Self-Regulation in Times of COVID-19

Self-Regulation in Times of COVID-19

Thomas Heinrich, Dipl.Psych. , Bioenergetic Analyst (CBT),

Certified Advanced Rolfer™, Mentor

Sitting in front of the computer at home in quarantine and working alone is exhausting.
Sitting in front of the computer and talking to people nurtures the mind, but starves out the body.

One reason for this starving is that the transmission of the data is reduced, as far as is necessary, to understand a person’s speech, to recognize the person in their role, i.e. as a colleague, client or friend, and to understand his or her facial expressions. But this is only possible, because the tolerance of our system to perceive and interpret the signals of the environment is stretched to its limits. So we strain ourselves to get the information. No leaning back is possible; no letting the other come to oneself. Staying connected with oneself, in our own body, needs an additional effort, which takes the awareness and power away from the concentration, which is needed to understand the person on the other side of the screen.

This lack of information sets us under stress like a Bioenergetic exercise. If people close to us are suffering from an infection with SARS CoV 2, our network of attachments is threatened, which brings forth our stress level. With these different kinds of stress, we react more likely with our character structure and the learned behavior and mood of our history. We lose the newly learned patterns and are reduced to the old one’s. Frustration takes place and enhances the old structures.

How can we stay connected to ourselves with Bioenergetic knowledge and techniques? How can we self-regulate ourselves with Bioenergetic knowledge and techniques? And how can we stay well in these times of covid 19, with the changed lifestyle we have chosen in the last years and be in our own power?

Learning objectives:

• Participants will be able to name and explain 3 subdivisions of the autonomous nervous system following the polyvagal theory of Steven Porges: mobilization, immobilization, and social engagement

• Participants will be able to describe the 3 named subdivisions and their meaning for the process of self regulation

• Participants will be able to perform at least 3 exercises to activate the mobilization system and the social engagement system

• Participants will be able to describe the 3 states (immobilization, mobilization or social engagement) that a client might exhibit in reaction to a stressful situation.

• Participants will create, with their clients, three or more steps that the clients can use to change their autonomous nervous state from a state of immobilization into a state of mobilization or social engagement.