EMDR & Mindfulness and EMDR & Spirituality
Presented by - Dr Alexandra Dent
Friday 8th March 2019 at 9.30am -4.30pm
Carrs Lane Conference Centre, Carrs Lane, Birmingham, B4 7SX
www.emdrwestmids.org.uk
Dr Alexandra Dent is an experienced Registered and Chartered Clinical Psychologist and Europe Accredited EMDR Consultant/supervisor working with children and adolescents (C & A), adults and families across the East Midlands. She is current Chair of the UK & Ireland EMDR C & A Committee and has also been an EMDR UK & Ireland Board member. Alexandra is the UK & Ireland EMDR representative at the EMDR Europe C & A Committee. She is also an EMDR Europe facilitator in training.
Alexandra worked in a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) between 2002 and 2013 and was the Lead Clinician for trauma work. This involved the provision of trauma services with particular emphasis on the use of EMDR.
Alexandra set up her own successful independent Clinical Psychology practice in March 2012. Areas of interest include trauma, attachment work, mindfulness and spirituality. She has presented both nationally and regionally on ‘Mindfulness and EMDR’ and ‘Attachment focused EMDR and resource work' and ‘the new Heart & Soul Led Psychotherapy Model for treating psychological distress’. She has also run workshops with colleagues for the EMDR C & A committee on the use of storytelling using EMDR and a Developmental training day for C & A Consultants.
Alexandra has a book due to be published in 2019 with Routledge called ‘Introducing Spirituality in Psychotherapy’. This describes Heart & Soul Led Psychotherapy which is a spiritually informed model to working with psychological distress and can be used as a standalone model or as part of a BioPsychoSocialSpiritual approach.
EMDR and Mindfulness
Mindfulness practice is become increasingly popular as a therapy and is often associated with CBT. However, the principles of Mindfulness can be broad and far reaching. Until recently, it has not commonly been applied to EMDR therapy. However when used in the preparation stages, Mindfulness can have very beneficial and powerful effects. The main resources currently used in EMDR include the safe place, container and light stream, all of which are very effective but do not help individuals learn how to stay in the ‘present moment’. Mindfulness increases a person’s awareness in everyday life, especially when they may have previously drifted or dissociated. By learning to stay in the moment, clients do not get caught up in distressing thoughts and emotions and instead notice a sense of peace and calmness. This increases a person’s window of tolerance to processing distressing memories. Mindfulness compliments other techniques such as the Back of the Head Scale (Jim Knipe) and fits perfectly with key aspects of EMDR, especially learning how to tolerate difficult and distressing emotions, awareness of physical sensations and the body scan. By learning to be mindful, often in just a few sessions, clients build up their resources and coping strategies and feel very prepared for EMDR desensitisation.
Learning objectives
1. Critically consider Mindfulness and how it can be applied and implemented within EMDR therapy.
2. Demonstrate how to explain Mindfulness in a simple format to clients.
2. Demonstrate tools to implement Mindfulness exercises to clients of all ages in the preparation phase of EMDR.
3. Develop one’s own Mindfulness practice.
To book a place go to - www.emdrwestmids.org.uk