Body-mind psychotherapy for depression, anxiety, trauma

Workshop offering!

February 16, 2015 Leave a Comment

I am pretty excited to be able to tell you about a two-workshop series I am offering this spring. It is for people who work with postpartum moms, or who want to work with that population. The first day, on Friday 17 April, we’ll focus on the background information needed to effectively work with women who’ve experienced reproductive trauma. The second workshop is more specifically focused around clinical skills used within therapy sessions, and I hope you’ll bring your experiences to share.

For more information you can click HERE to go to the page on this blog. There you can download the flyer, and get the registration information. If you have questions about the content, let me know! Looking forward to seeing you in Fredericton this spring.

Leslie

Reflection on the 2014 Retreat….

July 12, 2014 Leave a Comment

The 2014 Summer Bioenergetics Retreat on Prince Edward Island is history now. It was and it will not come again. There may be other retreats and they may be wonderful but this particular one will not be repeated.

I was fortunate to be a participant in the original retreats offered by Bethany Doyle and Rosalind McVicar. I began in 2003 and attended annually through 2012, which was the final year of their program. The retreat in 2003 was my introduction to bioenergetic therapy, and I was hooked, so much so that I applied for the training program that was starting that fall. I was fortunate to be accepted and trained with Rosalind and Bethany, as well as with Michael Maley, Louise Frechette, and Chuck Lustfield, the International Trainers who traveled to PEI for us. And I got to go to the retreat for all those years.

Several members of the initial training group are now Certified Bioenergetic Therapists (CBTs), and we have created a team to continue to offer a summer retreat on PEI. Last month, we had our second retreat with 20 participants, three therapists (see below for contact information), offerings in creativity, spirituality, and grounding movement, West African drumming, opportunities to share responsibility and support our community, plus to have massage and body work available. During the week, I also felt my connection to those who have come before, as Rosalind and Bethany offered their best wishes, and from others in my training group who sent email and phone support.

The heart of the retreat program is bioenergetics: more exercise to increase body awareness and express strong feeling, group process where we all get to know ourselves and each other, individual therapy where people can work out material that comes up in the heightened context of the group. The absolute confidentiality of the group makes it a safe place for people to work with what really matters to them, and the chance to work with deep feeling, whatever it is, opens energy for laughter and spontaneous play. And there was much laughter and much spontaneous play last week!

I feel grateful to have had the opportunity to shape and support the processes of this retreat. I learned a lot about myself and my connections to others, even as a therapist, and I appreciate the openness and willingness of all of our participants to engage in the process and support one another.

Planning for next year is underway! Mark your calendar: July 4-10, 2015, Saturday to Saturday.

Therapists: Laurie Ure, Gloucester, MA, USA http://laurieure.com/

Jessie DeBaie, Nova Scotia, CA http://www.bioenergetictherapy.ca/jessiepage.htm

Leslie Ann Costello, New Brunswick, CA http://frederictonbioenergetics.wordpress.com/

Massage and body work:

Ailsa Keppie, Halifax, Nova Scotia, CA http://www.aninspiredheart.com/

Anticipation of joy? Or joyful anticipation?

June 26, 2014 1 Comment

We leave tomorrow for the week-long bioenergetic retreat in Prince Edward Island. We have spent a year preparing, with more active preparation going on since January, and accelerating toward tomorrow. The program begins on Friday evening and runs through the following Friday at mid-day, and each year it draws a diverse group that somehow becomes a community during our time together. And I can imagine that the people who are joining us from all over the world are preparing, packing, and anticipating.

I have been busy with getting ready, looking after details, checking in with the rest of the team, and preparing myself for the work of therapy. Body psychotherapists use their bodies in their work, so part of my preparation has been to be sure I do my bioenergetic exercises, to be aware of my sleep and nutrition, to work through any internal logjams that may get in my way.

And now, today, I am feeling that lovely anticipatory excitement that comes up when you are heading off for an experience that is new and also likely to be challenging and deepening and supportive and connecting. The closest comparison I can get is that feeling I had when I was maybe eight years old of expecting Santa to come and bring presents on Christmas Eve. There was an element of surprise but also the expectation was that things would be pretty good.

I am looking forward to seeing what gifts the next week brings. Gifts are not always in bright packages: in fact, the gifts of the retreat often arrive in the form of difficult feelings, ones we prefer to avoid. I guess maybe the gifts come when people are offered a time and space to be themselves, bring their struggles, challenges, and their joys, express whatever their bodies need to express, and then see what happens. Part of my anticipation is that I don’t know what will come up; part of my joy is that I do know that things will happen, people will have opening experiences, and we will become a community.

I wish you all the gifts that freedom of expression can bring.

Knowing by slowing…

August 22, 2013 3 Comments

Body psychotherapy isn’t as odd-sounding as it once was. People are beginning to understand that the mind and body are not really separate, that there are tissues in the gut, for example, that are much like brain tissue, that emotions are experienced at the body level, and that even those classic “psychological” problems of depression and anxiety are body experiences. The mind of course is part of them; the kinds of distorted thinking that we engage in when we are experiencing depression or anxiety can most certainly make things a lot worse. But I am not sure that the chicken-egg question matters here….I personally don’t care if how you feel affects how you think, or if your thoughts are affecting your emotions. The point is that things are pretty bad, one way or another, and how can you live more comfortably?

So it is obvious, I guess, that developing awareness of what you are thinking can make a difference. You can even change your habits of mind. You can also change your habits of body, and your habitual ways of responding to situations, and those kinds of changes can be most helpful in trying to cope with symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Self awareness is the key to any kind of change. You can’t change if you don’t know what you are currently doing. And the key to self awareness is, for many of us, slowing down. Slowing our everyday experiences so that there is time for self-reflection, slowing our thinking, so that we can become aware of thoughts as they arise and fade away, slowing our behaviour so that we can become responsive rather than in the perpetual knee-jerk of reaction.

What happens when you slow down? Just take a moment to notice what happens….without judgment, without struggle, with compassion. For many of us, slowing down generates negative thoughts (“this is unproductive,” “I”ll never accomplish anything,” “Does she think I’m not a busy person? I don’t have time for this nonsense.”). For some people, the open space of unstructured time feels uncomfortable, as if you should DO something. For some, a bit of quiet allows us to feel our exhaustion, the fatigue that comes with forever and forever keeping up a front, being frantically productive and chronically stressed.

But without judgment and with compassion, what is it like for you to take time and space to just be? What do you notice about yourself? Who are you, really, when you separate yourself from the story inside your head?

Wherever you are is the place to work. Notice sensation in the body. Notice what you notice in your environment; what are you sensitive to in this moment? In the next moment? Notice thoughts as they arise and fade out. Notice which ones tug hardest on your attention. Notice more sensations in the body; try moving, and notice what that is like. Can you feel the desire to move, the intention to move, before you manifest that intention into action? Where in your body are you aware of that intention? How do you KNOW, in your body, that you want to move?