Prior Presentation Descriptions
1. Contemporary Reichian Psychotherapy: A body-mind psychotherapeutic approach
The goal of psychotherapy is to help people who are suffering from distressing emotions, feelings, and/or interpersonal relationships develop the capacity to find pleasure, excitement, and satisfaction in their lives. Contrary to some current psychological theories, though well understood in the practice of yoga, emotional distress is not just the result of difficulties in how we think, or due to a misbalance of chemicals in our brain, but is equally rooted in how we breathe, move, speak, see - the functioning of our body-mind. In our 2 hours together I will discuss how distressing emotions become lodged in one’s body-mind, and introduce to you a psychotherapeutic approach that integrates work with one’s ‘psyche’ with work with one’s ‘body’ to more directly help people move from a place of contraction and emotional pain to expansion and growth.
Instructor: Daniel Schiff, PhD
Tuition: By donation
Date: Sunday, January 28, 2007
Time: 1:00 PM - 3:00PM
Location: Shanti Yoga Center, 800 Franklin Street, Suite 204, Vancouver, WA 98660. www.shantiforeveryone.com
2. The Bioenergetic Basis of Somatic and Psychological Disorders:
A Reichian Perspective
In the early 1940’s Wilhelm Reich, MD coined the term biopathy to characterize those disease processes that result from an underlying disturbance of bioenergetic pulsation. According to Reich biopathies can present themselves as both psychological/behavioral disorders and somatic disorders, both which have at their root chronic patterns of emotional defenses - or armor. In this presentation I will present and discuss Reich’s concept of biopathy and his bioenergetic approach to treatment (orgone (Reichian) therapy), and, if time permits, give a demonstration of his characterological and somatic approach to undoing armor.
Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: National College of Naturopathic Medicine
Room 322
3. The Cycle of Experience: An Affective/Bioenergetic Developmental View
We are in a period of tremendous growth in our knowledge of human functioning, growth that both expands upon and confirms the organismic self-regulatory processes first articulated in Reichian and Gestalt theory and therapy, and depicted by the Cycle of Experience (COE). In this presentation I will enlarge upon the theoretical and clinical understanding of the COE, incorporating Stanley Greenspan’s model of functional emotional development, Allan Schore’s research on the developmental neurobiology of attachment, and Wilhelm Reich’s research and writings on life energetic functioning, and discuss its application in the framing and execution of clinical interventions.
4. The Cycle of Experience: A Gestalt/Reichian understanding of character structure and the facilitation of character change in psychotherapy.
The Cycle of Experience is a model of organismic self-regulation developed out of the early work of Perls and Goodman (Gestalt therapy) and Wilhelm Reich. It essentially depicts the process via which individuals engage the environment to fulfill their basic needs and desires, and how disruptions to this organismic process contributes to psychopathology. It provides a template that can help therapists to both understand and engage the character issues clients bring to therapy – issues which often must be addressed in some manner if therapy is going to be successful.
In this workshop I will present an overview of the Cycle of Experience as a model of organismic self regulation, look at the relationship between patterns of self regulatory disruption and character structure, and provide an orientation to how this model can be used in clinical practice. The presentation will be both didactic and experiential, and questions and discussion well received and encouraged.
The Wellness Project, March 15, 2006, Vancouver, WA.