Active Pause

Combining Eastern and Western trauma physiology, Alaine Duncan and Kathy Kain introduce a new map for body-oriented clinicians to help restore balance in their clients. Using concepts from Acupuncture and Asian Medicine (AAM) alongside descriptions of the threat response from Western bio-behavioral science, they describe common physical symptoms, emotional presentations, and paths for healing for five survivor “types”. This approach is further developed in their new book, The Tao of Trauma – A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Healing.

Alaine Duncan is an acupuncturist and Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner. Her clinical curiosity, at the interface of the neuro-biology of traumatic stress and ancient healing principles from acupuncture and Asian medicine, inspired the creation of The Tao Trauma: A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Treatment. Her research background includes serving on studies assessing the impact of integrative medicine on compassion fatigue in military caregivers; use of acupuncture for treatment of combat-related traumatic stress, chronic headaches in OIF/OEF veterans with traumatic brain injuries, pain in veterans of all conflicts, and for Gulf War Veterans Illness.  She was founding director of Crossings Healing & Wellness, Silver Spring, MD, a charter member of the Integrative Health & Wellness program at the DC Veterans Administration Medical Center, and is Chair of the National Capitol Area Chapter of Acupuncturists Without Borders, providing free acupuncture for immigrants and refugees.  See website.

Kathy Kain, PhD has been practicing and teaching bodywork and trauma recovery skills for over 38 years.  She teaches in the U.S., where she lives, as well as internationally. She is a Senior Faculty member for the SE Trauma Institute, and was a senior trainer for 12 years in the Somatic Psychotherapy training program based in Sydney, Australia, which helped develop her expertise in the integration of touch into the practice of psychotherapy and trauma recovery, as well as in somatic approaches to working with developmental and complex trauma.  Kathy is co-author of these books: Nurturing Resilience – Helping Clients Move Forward from Developmental Trauma;The Tao of Trauma – A Practitioner’s Guide for Integrating Five Element Theory and Trauma Healing, and Ortho-Bionomy – A Practical Manual. See website.

Published  May  2019.

In this conversation, Judith Blackstone describes the experience of living within one’s body and uncovering a fundamental dimension of consciousness pervading one’s body and the environment as a unity.  She explains how this experience deepens our sense of intimacy and contact with other people at the same time as it deepens our contact with our own being.  The embodiment of fundamental consciousness also enhances and unifies our basic qualities and functions, including our ability to know, feel, sense and perceive.

Judith Blackstone, PhD, developed the Realization Process, a method of embodied psychological and relational healing and nondual spiritual awakening.  She offers workshops and teacher certification trainings world-wide. She recently retired from forty years as a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City.  She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body: the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness, Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, and The Empathic Ground.  An audio series of the Realization Process practices is available from Sounds True.  For information on Judith’s teaching schedule, visit her website.

Published April 2019.

In this conversation, Judith Blackstone describes the experience of living within one’s body and uncovering a fundamental dimension of consciousness pervading one’s body and environment as a unity.  She explains how this experience deepens our sense of intimacy and contact with other people at the same time as it deepens our contact with our own being.  The embodiment of fundamental consciousness also enhances and unifies our basic qualities and functions, including our ability to know, feel, sense and perceive.

Audio only:

Judith Blackstone, PhD, developed the Realization Process, a method of embodied psychological and relational healing and nondual spiritual awakening.  She offers workshops and teacher certification trainings world-wide. She recently retired from forty years as a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City.  She is the author of Trauma and the Unbound Body: the Healing Power of Fundamental Consciousness, Belonging Here, The Enlightenment Process, The Intimate Life, and The Empathic Ground.  An audio series of the Realization Process practices is available from Sounds True.  For information on Judith’s teaching schedule, visit her website.

Published April 2019.

This 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.

Andy Fisher, PhD, is a major figure in ecopsychology, having tracked and reflected on the development of the field for the last two decades. Author of one of the field’s primary texts, Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life(2nd Ed.), he is best known for his critical scholarship and holistic vision of the ecopsychological project. Andy keeps up an active schedule of writing and teaching, including a year-long training in ecopsychology that he offers near his home in eastern Ontario, Canada. A psychotherapist in private practice and wilderness rites of passage guide, he also teaches courses in such related topics as Buddhist psychology, elderhood, and dream-work. For more about Andy,  visit his website.

Published in March 2019.

Terry Marks-Tarlow, PhD, has been a practicing clinician since 1985 and a practicing yogini since 1979. She specializes in deep transformation and issues surrounding creative production and believes that all effective psychotherapy is inherently creative. In this conversation, she and Serge Prengel discuss how the embodied creativity and meditative aspects of everyday life dovetail with the courage to face uncertainty and search for novelty in a fully relational clinical practice.

Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Monica, California. She is Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate School, Teaching Faulty at the Insight Center, Los Angeles, and Visiting Professor at Italian Universita Niccolo Cusano, London. She presents workshops and seminars internationally and nationally on clinical intuition, creativity, play, and nonlinear dynamics. As an Executive Board Member of the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, she co-created and curates an annual exhibition of visual and performance arts, “Mirrors of the Mind: The Psychotherapist as Artist.” Dr. Marks-Tarlow has authored and co-edited numerous books, including Play & Creativity in Psychotherapy (2018, Norton), Truly Mindful Coloring (2016, PESI), Awakening Clinical Intuition (2014, Norton), Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy (2012, Norton), and Psyche’s Veil (2008, Routledge), all of which she illustrated herself. Dr. Marks-Tarlow embodies balance in life between play, imagination, and creativity through her dance, art, yoga, and writing opera librettos. See website.

Published March 2019.

Terry Marks-Tarlow, PhD, has been a practicing clinician since 1985 and a practicing yogini since 1979. She specializes in deep transformation and issues surrounding creative production and believes that all effective psychotherapy is inherently creative. In this conversation, she and Serge Prengel discuss how the embodied creativity and meditative aspects of everyday life dovetail with the courage to face uncertainty and search for novelty in a fully relational clinical practice.

Audio only:

Terry Marks-Tarlow, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Santa Monica, California. She is Adjunct Faculty at Pacifica Graduate School, Teaching Faulty at the Insight Center, Los Angeles, and Visiting Professor at Italian Universita Niccolo Cusano, London. She presents workshops and seminars internationally and nationally on clinical intuition, creativity, play, and nonlinear dynamics. As an Executive Board Member of the Los Angeles County Psychological Association, she co-created and curates an annual exhibition of visual and performance arts, “Mirrors of the Mind: The Psychotherapist as Artist.” Dr. Marks-Tarlow has authored and co-edited numerous books, including Play & Creativity in Psychotherapy (2018, Norton), Truly Mindful Coloring (2016, PESI), Awakening Clinical Intuition (2014, Norton), Clinical Intuition in Psychotherapy (2012, Norton), and Psyche’s Veil (2008, Routledge), all of which she illustrated herself. Dr. Marks-Tarlow embodies balance in life between play, imagination, and creativity through her dance, art, yoga, and writing opera librettos. See website.

Published March 2019.

Movement has been important to Marjorie Rand for all her life, personally and professionally. in this conversation, she talks about an accident that refocused her.

Marjorie L Rand Ph.D. has had a private practice of Integrative Body Psychotherapy in Manhattan Beach and Newport Beach CA for 42 years. She has co-written, or contributed to 4 books and many published articles. Her DVD’s and those of Jack Lee Rosenberg can be found in the archives of USABP. See website. Published March 2019. See also conversation with Marjorie Rand about therapy.

Movement has been important to Marjorie Rand for al her life, personally and professionally. in this conversation, she talks about an accident that refocused her.

Marjorie L Rand Ph.D. has had a private practice of Integrative Body Psychotherapy in Manhattan Beach and Newport Beach CA for 42 years. She has co-written, or contributed to 4 books and many published articles. Her DVD’s and those of Jack Lee Rosenberg can be found in the archives of USABP. See website.

Published March 2019

Movement has been important to Marjorie Rand for al her life, personally and professionally. in this conversation, she talks about an accident that refocused her.

Marjorie L Rand Ph.D. has had a private practice of Integrative Body Psychotherapy in Manhattan Beach and Newport Beach CA for 42 years. She has co-written, or contributed to 4 books and many published articles. Her DVD’s and those of Jack Lee Rosenberg can be found in the archives of USABP. See website.

Published March 2019. See also conversation with Marjorie Rand about therapy.

Trauma 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 their ‘parts’ or states. With a body perspective and parts language, she found that they could better observe their emotional and somatic experience without the fear that the language of the body evoked.

Janina Fisher, Ph.D. is the Assistant Educational Director of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute, an EMDRIA-approved EMDR Consultant, and a former instructor, Harvard Medical School.  An international expert on the treatment of trauma, she is co-author with Pat Ogden of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Attachment and Trauma (2015) and author of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors: Overcoming Internal Self-Alienation (2017) and the forthcoming book, Working with the Neurobiological Legacy of Trauma (in press).  See website.

Published February 2019. See other conversation with Janina Fisher.