About

Why Michael Shiffman is Your Expert for Somatic Therapy

Michael Shiffman, PhD, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage and Family
Therapist (LMFT #122513) in Private Practice in Los Angeles

I am a Certified Group Psychotherapist (CGP), a certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), a certified Neuroaffective Relational Model Therapist (NARM) and a Level 2 PACT Couple Therapist. I am also trained in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Voice Dialogue and have a rare level of education and expertise in the use of touch for somatic regulation and attachment repair.

My_CV can be reviewed here.

Individuals, Couples and Groups

My clinical work is mindfulness based, somatically grounded and asset oriented. I have a substantial background working with anxiety, panic, traumatic stress, substance abuse and recovery, relapse prevention, and somatic-oriented therapeutic practices. I teach mindfulness meditation, neuroaffective regulation and somatic psychotherapy.

Meditation

I began meditating in 1994 under the guidance of Shinzen Young. I founded LA Dharma in 1999 and hosted a meditation group and coordinated 20 daylong retreats and two large conferences with teachers from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center and the Insight Meditation Center. In 2002, I began teaching mindfulness meditation and I have since taught beginning, intermediate and advanced meditation practices. I also studied with Jason Siff and have practiced with Rev. Hyewol Sunim since 2002.

Teaching and Consultation

I teach and consult in three areas: complex trauma, somatic therapy and mindfulness practices. I teach mindfulness meditation as a formal practice as well as integrating it within the context of a wide array of awareness and embodiment exercises. Somatic practices range from bringing attention to tension patterns to the use of physical touch for somatic regulation and attachment repair.

I provide consulting related to mindfulness and trauma. Whether it is designing a corporate program or training, group or individual consultation, or support related to a workplace or private practice emergency, I can provide training and consultation.

Training

I received my PhD at UCLA. My initial academic training is in sociology and includes conversation analysis, social movements, labor union history, gender studies and social psychology. My doctoral dissertation was on family trauma and posttraumatic stress among adult children of alcoholics. I have worked in program evaluation, health care research and grant writing, and have provided technical services at UCLA through several private computer companies and as an individual consultant.

NARM: The NeuroAffective Relational Model for Treatment of Complex Trauma

NARM™ is an integrated top-down and bottom-up approach to complex trauma. In developmental trauma, individuals incorporate the environmental failure they have experienced in a bottom-up process of disturbed regulation and a top-down process of distorted identifications. Knowing how to work with the complex interplay between the nervous system and identifications greatly expands our therapeutic effectiveness.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing™ (SE) is a method for resolving shock trauma and relieving chronic stress. Founded by Dr. Peter Levine, SE is an approach that assists the completion of the fight, flight or freeze response which, in turn, can resolve shock trauma and release chronic somatic holding patterns.

Using Touch for Somatic Regulation

The use of touch in psychotherapy for the repair of early attachment ruptures and trauma resolution is not new. Competent and ethical psychotherapists have used intentional physical contact since the early 1930’s. What is new is that there is current neurobiological data that supports the efficacy for the use of touch for the resolution of pre-verbal relational trauma.

I use the Psychobiological Approach to Couple Therapy

PACT is grounded in contemporary neuroscience. This highlights the physiological functioning of the brain as the biological underpinning for the relational dynamics of the couple. This means that the couple’s challenges and patterns are in large part due to their nervous systems’ reactions to perceived threat. PACT focuses on maintaining safety for both parties.

EMDR Integrates Traumatic Memories into the Past

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that result from disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show that EMDR therapy, can lead to a faster healing process than psychotherapy.

Voice Dialogue Explores our Inner World of Parts – Our Sub-personalities

Voice Dialogue is the specific method developed by Hall and Sidra Stone to explore the world of the Selves – also known as sub-personalities. This method requires two people: a facilitator and a subject. The job of the facilitator is to help the subject become aware of, and to experience, the various Selves that run our lives and to learn how to use them in a conscious way through the development of an Aware Ego Process.

Mindfulness

The Buddha says that mindfulness arises from the cultivation of awareness in four domains: the activities of the body, the sensations of the body, the activities of the mind, and the awareness of dhamma, in particular our body-mind system and its change over time. To develop mindfulness is to cultivate awareness; it is to train the mind. The challenge is that we need to use the mind to train the mind using the body as its data.