Training Overview

Mind Body resourcing offers training in Bodynamic Developmental Psychology. Bodynamics is a precise and practical approach to working with the body to make verbal psychotherapy more efficient and effective. This somatic therapy enables the practitioner to make precise interventions related to the developmental origins of your clients’ current problems.

Based on a wealth of empirical research the Bodynamics model describes how non-traumatic developmental disruptions are encoded in both mind and body. Trainees learn to use specific muscles to build somatic resources that will guide, extend, and contain verbal therapy. This precision aids clients to sense new psychological competencies, resolve issues sooner, and integrate these changes directly into their lives.

This training will also sensitize you to the themes of the developmental stages around which relationships and psychological development take place. Building your relationship with a client around these themes will greatly facilitate your ability to heal attachment disruptions.

Healing Developmental Disruptions

At the conclusion of this program, participants will be able to:

  • Distinguish between developmental disruptions and trauma
  • Use somatic techniques to focus verbal therapy & address developmental disruptions
  • Identify themes & characteristics for each of the Seven Developmental Stages
  • Use specific muscles for each of the Seven Developmental Stages
  • Affirm a client’s healthy psychological development
  • Build needed abilities and a sense of competency to resolve specific psychological issues
  • Resolve therapeutic issues in the context of the stage when the protective behavior was learned
  • Build the interpersonal relationship around the theme of the developmental stage in which you are working

Learning formats for each developmental phase

  • Experiential Exercises: Developmental Movements, Parent/Child Exercises, Taking on the Character Structure
  • Lectures on healthy development, early & late disruptions
  • Subgrouping, Discussions, Case Presentations & Questions
  • Demonstration Sessions
  • Supervised Practice Sessions

Trainees are giving good practice sessions to each other on the third day of training, and many report taking the work into their practice the following week. We continue to fine-tune this training so you can quickly and effectively integrate the key principles and basic tools of Bodynamics into your own practice.

Overview:

Training consist of four modules spaced roughly two months apart. The first module is 5 days long and the remaining three are 4 days each. The first module provides an introduction to Bodynamic Psychology and covers the first two character structures. The second module covers the 3rd and 4th character structures. The third module covers the 5th and 6th character structures. The fourth and final module covers the 7th character structure and the series of abilities (centering, grounding, support) as they integrate across all character structures.

Training Schedule

North America:

No Trainings available until further notice

Training Testimonials

There are two levels of training offered by Mind Body Resourcing:

Practice Subgroup Session

Healing Developmental Disruptions

This 17 day training is suitable for professionals who work with people. Students will achieve a greater knowledge of the interaction between psychological, social, emotional, and sensory development. Previous training’s have included somatic psychologists, counselling therapists, physicians, teachers, chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, coaches and business personnel seeking a  deeper understanding of healthy human development and its application to people’s lives.

Integration Module
In line with our current emphasis on helping trainees to immediately bring Bodynamics into their own practice, we are offering several shorter training’s (4 days) that will aid this process. Advanced training’s will focus on specific abilities like grounding, centering, support and self-support, connectedness, cognitive skills, and others. In Bodynamics these are called ego functions. (See Body Encyclopedia.), These training’s will also include demonstration sessions, supervised practice session, case studies, and more. Training’s can also be designed to meet the specific needs of a group. Requirements: All previous trainees who have completed the 17-Day training in any city are eligible for the Integration Module.

CEU credits can be received for these training’s.

Graduate academic credit can be received for the Resolving Developmental Disruptions training from:
Meridian University (www.MeridianUniversity.edu)

Bodynamic Training
Healing Developmental Disruptions

Raja Selvam ISP“Bodynamic Somatic Developmental Psychology is probably the most body-oriented and comprehensive developmental psychology and character structure model there is. Therefore, I highly recommend the Bodynamic foundation level training as a must to all those who are serious about being a body-oriented therapist.”
Raja Selvam, PhD, Senior Trainer, Somatic Experiencing

Bodynamics is a body centered developmental psychology. It is based on twenty years of empirical research on the developmental origins of client’s current problems. The model of Seven Developmental Stages is a detailed description of how developmental experience is encoded in both mind and body. It includes the characteristics, themes, muscles, and therapy issues for each stage. This gives access to great specificity in therapeutic interventions.

