Amber Gray

Walking Together: An Introduction to Clinical Work with Refugees and Survivors of Torture, Part 1
2017-04-21 09:00 (America/New_York)
Presented by Amber Gray, LPCC, MPH, MA, BC-DMT Dates, Times, and Locations
April 21, 2017 9:00 am to 4:30 pm Albuquerque, NM
Objectives
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
1. Participants will have an overview and framework with which to better understand the complex issues arising in clinical work with refugees and survivors of torture.
2. Participants will understand self-care as an ethical requirement of work with refugees and survivors.
3. Participants will understand the benefits and risks of empathy in psychotherapy with refugees and survivors of torture.
4. Participants will learn one compassion-based, self-care skill.
Participants will be introduced to the unique community, social, and health/ mental health issues that can exist within a community of people displaced by extreme hardship, war, organized violence, and human rights abuses.
6. Participants will have increased skills to assess refugees presenting with mental health, social, functional, and adjustment issues.
Registration
The deadline for registration is Tuesday, April 18, 2017. Please direct registration forms or questions to Karen Gonzales. Karen may be reached by email at Karen.Gonzales@state.nm.us or telephone at 505-476-3076. There is no cost for the training and CE credits in social work, counseling, and psychology will be provided for attending. Details on how to claim CEs will be provided during the presentation.
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Amber is speaking at the UCLA Expressive Arts Summit in Los Angeles
2017-03-30 00:00 - 2017-04-02 00:00
Hilton Los Angeles Airport
5711 W Century Blvd – Los Angeles
Psychotherapy Approaches • Contemplative Practices
Community Building
New Experiences — New Connections
All the Creative Arts plus Play Therapy
150 Faculty • Over 100 Sessions • 4 Days
VIEW ALL INFORMATION AT THIS LINK

Amber Gray and colleague Tarrie Burnett spoke on their programs for to empower Refugee Women at the UN Convention on Women
2017-03-17 00:00
ON THE STATUS OF WOMEN

The sixty-first session of the Commission on the Status of Women took place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, from 13 to 24 March 2017. Representatives of Member States, UN entities, and ECOSOC-accredited non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from all regions of the world attended the session. The themes of this years session were:

Priority Theme: Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work
Review Theme: Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls (agreed conclusions of the fifty-eighth session)
Emerging Issue/Focus Area: The empowerment of indigenous women

Amber Gray, Restorative Resources Director, was a presenter at the Forum. Amber co-presented with colleagues from The University of New Mexico, The Turkish House, and Lutheran Family Services. Amber’s presentation focused on a framework LFS piloted to provide group therapy to Afghan women, who are recently arrived refugees, using a public/mental health and creative arts therapy approach. This group fosters a restored sense of belonging through connection, empowerment, and engagement with meaningful activities.
The framework is being replicated with women from Central African Republic and Democratic Republic of Congo this year. Unlike many group therapy approaches, this framework utilizes a public health approach so the facilitators and the women can co-create the group content and process. The framework is based on Amber’s Restorative Movement Psychotherapy, a mindfulness, somatic and arts based approach to working with refugee and war trauma; survivors of torture; and survivors of interpersonal trauma in cross cultural contexts. Participants attending the Forum from Mozambique and Kurdistan expressed an interest in similar programs, and Restorative Resources is currently co-seeking funds for the Kurdistan program. We are conducting research on impact on a sense of belonging, for the second year.

Continuurhythm®: Polyvagal informed Continuum at Tensegrity in Sunshine Coast, Australia
2017-03-10 00:00 - 2017-03-12 00:00
Tensegrity Studio
306 Kiel Mountain Road – Kiels Mountain, Sunshine Coast
Very special three day workshop with Amber Gray on the Sunshine Coast.
The Continuum Movement, pioneered by Emilie Conrad, is an antidote to the challenges of an uncertain world. Continuum is a renowned self discovery method, a revitalizing movement practice, and a transformational life practice.
Breath, sound and movement sequences ranging from slow and subtle to fluidly dynamic form the basis of our three days of movement exploration.
Continuum Movement was “born” in Haiti; inspired by the undulating movements of Haitian dancers in ceremony, Emilie was inspired to explore the source of free, unconstrained movement for pleasure, for wellness, and to counter the effects of stress, aging, illness, injury, and trauma.
Continuurhythm® is authorized Continuum teacher Amber Gray’s unique synthesis of Haitian dance, Dr. Stephen Porges polyvagal theory, and Continuum. This polyvagal informed and Haitian dance inspired Continuum workshop will integrate extended movement practices with polyvagal theory and teachings from Haitian sacred tradition. It is appropriate for movers of all levels of experience and fitness, and for those working with or living with trauma, stress injury, physical injury, and chronic pain. It is also perfect for movement therapists and artists, bodyworkers, somatic practitioners, psychotherapists, healers and dancers who want to connect to the deep roots of all movement; our own inner choreographer, the fluid, resilient body.

