Presenter: Lauren Porter, LPC, CCLS, RYT
OVERVIEW
Overview: As a child life specialist, do you ever experience feelings of helplessness in circumstances that feel outside of your control? Do you ever question your capacity to actually be helpful and supportive in moments of chaos? When we step into challenging situations as child life specialists, we can feel the impact of this on our body and emotions just as much as the children and families who we are serving. And, we have an amazing opportunity to hold an unconditional space for ourselves and the children and families that supports our shared emotional experience. In this webinar, Lauren will explore tools and practices that involve using your own body as a tool to promote connection and safety for everyone, including yourself.
About Our Presenter:
Lauren is a Heart-Centered Embodiment and Relationship Coach and Yoga Teacher, Synergetic Play Therapist, Licensed Professional Counselor, and certified child life specialist. She has nearly 20 years of professional experience working in the areas of infectious disease prevention, reproductive health, substance abuse treatment, eating disorder recovery, developmental and complex trauma, early childhood development, and pediatric pain management. Lauren also was the founder and director of Lionhearted Kids, a non-profit organization in Cape Town, South Africa that provided mindfulness-based psychosocial care, child life, and yoga for children, families and caregivers, and specialized psychosocial training for child life specialists from 2010 – 2019.
From all of her personal and professional work, Lauren has developed a fascination for the role our relationships play in reminding us that we have an embodied nervous system. This brilliant design provides us with feedback regarding our sense of well-being and safety, allows us to feel and communicate with each other beyond words, and gives texture to our relational experiences. Using her background in counseling psychology, Yoga, mindfulness, neuroscience, and Synergetic Play Therapy™, she offers her clients, who are often in caregiving roles, tools and practices that support them in befriending their body and emotions, attuning to and responding to their needs, discovering their inner resources, and reclaiming all parts of themselves. When we build this heart-centered relationship with ourselves, we deepen our capacity for engaging unconditionally with everyone with whom we come into contact.
