Articles

Article: Creating Harmony

Effective interventions for the neurobiology of children and adults that have been exposed to trauma and insecure attachment models.

The residue of trauma is far reaching and invasive. Long after our mind can not remember the body does. Displaced anger, attachment breaks, abuse and neglect are all types of environmental assaults that are stored in the body.

These body memories affect our current level of functioning in a subtle and insidious way. These wounds manifest in the body through acute or chronic tension, recurring injuries, habitual holding patterns, hardwired emotional responses, and autonomic nervous system activation.
During this workshop we will learn intervention strategies that are psychologically effective as well as explore ways to increase the internal and external healing environments that supports secure attachment in ourselves and others.

From her 20 years of experience in child welfare and as foster adopt mother Lori understands the system from the inside out and is deeply committed to creating an effective system of care for our most vulnerable families. Clearly, caregivers and other professionals that understand the energies dynamics of trauma and attachment are better able to provide accessible harmonious services to the families they serve

Workshop Objectives

1.)  To clarify the physiological effects of trauma, including the environment that creates reactive attachment disorder, on the body and brain.

2.)  Increase awareness of the continuum of coping strategies that, are biologically programmed, that we and our clients use to deal with stressful situations and insecure attachment models across time.

  • Infant, Toddler model of development
  • Past neuro network development effects current ability to function interpersonally and physiologically
  • All have neuro network to activate secure attachment
  • Focus on actualizing versus “fixing” rehashing old across all time and space

3.)  To learn intervention strategies that are effective with adults and children that have exposed to trauma and insecure attachment models.

  • Tree
  • Time In
  • Time Out
  • Mirror nuron secure attachment, non judgment
  • (Primary) Caretaker, systems of care
  • Muscle Testing
  • Power versus Force
  • Support Team (Alive on transcended time)
  • Consistency/ Structure Predictability
  • Constance/Permanency/ Transitional Objects versus Abandonment of Annihilation.
  • Non Attachment to Outcome
    • Let go ego attachments to fix, save or rescue another
  • Energetic unconditional positive regard versus name-calling disorder (Looser or opp defiant)
    • Giving up hope they can evolve (Definition: Abuse Neglect versus Ship runs down hill)
    • Control Manipulation
    • Dictatorship
  • Homeostasis Systemic Health, Person, Agency, Team Community
    • Person, Agency, Team, Community
  • Goodwill/Prayer, LOVE is the healing power

4.)  Explore ways to increase internal and external healing environments that supports secure attachment in ourselves and others.

  • Focus on what wants to create versus “fixing” past
  • Need down time to process, digest, and integrate
  • Is this life supporting?
  • In Zone/Flow/Rhythm
  • Trust that there is something bigger than us at play
  • Co-dependency is the shadow side of love
  • Freewill and co-creation

Workshop Activities

1.)  Demonstrate the energetic power of words, wishes and support

2.)  Neural Network Connections – A Meditation to Strengthen Adult Skills for Nurturing and Protection

Workshop Relevance

Lori Kochevar is a Licensed Professional Counselor who has worked with children, adolescents, and families for the last twenty years. Along with a Masters degree Lori has extensive training in spirituality, family systems, trauma, body psychotherapy, and play therapy.  In the first 10 years working in child welfare, Lori was a family preservation specialist.  More recently she has provided consultation and training for foster parents and other professional working in the child welfare arena.  Most importantly, Lori is a foster adopt mother who has now adopted two beautiful children from the department of social services.

Trauma is the body’s physiological response to a perceived life-threatening event.  In the face of trauma, physical reactions such as “fight, flight, or freeze” are triggered, but may be overwhelmed or ineffective in their programmed attempts to respond to threat.  While the emotional body often feels hijacked and or numb, the primary effects of trauma are physiological.  Traumatic memories can be safely accessed by bypassing the emotional and cognitive components working through the truncated physiological responses in the body.

Lori is intuitively gifted at getting to the core issues that help children and families learn to dance in harmony.  Recognizing that each member of a family is like a finely tuned band. Harmony is created by each member of the family playing their note in creative flow with a pure tone.  As we welcome both the shadow and the light within ourselves and others, the brilliance of the big picture becomes more defined and inviting.  As caseworkers, foster parents and other professional it is important that we allow room for the harmony that is created from all of our differences.

Handout Description

1.)  How stressful is your life – Questionnaire

2.)  Positive and Negative Coping Strategies

3.)  Common Responses to Trauma – and Coping Strategies

4.)  Long Range Effects of Attachment Problems

5.)  Adult Attachment Disorder and Treatment

6.)  Nurturing a Strong Relationship

7.)  Secondary Trauma:  Healing for the Healer

8.)  How the Brain Development Neural Networks

9.)  Mirror Neurons and Healthy Attachment


Article: Neurofeedback

A quantum training tool to enhance your internal wellbeing

Neurofeedback is a method for perceiving your brainwave activity and consciously modulating it to optimize your performance. It enables you to transcend ineffective or through neurofeedback how to alter and direct your brain’s activity to do your best in any effort.

