[From Svava Brooks on ACEsConnection via an email by CenterForChildren.org ]
Penny Davis, M.A. is a Certified Positive Discipline Lead Trainer and presenter on the effects of Insecure Attachment and Trauma on brain development, and the methods that are effective in re-building attachment, re-building the brain,and healing relationships. Penny’s early career was as a social worker in Child Protective Services, working with birth families, foster and adoptive parents. She learned first-hand about badly-disrupted attachment working with adoptees, and what it takes to create secure attachment, in the 1970s and 80s -- before the research we have today. Her website is http://www.respectful-relationships2.com
Sponsored by San Diego Center for Children, Penny is returning to San Diego for a one-day training Friday, April 25, 9-4, on working with children with trauma histories. Therapists, social workers, parents, foster parents, educators, kinship caregivers, and anyone working with youth and families will learn tools to use right away.
For registration and information please see http://tinyurl.com/SDCCTraumaTrng
Contact: Aisha Pope, LCSW: apope@centerforchildren.org
San Diego’s Center for Children has innovative programs to remediate child trauma including the “somatic healing” advocated by researchers at the edge of brain science like Dr. Bruce Perry, MD.
In a recent CenterForChildren blog, Dr. Sarah MacArthur, Ph.D says these non-traditional methods are working on the ground in San Diego. “I am asked how things like hip hop and skateboarding help a child who is struggling with depression or ADHD [attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder]," she writes. "Two years into the Wellness Project, approximately 70% of the children showed improvement in symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD using wellness therapies." See http://www.centerforchildren.org/live-blog/87-wellness-innovations-transform-children
Dr. Perry notes that “because the brain is organized ... with symptoms of fear first arising in the brain stem and then moving all the way to the cortex, the first step in therapeutic success is brain stem regulation... The only way [traumatized kids] can move from super-high anxiety states, to calmer more cognitive states, is rhythm,” Perry emphasizes. “Patterned, repetitive, rhythmic activity: walking, running, dancing, singing, repetitive meditative breathing... using brain stem-related somatosensory networks which make the brain accessible to relational reward and cortical thinking." Dr. Bessel van der Kolk also uses yoga, drama, drum circles, trampolines, and other somatosensory rhythmic work. See http://attachmentdisorderhealing.com/how-your-brain-works-101/
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