Patricia Gerbarg, M.D., Assistant Clinical Professor in Psychiatry, NY Medical College, graduate, Harvard Medical School and Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, integrates standard and complementary treatments. She researches mind-body practices for psychiatric disorders, survivors of mass disasters, and medical illnesses. With Dr. Brown she co-authored award-winning books: How to Use Herbs, Nutrients, and Yoga in Mental Health Care; Non-Drug Treatments for ADHD; and The Healing Power of the Breath.
Evidence-Based Breath~Body~Mind Techniques for Personal Transformation, Stress-Resilience, and Wellbeing
June 23-27, 2014
Turning on the body’s innate healing systems is the most effective, sustainable approach to mental and physical health. Through scientific study, specific mind-body techniques are being developed to rapidly and safely relieve emotional distress, psychiatric disorders, physical illnesses, and pain, and to enhance emotion regulation, interpersonal relationships, and performance in school, work, athletics, and the arts.
Breath~Body~Mind programs teach Qigong movements, breathing practices and meditations for self-development and for work with mental health patients, military groups, medical patients, and adults and children affected by mass disasters. Children in hospitals, schools, and special educational settings have also benefited. The neurophysiological basis for the effects of breathing practices will be discussed in concert with relevant clinical studies.
Participants will learn the core Breath~Body~Mind movement, breathing, and meditation practices. Each session includes didactic and experiential components.
- Voluntarily Regulated Breathing Practices (VRBPs) open a portal to the autonomic nervous system, whereby it is possible to send messages through interoceptive systems that have profound effects on perception, cognition, emotion processing and regulation, and stress response systems
- Experiential: Qigong Movements - 2 Golden Wheels and 4-4-6-2; Breathing - Coherent, Resistance (Ujjayi), Breath Moving, “Ha” breath; Body Scan, Open Focus Meditation, Group process
- Neurophysiology of PTSD and Clinical Studies of Breath~Body~Mind for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Military PTSD, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, and Schizophrenia (Genomic and Cognitive Effects)
- Qigong Movements 3 Golden Wheels and 4-4-6-2; Breathing - Coherent, Resistance, Breath Moving, “Ha” breath; Body Scan, Beginning Open Focus Meditation with Heart Focus
- Clinical studies of breath-focused programs following mass disasters: 2004 Southeast Asia Tsunami, 9/11 World Trade Center Attacks, Gulf Horizon Oil Spill, war, and slavery in Sudan. This presentation includes film clips of programs for disaster relief following the earthquake in Haiti, liberation of slaves in South Sudan, and work with polio victims in Sudan
- Qigong Movements 4 Golden Wheels and 4-4-6-2; Breathing - Coherent, Resistance, Breath Moving, “Ha” breath; Body Scan, Open Focus Meditation for Dissolving Pain
Neuro-psychoanalysis, Trauma, and Bonding
- Clinical cases of rapid, permanent resolution of long-standing trauma formations and PTSD symptoms—anxiety, disconnectedness, numbing, and somatic delusions—illuminate processes through which breathing practices activate innate neuro-psycho-immuno-endocrinological systems involved in neuroplasticity, healing, homeostasis and resetting of the nervous system to ‘normal’
- Qigong - 4 Golden Wheels and 4-4-6-2; Breathing - Coherent, Resistance, Breath Moving, “Ha” breath, Vibrational Breathing; Open Focus Meditation for Dissolving Pain, Group process
- Demonstration of how to teach breathing practices to patients. Participants practice teaching breath techniques with faculty supervision
- Qigong - 4 Golden Wheels, 4-4-6-2; Breathing - Coherent, Resistance, Breath Moving, “Ha” breath, Vibrational Breathing; Open Focus Meditation for Pain
- Participants practice teaching breath techniques with faculty supervision
- Group Healing Process using sound