Description:
OPD Points: 10
This course consists of 60 hours of online tutorials, illustrated with over 300 videoed case histories with children between the age of 2 – 18 as they work at the Clay Field. Released over 12 modules participants have access to the prerecorded tutorials for 12 months.
The Clay Field is a flat rectangular wooden box that holds 10 – 15 kg of clay. A bowl of water is supplied. This simple setting offers a symbolic “world” for the hands to explore. There will be no artwork to be taken home. The hands enter the Clay Field and move in it; in their ability or inability to “handle” the material they tell the client’s life story. The hands then can be encouraged to find ways to deal with situations and events, to complete actions that previously could not be coped with.
Touch is the most fundamental of human experiences. The first year of our life is dominated by the sense of touch. Tactile contact is the first mode of communication we learn. Our earliest stages in life are dominated by oral and skin contact between infant and caregiver. Our earliest body memories and our core attachments were formed when we relied on sensorimotor feedback to feel safe and loved. Love as well as violence is primarily communicated through touch. Our boundaries are invaded through inappropriate touching. Sexual experiences are overwhelmingly ruled by the sense of touch – and so are medical procedures, as well as all other events that happened to our bodies.
Key Learning Objectives / Outcomes:
- Stages of Engagement of the Hands in the Clay Field
- Haptic Perception and Haptic Diagnosis
- Trauma and the Autonomic Nervous System in Children
- Trauma Informed Interventions to Strengthen the Sensory Division in the nervous system.
- Trauma Informed Interventions to Strengthen the Motor Division in the nervous system.
- Sequential Development and the Expressive Therapies Continuum
- The Sensory Cortex – age 0 to 1 years
- The Motor Cortex – age 1 – 4
- Vital Relationship and Perception – age 4 – 6
- Symbolic Play – age 6 – 9
- Departure from the Relational Field of the Parents – age 9 – 11
- Centring as Discovery of the Inner World – age 11 – 13
- Centring as Search for Identity – age 13 – 16
- Centring as Search for the Own Base – age 16 – 18
- Age-specific self-perception and orientation in the Clay Field
- Age-specific body-perception
- Embodiment or dissociation
- Age-specific haptic organization of the arms
- Age-specific haptic organization of the hands
- The Five Situations for Children
- Age-specific Cognitive Integration
- The appropriate use of tools
- Child specific trauma interventions
- Child specific body perception
- Dialoguing with children at the Clay Field
