Have you ever wondered why you spend a third of your life unconscious and vulnerable? Or considered how wonderful it might be to have an extra eight hours a day to be productive or to make it to level 2000 on Candy Crush? Truth is you don’t have a choice. Everything sleeps, from single cell organisms like the amoeba you pulled from a pond and watched under a microscope in High School biology to the fuzz-ball rescue puppy you got on your eighth birthday. It’s a biologic imperative, like breathing, eating, and if a species is to continue, sex.
So, what’s the harm in missing a few hours, as most Americans do? Sleep research in the past two decades answers this with a resoundingeverything. Inadequate sleep correlates with increased mortality from all causes. The links are fascinating and disturbing and encompass everything from Alzheimer’s, heart attacks, stroke, obesity, and type II diabetes to depression, anxiety disorders, substance-use disorders, schizophrenia, and even cancer.
Join Dr. Atkins for a fascinating full-day overview of the evidence and best-practice strategies, which include cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and other non-pharmacologic strategies, to improve sleep and overall health and wellness for you and your clients.
From the book by Hans Selye “The Stress of Life” to the eye-opening results of the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES) on childhood trauma and health, the case is clear for the negative emotional, physical, and social fallout of severe and protracted stress and trauma. But what about the flip side? Where are we as it relates to the science and practice of positive emotional states and experiences? What is known about the healing power of humor, faith, spirituality, love, and social connectedness?
This workshop provides the mirror-side view of the stress literature. From author Norman Cousins and his lifesaving discoveries in “Anatomy of an Illness: As Perceived by the Patient, ” Bernie Siegel’s caring therapeutic approach “Exceptional Cancer Patients”, the inclusion of irreverence and humor in Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) as a core strategy, to the exciting neuro-anatomical changes seen with a mindfulness practice, you will learn about and experience how positive emotional states can rapidly alter both physiology and mood.