The college of medicine has run hundreds of online classes and events – many of them free to attend – since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. Those who’ve joined one of the wide variety of sessions – featuring everything from a gentle daily exercise class to hypnosis sessions and lu jong and laughing yoga – say they’ve enjoyed meeting new people and learning new skills. Many of our classes have continued post-pandemic and you’ll find the latest events listed below. To find out how you can get involved, simply scroll down for class and event information and register your place.
What is the Havening Technique?
The havening techniques®.
Havening refers to a newer alternative therapy technique that incorporates distraction, touch, and eye movements. Its goal is to reduce anxiety and distress associated with negative memories. According to dr. Steven ruden and dr. Ronald ruden, the creators of the technique, the use of therapeutic touch can help treat mental health symptoms by changing pathways in the brain linked to emotional distress. The theory rests on the idea that touch can help boost the production of serotonin in your brain. This, in turn, helps you relax and detach from an upsetting memory or experience. The release of serotonin is said to have a soothing effect that helps relieve mental health symptoms and keep painful memories from troubling you further.
Kate truitt, a clinical psychologist who is a certified trainer for havening, works out of los angeles and has been a proponent of the technique since 2014. After experiencing a severe trauma five years ago, she went to a havening workshop in new york city and found that within minutes she was feeling better. According to truitt, havening focuses on exploring how trauma is encoded in the amygdala, the part of the brain that experiences emotions. "in a moment of trauma encoding, the brain goes into what's called a hyper gamma wave start, which allows the amgydala, our survivor brain, to basically latch like super glue onto a traumatic experience and say 'i'm remembering this forever, because this threatened my life,'" explained truitt.
We will first chat about the situation you would like to change, and see whether havening can help. Once we agree to work together, the painful memory is briefly activated, gentle touch is applied to the hands, arms and face and distraction exercises are used. This creates the necessary conditions in the brain to remove the receptors that trigger distressing emotions and physical content of a trauma-based memory. If you don’t feel comfortable disclosing some the content of an event, i do not need to know all the details. Take-away: you can be shown how to do self-havening at home whenever required.
Havening clears distress and trauma from the brain. Through using the havening techniques®, the memory is de-traumatised and the negative effects are permanently removed. This means that when we think of the stressful memory, it can no longer trigger the brain’s red" alert” state. The memory becomes another memory of something that happened in the past, but without having to re-live the emotional consequences of it again and again. Havening techniques™ uses human touch as a therapeutic tool, called havening touch®. “the havening process was a totally different experience, however magically it worked! donna was calm, confident and reassuring throughout the sessions.