Description
Overview
In these webinars we will work with 3 different aspects of understanding, regulating and including hypo-states. Hypo-states are both part of everyday life coping mechanisms and they are part of our stress and survival reactions. We will work with both the small giving up in hypo-response and the deep collapse in hypo-arousal and with the relational aspect of working with hypo-states.
Each webinar includes presentations, experiential elements, Q&A and a demo session.
Learning Objectives
After the course you will be able to:
- Include and normalise hypo-response in your daily perception of yourself and of others side by side with hyper-response (tension)
- Modify hypo-responsive areas in the body through low-dosed muscle-activation, micro-activations or joint-mobilisations
- Understand how stress-patterns are held by both tension and giving up
- Differentiate between hypo-response in muscles and hypo-arousal in the ANS
- Understand how modification of hypo-response can be part of trauma-therapeutic work with approaching hypo-arousal
- Understand the difference between relating to hypo-arousal instead of polarising to it or being pulled into it
- Find neutral, accepting verbal language that supports inclusion and normalisation of hypo-states
- Invite hypo-states into contact
Course Content Level
Intermediate/Advanced
Target Audience
This course is suitable for counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, family therapists, students and anyone interested/working in attachment, trauma, addiction or neuroscience.
Webinar 1 | Hypo-response
How do we access basic presence skills like centering, grounding, orienting and boundaries when they have gone missing?
Hypo-response is a strategy that lowers our access to psychomotor impulses and emotions through giving up in muscles and connective tissue. Going into hypo-response means that we experience flaccidity, under functioning and low-energy in a muscle or a muscle-group, as a way of managing emotions and impulses that we cannot handle in the context we are in. Hypo-response is a “solution” – we no longer feel the emotions and impulses. The consequence of Hypo-response is a loss of coping skills, loss of firmness in our muscles and energetic holes in our boundaries.
In this webinar, we will work with how to track hypo-response and how to awaken hypo-responsive muscles through low-dosed muscle-activation and micro-activations. We will explore this methodology together and process how it can be a resource when working with stress and trauma.
Webinar 2 | Hypo-arousal
Sitting on the edge of an abyss together, establishing a relationship to hypo-arousal instead of polarising to it or being pulled into it.
Hypo-arousal is the activation of the dorsal-vagal part of the parasympathetic nervous-system. This impacts the whole body through a general physiological shut-down and the body goes into hibernation and collapse. The giving up in hypo-arousal goes deeper than in hypo-response, it is a survival-reaction in overwhelming situations.
Learning to modify hypo-response supports being able to approach the deeper collapse. It supports building a boundary between the conscious self and the collapse, so we can establish a relationship to the collapse instead of either being pulled into it or defending against it. Sitting on the edge of an abyss together is a poetic language for finding a new way of relating to hypo-arousal with acceptance, contact and curiosity. In this webinar, we introduce awakening proprioception through joint-mobilisation as an additional pathway to awakening hypo-responsive areas in the body.
Webinar 3 | The relational aspect
The relational aspect of working with hypo-states, negotiating with isolation and shame
Hypo-states are typically connected to patterns of isolation and shame. In hypo-states we withdraw inwards, we hide, we pull away from contact. Negative self-talk is often part of the patterns as well as loss of orientation to the here and now. Including hypo-states in who we are, thus involves negotiating with these withdrawal patterns.
In this webinar, we will work with how normalisation and inclusion can build a bridge to the hypo-responsive parts of us – how inclusion of hypo-states in our conceptual map supports that we can include them in contact.
We will train orientation both inwards and outwards and we will work with the principle of meeting in similarities, so the experiences related to hypo-states can be held in subgroups of people being in contact with the same emotions, sensations etc.
Speaker Biography
Merete Holm Brantbjerg is a psychomotor-trainer and co-creator of Bodynamic Analysis from 1985-2003. From 2003 till now, she has developed “Relational Trauma Therapy” with Kolbjørn Vårdal combining psychomotor and neurocentric skill training and systems oriented group-work. The goal of the approach is to establish systems in which mutual regulation of what has been held in dissociation can happen. Merete has specialised in developing methodology aimed at normalising, including and regulating hypo-states. She leads trainings and workshops in Denmark and internationally online. She lives in Copenhagen, Denmark.
