Resource oriented skill training is a method originally based in a psychomotor teaching tradition in Denmark. The method was developed further within Bodynamic Analysis – a body-oriented psychotherapy created in Denmark since the late 1960s. Knowledge of psychomotor development and psychological muscle function in the development of a person’s resources and defense patterns is key in the Bodynamic approach. Knowledge of both hypo- and hyper-responsive (giving up and controlling) defense patterns represented in muscles opens an opportunity to adapt methods and interventions precisely to the actual meeting with the individual.
Merete Holm Brantbjerg has further refined the skill training into a relational method when working with stress and trauma – focusing especially on dynamics of resonance and authority – by using the concept of individual “dosing”. Resource-oriented skill training – or Motoric Haiku - is a psychotherapeutic method capable of reaching into behaviour and defense patterns connected to unresolved stress and trauma.
Why choose a body-oriented method in working with stress and trauma?
Patterns of behaviour and defense founded in implicit sensory based memory (sensing, feelings, experiences with no conscious relation to a specific biographical event) cannot be reached through the spoken language. Traumatic memory is characterized by dissociation, and therefore the locked patterns often lie tied into a sensory, non-linear memory. A body-oriented method offers an opportunity to reach into these layers of consciousness and start a process of healing- and integration.
Why focus on skilltraining?
Skills become automatic when they are trained and used for a long enough time; we no longer need to think about how we do something – we just do it. When our survival intelligence takes over in threatening or highly challenging situations , these automatic skills are still available to us. Thus it makes a difference which skills a person has trained to become automatic prior to a trauma. It matters both in terms of the choices/skills the person has available IN the situation – and it matters in terms of which skills are available to support “landing” into a social platform after the traumatic situation is over.
Skills that highly support our capacity to cope with high stress and to land from high stress are:
- centering, grounding, flexibility, boundaries, regulating contact
- orienting in factual reality
- optimizing safety
- being in charge from within in both directing and following roles in interaction
- regulating intensity - tracking shifts in the autonomic nervous system
- coping with transitions between high and low intensity
Training these psychosocial skills can be a pathway to support coping with high stress and healing unresolved trauma. Implicit memory pieces from dissociated trauma can be accessed and invited into consciousness through precisely dosed skilltraining.
Integrating our experience of a traumatic event challenges the personality.
Relating to trauma demands that our capacity, our value system, our perception of reality and oftentimes our self-image expand. Resource oriented skill training supports this expansion of the personality’s capacity – bodily, emotionally and cognitively.
How is it done?
Specific and simple body exercises are used to train both individual and relational skills.
In the exercises, special focus lies on the following principles:
- specific body-sensing supporting an increased presence here and now
- naming bodysensations and emotional experiences in verbal language – building a bridge to language
- precise individual dosing
- acceptance of whatever sensations and experiences the exercises evoke
- sorting out which exercises are resourcing for each person
Each exercise can be done big or small, slow or fast, and for a longer or shorter time. Training the awarenes of the optimal individual dose in performing an exercise is key in the method. Ownership and inner authority is supported through this principal of individual “dosing”. When precise individual dosing is found “windows of opportunity” occur in the here and now – moments where healing happens, lost resources become available again, skills are restored, new neural pathways are established and implicit memory pieces may emerge.
Cognitive integration is supported through conceptualizing and sharing – and is an integral part of the method.
The relational aspect of the method
Finding the precise dosing when exploring a body exercise and through this gaining access to the potential for self healing is a process that most often depend on support from another person. Sensing the precise dose that brings you into the here and now needs for you to open up to your own resonance – and doing that is nurtured by being in a resonant and attuned relationship with another person.
If it was possible to access the self-healing potential on one’s own – we would have probably done it long ago. On the pathway to healing we meet our defense patterns – giving up and controlling – and both of these responses make it difficult to attune precisely to individual dosing.
The role of the therapist or teacher is important. Through nonverbal resonance and verbal support, the therapist can guide the client/participant to discover what it feels like to find the optimal dose in an exercise – and to integrate this experience in the self-image. The presence of the therapist in the here and now is key in this process.
The therapist comes first
As described above, the presence of the therapist in the here and now is crucial in this kind of trauma work.
To be able to meet other people in stress and trauma states – and to be able to support others in opening up “windows of opportunity” for healing – you need to know this landscape in yourself. You need to be able to cope with your own states of high and low intensity – and you need to know what skills support you in staying present.
Trauma states are contagious. High stress has a tendency to evoke high stress. If just one person in the room is trained to stay centered, grounded and attuned when powerful trauma states occur it makes a big difference for everybody present. It provides a container and a “landing platform”.
Supporting the therapist’s presence, safety and resonanceskills comes first in this training.
Merete Holm Brantbjerg is a co-creator of Bodynamic Analysis (1985) – a member of European Association of Body Psychotherapy (EABP) and the psychotherapist organization in Denmark (Dansk Psykoterapeutforening). She specializes in resource oriented skill training as a psychotherapeutic method – applying it to both developmental and shock trauma.
Merete currently leads trainings and workshops in Scandinavia, Vancouver and London, and maintains a private practice for therapy and supervision in both Copenhagen and internationally.
The name "Moaiku" - derived from 'Motoric Haiku' - captures the poetic quality in a psychotherapeutic skill training that is focused on simplicity, repetition, precise individual dosing, and 'here and now' presence.
Merete Holm Brantbjerg offers workshops in Vancouver, London, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm - focusing on different aspects of stress and trauma
Workshoptitles are
Building a bridge between trauma and personality
Instincts, emotions and feelings
Authority and Trauma
Coping with transitions – Stress management
A Hidden Challenge in Coping with Stress - understanding the impact of hyporesponse and how to approach it.
Pleasure and direction (supporting the cooperation between right and left side of the brain).
Discover the hidden challenge in coping with stress (this workshop focuses on presenting the concept of hypo-response and the role it plays in stress patterns)
Identity and Trauma (includes knowledge about identity formation in the teenage phase and how that parallels identity crisis after trauma)
Gender skills and trauma healing
Attachment and Trauma
MHB also offers longer training in trauma therapy for therapists in Scandinavia in Danish/Swedish - and in October 2012 a new 3 module training will start in Vancouver: Moaiku Trauma Therapy in English.