What does the ten-day program look like?
Intake
We connect over Google Hangouts to meet each other, chat about expectations, and conduct an intake to make sure you are a candidate for remote delivery. We will make sure you know how to use the equipment as well.
Day 5-6
Feedback loop is now recruiting middle ear muscles. Sound gets decontextualized from trauma, and other sounds come on board that have not been previously available. You get tired.
Day 1-2
Primes the nervous system, triggers a feedback loop by getting sound into the middle ear.
Day 7-8
Deepens the decontextualizing and introduces new sensations and sounds of safety and belonging.
Day 3-4
Expands the demand on the nervous system and continues to move sound into the previously shut down areas of the middle ear.
Day 9-10
Programs in the new sounds. Reassures you of your regulation.
Outtake
Over Google Hangouts, we walk through all your paintings, session notes, and reflections to help make meaning and perpetuate the healing.
What is Safe and Sound Protocol?
Safe and Sound Protocol is an auditory, research-based protocol developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, Professor of Psychiatry at University of North Carolina, “Distinguished University Scientist” at Indiana University, and the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium—uses prosodic vocal music that has been filtered to train the middle ear muscles to focus in on the frequency envelope of human speech.
The SSP is currently in use by more than 1400 therapist and is backed by 20 years of research and clinical studies. It is influenced by Porge’s Polyvagal Theory (see more detail below).
The Safe and Sound Protocol is intended to accelerate the effectiveness of other modalities by preparing the client’s emotional and physiological state. Dr. Porges discusses two pathways to achieving progress with clients: the passive pathway and the active pathway. Since a calm autonomic/physiological state is necessary for health, growth and restoration, achieving it becomes the foundation of an effective therapy. We conceive of the SSP as a passive pathway therapy helping to change the client’s physiologic state through neuroception and opening the system to further neural change from other active pathway therapies that follow.
The SSP is best used together with other Active therapies.
Active pathway therapies include: speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, cognitive exercises, psychotherapy, dance therapy, listening therapy and many others.
Changes from the SSP can be cumulative and self-perpetuating.
They will be enhanced by the social support the client receives and the learning opportunities they are presented with. While you may notice some very positive changes while using the SSP, it is not meant to be used in isolation. The changes you see can potentiate neuroplasticity and functional change from subsequent therapy modalities.
As the client learns to process these speech-related frequencies, they improve the functioning of two cranial nerves that are important for promoting overall social behavior.
Cranial Nerve VII (Facial Nerve) helps clients focus on human voice and tune out irrelevant frequencies.
Cranial Nerve X (Vagus Nerve) enables self-soothing and autonomic regulation.
My Training:
I have experienced Safe and Sound and the Mosaic of Healing in multiple settings:
one-on-one while lying on a table and receiving Rolfing
at home by myself with a rented headset
5 consecutive Sunday afternoons from 12:30-4:00 pm in a gathering of ten women where we combined meditation practice, the Mosaic of Healing, and breaks for food and conversation
5 days in a row with my 8-year-old son as a post-cancer healing intervention with Ana Do Valle at her office in Boulder
Based upon these experiences, I am offering an integrative course blending the stabilizing and clarifying influence of traditional mindfulness/awareness meditation practices with the Mosaic of Healing practice developed by Ana. This combination helps gently repair early attachment trauma and cultivates the capacity for self-regulation and social engagement.
What is Polyvagal Theory?
Polyvagal Theory articulates three different branches of the autonomic nervous system that evolved from very primitive vertebrates to mammals.
First, you have a system that is really an ancient one, which is death feigning or immobilization.
Then it has a fight or flight system, a mobilization system.
Then finally, with mammals, you have a social engagement system, which can detect features of safety and actually communicate them to another. When you trigger feelings of safety, the autonomic nervous system can help health restoration.
Most people are familiar with fight or flight, but they do not know there is a 3rd response called Freeze.
In terms of dealing with a life threat, you most likely go into this feigning death, dissociative state. Immobilization is the critical point of the experience of life-threat trauma events. It used to be assumed by trauma therapists that stress was a fight-flight reaction. But that’s not what the survivors of trauma described. They were describing this inability to move, the numbness of the body and functionally disappearing. And that’s what Polyvagal Theory describes.
—information taken from integratedlistening.com and compassionaterolfing.com