"Mindfulness Informed EMDR Treatment: A Treatment Planning Template for
Recovery Services" will be the topic of my workshop at the Evolution of Addiction Treatment Conference in Los Angeles at the LAX Sheraton. The conference runs from Thursday February 2 through Sunday February 4. My workshop is from 4-6pm on Saturday, and I hope to follow it up with a book signing for Clinical Dharma, and perhaps a dinner party with interested others hosted by Refuge Recovery Centers, but more will be revealed on this page and others... This workshop will bring to light the two most important projects of 2017 for me... the publishing on Springer Books of EMDR Therapy and Mindfulness for Trauma Focused Care, co-authored by myself and Dr. Jamie Marich. More specifically the workshop addresses the MET(T)A Method (Mindfulness and EMDR Treatment Template for Addictions), developed by me for Refuge Recovery Centers and now spreading beyond to other treatment centers. I am excited to have this platform at this particular conference to bring the message of trauma focused care a little further into the addictions world.
Worldwide Insight is a on-line Dharma practice group that offers meditation instruction, teachings, and live Q&A on video.
I had the great opportunity to do a talk as part of their Healing and Wellness series. Should you be interested in signing up for a free membership, below is a link that points to the recording of the talk, where I focused on a number of subjects including Clinical Dharma, EMDR and Mindfulness and trauma treatment in general from the Dharma perspective....
https://www.worldwideinsight.org/recorded-classes-healing-insight/
What a wonderful trip to Birmingham, Alabama! Spent a half day talking to clinicians about EMDR and Mindfulness, Clinical Dharma and Refuge Recovery... then lead a mini-retreat complete with a Refuge Recovery meeting the next day! Big thanks to Steve and Pam Moore and their Addiction Research Foundation for their generosity and invitation... I look forward to being down there again sometime sooner than later... and thanks to them for taking a number of copies of Clinical Dharma: A Path for Helpers and Healers to sell to their sangha and clinical colleagues!
I am creating more content around the topics I am passionate about, and I had the opportunity to contribute to the Santa Barbara Chapter of CAMFT Newsletter... thank you to Jenn Kennedy for inviting me to write the piece... looking at EMDR and mindfulness for addiction treatment, and what the implications are for Marriage and Family Therapists...
A download of my contribution is available by clicking: here
My second appearance on Issues with Anna is up... giving my Buddhist and therapeutic reflections on the phrase "Everything Happens for a Reason..." after Mishka Shubaly details why it triggers him...
Author and musician Mishka Shubaly isn’t only the author of seven bestselling Kindle Singles. (If you don’t know what these are, Google “Kindle Singles,” where you’ll also learn that almost all the publications who have written about them, from The New York Times to The Atlantic, focus on Shubaly. Some of his Kindle Singles titles include:
-The Long Run
-Shipwrecked
-Of Mice and Me
-Are You Lonesome Tonight?
-Beat the Devil
And then there’s his full-length memoir, I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You
His writing is fierce, honest and funny—not an easy trifecta to pull of—and much of it focuses on trauma, alcoholism and sobriety. While Shubaly’s path to recovery is controversial, he’s never shy about saying it works for him but doesn’t suggest others follow in his wake.
In this episode, we talk about Shubaly’s issue with the expression “Everything happens for a reason” and the general cult of positivity that permeates the world. We then attempted to uncover even more about why someone would have this issue with our team of experts, including meditation teacher Jeff Kober, Buddhist PSYD MFT Stephen Dansiger and 10-year-old LA resident Archer.
My good friend Anna David has a new podcast called You've Got Issues, where she talks to artists and others about their pet peeve issues... and then she hands it off to a panel of experts to look at the underlying causes and conditions that may inform these pet peeves...
I recorded several of these with Anna as one of her experts breaking down the issues focused upon in the interview... other experts include Jeff Kober, Noah Levine and a 10 year old named Archer... I had a great time recording these, and the first one regarding people wearing their pajamas on a plane is up and available...
