The Inner Thoughts of a Trauma Guru – Dr. Peter Levine – HPP 51

Episode 51

Peter Levine, PhD

Years ago, trauma was defined more by external events rather than the responses human beings have to those events. Psychological trauma can happen to anyone when they perceive a situation as a threat and are unable to complete a satisfactory fight, flight or freeze response.

The nervous system is designed to keep us psychological intact when we perceive we cannot keep ourselves safe in a situation. However, if we do not address the way in which our nervous and memory system categorized the event, the aftermath can be quite devastating.

Show Notes:

The origins of Somatic Experiencing from the founder

Why Somatic Experiencing works so well with trauma

The basics of how trauma gets trapped in the body

The simple protocols that go a long way

The spiritual implications of trauma

The relationship between presence, dissociation and trauma

Trans-generational trauma

MDMA-assisted psychotherapy

Where trauma work is headed

Peter Levine, PhD

Peter A. Levine, PhD, holds doctorates in both Biophysics and Psychology. He is the developer of Somatic Experiencing®, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma; Founder of the Somatic Experiencing® Trauma Institute/Foundation for Human Enrichment®; Founder and President of Ergos Levine Institute of Somatic Education®; and author of several best-selling books on trauma, including Waking the Tiger, which is published in over 28 languages. Dr. Levine is currently a Senior Fellow and consultant at The Meadows Addiction and Trauma Treatment Center in Wickenburg, Arizona and continues to teach SE™ trauma healing workshops internationally.

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Will Van Derveer, MD is co-founder of Integrative Psychiatry Institute (IPI), along with friend and colleague Keith Kurlander, MA. He co-created IPI as an expression of what he stands for. First, that anyone can heal, and second that we medical providers must embrace our own healing journeys in order to fully command our potency as healers.

Dr. Van Derveer spent the last 20 years innovating and testing a comprehensive approach to addressing psychiatric challenges which transcends the conventional model he learned in medical school at Vanderbilt University and residency at University of Colorado, while deeply engaging his own healing path.

He founded the Integrative Psychiatric Healing Center in in 2001 in Boulder, CO, where he currently practices. Dr. Van Derveer regards unresolved emotional trauma as the most significant root cause of psychiatric symptoms in integrative psychiatry practice, along with gut issues, hormone imbalances, inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and other functional medicine challenges. He is trained in Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and other psychotherapy techniques. His current clinical passion is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, which he mentors interested doctors in providing. An avid meditator, he has been a meditation instructor since 2004.

For the past several years Dr. Van Derveer has taught psychiatrists and other psychiatric providers integrative psychiatry in a number of settings, including course directing the CU psychiatry residents’ course as well as with Scott Shannon and Janet Settle at the Psychiatry MasterClass. In addition to his clinical work and teaching, he was co-investigator in 2016 a Phase II randomized clinical trial, sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). He continues to support this protocol, now in a Phase III clinical trial under break-through designation by FDA.

Dr. Van Derveer is a diplomate of the American Board of Integrative and Holistic Medicine (ABoIHM) since 2013, and he was board certified in the first wave of diplomates of the new American Board of Integrative Medicine (ABIM) in 2016.