts of the body’s stress response system on brain function, behavior, physiology, and relationships.
- Address tension and immobilization so you can choose the best intervention to enhance treatment outcomes.
- Distinguish between fawning, appeasement, fight, flight, freeze, and dorsal shutdown as survival strategies so you know exactly what you are dealing with.
- Increase the capacity for bottom-up self-regulation so your clients can work from the body, not only the mind.
- Expand tolerance and interoceptive awareness to increase your connection.
Somatic Techniques for Nervous System Regulation Led by Linda Thai
In this jam-packed experiential session, Linda will share techniques for professionals to use for themselves and to introduce to your clients to restore well-being.
You will learn:
- Brain-based and body-based techniques that increase your window of capacity.
- Techniques for up-regulation, down-regulation, and co-regulation to improve daily function and relationships.
- The theory behind breathing exercises so you can use them most effectively.
- How to release tension in the eyes as a gateway to restoring well-being.
- The multiple possible purposes of fidgeting/stimming and how to intentionally engage in these practices to enhance well-being.
- Two gateways to enhance integrative capacity to attain effortless focus and concentration.
What’s Included in Each Session?
Meet your presenter
Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.
Bessel A. van der Kolk, M.D., is a pioneer clinician, researcher, and teacher in the area of posttraumatic stress. His work uniquely integrates developmental, neurobiological, psychodynamic, somatic, and interpersonal aspects of the impact of trauma and its treatment. He is the author of the NYT #1 best seller, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Treatment of Trauma, which transformed our understanding of traumatic stress, revealing how it literally rearranges the brain’s wiring. Dr. van der Kolk and his various collaborators have published extensively on the impact of trauma on development, cognitive development, memory, and the psychobiology of trauma. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific articles on such diverse topics as neuroimaging, self-injury, memory, neurofeedback, Developmental Trauma, yoga, theater, and EMDR.
Linda Thai, LMSW, (she, her) is a trauma therapist specializing in cutting-edge brain- and body-based modalities for the healing of complex developmental trauma. Her teaching is infused with empathy, storytelling, humor, research, practical tools, applied knowledge, and experiential wisdom.
Linda has studied Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, Somatic Abolitionism, Brainspotting, Internal Family Systems, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, Havening Touch, Flash Technique, and structural dissociation of the personality, and offers the Safe and Sound Protocol, yoga, and meditation within her practice.
Linda is passionate about breaking the cycle of historical and intergenerational trauma. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, and now living in Alaska, Linda is a former child refugee who is not only redefining what it means to be Vietnamese, to be Australian, and to be a United States-ian….she is redefining what it means to be wounded and whole and a healer.
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