The Brain That Changes Itself: The Neuroplasticity Revolution for the Helping Professions

The discovery that the brain is plastic is the most important change in the understanding of the brain in 400 years. Scientists used to think that the adult brain was hardwired, fixed, like a machine with parts, its circuits unchanging. The doctrine of the unchanging brain gave rise to a neurological fatalism that meant people with brain damage or mental limitations were, by definition, in all cases condemned to live with them. The mind could change, but not the brain. Talk therapy was often seen as “just talk”, and not a serious biological intervention.

Neuroplasticity is the property of the brain that allows it to change its structure and function through mental experience. Neuroplasticity can help refine existing practices and approaches in a wide range of settings that include psychotherapy, occupational therapy, rehabilitation, social work, and education. Neuroplastic interventions can be applied to a range conditions that include: learning disorders, inability to access emotions, OCD and anxiety disorders, age-related memory loss, attachment disorders, schizophrenia, chronic pain, cognitive disorders from stroke and brain injury, MS, CP, sensory problems, blindness, internet addictions, and autistic spectrum disorders.

Using inspiring films of actual patients who had “incurable” medical conditions as they undergo neuroplastic change, this workshop will demonstrate the core principles of neuroplasticity. From case examples, you will see how understanding plasticity can improve your therapeutic effectiveness regardless of setting. The seminar will offer transformational, practical information, and open new ways for you to help people — and expand how you live your life with your plastic brain.

You will learn —

• To apply the core principles of neuroplasticity regardless of your therapeutic background or approach
• The epochs of plasticity across the lifespan, and the four different kinds of plasticity
• Why, if the brain is so plastic, we missed that fact for 400 years
• The core neuroscience experiments proving the brain is plastic
• The full range of conditions — psychiatric, neurological, medical, emotional — that neuroplastic interventions can treat, including learning disorders, inability to access emotions, OCD and anxiety disorders, PTSD, attachment disorders, psychosis, chronic pain, ADD, autistic spectrum disorders, cognitive disorders from stroke, brain injury, MS, CP, epilepsy, rehabilitation problems, speech and sensory problems, internet and other addictions, and bad habits
• The plastic paradox: How neuroplasticity gives rise to not only flexible, but also rigid behaviour, and how to improve your effectiveness with seemingly rigid clients
• To identify when plasticity is a resistance to change
• The latest neuroplastic brain exercises and neuroplastic training techniques that can supplement psychotherapy, or get a “stuck” client moving again and to help better regulate their brains
• The contributions of Freud and Pavlov and the founders of psychotherapy to our understanding of neuroplasticity
• How intimate relationships, the proper therapeutic relationship, and love can put the brain in a neuroplastic state
• The neuroplastic components of memory, working through, resistance, dissociation, transference, sleep and dreaming
• How to change your practice when you return to the office

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