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Remembering John Chitty: April 15, 1949 – February 28, 2019
John Chitty, my teacher, mentor, supervisor, friend and fellow pilgrim-on-the-path, has transitioned to the “magical place” where his life began.He often said, “We are a unit of consciousness that comes from an invisible spiritual world to Earth for the purpose of gaining wisdom through experience.” He offered these words as a mantra, used whenever greeting a baby. And, I think, perhaps everyone he met. I imagine him back in that other realm having new experiences, gaining more wisdom.
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Send Your Worrywort on Holiday
Worry can plague you. It digs and jabs, disrupts and jumbles: your sense of serenity dislodged. According to Rick Hanson, PhD, anxiety—a form of worry—allowed our ancestors to survive. Being able to sense danger, to determine if it was safe to approach, to avoid or move on allowed our ancestors to see another day. But when we focus on the bad, the good gets left behind. Luckily our brain can be trained . . .
Curiosity is one way out of Stuckness
One of the top complaints I hear from people who come into my office is “I’m stuck.” What they are saying without realizing it is that they’re stuck in repeating scenes with repetitive themes in their lives, either with the same or different people, over and over again.
Specializations Around the World
Healing Adverse Early Experiences Moves Beyond “Keeping Score” In the Body
Early experiences that influence adult disease are not just in childhood; they begin in the womb. Our earliest pioneers of fetal origins of adult disease such as David Barker, MD, PhD and Peter Nathanielsz, PhD revealed that nutrition, geographic location, stress, and the environment all have an effect on the baby in the womb. The study of the baby’s experience of conception, pregnancy, birth and attachment also create patterns of distress that may last a lifetime. What do these patterns look and feel like? How can we help our babies and their families, and the professionals who support them?
Rewiring the Addictive Brain
In her latest publication, Rewiring the Addictive Brain, Dr. Laurel Parnell convincingly responds: combine EMDR to reprocess and clean things up and use resource tapping—a combination of positive imagery that activates positive resources internally and bilateral stimulation that serves to link this information together. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a powerful therapy for handling trauma (small and big).
Culture Bound Syndromes
The son of two immigrants from the West Bank, I grew up navigating a minefield of culture bound phenomena. I was taught that a sudden gust of air from opening a window or stepping out the door was grounds for immediate illness. We took great care to avoid sitting near an open window or hurrying out the front door on a windy day, fearing that the air could cause sudden onset of flu like symptoms. Of course, any time I exposed myself to this mysterious foe I immediately came down with a case of the sniffles or a generalized muscle soreness. This belief of ailment from the wind is not one unique to Arabic culture.
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A Pioneering Music Project
We recently read a fascinating article in The National Geographic,January 1, 2019 highlighting what they called a "pioneering music project". A research team at the University Hospital in Geneva, Switzerland, working with premature babies, adapted special headphones and three specific songs for the babies to hear.
Congratulations Hiroki Yamaji
SPT Magazine offers our congratulations to Hiroki Yamaji, the 2018 winner of the Alice Ladas Research Award. His study was titled: An Efficacy Study of Somatic Psychoeducation at a Japanese University. Hiroki addressed the question of whether an 8-week somatic psychoeducation course for college students could result in students developing somatic awareness and trust in the organism, and enhance integral functioning that included general mindfulness, stress resilience, interpersonal empathy, responsibility for self-care, and generic skills.
Human Baby, Human Being: Contributions from the Emerging Field of Pre and Perinatal Psychology
Matthew Appleton is pleased to announce an upcoming conference Bristol, UK. This keynote conference will bring together innovative pioneers who have changed our understanding of the importance of how our womb and birth experience impact us as human beings. Many of the presenters are highly respected authors, lecturers and workshop leaders in the emerging field of prenatal and perinatal psychology.
BOOK REVIEWS
Infant and Toddler Development: From Conception to Age 3. What Babies...
Mary Jane Maguire-Fong and Marsha Peralta, recently published, Infant and Toddler Development: From Conception to Age 3. What Babies Ask of Us. In their “Preface”, they acknowledged my mom as a colleague and friend who has been “a source of wisdom, counsel, and inspiration in this work” (pg. x). Peralta noted, “We have so appreciated her contributions to our thinking and perspective”
It’s Never Too Late: Healing Prebirth and Birth At Any Age...