How is this accomplished? Scalp sensors pick up your brain waves and translate them into sixteen electroencephalographic waveforms in a multimedia computer display. Each waveform corresponds to a distinctive aspect of brain activity. You will be able to see characteristic patterns occurring when you are drifting, stuck, overwhelmed in a thought, can’t let go, are overanalyzing. Through neurofeedback training you will learn how to direct your brain away from counterproductive mental patterns and reflexes and toward the flexibility and resilience required fro high-stakes performance.

Developed by the Zengar Institute of Victoria, British Columbia, the neurofeedback program guides and trains you toward optimal states drop out as the nervous system learns to choose the desired states on its own. Ultimately the trainee no longer needs the computer to succeed. For many people these changes have been found not only to endure but to continue to advance after training is completed.

Neurofeedback can enhance performance across the entire range of human activity because the whole nervous system participates in these opportunities to “upgrade” itself.

Who Can Benefit?

 Anyone who wants to maximize their potential and train their brain to be in the zone.  The same 21st-century neuroscience practiced by astronauts, artists, West Point cadets, and peak-performing athletes, academics, and professionals is now available to you. Neurofeedback can prepare you fro important moments of your live.

  • Athletes
    • “Members of Italy’s World Cup – winning soccer team…a starting quarterback in the NFL…They’ve all turned to neurofeedback, a technique that promises to help athletes reprogram their brains so they can reach a zone of relaxed concentration during clutch situations.” Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2006
    • “…neurofeedback will some day be the norm for PGA Tour Pros.” Gio Valiante, sports psychologist to a number of top golfers. Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2006
    • In October 2006 The independent (London), presented an article describing psychologist John Gruzelier’s test of neurofeedback’s efficacy on 100 students at London’s Royal College of Music.
    • “Professionally, improvements in dance are seen within five weeks,” Gruzelier says. “It is similar to a fast track to meditation, but more directed. Socially anxious students become more confident and outgoing. It’s not an invasive treatment, just readjusting what is already in the head.”
  • Students
    • In an exemplary 2005 study in Hartford, Connecticut, second test SAT scores improved by 233, 180, and 136 points for three individuals following 10 half-hour neurofeedback sessions. (Educational Testing Service data show that taking the SAT test a second time results in an average 14 point increase in the repeated test score.)
  • Professionals
    • In another research effort, Gruzelier found neurofeedback to improve ability and confidence in 20 English eye surgeon trainees. Gruzelier suggests that neurofeedback should be available to everyone.
  • Performers
    • Award-winning pianist Cassie Yukawa,  had ten neurofeedback sessions seven years ago, and believes in it. “It has had a wonderful impact on my life, enhancing my general feeling of wellbeing,” she says. “And I have no doubt that it has had a positive effect on my performances. It is about a state of mind; I am now far more willing to be flexible in my playing. It enabled me to think about and explore performance.
    • “Things can go wrong, which can be distressing. But now I am more able to let go and respond, so I don’t spend time just trying to get through to the end of the piece, but can transform those blips into something positive.”
  • Executives
  • Seekers of Peace

Overall Results

  • When your brain and CNS are able to ignore turbulence and relax into the still point of each moment
  • Your physical body unwinds
  • Your emotional body relaxes
  • Your cognitive body is able to let go of ineffective ways of thinking
  • Your spiritual body can experience the joy and bliss of simply being with yourself and with others you love

Lasting Effects – Seen Quickly

  • 80% of people trained notice the benefits in just 10 sessions
  • Body learns new nuro-pathways – so similar to riding a bike once you learn your body remembers
  • Leaders in the field experience a success rate of nearly 90% (Symphony in The Brains, Tim Robbins)

How it can be Easy and Effortless

  • Disappears and disdues symptoms of disease and tighten “hardwired” ineffective findings
  • No need to rehash, re-experience or relive painful memories
  • Instead focus on creating new healthy nuro-pathways that support your overall sense of well being

How ??

  • Relax in a comfortable chair while listening to music
  • Client knows brain becomes unsteady when ?? stop music occurs
  • Inturupts unconscious and conscious habits of mental struggle and excessive effort (distractions)
  • Nuro-pathways for calm, balance and focus become the preferred path
  • Physical and emotional symptoms dissolve
  • Brain becomes more efficient and effective
  • New energy becomes available to restore and enhance our overall well being

Who Trainers Work for

  • Those who have issues that have not fully been address other methods
  • Those looking for an organic model of evolution
  • People with symptoms (emotional or physical) related to stress
  • People who want to improve their performance
  • People seeking improved focus, enhanced clarity and a grounded, centered and balance