#73 – Keen on Yoga Podcast with Bessel van der Kolk

Bessel van der Kolk MD is author of the seminal book The Body
Keeps The Score. He spends his career studying how
children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, and has
translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment
research to develop and study a range of treatments for
traumatic stress in children and adults.


In 1984, he set up one of the first clinical / research centers
in the US dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress
in civilian populations, which has trained numerous researchers
and clinicians specializing in the study and treatment of
traumatic stress, and which has been continually funded to
research the impact of traumatic stress and effective treatment
interventions. He did the first studies on the effects of SSRIs
on PTSD; was a member of the first neuroimaging team to
investigate how trauma changes brain processes, and did the
first research linking BPD and deliberate self-injury to trauma
and neglect in early childhood.


Much of his research has focused on how trauma has a different
impact at different stages of development, and that disruptions
in care-giving systems have additional deleterious effects that
need to be addressed for effective intervention. In order to
promote a deeper understanding of the impact of childhood
trauma and to foster the development and execution of effective
treatment interventions, he initiated the process that led to
the establishment of the National Child Traumatic Stress
Network (NCTSN), a Congressionally mandated initiative that now
funds approximately 150 centers specializing in developing
effective treatment interventions, and implementing them in a
wide array of settings, from juvenile detention centers to
tribal agencies, nationwide.

He has focused on studying treatments that stabilize
physiology, increase executive functioning and help traumatized
individuals to feel fully alert to the present. This has
included an NIMH funded study on EMDR and NCCAM funded study of
yoga, and, in recent years, the study of neurofeedback to
investigate whether attentional and perceptual systems (and the
neural tracks responsible for them) can be altered by changing
EEG patterns.

​His efforts resulted in the establishment of Trauma Center
(now the Trauma Research Foundation) that consisted of a
well-trained clinical team specializing in the treatment of
children and adults with histories of child maltreatment, that
applied treatment models that are widely taught and implemented
nationwide, a research lab that studied the effects of
neurofeedback and MDMA on behavior, mood, and executive
functioning, and numerous trainings nationwide to a variety of
mental health professional, educators, parent groups, policy
makers, and law enforcement personnel.


You can find out more about him on his website here.