This 2-day course is designed to help practitioners understand therapeutic play from a neuro-biological perspective. With the help of neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, and a Synergetic Play Therapy framework, practitioners will learn how to effectively work with therapeutic play in a way that supports nervous system regulation, reorganization of the child’s lower centers of the brain and promotes healing for the child.  Through role play, discussion, and experiential exercises participants will learn practical techniques that can be used right away in the playroom. Topics such as boundaries, co-regulation, nervous system activation, emotional flooding and use of aggressive toys and play will be explored.

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This training will also guide participants towards a deeper understanding of what it means to become a child’s external regulator during trauma play while practicing how to care for their own nervous system thereby decreasing compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma.  The result is the transformation of trauma play into ways of connecting, healing, and mutual trust.  

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Objectives

• Examine how play therapy works from a neurobiological perspective

• Explain the link between a child’s nervous system states and their play

• Identify the four primary threats of the brain and how to use this information to create a neuroception of safety in a play therapy session 

• Examine the Synergetic Play Therapy concept of “The Set Up” in the playroom to understand what the child is trying to communicate

• Examine what it takes to become the “external regulator” in the playroom to support nervous system integration

• Explain the significance of congruence and authentic expression in the play therapy process

• Identify strategies for maintaining regulation during intense play, aggression, and death in the playroom

• Identify at least 2 strategies for working with aggression in the playroom without experiencing the nervous system shut down leading to vicarious trauma

• Identify at least 2 strategies for setting boundaries without shaming or shutting down a child’s play

• Define "emotional flooding," and identify at least 2 strategies to employ when this happens in a play therapy session

• Explain how a practitioners own “window of tolerance” can impact the child’s healing process

• Examine how to use principles from Interpersonal Neurobiology and Synergetic Play Therapy to support deeper integration and the re-patterning of the client’s nervous system