The Power of Touch

Here is a date for your diary – On Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd November 2007, Confer has teamed up with the British Holistic Medical Association and The School of Integrated Health, University of Westminster to bring you, The Power of Touch, a conference exploring the psychophysiology of touch, emotional communication, physical contact, cellular memory, manual messages and tactile stimulation.

Touch affects body, soul, spirit, mind and emotion. How can we use it safely to enable a sense of well-being and restore the capacity for pleasure and self-regulation? Organised by Confer and the University of Westminster in association with the BHMA, this is a conference about the psycho-physiology of touch. What do the latest scientific research and new approaches to psychotherapies tell us about the ways bodywork therapies affect the mind and the body?

Bodyworkers and other therapists often find an embodied source of pain which may have psychological roots. How does emotion get locked into the physical body in ways that are not just imaginary, but physical and physiological? How might such psychosomatic symptoms be understood and worked with relationally in the context of a bodywork consultation? How are bodyworkers contributing to the new paradigm of a whole-person psycho-physiological treatment approach? How does touch impact on the patient's overall well-being? How can we work most effectively with patients who are vulnerable or traumatised? The focus of this conference is to provide complementary health practitioners and other health workers interested in the power of touch with the most recent research and clinical insight into the capacity of tactile communication to open up emotional and physical pathways of healing.
Chair: Professor David Peters

Speakers include:

Peter Mackereth - Touch Therapies: the curious and fascinated researcher
Babette Rothschild – The complex and multi-layered boundaries of touch
Bevis Nathan - What happens when you touch someone?
Roz Carroll - Touch as human feedback, touch as ‘the mother of the senses’
Howard Evans - Cranial sacral touch and the communication of inherent health
Leon Chaitow ND DO – Touching all the bases in chronic pelvic pain conditions

There are also numerous workshops being run on topics which include:

Trusting what you sense and sensing what you trust
Boundaries, touch and mindfulness
Cranial sacral touch and the communication of inherent health
Complex patients in the bodywork practice
An overview of the ordinary and extraordinary kinds of touching found in different disciplines.
Are you a pussy cat or a barking dog? Touch as a reflective tool
Using reflection to process emotional responses to touch.

Venue The Old Cinema, University of
Westminster, Regent Street,
London W1
Dates November 2 and 3 2007
Further info
info@confer.uk.com
www.confer.uk.com

Confer is an independent organisation providing innovative CPD for psychotherapists, psychologists and doctors. Its conferences and seminars are designed to focus on the cutting-edge of research and theoretical thinking as it is applied to psychotherapy, aspects of medicine and to the culture as a whole.