ABSTRACT
Trauma derives from many sources, personal and familial, social and political, often locking people into default nervous system responses: fight or flight, or a dorsal vagal freeze/collapse.
The BodyDreaming approach to trauma derives from several sources. In my early work with Jean Vanier’s L’Arche community in France, I learned the importance of attunement for psychic healing. My initial psychoanalytic training, and especially infant observation, strengthened my awareness of the importance of reciprocity and inter-regulation between caregiver and child. Training in Jungian analysis confirmed for me the archetypal energies accessible in our dreams.
In the late 1980s I trained in BodySoul Rhythms developed by Marion Woodman, Anne Skinner, and Mary Hamilton. These, together with the work of Paula Reeves and Candace Loubert, rooted me in a body-oriented approach to healing.
To further bridge psyche and soma, I now also draw on Allan Schore’s work in neuroscience and affect regulation and early development; Eugene Gendlin’s Focusing ; Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing Trauma training and Steven Hoskinson’s Organic Intelligence.
BodyDreaming comprises techniques from all these modalities to bring homeostasis to an activated nervous system, aligning and grounding the individual in the here and now of their body psyche connection with the self-regulatory principle that governs all of life.
