Integrating Polyvagal Theory in Clinical Practice – Stephen Porges, PhD and Deb Dana, LCSW

Salepage link: At HERE. Archive:

Watch researcher Stephen Porges and expert clinician Deb Dana in this rare virtual training to fully learn the theory and the practice of integrating Polyvagal into your clinical work.

In times of crisis, our clients may want to anchor in an autonomic state of calmness and social engagement. But our physiological state, emotions, and nervous state can override our capacity to be calm and we often mobilize into sympathetic fight and flight, anger and anxiety, or dorsal despair, disconnection, and collapse.

This pervasive threat may destabilize our nervous systems and limit our capacity to provide the cues to our clients consistent with our benevolent intentions to connect, support, and be present.

Now you can learn the science that explains how social behavior turns off defenses and promotes feeling safe – critical in the world of treating trauma – and how to inform your practice with this latest, and most respected, science.

Applying a Polyvagal perspective to our therapeutic strategies that witness and expand the capacity to feel safe – and use social behavior to regulate the physiological state – can be effective in treating psychological disorders that are dependent on defense systems.

Purchase today for this don’t miss training with Dr. Porges and Deb Dana.

1. Determine the principles and features of the Polyvagal Theory.
2. Evaluate maladaptive behaviors, including states of dissociation, and how they may be an emergent property of an adaptive physiological state triggered by survival mechanisms.
3. Propose a face-heart connection that defines a social engagement system linking bodily feelings with facial expression, vocal intonation, and gesture.
4. Analyze the neural process (neuroception) that evaluates risk in the environment and triggers adaptive neural circuits that promote either social engagement or adaptive survival strategies.
5. Utilize an autonomic map to identify common body responses, behaviors, and beliefs for each autonomic state.
6. Determine ways to engage the co-regulating pathways of the Social Engagement System to create an environment of safety in clinical sessions.
7. Justify how the autonomic nervous system operates as an internal surveillance system and its impact on clients’ habitual responses to trauma.
8. Practice the trauma-informed therapist’s role as co-regulator and the impact on clinical outcomes.
9. Assess for patterns in clients’ autonomic states to better inform treatment planning.

Adaptive function of evolutionary changes in the autonomic nervous system (Porges)

Navigating the hierarchy through autonomic mapping

Anchoring in regulation

Engaging the vagal brake (Dana)

Connectedness: A biological imperative (Porges)

Identifying ruptures and practicing repair

Assessing the right degree of connection

How to have an autonomic conversation (Dana)

The Social Engagement System as a Portal of Co-regulation: Harnessing a Neuroception of Safety in Clinical Treatment (Porges)

Utilizing the individual pathways of the Social Engagement System (Dana)

A One Nervous System Model (Porges)

Guiding questions for Polyvagal Informed therapists (Dana)

Discussion and Q&A with Speakers