Coping with Stress in Today’s World:
Solutions for Anxiety, Depression, and Burnout

Psychologists who work with children are often in a position to recommend interventions for home and school which are meant to support the work they do with their clients in the office. However, some knowledge of school systems and the kinds of interventions that are possible within them is necessary for the recommendations to have an impact. In this workshop, Alexandra Linardakis BSN and Jenna Prada M.Ed. will bring their differing perspectives to a conversation about the role that somatic regulation can play while working with school-aged children. They will discuss via case studies how each of their unique professional backgrounds can offer varied tools to support children in grades k-12, making clear that the best way to help clients is often to encourage a team-building approach between mental health providers, parents, schools, and others involved with the children. This workshop will provide concrete tools for biofeedback professionals in relation to various aspects of the school-aged child’s life.

Stephen Porges will elaborate on how Polyvagal Theory provides a neural foundation for a brain-body medicine that would lead to insights into the treatment of trauma and chronic stress-related mental and physical health challenges.

The theory describes how, via evolution, a connection emerged in the brain between the nerves that control the heart and the face. This face-heart connection provided the structures for the “social engagement system” that link sociality with autonomic regulation and explains the important mediating role of physiological state in facilitating either connectedness and intimacy or defense such as fight/flight, hypervigilance, dissociation, collapse, shutdown, and even syncope.
This workshop is designed to give participants an overview of the Polyvagal Theory and the Social Engagement System as it relates to stress in our modern world.

Somatic Experiencing® (SE™) is a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma and other stress-related disorders. SE offers a framework to assess where a person is “stuck” in the fight, flight, or freeze responses and provides clinical tools to resolve these fixated physiological states. It offers practical skills appropriate to various healing and helping professions, including educators, mental health, medical, physical and occupational therapies, bodywork, addiction treatment, first response, and more.

During this unique program, Peter A Levine, Ph.D., the developer of Somatic Experiencing, will demonstrate how SE addresses trauma responses through a combination of theoretical explanation and body-oriented experiential exercises. This program will address the underpinnings of trauma and explore how nervous system regulation and awareness of bodily sensations can bring individuals out of a trauma state and into a more embodied and regulated sense of authentic self.

A legacy burden is a belief or emotion passed down generationally through the family tree, ethnic lineage, or environment/society. We also carry many historical legacy burdens as a collective— to include racism, patriarchy, individualism, and materialism. These collective legacy burdens are systemic and significantly influence almost all organizations, institutions, and policies. The legacy burden of white supremacy culture has created a global bias in which people of color are marginalized and have reduced access to resources when compared to people born in a white body. Despite the recent increase in dialogue regarding diversity, equity and inclusion, we still have a long way to go in addressing the traumatic effects of racial injustice (police brutality, mass incarceration, health disparities, and education/economic wealth gaps) that we still see and experience in the world today. Rather than staying stuck in pain, guilt, shame or defensiveness, it’s important to recognize that we all have unconscious bias that stems from traumatized fear based “parts” of us that took on protective thoughts, feelings and behaviors passed down and around during our early years of social conditioning.

The psychological toll that results from racism among BIPOC communities is known as racial trauma and is the result of navagating emotionally harmful messages and even mild interactions of discrimination, as well as vicariously witnessing acts of violence geared towards a particular race or community that you belong to. The good news is as healers, we can all be part of the solution by minimizing and reversing the personal, relational and collective impact. Research documents that racism creates significant physical and mental health challenges for people of color, which neurofeedback can help to treat and alleviate. In this presentation we will explore the potential role of biofeedback in mitigating racial and generational trauma.

In this workshop Harry Campbell will lead a discussion with Dr. Mary Jo Sabo about neurofeedback in schools, past present and future. They will talk about how the famous Yonkers Project came about and how successful it was. They will discuss some of the things that are being done now. Finally, they will give their thoughts about where neurofeedback and biofeedback in schools could be headed and how we can accelerate the process to bring neurofeedback and biofeedback to a wider audience.

Why WIFI and electro pollution affects your brain, the microbiome and has huge clinical implications for many patients you see. There will be a review of cases where rapid clinical improvements occurred by greatly reducing EMF, as well as the research behind known biological effects. The presentation will include information about how to discuss these issues with patients, and why LIGHT at night has far more clinical implications than you are aware of.

Over the last few years more and more students report anxiety and stress related disorders which can be ameliorated and reversed through self-awareness and self-regulation approaches. By integrating wearable biofeedback devices to demonstrate how mind/body/emotions are interconnected, participants can increase their awareness and then implement regeneration strategies. When these skills are generalized at home and at work, many students report significant reduction in symptoms. The presentation focuses on the use breathing, posture, muscle, skin conductance and muscle feedback to demonstrate voluntary control, teach awareness of sympathetic reactivity and mastery to inhibit reactivity. It outlines a sequential 12 week group program that can be taught in schools and used in homes and at work.