You will learn the interpersonal and developmental origins of current problems, allowing you to pinpoint the context of therapeutic issues and how they are held in the body. Then, by inviting your client to use specific muscles, you can create a defined container in which their process is more likely to move towards completion. This precision in your interventions will enable change to happen more quickly for your clients.

Since attachment states of mind are predominantly formed in the first three developmental stages, using the Bodynamics model will sensitize you to the themes around which both relationships and psychological development take place. Working with our Affirmative Relational Messages, and some muscles of these stages to develop new resources, will greatly facilitate your ability to deepen working relationships with your clients. This will foster the healing of attachment disruptions.

Babette Rothschild“The Bodynamic model of Seven Developmental Stages is the most sensible, comprehensive, easily applicable, and accessible personality theory that I have ever encountered. I draw from this incredibly valuable framework every day. In my opinion, it would be hard to find a better training in developmental psychology anywhere.”
Babette Rothschild, MSW, LCSW, Author, The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment.

Resourcing – A New Vision of Therapy:
The discovery that overwhelming emotional stress leads to emotional and muscular resignation has created a paradigm shift in somatic therapy. It allows us to build resources by using specific muscles to teach or awaken skills related to the issues being worked on verbally. Resourcing is a sophisticated and powerful way to help your clients build structure. It is particularly helpful for those clients whom you feel are missing basic skills at work, in relationships, or in manifesting life goals.

Testimonials from colleagues & trainees

htmlimport_sydnoractualfinal“I am so happy that I followed my Somatic Experiencing Training with what I see as its sister training, Bodynamics. SE greatly expanded my ability to work with trauma, and Bodynamics greatly expanded my ability to understand and work with developmental stages.

Anne and Joel have developed a method of teaching that is so well paced and experiential and fun that a lot of knowledge can integrate smoothly into our ways of working. Now I know when and how development was not supported emotionally/psychologically in myself and my clients, how it shows up in flaccid or tense muscles, and how to correct both aspects.

Through the demo sessions and small group practice everyone in my class experienced very significant shifts in ourselves that held over time.”

Sydnor Sikes, Clinical Psychologist, Austin TX

Ian_macnaughtonJoel and Ann are exquisite teachers of their craft They offer much to any fortunate enough to experience their trainings. Not just theorists they offer their students a lifetime of having personally explored, practiced and taught developing an authentic presence and bringing that into engagement with their students.  They cover vast spectrum of experience, from leading edge brain science, attachment research, and how to work with the body, mind and spirit. They both are always pushing the frontiers of their own consciousness,  in my view a prerequisite for choosing a couple to study with. They walk their talk and you will know that being with them.

Dr Ian Macnaughton
Registered Clinical Counsellor,
Past President the British Columbia Association of Clinical Counsellors
Author, Body Breath & Consciousness.

Patricia_Meadows“I continue to be in awe of the effectiveness and efficiency of the Bodynamic approach. I personally have experienced and studied many different somatic approaches over the past thirty years and have found this approach to be the most precise and transformative in working with developmental issues.”

Patricia Meadows, MS, RN, RCST, SEP
Integral Healing & Living
800 Arlington Circle Novato, CA 94947
(415) 883-8321

Dear Gestalt Community, I am sending an announcement from Anne and Joel Isaacs who are the only fully trained Bodynamics people offering training in the USA. I have had the distinct pleasure of training with them in the past couple of years. Anne and Joel are two of the finest people, therapists and trainers I have ever had the privilege of studying with. The Bodynamic model is an amazing complement to our Gestalt model.

Bodynamics offers the only non-Freudian developmental theory and characterological system I am aware of. It begins in the third trimester and goes through adolescence, based on years of clinical observation and the work of Lisbeth Marcher & her colleagues. The Bodynamic system has mapped when each individual muscle comes online as the child develops. Bodynamics offers a fresh and unique frame through which to diagnose, intervene and relate to our clients. It is an organismically based therapy, an experiential training and a lot of fun.

Michael E. O’Brien Psychoanalyst New York City