After reviewing the work of Patricia Resick (1988, 1993), Charles Marmar (1989) and James Pennebaker (1989, 1997), and from my own experience of training with Lou, it became obvious to me that the type of exposure was very important. If we could help survivors construct complete narratives of their traumatic experiences while in a relaxed state, we could help them to accelerate healing of their traumatic stress symptoms. By facilitating this important narrative process, not only are we assisting them with confronting the traumatic material, we are also helping them to structure the intrusive sensory traumata into language. These previously mentioned researchers have been able to demonstrate that effective narrative construction has a powerful …show more content…
Integrating the work of Bob Scaer (2001; 2006) into my own research on relaxation, I began to see that as a person is able to develop and maintain parasympathetic dominance (i.e., relaxation), then symptoms abate. Through working with Emergency Medical Technicians, Neuro-Muscular Therapists, as well as several psychiatrists and neurologists, I stumbled onto the discovery of how 20-30 seconds of pelvic floor relaxation (e.g., psoas, sphincter, and pubio-coxyx , or Kegel, muscles) precipitates parasympathetic dominance. This simple relaxation strategy fortifies the individual with (a) comfort in their body; (b) total access to memory, language and neocortical functioning; and (c) the capacity for intentional living (more about this in the training). If and when a trauma survivor is able to keep their body relaxed, they no longer suffer …show more content…
In 1999, Hubble, Duncan, and Miller released, in my opinion, the single most import text of the past decade—The Heart & Soul of Change. This book is chock-full of paradigm-shifting information. One of the most important truths to come from their huge meta-analytic study was what they learned about predictors of positive outcomes in psychotherapy. They found that the MOST important predictor of positive outcomes in our patient’s psychotherapy has nothing to do with the therapy itself—it is occurrences that happen outside of therapy that account for over 40% of positive outcomes. Then, of the 60% that we, as helpers, can influence we find that 30% is contingent upon the development and maintenance of a good therapeutic relationship. The remaining 30% is split equally between positive expectancy (which has also been called either “hope” or “placebo”) and techniques/models. There is a good argument that the process of developing expectancy/hope/ placebo is also a relational function. If this is so, then that means the degree that we can influence positive outcomes for our clients, 75% is contingent upon relational factors and 25% is contingent upon technical and/or philosophical factors. This data confirms what I, as a professional care provider for nearly three decades, have always intuited—people