Beyond Identification

Next Conference December 2023

Offered by Sufism and Psychology Forum with Community Healing Centers

Saturday, December 2, 2023

*Registration is closed but stay tuned for highlights

Beyond Identification: “The Healer’s Heart”
With Kathy Kain, Lael Keen, and Scott Zamurut
Saturday, December 2, 2023, on Zoom
9:30am- 3:30pm (PT)
Registration: $95 (*register by 11/29)

*4.5 CE Credits for LMFTs, LCSWs, LPCCs, and/or LEPs

This year’s Beyond Identification program focuses the state of the practitioner as an essential factor in the healing process. The heart has been recognized as a center of awareness in many spiritual traditions since ancient times.  Many healing traditions also recognize that the heart plays a central role in organizing internal states. Recently, the fields of interpersonal neurobiology, somatic studies, and trauma treatment have also come to understand the position of the heart in organizing the healing process across modalities.

This year, we reach beyond the discipline of psychotherapy to include healing approaches that involve hands-on work. All three of our presenters are experts and teachers of somatic healing disciplines. There is much to still to be learned about the role of the heart in promoting human development and healing. This program offers the opportunity to increase our understanding and awareness of how focus on the heart can remove impediments and increase the possibility of realizing our full human potential.

Presentation Highlights 

Kathy Kain

Presentation: “Somatic Presence:
Resting and Nourishing the Healer’s Heart”

Those of us in the healing and caring professions must attend to our own resilience or we risk moving into compassion fatigue, as well as poor physical, mental, and spiritual health consequences from being chronically over-extended. Our ability to be heart-full for ourselves and others can become compromised. In this experiential presentation, we will discuss the ways in which our somatic history and habits can undermine resilience, and then together explore some somatic practices that can help us rest and nourish our heart-full presence.

Lael Keen

Presentation: “Creating a Space Where Grace
Can Arise and Healing Can Happen”

Healing is within the agency and power of the client and has to do with the client accessing the resources that arise from their unique life journey. How then do we, as helping practitioners, conceive of our role? We will consider some of the ways healing and self-regulation are thought of in the disciplines of Anthroposophy, Rolfing® and Rolf Movement®, and Somatic Experiencing.® The job of the practitioner is to support the client’s unique healing journey and the practitioner’s ability to do this is in direct relationship to the quality of presence that they are able to bring to the meeting with the client.

Scott Zamurut

Presentation:
“The Home of the Heart”

One pathway for understanding how the heart serves as the center for practicing a healing art is to understand it’s place with our body anatomy and physiology. Knowing the heart’s placement with our body, physically and energetically, enlivens our understanding and experience of the heart as central in our healing practice.

Presenter Bios

Kathy Kain, PhD,, has practiced and taught somatic and touch-oriented approaches to trauma recovery, self-regulation skills, and resilience for over 42 years. Through her Somatic Practice organization, she offers professional development programs for practitioners in the fields of psychotherapy, trauma recovery, physical care, and somatics. Her educational approach encourages students to engage in ongoing practice that deepens their skills and expertise as they gradually embody this somatic approach – and make it their own. Kathy teaches in Europe, Australia, Canada, and throughout the United States, is a senior trainer in the Somatic Experiencing training program, an adjunct faculty member of Sonoma State University, and was a senior trainer for 12 years in the Somatic Psychotherapy training program based in Sydney, Australia. She co-authored the books The Tao of Trauma with Alaine D. Duncan, Nurturing Resilience with Stephen J. Terrell, PsyD, and Ortho-Bionomy with Jim Berns.

Lael Katharine Keen‘s primary practice is in Somatic Experiencing®, Rolfing® and Rolf Movement®. In addition to her private work with clients, she is senior faculty for Somatic Experiencing® International Institute and a founding member of the Brazilian Trauma Association (ABT), as well as Advanced Faculty and Movement Faculty for the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute of Structural Integration and a founding member of the Brazilian Rolfing Association (ABR). Lael holds a 5th degree black belt in Ki-Aikido and has studied many different disciplines that focus on the body-mind connection.  She is a Bates Method Vision Educator and integrates the work with vision into her work with Rolf Movement and Somatic Experiencing® She is also an Anthroposophic Art Therapist and completes her 3 year training as an Anthroposophic Biographical Counselor in September of 2023. She lives in the south of Brazil where she and her husband, Russell Jones (also a Somatic Experiencing® teacher), own and operate a training center in the Atlantic Rain Forest on the Island of Santa Catarina. She continues to study and learn about what it is to be a human being and how we can heal at all levels, body, mind, soul and spirit.

