Blog Post — Number Two: My attendance to the 36th Annual Boston International Trauma Conference — Day One
This happens to be my first time on the east coast, so excited to be here! I arrived yesterday afternoon, after flying for nearly half the day. The city is beautiful and I cant wait to hopefully explore it some more during the next week! Anyway, here is how the first day of the conference went—
8:45am - 4:30pm : Self-Experience and Embodied Awareness
Where to start— there were so many wonderful speakers! I’m not going to mention them all here, just the ones that really stood out to me, or that I gleaned useful information from.
Scott Lyons— He lead the attendants through an exploratory play demo, that entailed us wandering around the room and trying to see others and the world around us, as perhaps our younger self would have. Examining the little details, feeling textures, moving in unconventional ways. It really shook up our perceptions of how we can act vs how we should act, especially in a professional group environment. One of my biggest takeaways from Scott, was using simple ideas like describing our favorite ice-cream, to demonstrate how to build a blueprint for describing our feelings and emotions. Especially useful for individuals that struggle with or have never taken the time to explore their feelings, which happens to be a good portion of the ones who come seeking therapy.
Licia Sky— She comes at emotions and feelings from another direction— through voice, song, and sound. She began her work as a touch worker, helping people remove residual traumatic tension within their bodies through touch. She noticed that there were some individuals that couldn’t get it out, no matter the touch used, but after helping them attune to or create certain noises, they found release. We did a demo with the sound “mmm” and all of its various inflexions, and explored how it made people feel. As well as the sound “Ha” and its core strengthening boundary like use. Her work really stands out to me personally, because of how our voices get stamped down during developmental trauma, and we learn that it is safer to be quiet and unheard. This is a maladaptive learned pattern, atleast for myself, and I can feel and hear the potential benefits of exploring and strengthening our voices.
James Fox— He has been teaching yoga to incarcerated individuals for over 20 years. Going against the male stigma revolving around yoga, he is bringing it to individuals that truly need it— helping them reconnect with their bodies and learn to self regulate. He led us through a very simple Qi Gong / Yoga session that reduced my own inhibitions about potentially teaching this to others. I don’t necessarily need to be a licensed yoga teacher to bring these basic grounding techniques to my own future practices.
Summary: Each of these wonderful speakers brought us their own personal techniques for helping their clients reconnect with their bodies. Their techniques revolved around bodily movement, mindful breathing, and the power of our voice.
4:45pm - 6:00pm : Evidence Based Practice or Practice Based Evidence? Using the Wisdom of Practice to Create Usable Scientific Knowledge about the Mechanisms or Trauma Responses and Effective Interventions.
This was a fairly short talk about exploring the strengths and limitations of our current Evidence Based Practice Guidelines within the APA, particularly surrounding PTSD.
Wendy D’Andrea— She did an excellent job of displaying how weak our current guidelines to treat PTSD are for aspiring therapists and scientists alike. She shared a few studies as examples of how we can use the data gathered during practice to evaluate therapeutic efficacy. Heart Rate Variability and Vocal Inflection were two key metrics that I gathers, I hope to speak with Dr. D’Andrea some more about current research and other potential sample metrics.
Summary: There isn’t much to say here, other than that our approach to trauma is still evolving, and I’m excited to be a part of it.
That was a big first day— excited for what tomorrow brings!
