Spirituality In Health-Care Network Event 

You Are Invited To A Meeting of The

SPIRITUALITY IN HEALTH CARE NETWORK
Integrating Spirituality and Health Care

Thursday April 3, 2014   7:00pm to 9:30pm
Suggested Contribution $10.00
Friends House    60 Lowther Avenue    Toronto
(2 blocks north from the Bedford exit of the St George Subway Station)

Trauma & the Soul: The Emergence of Spirit During Trauma Therapy

  In working with trauma, effective therapy often involves identifying dissociative "parts" and working with the body.   During this work, as a safe, relational environment is created, spiritual resources may emerge spontaneously.  As painful trauma memories are processed, these spiritual forces and helpers can assist in holding and nurturing deeply wounded child parts.  Skilled trauma therapy can involve facilitating and utilizing these life-affirming allies to aid in healing, rather than in bypassing the healing process.

Therapists working with body-based trauma approaches, such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or in parts-based psychotherapies, like Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy (www.selfleadership.org), learn to anticipate and recognize the appearance of spirit in dreams and in imagery.  How do we work safely with such spontaneous spiritual emergences, and hold them within a larger, body-informed model of care?  This talk will introduce core qualities of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy and of the IFS model and discuss safely working with the psycho-spiritual dimensions of these approaches.  It will also emphasize the ability of body-based therapies to restore life-sustaining basic physiologic rhythms and animal defenses, which are not addressed in purely “talk therapies” or in wholly transpersonal approaches.

After this talk, there will be a guided imagery involving identifying the larger Self, whose qualities include compassion, curiosity and wisdom.  From this place, participants will have an opportunity to hold a child part and to sense the innate healing capacities held within Self.

Optional reading: The Larger Self, by Richard Schwartz, founder of the Internal Family Systems model


Dr. Harry Zeit is a formerly American board-certified emergency physician.  After over twenty years of full-time ER work, carried by his personal transformational process, he re-trained and became a physician psychotherapist.  Since 2005, he has maintained a full-time private practice in psychotherapy. Harry recently completed the final level of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training and was certified in April of 2013. He has a special interest in somatic psychology, yoga and the treatment of psychological trauma. He is currently the education chair of the Ontario Medical Association Section in Primary Mental Health Care and teaches the ‘Caring for Self while Caring for Others’ program through that organization. He is also an active member and certificant of the General Practice Psychotherapy Association of Canada (GPPA).

AGENDA

6:45 - 7:10    Registration
7:10 - 7:15    Opening Remarks
7:15 - 7:30    Opening Sacred Ritual
7:30 - 8:30    Dr. Harry Zeit    Trauma & the Soul: The Emergence of Spirit During Trauma Therapy
8:30 - 8:35    Announcements
8:35 - 8:50    Break
8:50 - 9:15    Group Sharing/Questions
9:15 - 9:30    Closing Sacred Ritual

SHCN Chair: Jeannette McCullough RN 

SHCN Steering Committee: John Thornton MD, Larry Nusbaum MD, Heloisa Porto, Brandon Klayman, Catherine Stone MSW
Parking: There are a few spots behind the building, North of Lowther Ave. and West off Bedford Rd.