Lifestreams: Continuum as Moving Medicine, Hobart, Tasmania
2017-03-03 00:00 - 2017-03-05 00:00
Pilates J Studio
1242 Acton Road – Cambridge
Continuum is “moving medicine”. Emilie Conrad, creator of Continuum Movement, taught that all fluids are basically one element, resonating with all other fluids. They function as a kind of umbilical cord supplying us with the pulsing undulations of life. Continuum increases flexibility, motility, wellbeing, creativity, innovation, adaptability and vitality.
This workshop is an invitation to dive deep into the pool of existence within our cells and enter the play of life through Continuum, a practice that involves simple sound streams (to stir the fluid that resides within our tissues), breathing patterns, and slow, organic movements. In this workshop, we will have opportunities to address specific participant or client issues as defined by the group.
This workshop is open to movement artists and practitioners, therapists, body workers and all those committed to a deep exploration of how life reveals itself in each and every breath and movement we create.
Over the weekend we will focus on how Continuum aids us to restore fluidity and health to our tissue, our movement, and overall well-being, after specific injuries, chronic stress, and/or exposure to life challenging or traumatic events. Reference will be made to how Continuum has been used with survivors of large-scale disasters, interpersonal violence and physical injury to guide our own fluid inquiries.
WHEN: 3-5 March 2017 Friday 6-9pm Saturday 1-6:30pm Sunday 10am-4pm
WHERE: Pilates J studio of Julie Hills, 1242 Acton Road, Cambridge, Tasmania
Payment to Amber E. Gray via PAYPAL: amber@ecentral.com
For logistical information, contact Julie Hills: pilates@pilatesJ.com.au or 0402 827 651

The Art of Spine Restoring our Core with Continuum
2017-02-24 00:00 - 2017-02-26 00:00
Soul Centre
18 Huia Rd – Auckland
Our Spine is a pathway that spans our ancestral and evolutionary origins to our future potential. As axis mundi, we connect heaven and earth in our bodies core; as poto mitan, we encounter our universal Center. Our spine is core support, fluid strength, and gravity dancer. Our spine is also the pathway of our inner knowing: It remembers how we are born to move. Continuum is a movement practice inspired by the fluid undulations of Haitian dance. It enables us to move beyond our ‘everyday body’ with its rigid and repetitive patterns of movement, and to open into our flowing, sensuous body. Through a rich variety of breath, sound and subtle movement explorations we will experience our capacity for free, flowing, non-constrained. Engaging in new ways with gravity, we promote adaptability and core strength. Continuum complements other movement practices and arts such as yoga, pilates, gyrotonics, and dance, and is a profound self care practice for anyone engaged in therapeutic and healing traditions.
Instructor: International presenter Amber Gray is a Continuum teacher, award winning dance movement therapist and a board licensed mental health professional. Her teaching often combines Continuum with dance movement therapy, somatic psychology, current trauma and neuropsychological research, movement therapy, life impressions bodywork, ritual, and creative arts.
Cost: $333 or $300 if paid in full by the 20th February
To Register: info@soulcentre.co.nz

Body as Voice: Restorative Movement Psychotherapy for Survivors of Trauma
2017-02-22 00:00
Amber is returning to Europe to offer her unique body, movement and rhythm-based framework for promoting resiliency and processing traumatic experience in clients who are survivors of traumatic life events.
This 3-part training is based on the facilitator’s 20 years experience as a Dance Movement Therapist and Somatic Psychotherapist specializing in interpersonal trauma, including torture treatment, refugee mental health, ritual abuse, childhood trauma and human rights violations, in crosses cultural contexts. Part 1 and 2 are currently approved for ADTA Alternate Route (Graduate Level) Training, and Part 3 is in process.
The training emphasizes
– Ongoing cultivation of somatic self-awareness, self-compassion and self-love,
– Prevention and mitigation of vicarious trauma,
– Enhancing somatic listening skills,
– Contact, connection and relatedness through promotion of internal state-shifting and social engagement
– “State-shifting” to resource through the body, and dampen negative affect,
– Integrate breath, body and movement based practices and processes into trauma processing to restore meaning and belonging.
What participants say:
“This training transformed my embodied knowledge of trauma, its process and healing trajectory. On top of unpacking important theories, the course is especially thorough in integrating opportunities for experiential understanding. I really appreciated the rich case studies and demos Amber brings into the course, and opportunities to work in smaller groups or dyads to explore therapeutic applications and our own relationship to this work. Perhaps the most powerful for me, Body as Voice helped restore and enhance my own self-compassion and a more authentic presence with others.”
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Heartlines at MOVE Studio in Santa Fe
2017-02-14 18:00 - 21:00
MOVE Studio
901 W San Mateo Rd – Santa Fe
Open the Door to Your Heart
Walk right on in
Let your love come running in
Open the door to your heart…
Let it flow like the river
Let it shine like the light
Nick Kamen
The human heart has captivated philosophers, artists, scientists, and poets for eons. It is at once an organ that is essential to life, and the “home” of energetic and emotional qualities essential to humanity: Love, caring, sadness, and more. It is an organized system; a feeling and perhaps thinking brain, and the source of emergent behavior. This Continuum evening class combines a brief anatomical overview of the heart with a breath, sound and movement based Continuum exploration. Opening the “door to our hearts”, we explore our hearts through stillpoints, spirals and suspension in space.
WHEN: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2017 6-9 PM
WHERE: MOVE, 901 San Mateo, Santa Fe
COST: $35.00
CONTACT: Amber Gray, 505-603- 7021; restorativeresources@gmail.com