Scott Zamurut, RCST®, is a senior teacher in the field of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. He devoted a decade to study and teacher training with Franklyn Sills, and Sills’ osteopathic colleagues. His rigorous, spirited, and hands-on classroom style is a result of over 30 years of observation, practice, and study, including the training of practitioners and teachers. Scott has served his profession as a founding board member of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America; and as a Past Vice President of the American Polarity Therapy Association. He teaches the fundamentals of Biodynamics the way the founders described it, which recognizes that the very essence of life breathes in us in a way that “ordinary humans” can perceive. When we observe the Breath of Life skillfully–without manipulation– life returns.

For more information please call (415) 499-1115 or email spf@ias.org.

**International Association of Sufism is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, to sponsor continuing education for LCSWs, LMFTs, and LEPs, Provider number: 95354. IAS maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Continuing Education grievances and request for refunds, disability accommodations, copies of CEU certificates or other records should be directed to spf@ias.org. For our policies pertaining to these matters, please go to the policies page.

Beyond Identifications Overview & Past Programs 

All Beyond Identifications programming focuses on the practice of psychotherapy grounded in a heart-centered approach. The heart has been recognized as a center of awareness in many spiritual traditions since ancient times. Recently, the field of psychotherapy has begun to recognize its relevance, from both neurobiological and experiential perspectives, yet there is still much to be learned about the role of the heart in promoting human development and healing.

Read more about this program, and the interplay of psychology and spirituality in Sufism: An Inquiry.

Beyond Identification 2022
“Heart-Based Treatment of Trauma”
Saturday, March 12, 2022, 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

The most recent Beyond Identification program focused on the treatment of trauma from a heart-based approach to psychotherapy. Presenters at this event are all experts in their fields and represent a variety of psychotherapeutic approaches and spiritual disciplines. The Beyond Identification program offers the opportunity to increase our understanding and awareness of how focus on the heart can remove impediments and increase the possibility of realizing our full human potential.  Program presenters included:

      • Joseph Bobrow, Ph.D. – Turning ghosts into Ancestors: The Transformative Power of the Beloved Community
      • Hamaseh Kianfar, Ed.D. – The Role of Forgiveness in Healing Trauma
      • Glenn Hartelius, Ph.D. Heart-Located Presence as a Measurable Cognitive Process
      • Jorina Elbers, Ph.D. The Resilient Heart: Trauma-sensitive Approaches to Using HeartMath with Your Client

Beyond Identification Team

Hamaseh Kianfar, Ed.D. is a Registered Associate of Marriage and Family Therapy and has earned her Doctoral Degree in Education.  Hamaseh currently works as a Mental Health Practitioner for Behavioral Health and Recovery Services for the county of Marin. Prior to her work for Marin County, Hamaseh worked as a Mental Health Practitioner, providing direct therapeutic services, crisis intervention, facilitating mental health groups, and providing psychodiagnostic court evaluations for juveniles and adults impacted by the criminal justice system. Hamaseh believes that working in a collaborative way with community providers, providing culturally informed care, and keeping the client at the center of services is integral. Hamaseh has served as a commissioner for Marin County’s Human Rights Committee and is committed to equity for all and the promotion of community-based social justice. Hamaseh is certified in a variety of groups and tools, including Seeking Safety, Anger Management, J-SOAP-II, JSORRAT-II, CANS, Parenting for the Inside Out, Thinking for Change, Criminal Conduct and Substance Use, Motivational Interviewing, and Restorative Practices.