I was taken by Mia’s presentation of both information about what happens and what outcomes may result and also her specific processes, complete with dialogues and case studies, to work toward understanding and healing moments that can and do create imprints that influence our lives to come—who we are in this world, how we view ourselves within our family system as well as our communities at large, and how we believe the world accepts and values us.
Take a Tool and Run with Dr. Heather Corwin
TTR 2: By using your environment to make a physical connection to the sensual elements around you, you give yourself the opportunity to slow the world down. I call this practice environmental grounding (EG). You know the textures and touch sensations you most enjoy. Use those feelings to remind you to be in the NOW, which will help you remain present. Which sensation do you respond most to? Temperature? Texture? Energy? Discover you daily EG and find more ways to engage in your life on your terms.Dr. Heather Corwin’s Take a Tool and Run is a monthly vlog that offers quick and effective tools to share somatic centering practices.
Somatic Perspectives: Conversations on Psychotherapy
- Andy Fisher: Ecopsychology March 1, 2019This conversation is a wide-ranging exploration of the new field of ecopsychology. It includes discussions of how the lived body and Buddhist psychology figure in this field, as well as the radical implications of reconnecting our minds to nature. Audio only: Andy Fisher, PhD, is a major figure in ecopsychology, having tracked and reflected on […]Somatic Perspectives
- Janina Fisher: Integrating somatic approaches to trauma with ‘parts’ language February 1, 2019Trauma often inculcates fears of body awareness and incapacitating shame that complicate the use of somatic approaches. As Janina Fisher explored how to help such clients with befriending their emotional and body responses to trauma, she began to develop a way of helping them to understand themselves as fragmented and to become more aware of […]Somatic Perspectives
Relational Mindfulness with Serge Prengel
Revisiting last month’s article about the Window of Tolerance, Polyvagal Theory...
Last month, I published an article with a very similar title to this one. It was exploring mindfulness within the context of the Autonomous Nervous System (ANS). The gist of it was captured in a few charts about the Window of Tolerance and the Polyvagal Theory. I realized that my point could be better expressed through a different set of visuals. The following is are-write of this article, including new visuals.
CARLETON’S CHOICE: BOOKS WORTH A READ
Jacquie’s Pick of the Month
Dr. Jacqueline Carleton has guided interns in the art of literature review and academic critique for decades, and SPT Magazine has thankfully shared their reviews with our readers since our inception 8 years ago. It’s a pleasure to write with up-and-coming psychologists and researchers, to share in their discoveries and their opinions regarding books that are ‘hot-off-the-press’, the ones we prefer to publish. Older books, however, those published two years ago or more, have not been shared with the thought that they’ve been reviewed by many others that it was redundant news. Until now.
The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Recovering from Trauma and PTSD
The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Recovering from Trauma and PTSD teaches readers how to overcome “flashbacks, shame, guilt and fear” using compassion-focused therapy. Deborah A. Lee and Sophie James provide readers with insight into the mechanisms of post-traumatic stress and a practical self-guided approach to overcome it.
Reflections
It’s Never Too Late: Healing Prebirth and Birth at Any Age – A Reflection...
Early in the writing of the first draft of It’s Never Too Late: Healing Prebirth and Birth At Any Age, I discovered there were steps, especially in the embryo’s story, that even after studying, I had difficulty envisioning. At the time I wondered, could I leave these hard to reach, yet essential steps out of my written examination? Would anyone besides experienced embryologists and biodynamic craniosacral therapy teachers notice? It didn’t take long to come clean with myself, that if I skipped intricate steps in my understanding, I would only further reinforce what was at the root of my amnesia, and that in order to be whole myself, I had to find out what was going on.
In Memory Of
John Chitty 1949-2019
John was a celebrated teacher of polarity therapy and Biodynamic craniosacral therapy. His blend of therapy combined ancient wisdom with current health practices. He and his wife, Anna Chitty, started teaching polarity therapy in 1979 and opened the Colorado School of Energy Studies in Boulder, CO. in 1992. At the end of his life, John created Polarity Counseling.
Christa D. Ventling 1930-2019
With regret we share the recent news of Christa D. Ventling’s passing. According to Courtenay Young, she was a female pioneer in European Bioenergetic Analysis and in qualitative research in body psychotherapy.
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