Screenwriter Jeff Roda is not someone who’s going to be bragging about his accomplishments. You will, in fact, have to attempt to drag them out of him—and you still won’t be successful at learning much. Everything about what he’s done career wise must be gleaned through Google. And here it is:
-He’s written screenplays for DreamWorks, Paramount Pictures and New Regency Films, and television pilots for the WB, CBS and Media Rights Capital
-He was a producer on Love Liza starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kathy Bates (he wrote a piece about his friendship with Hoffman here)
-He has written three Black List scripts
-He is currently developing his pilot When I’m Sixty-Four for HBO
In this episode, we discuss Jeff’s issue with people who wear pajamas on planes. If you’re wondering how a person could have an issue with something so silly—well, you’re listening to the right podcast. Delving underneath the issue with the help of meditation teacher Jeff Kober,Buddhist PSYD MFT Stephen Dansiger and 10-year-old Archer, we discovered how someone could have a problem with such a seemingly silly activity.
Refuge Recovery Centers where I am Clinical Director is a trauma focused Buddhist addictions treatment center that uses the Refuge Recovery program as described in Noah Levine's book of the same name as its foundation for the treatment. Meanwhile, Refuge Recovery the non profit peer led fellowship has been expanding extensively over the last few years. There are now meetings all over the US and throughout the world, and new ones are popping up every day. The 2nd Annual Refuge Recovery Conference will take place at Against the Stream Melrose in Los Angeles from June 24-26, 2016.
On Saturday, June 25 from 3pm-5pm, Dharma workshops will be conducted for participants by George Haas, Mary Stancavage, Dave Smith and myself. This is a wonderful opportunity to share my Dharma and recovery path through explaining some aspects of the Dharma that hopefully will be helpful to those in attendance at the conference. It promises to be an exciting event --- if you ever wanted to picture yourself in an AA conference in the 1940s when the fellowship was new and going through its growing pains and making decisions about the future, this is an opportunity to get to replicate that feeling.
Refuge Recovery Centers has allowed me to not only synthesize all that the Dharma has brought into my life along with all the elements of my recovery and my professional life thus far, but also allowed me to infuse the Center with the spirit and practice of EMDR therapy in conjunction with Buddhist mindfulness. I hope to touch upon the relationship between trauma recovery and Dharma in my workshop, and I hope to help attendees to a greater understanding of their own journeys.
Heading out to Claremont tomorrow to give a talk on the use of Mindfulness and EMDR therapy in the treatment of Body Image issues and Eating Disorders. This is an exciting time for me, as the training of all the clinicians at Refuge Recovery in EMDR is almost complete, and my presentation at the EMDRIA Conference in August has been accepted and scheduled. My colleague Dr. Jamie Marich and I are forging ahead with our book on Mindfulness and EMDR. The theory and ongoing practice of using the 8 phase protocol as a way of seeing cases at an addictions rehab truly seems to be making a difference, and I am looking forward to initial research and ongoing research on the subject.
When I was invited to give this talk in Claremont, it struck me that body image difficulties make perfect targets for trauma reprocessing, and it also became clear that this 8 phase protocol template for running an agency could have even wider implications. I am going to continue to present on the topic, write about the topic, and see what we all can do to hopefully better the lives of those who struggle with trauma related disorders.
More to come!
A free podcast download of Josh Korda & I discussing the Roads to Healing the Underlying Causes of Addiction from our talk at Dharma Punx NYC on Tuesday, March 22, 2016.
Click here to listen / download.
I had the privilege of being the teacher for the month of January for CTZNWELL's #MindfulMondays weekly online meditation... The archived footage is below if you would like to meditate with me on Setting Intention and New Beginnings...
MindfulMondays w/ Dr. Stephen Dansiger 1/4/16 New Beginnings: Setting Intention Sign up for #MindfulMondays at www.tinyurl.com/ctznwell To learn more about Dr. Stephen, visit http://www.drdansiger.com/
MindfulMondays w/ Dr. Stephen Dansiger_1/11/16 Sign up to join #MindfulMondays at www.tinyurl.com/ctznwell To learn more about Dr. Steve, visit http://www.drdansiger.com/
MindfulMondays w/ Dr. Steve 1-18-16 To sign up for #MindfulMondays, visit http://app.webinarjam.net/register/18163/04ca71b7c4 To learn more about Dr. Steve's Inaugural Clinical Dharma Retreat on infusing the Four-noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path into the self care of self and others, visit http://www.drdansiger.com/calendar/2016/1/30/clinical-dharma-half-day-retreat
MindfulMondays w/ Dr. Steven 1-25-16 To sign up for #MindfulMondays, please go to www.tinyurl.com/ctznwell To find out more about Dr. Steve's Clinical Dharma retreat and his work, please go to http://www.drdansiger.com/calendar/2016/1/30/clinical-dharma-half-day-retreat