Leili First, Ph.D. is a student of Uwaiysi Sufism and a long-time member of the International Association of Sufism. Dr. First has given lectures on Sufism and Women in Islam at colleges and universities and presented at the Annual Sufism Symposium and Parliament of the World’s Religions. She has served on the Marin Interfaith Council, and as a Sufi Women Organization representative at the United Nations meeting of NGOs. She holds a Ph.D. in Transformative Studies.

Jamal Lawrence Granick, Ph.D., is a licensed psychotherapist in California and New Mexico. He is student of Uwaiysi Sufism under the guidance of Dr. Nahid Angha and Shah Nazar Dr. Seyyed Ali Kianfar, the founding directors of International Association of Sufism. Dr. Granick is a member of IAS and serves on its Executive Committee, and has participated in many of its programs, including presenting on Sufism and Psychology nationally and internationally. He also holds a fourth degree black belt in Aikido which he teaches in a regular weekly class. Jamal obtained a Ph.D. from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in 2011, and did his doctoral research on transpersonal aspects of therapist’s presence in psychotherapy.

Mary Toth Granick, M.Ed, LMFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and maintains a private practice in California and New Mexico.  She works with individual adults, couples, adolescents and their families. She also has extensive experience and a background in school-based counseling services. Ms. Toth Granick is a student of Uwaiysi Sufism and a member of the International Association of Sufism. She has contributed articles in the SPF Newsletter and the journal, Sufism: An Inquiry. She has also presented her work with Sufism and Psychology at various retreats in the Bay Area.

Arife Ellen Hammerle, Ph.D. is a senior teacher of the Uwaiysi School of Sufism, guided by Sufi Masters Dr. Nahid Angha and Shah Nazar Seyyed Dr. Ali. Kianfar. Dr. Hammerle is a member of the International Association of Sufism and sits on the Executive Committee for the Institute for Sufi Studies. She is a psychotherapist and published author who teaches courses at the Institute for Sufi Studies and 40 Days Alchemy of Tranquility Program. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology. Dr. Hammerle is a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor with the Community Healing Centers, an integrative psychotherapy non-profit organization. She is a published author who has written numerous books and articles on spirituality and psychology.

Elizabeth Miller, Ph.D., is a student of Uwaiysi Sufism under the guidance of Dr. Nahid Angha and Shah Nazar Seyyed Dr. Ali Kianfar.  She is a member of the Sufi Women Organization Council and serves on the editorial team of Sufism: An Inquiry.. Dr. Miller works as an educator and professor of Philosophy and Religion, and is co-founder of a Bay Area nonprofit.  Her research focuses on heart-based approaches to evaluation and learning, and draws on Sufism, science and psychology.

Katherine Preston, MA, LMFT is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and has been a practicing psychotherapist for over twenty-five years. She maintains a private practice in San Francisco and has held many clinical leadership positions overseeing and providing clinical training and supervision for therapeutic services throughout the Bay Area. Ms. Preston is a student of Uwaiysi Sufism and a member of International Association of Sufism. Ms. Preston serves as moderator for the 40 Days – Alchemy of Tranquility Program.

Amineh Amelia Pryor, Ph.D., LMFT is a student of Uwaiysi Sufism under the guidance of Sufi Masters Dr. Nahid Angha and Shah Nazar Seyyed Dr. Ali Kianfar. Dr. Pryor is co-director of the Sufism and Psychology Forum and co-editor of the SPF Newsletter, a department of International Association of Sufism. Dr. Pryor is a clinical supervisor and psychotherapist at the Community Healing Centers in San Francisco. She presents at local and international conferences and has published articles in the fields of spirituality, psychology, consciousness, and science. Dr. Pryor is the author of Psychology in Sufism and co-author of Sufi Grace.As a presenter and group facilitator in the 40 Days – Alchemy of Tranquility® Program she also experiences the benefits of the 40 Days practices in her own life.

**International Association of Sufism is approved by the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, to sponsor continuing education for LCSWs, LMFTs, and LEPs,  Provider number: 95354. IAS maintains responsibility for this program/course and its content. Continuing Education grievances and request for refunds, disability accommodations, copies of CEU certificates or other records should be directed to spf@ias.org. For our policies pertaining to these matters, please go to the policies page.