This course is offered by the Polyvagal Institute. It is for people who see an opportunity to redefine mindfulness based on Polyvagal Theory (PVT). This includes therapists who use PVT, people who currently have a mindfulness practice, and people who would like to apply PVT toward leading a more mindful life.
This is an experiential course. It provides a safe and stimulating environment to find your own way to integrate mindfulness, meaning and purpose in the context of experiencing life as interaction.
See below: Why this course? | Why this instructor? | Curriculum | Practical details
Why this course?
This course is an invitation to spend time with yourself and with kindred spirits to explore mindfulness in light of the Polyvagal Theory. This is an experiential, first-person exploration to find your own way to integrate mindfulness, meaning and purpose in the context of experiencing life as interaction.
Beyond traditional mindfulness
It’s not that mindfulness is new to you. Even if you don’t have a regular mindfulness practice, such as yoga, meditation, therapy, or playing golf, you have a sense of what it’s like to be mindful rather than mindless.
You are not just trying to allocate more time to mindfulness practices. You are curious about what it would be like to live in a way that is more mindful while active and spontaneous.
You know something about Polyvagal Theory (PVT). Maybe, you know a lot about it: for instance, you’re a therapist whose work is based on it. Maybe, you only have a vague sense of it having to do with our nervous system and the different ways we react to the interactions of life.
This course is suitable for all levels of PVT experience: experts as well as beginners. It is not about technical expertise in PVT. It is about developing an experiential understanding of how PVT profoundly impacts how you think about mindfulness and how this affects your life.
A paradigm shift
The traditional perspective on the ANS is that it controls the automatic functions of our body as it connects the brain to most of our internal organs. The Polyvagal Theory adds that the ANS operates within the context of interaction.
It is not just that the ANS regulates our heartbeat, for instance, and our heartbeat is faster as the Sympathetic system is engaged when we are in danger. Generally speaking, how the ANS modulates the function of our internal organs depends on its assessment of how safe or dangerous our situation is.
Our senses are continuously scanning the environment to detect potential threats. A vital function of the ANS is to process this sensory information about the environment and assess risk. Stephen Porges coined the term neuroception to describe how our nervous system does it automatically (i.e., at the nervous system level, without conscious perception).
Hence, PVT puts mindfulness within a broader context: how we manage interaction. Moment by moment, we implicitly assess our situation. Neuroception takes place below awareness, as much of our functioning does. But it is possible to develop our capacity for mindful awareness of what we sense through neuroception.
Inner connection & inteconnection
This perspective is very different from the notion of mindfulness as something that requires removing ourselves from the hustle and bustle of life, at least temporarily. For instance, when we meditate, we usually face a wall or close our eyes, look inside, and find some distance from life. In contrast, PVT opens up new perspectives on combining inner connection and interconnection.
Another key consideration is that much of what happens in interaction is implicit rather than explicit. The relational implicit is difficult, and often impossible, to fully express in logical language. So, mindful awareness is not the same as making explicit what is implicit, and it involves finding different ways of relating to our experience.
Dancing at the edge of experience
Culturally, we have a bias toward explaining what we experience, which is reducing it to familiar concepts. We need to resist the urge to explain what we experience and instead spend more time exploring it. We practice dancing at the edge of experience.
The Polyvagal Theory provides a logical, scientific framework for making sense of life as an interaction. However, to put this framework into practice, we must shift from a logical thinking mode to a sensing and feeling mode.
As we enter this territory, we discover that self-awareness, artistic exploration, and mindful practices blend into an embodied philosophy of life that we experience freshly, moment by moment.
I invite you to explore how it may open new directions in your practice and life.
Why this instructor?
Serge Prengel is a Focusing-oriented therapist. In addition to Focusing, he is also trained in Core Energetics and Somatic Experiencing.
Over the years, he has been exploring the similarities and differences between different approaches to better understand how change happens. He has conducted over 200 interviews with therapists, Focusers, researchers, and mindfulness practitioners.
Serge has led workshops in a variety of venues and conferences, such as Focusing, Somatic Experiencing, USABP, etc. He fosters a safe and stimulating space for groups to creatively explore our embodied process.
See bio for Serge Prengel.
Curriculum
The course
Much of the learning is experiential, in group discussions and breakout rooms. The course also includes conceptual learning and pre-recorded discussions with Steve Porges.
There are four 90-minute sessions covering the following topics:
(1) An embodied & relational perspective on mindfulness
(2) Neuroception: Sensing threat, safety & connection
(3) Applied neuroception: Action-oriented contemplation
(4) Everyday mindfulness: an embodied philosophy of life as interaction
There is a natural progression that gives you a space to explore and formulate what mindfulness means to you based on the Polyvagal Theory. This is not mindfulness as a separate compartment in your life. This is not philosophy as the pursuit of abstraction. We’re talking about an embodied sense of what it means to you to lead your life in a mindful way, connected to an organic sense of meaning and purpose. A personal, experiential integration of meaning into practical life.
Practical details
This is a highly experiential course. You are not passively attending classes, you are learning by participating in the process.
Four 90-minute live sessions, every other week on Mondays at 12:00 pm EST: October 2, October 16, October 30, and November 13, 2023.
Before each session, you have a short video of a pre-recorded conversation between Steve Porges and Serge Prengel.
Between sessions, students will meet in dyads or small groups to practice.
This course is offered by the Polyvagal Institute. Please apply through their website (link below).
For FAQ, including scholarships, see Frequently Asked Questions at the bottom of the page describing the course (link below).
To register, go to this Course’s page on the PVI website.