Our “embodiment” is one pillar of the enactive approach. Today we will learn what the notion of “embodiment” is about, what is stands for and its importance in common life and in trauma and dissociation. We will become acquainted with the idea that how we feel, perceive, imagine, think, speak and act is strongly influenced by our existence as physical and lived bodies.

In trauma, there tends to be a trinity of tendencies to act: to feel fragile and to defend, to avoid feeling and realizing what happened, and to seek means of control to counter one’s fragility and motivated ignorance. Today’s workshops discuss this trinity while focusing on its embodied manifestations. The goal is to inspire clinicians how to include our principled embodiment in trauma therapy.

“Embedment” is another cornerstone of the enactive approach. Today we learn that we do not exist as brains/minds/bodies in a void. Rather, we ongoingly couple ourselves to an environment that affects us and that we affect. This environment is not part of an objectively existing reality. It is a world we enact and couple to our self that we also enact. As we do this, we do not find but make meaning.

In complex trauma, there tend to be three or more kinds of dissociative agents. Each enacts and reenacts his or her own experiences and ideas of self, world, and self-world couplings. Each makes meaning. Effective clinicians couple themselves to their patients as a whole and the dissociative agents they may include. To do this, they live a deep affective interest in what it is like to exist as a traumatized individual or dissociative agent of a particular kind. Today’s workshops focus on this phenomenology.

Neuroscience basically depends on conscious agents. Hence, consciousness is primary. This science then, takes a particular methodology. Today, we will learn what this neurophenomenology is about. We will also learn that scientists and clinicians alike are not “objective” observers. They are like the individuals they study or assist subjects primarily longing. They’d better experience, know and realize what they long and strive for, but may not be trained to do that. Time for a change!

Part of the longing in traumatized individuals is to not experience, know, and realize the horrors they met. This avoidance may include efforts to disown their body. The therapeutic challenge is to overcome this tendency as loss of the body implies a loss of self and meaning. We will become acquainted with ways to promote this achievement.