Serge Prengel

Active Pause® Part 2: If the pause is a natural part of the human...

What is that mindful practice? Is it sufficient to just have a ‘mindful practice’, such as mediation, or yoga, or Focusing? It would probably help some, but it wouldn’t be enough to replace the specific practice of inserting the lens. The more intense the potential danger, the more our reactive circuits take over, bypassing the circuits that counterbalance reactivity. In other words: The more intense the potential danger, the more we need to train our mind to recognize that this specific danger is safer than it appears to us. Why am I calling this a ‘mindful practice’, as opposed to just ‘training’?

Can Meditation Heal Schizophrenia?

Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder that affects about one percent of the world’s population. It has been defined as "a splitting of the mind" from German shizophrenie, a neologism coined in 1908 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler (1857-1939). It also stems from the Greek skhizein meaning to "to split" (schizo-) + phren (genitive phrenos) "diaphragm, heart, mind", including concepts associated in ancient Greek thought with the human mind. When schizophrenia is active, symptoms can include delusions, hallucinations, trouble with thinking and concentration, and lack of motivation. Research is leading to new, safe treatments. Experts are also unraveling the causes of the disease by studying genetics, conducting behavioral research, and using advanced imaging to look at the brain’s structure and function. These approaches hold the promise of new, more effective therapies. Neuroplasticity, neuroscience’s latest paradigm, may attempt to correct the abnormal integration across large scale neural networks associated with schizophrenia with methods like meditation.

DEFENSES: THE ROAD MAP TO YOUR ESSENCE

What is your relationship to your defenses? Can you name them? Can you name your self-destructive habits? Maybe notice where you keep feeling helpless or stuck? From a psychological perspective, defenses are survival skills that resulted from negative childhood experiences—when our external environment threatened our internal sense of safety and wellbeing, be it overwhelming feelings such as abandonment, fear/terror, feeling unloved and unlovable and so forth. In response, we created survival skills to endure destructive emotional, physical and spiritual experiences. Due to our codependence on our caretakers, our defenses truly become survival skills. The most mainstream defenses include denial, rationalization, repression, dissociation, projection, manipulation, caretaking and even humor. Although these skills allowed us to grow from child to adult, I often wonder about our relationship to our defenses as adults. A great survival skill for a child may not serve you as an adult.

Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy NEWS and FREE DOWNLOADS

Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy offers their call for papers and free access to several articles in their Spring 2021 issue: a Special Issue on Embodied psychotherapies in the digital age. According to Roz Carroll's introduction/editorial entitled, Embodied intersubjectivity as online psychotherapy becomes mainstream: Coronavirus measures have stimulated a re-organisation of the field of psychotherapy demanding a new level of technological skill, creativity and revision of established practice. This issue celebrates the resilience and adaptability of therapists and clients who have found new ways to stay connected, with contributions from Israel, Italy and Finland and the UK. It explores the new dimensions of online psychotherapy, offering vivid case studies of individuals and groups. The authors share their journeys of learning, re-thinking and reconnecting with sometimes unanticipated benefits for the work.
Serge Prengel

Active Pause® Part 1: The pause as part of a mindful process

This is the first in a series of articles about the power of the pause in life and in therapy. In this article, I talk about why I am calling this kind of pause Active Pause, instead of just calling it a pause. In a nutshell, because the word ‘pause’ alone doesn’t do it justice. In everyday language, what we call a pause is a moment where activity is suspended, i.e. something that we associate with a blank as opposed to activity. I use the word ‘active’ to make the point that the pause is not just a ‘blank’ but an intentional rupture from the status quo, the flow of things as they currently are. Without rupture, there is no possibility of a breakthrough. If the pause were just a pause, in the ordinary sense of the term, what comes after it would be pretty much the same as what comes before it. But the value of the pause is that it allows for disruption, for the possibility of change.

Can you help a doctoral student’s research project?

"I am researching perspectives of self-disclosure and comfort level using self-disclosure amongst professionals in the field of psychology with different amounts of clinical experience. The study will take no more than 15 minutes of your time. The study involves completing a short demographic and clinical questionnaire, and four open-ended short response questions. All participants who choose to participate will have an opportunity to win one of two $50 Visa gift cards!

18th anniversary of 9/11

As the 18th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Steve Solcum offers his thoughts and feelings concerning the traumatic aftermath, personally and as a nation. I was blessed to write with Steve and offer a link to his current blog post.

GenPax: Birth Matters

It is no longer acceptable for the more than 20 organizations dedicated to pre and perinatal life to operate as singular entities. We must band together and collaborate, we must aggregate our collective power to change the behaviors of the medical maternity community. If we are to successfully move the needle from traumatic birth – as a daily practice of U.S. hospitals – to a peaceful birth culture, we must form a unified front.

Spirit Into Form: Exploring Embryological Potential and Prenatal Psychology

The book is imbued with the serious belief that the human mind and soul is not an accidental side product of genes, brain, and body, but a dimension in the human where he/she strives to fulfill his/her talents and aptitudes, including the possible healing of traumatic experiences in earlier stages. Spirit as well as body as necessary but not sufficient condition for being and becoming human

Somatic Psychotherapy Today Volume 11, Number 1, 2021

This issue of SPT Magazine offers articles published online this past year for readers who do not follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn, and for those who want all of the articles in one PDF they can download and read at their convenience. I hope 2022 brings a return of contributors willing to share their experiences and clinical knowledge with our readers.